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The influence of an emotional processing strategy on visual threat detection by police trainees and officers
Author(s) -
Williot Alexandre,
Blanchette Isabelle
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3616
Subject(s) - psychology , psychopathology , task (project management) , visual search , visual processing , cognitive psychology , information processing , applied psychology , clinical psychology , perception , management , neuroscience , economics
Summary Threat detection is an important skill for police officers, but few studies have examined the impact of processing strategies on this ability. The first aim of our study was to compare the visual detection of threatening and neutral targets in 38 police trainees and 53 police officers. The other aims were to examine the effect of emotional or semantic strategies on this process and the effect of psychopathological symptoms. In a visual search task, participants had to detect a threatening or neutral target among neutral distractors. Participants answered a question used to induce a more emotional or semantic processing strategy. Results revealed that threatening targets were detected faster than neutral ones. This effect was enhanced with an emotional processing strategy but unaffected by symptoms. Processing strategy also had led to faster reaction time overall. This study shows that inducing processing strategies can influence threat detection in police trainees and officers.