Here is an interesting article about an Army study on who is best and worst at spotting roadside IED's. Not surprisingly, soldiers who had grown up hunting were best as they were used to scanning their environment for tiny little hints that something was up. However, they were almost equalled by soldiers who had grown up in bad urban areas who had learned at an early age to constantly scan their surroundings for threats.

The worst at spotting IED were those described as "heavy gamers", soldiers who spent a lot of time playing video games. They had a tendency to only focus on what they could see directly through their windshield. To them the windshield had subconciously become their game screen.

Anyway, I just thought it was kind of interesting...

-Blast

That's very interesting.

I wonder if a lifetime of video games could be compensated for with additional training.

Probably not. A few weeks or months of hard training may improve your skills quite a bit but you still won't be able to compete with someone's lifetime of experience. There's simply no way you can develop that kind of attributes in a short time.

By the way, I've had some interesting observations regarding my hiking buddies. I don't consider myself a hardcore outdoorsman but I have been taught since an early age how to walk quietly in the woods and observe the surroundings, pay attention to details etc. When I hike with my friends, for the most part city folks with relatively less outdoor mileage, I'm usually the first to spot a deer, snake, squirrel or anything else unexpected. I remember once a friend of mine and I nearly walked into a deer that was hiding in a bush only about 20' away on our 3 o'clock. It didn't make any noise at all as it moved. We were both facing straight. I spotted the deer instantly with my peripheral vision and alerted my buddy, who did not see it at all even though I pointed him to the right. By the time he turned his head the deer was gone and well out of sight in the dense undergrowth already, though it didn't take more than a second. My buddy actually thought I was pulling his leg.

Goes to show a lot of things. I wouldn't be surprised if the average person with even less outdoor time was even more oblivious to the surroundings. You can't make up for that in boot camp.

That's been known by NCO's who have been in combat for a Long time. the down side is you get to be Point man

Back in WW2 it was found that colorblind soldiers were often better at spotting things that didn't belong and things that people were trying to conceal. People who see colors can be distracted and confused by colors. People who can't see colors can sometimes catch subtle differences in tone that are easily missed. I wonder if they have a similar advantage at spotting IEDs.

I am not sure if this relates to the soldiers ability to see bombs, but if it depends on shadows, textures or other subtle clues it might.
I remember reading about research on the development of vision in kittens back in the seventies.
The name Marcus Jacobson comes to mind but I am not sure how direct of a link it would be. They were actually trying to study neurology when they were experimenting with the kittens.
Anyhow they found that if they raised kittens inside round solid cages painted with vertical stripes the kittens were unable to see things that were horizontal when they got older.
It was tied to certain critical periods in their growth.
The kittens never did learn to see horizontal stripes properly after they had grown past a certain age in the vertically striped world.

So maybe humans have similar critical periods to develop their vision skills too. Maybe if they are not exposed to ground textures they just don't develop the ability to see them easily.
If it is tied to critical development periods they might never be able to become proficient at it.

Good point. The military also used colorblind people to look at aerial photographs, they aren't fooled by camouflage, they can spot the patterns very quickly.

We also make good snipers....

I spend almost zero time thinking about color, but look for movement, shape, shine, shadow, and etc.

Now if the target is so obliging as to wear a construction safety vest, I won't try to stop him......


Of course, our clothes rarely match, and our socks never. I think they need to invent "Garanimals" for adults....

This is why I must never upset the wife BEFORE getting dressed in the morning.

Desperado: A very color blind friend took to sewing small buttons or knots of thread on shirt tails and pants pockets to identify the color. I forget his system but it was something like one button for black; two for brown, three for blue. He also had notched cut into the insole for shoes, little yarn streamers sewed into the toes of his socks.

He was really quite, exceptionally, color blind. Most have problems determining green from red or other narrow differences. For him everything was, according to him, black, white or gray. He couldn't tell day-glow orange from tan.

Another trick is to use color cards and comparing them against the object. The military has had issues with electrical maintenance personnel reading color codes under low-level red, now blue/green, light or other difficult light conditions.

One thing that's changed in the past few years is the availability of LED lighting. A red LED, unlike a white bulb with a red filter, is very much just red - there isn't any green or blue part of the spectrum at all. I noticed the difference because you can use very bright red LED lighting as a black and white darkroom safelight. The light could be much brighter than a filtered incandescent bulb because the light was effectively monochromatic. So under just single color LED lighting, everybody is color blind.