The human eye and vision system is about 97 percent illusion. Only a small range of vision is undistorted on the retina — and even that is upside down! The rest is the brain’s work of knitting together an image that makes sense.
The reason that you don’t see a blur as you follow the path of a hockey puck, that you don’t notice the temporary blindness of your eye blinking, and that you’re not consciously aware of the millions of stimuli entering your visual sense, is the magical work of the brain.
Although we think we see things instantaneously, each focus requires brain processing and as we look from side to side the movement takes time. The brain not only creates your image of the world, but its interpretation as well. Whether a smile is fake or sincere, and whether an arrestee is truly complying or just stalling for time to make his move are based on the observer’s experience.
Science of Sight and Perception
Studies of gaze and focus as presented by Joan Vickers in her book Perception, Cognition, and Decision Training — as well as Force Science Institute published research from Dr. Bill Lewinski — give evidence that elite performers have a longer gaze on a critical focal point than less-proficient performers. These elite athletes (including shooters) have developed very accurate targeting skills.
Are the hands our best focus target? Are there earlier indications of threatening movement that we can notice without fixating on the hands? The hands are the final point of nerve and muscle performance and therefore provide us with only split second warning of an impending punch or gun grab.
If we truly fixate on the hands, are we giving up focus on other body and behavior cues that might give us earlier warning of non-compliance? An attacker must go through his or her own process of scanning, targeting, and launching the mechanics of body movement for an attack. Perhaps the movement of a shoulder or the break of a wrist would give us a helpful few milliseconds to deploy a life-saving action.
Another problem is the ambiguity of hand movements. We often give subjects quite an advantage in expecting them to reach for identification at the same places in their car or on their person where they may be concealing a weapon.
We say that we watch everything in our environment, never knowing where a threat may appear. The reality is that we can’t simultaneously be aware of every possible space around us or even in front of us. Elite performers will have a more accurate sense — from training and experience — of what movements are consistent with an attack.
Associated with this is differentiating between attack aggression and mere anger. We should also be less focused on flight behavior and more focused on attack behavior. Both pose a risk, but obviously the attack behavior is more important to the officer’s survival than flight (recognizing that some flight is merely redeploying for an attack). Officers often have the same internal emergency response to both, using up valuable brain space worrying as much about a suspect getting away as a suspect killing them.
Watch the Whole Picture
I’m not recommending tossing away the age old advice of watching the hands. However, it is time to let science weigh in on where our attention should be for the best possible outcome.
All officers are trained to watch for a subject scanning the surroundings (looking for escape route or any advantage in the environment), clenching of the teeth or jaw (involuntary facial movement common to a subject getting into attack mode), as well as the individual taking a bladed fighting stance, making target glances at your gun or other weapons, and changes in the way the subject responds to you verbally.
Be intentional about knowing what you’re looking for and what you command your contact subjects to be doing.
