Losses of inhibitory control may be partly responsible for some friendly fire incidents. The Sustained Attentionto Response Task (SART; Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, & Yiend, 1997) may provide an appropriateempirical model for this. The current investigation aimed to provide an ecologically valid application of theSART to a small arms simulation and examine the effect of different proportions of enemy to friendlyconfederates. Seven university students engaged in a small arms simulation where they cleared a building floorusing a near-infrared emitter gun, tasked with firing at confederates representing enemies and withholding fire toconfederates representing friends. All participants completed three conditions which were differentiated by theproportion of enemies to friends present. As hypothesized, participants failed to withhold responses more oftenwhen the proportion of foes was higher, suggesting that a prepotent motor response routine had developed. Thiseffect appeared to be disproportionately more substantial in the high foe condition relative to the others.Participants also subjectively reported higher levels of on-task focus as foe proportions increased, suggesting thatthey found this more mentally demanding. Future research could examine closer the nature of the performancereductions associated with high proportions of foes, as it appears that this is more complex than a simple linearrelationship.
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