PERCEPTION, RECALL & USE OF FORCE INCIDENTS:
The Impact of Attentional Load on Policing
Authors: Jason Helfer & Mike Ranalli
An officer says he shot the suspect because he feared for his life, but subsequent video evidence shows
the suspect’s hands were in the air. Two officers provide conflicting details in their reports of an incident
where a TASER was used. An officer is asked why she discharged her weapon when an innocent bystand-
er was in the area, but she can’t remember seeing the bystander. What’s happening in these scenarios?
While some media accounts jump to judgment, accusing law enforcement officers of deception or
collusion, the explanation is rarely that simple. Understanding a few basic concepts about sensory input,
processing and recall can inform use of force investigations and help law enforcement leaders communi-
cate effectively to the public and the media.
WHAT IS ATTENTIONAL LOAD?
Attentional load is simply the concept that there is only so much we can pay attention to at once.
Much like a computer, the human brain possesses a determinate amount of processing power. Once the
processing threshold—the attentional load—is surpassed, our ability to process, store and subsequently
recall information is negatively impacted.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN OUR ATTENTION IS DIVERTED?
Think about when you’re talking on a cell phone while driving. Inevitably there will be a point where
you trail off in the conversation as you focus on something on the road (ideally, the reverse does not
happen!). True multitasking is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Not surprisingly, when you focus your
attention on one activity, you “tune out” details related to other activities. This phenomenon is known as
“inattentional blindness.” You can be looking directly at something and not see it, because your mind is
focused elsewhere. Inattentional blindness was made famous by the “invisible gorilla” video. In the video,
six people in two teams of three pass a basketball back and forth. Team members are dressed in either a
black or white t-shirt. The subjects watching the video are instructed to count the number of passes
made by the team in white. During the video, a person dressed in a gorilla suit passes through the players
and pounds his chest. The typical result of this experiment is that half of the study participants do not re-
call seeing the gorilla at all. How can that be? Donald Broadbent, an experimental psychologist, used the
Filter Model to explain why some sensory input is processed by the brain while some is not. Broadbent
proposed that because attention is finite, we need a filter to selectively choose from all the stimuli coming
to us. Information that we deem important gets through the filter and goes on for further processing in
the brain. Information that is filtered out is no longer available to us. We won’t remember seeing some-
thing, even if we were staring right at it.
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