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So you want to make a night jump and don't know what to expect? Here is an example of how many dropzones run their night jump procedures and what you need to know before you participate in night jumps.Before you even sign up for night jumps at a DZ you need to do a few jumps at the location during the day. Open somewhat high on at least one of the jumps looking and examining the potential hazards and outs if you end up in any direction from the DZ at night. Also before the end of the day arrives you need to have at least 1 glow stick and 1 strobe light that can be easily turned on under canopy. Typically most dropzones will hold a briefing before dark to go over the procedures for the specific location or situation. You will most likely then be asked to sit in a dark room with no lights for a period of time to allow your eyes to adjust to the darkness Typical things that are covered during night jump briefings include: Prep work In plane procedures Exiting Opening separation Under canopy behavior LandingBefore you can even prepare your eyes for the night skydives you need to prepare your equipment. First take the time to actually do a proper pack job on your main. Last thing you want to add to an already complex skydive is a reserve ride. You need to securely attach a glow stick to your altimeter or use a clearly lighted altimeter. If you are going to use a glow stick it is best to activate it before you start preparing your eyes then cover it with duct tape that is pulled off right before you jump. This insures that your glow stick is not a dud and it also keeps the light from shining on people's eyes. You also need to securely fasten your strobe light to you or to your rig. Attaching it to the rear of your leg, rear of your helmet or back is preferred since as the strobe fires your body will be blocking the light from getting in your eyes, but it is still very visible to everyone else. Some DZ's also require you to attach glow sticks to an arm so you need to listen during the briefing for individual DZ procedures. The most important thing in the preparation of the equipment is for the strobe and light sticks to be securely attached. One of the most important things you can do to maintain your night vision is to avoid looking at any lights during your climb to altitude. Make sure your jump plane does not have any interior lights on, that no one is using flashlights, or anything else to light up the plane. The only color light that should be used inside the plane is a red light since that does not affect night vision. If there are any other light sources or colors (from jump lights) cover as much of them as possible to maintain your vision and still maintain their functionality. According to the USPA SIM first time night jumpers are required to do a solo before they do any group night skydives. It is a really good idea to spend your first time in freefall at night looking around to make sure you find the landing area and pulling at your correct altitude. Typically groups are sorted by both group size and wing loading of the people in the skydive. Usually people with higher wing loadings are the first out on night jumps for reasons to be detailed shortly. After the groups and solos have been sorted most good night jump organizers will dictate exit order and pull altitudes. Usually with larger planes such as Caravans, Otters, Skyvans and Casa's two passes are made to allow for a greater horizontal separation then normally is allowed. Discuss with the pilot and S&TA; what the needed delay is for proper night jump separation. Exit on time, but as during the day do not rush the count. Just prior to exiting you need to activate the lights in the altimeter or uncover the glow sticks. DO NOT activate the strobes yet. In the last rewrite of FAR 105.19 the FAA changed the wording so the strobes no longer have to be active in freefall and since the lights of others in the group could affect your vision keep the strobes off. You do need a strobe that's visible under canopy still though. At most DZ's each night jump group is separated by a solo skydiver. The first group out the door is assigned the lowest pull altitude. 3000 feet is a standard first pull altitude for the first group to allow proper separation and more time to deal with the complexities of night canopy flight but this may change with the group experience and DZ procedures. Each solo or group exiting after the first group is assigned an altitude 500 feet higher then the previous group up to usually 4500 to 5000 feet. Pull at your correct altitude. Do not pull higher then your altitude since the combination of horizontal separation, vertical separation and wing loading separation make for the safest possible night jump environment for you. Once under a good canopy you need to do a few things differently than you normally would. The first is do not collapse your slider. The flapping noise that it makes can be heard by other canopies that might be getting close to you. You also need to turn on your strobe light. Do not do any spiraling or altitude loosing maneuvers since this will eliminate the vertical separation factor that the assigned pull altitudes established. Remember that. In a lot of cases of near misses on night jumps its usually discovered one jumper spiraled down to the other jumpers' level. Fly a very conservative pattern with no hook turns, S turns or other erratic flying. As you are flying constantly be scanning for the dropzone, outs, hazards and other canopies in the air. Hazards at night are different then hazards in the day since its easier to mistake a river for a road or not see power lines. If you are going to land off, try to avoid landing extremely close to roads since there are probably power lines above them you can not see. Always assume a PLF when landing off at night since you will not be able to clearly see the landing area. Typically most DZ's will light their landing areas by having the jumper's cars facing into the wind with the headlights on. Jumpers must plan and fly a flight pattern that has them passing over the cars high enough to miss them, but low enough that they do not out fly the lighted safe landing area. Overshooting the landing area is acceptable if the jumpers know the terrain and know of any potential obstacles they need to avoid. Notice the wind direction as you are boarding the plane, in some locations near large bodies of water the winds will change 180 degrees at night as the temperatures change. Take note of the lights and wind direction before you are set up to land. Also to safely land at night the jumpers are best advised to concentrate on the horizon more then looking down. Looking down will distort your vision and cause you to assume you are at the wrong height for flaring. If you learn nothing else about night jumping learn about the shadow effect. In a lot of situations where the moon is at your back as you are landing you will see a large black canopy rising up on a direct collision course with you. This is your shadow that you are flying into. Lots of jumpers have made avoidance turns only to pound themselves into the ground breaking bones or killing themselves only to find out it was their shadow they were avoiding. As soon as you land depending on the DZ procedures and where you landed, most DZ's either have you walk towards the cars or to the side of the lighted landing area. Others have you stay where you are until your entire pass has landed. Check in with either manifest or the organizer as soon as you land. Additional safety items to be taken into consideration are to carry a cell phone and the DZ phone number with you. Carry a DZ business card or pamphlet with you to make sure you have the correct local DZ phone number and not just a 1-800 number that redirects to them. This way if you land out you can call to let people know where you are or if you need help. Give your cell phone number out to manifest so that if you do not check in right away they can try to contact you. Leave the ringer set to high so if you are injured the rescue parties can locate you that way. Also a whistle around your neck can be used under canopy to scare away any canopy coming close to you or if you are coming close to them. The whistle is also a great way of assisting responders to find your location if you are hurt at night. As with all jump activity, the use of any alcohol or drugs is not only against the law, it is dangerous to others and STUPID. If you or others are unable to refrain from said activities do not get on an airplane to jump. Also some jumpers go the extra steps of attaching a glow stick to their main risers so in the case of a cutaway it is easier to track and then retrieve from the ground. Discuss the best method of doing this with your rigger or S&TA.; If a jumper lands off field do not rush into a truck to get them, slowly drive towards them with your head lights on high with someone walking in front of the truck to make sure you do not run over an injured jumper. This article was compiled by Eric Boerger D-26333 with assistance by Keith Laub, Michael Owens and Art Shaffer.

I am much more experienced in paragliding than skydiving and in paragliding we really respect the thermals as they are what we need to fly – but at the same time can cause all sorts of havoc close to the ground. Thermals are bubbles of rising air. They might extend all the way from the ground to a cloud or they might be just a bubble. I have been told to study a 1970 hippie lava light, as the rising lava in the light is nothing more than a thermal. If a thermal bubble leaves the ground and rushes up in a column of air, there is a void that must be filled - with the same amount of air going down or sideways outside the thermal as is going up in the thermal. Again, think of the lava light – as the lava rises, the oil fills the void where the lava was. In other words, if you land near a thermal that is bursting, you can be in the middle of a gust of wind that is going down or sideways filling the area under the thermal. I have been in a thermal that went up at 1,400 feet per minute – which is faster than a lot of jump planes. Somewhere there must have been air going down 1,400 feet per minute to fill the void. If you see a wind indicator (wind sock) quickly change directions, you might have just witnessed a thermal near by. On a quiet day in a field of tall grass you can hear them leave too, just a quick rustle of the grass is all you hear. A lot of times thermals are the most aggressive close to the ground as they are narrow and get wider as they go up. They can be explosive off of a super heated asphalt driveway or black roof. There are some “surface tension” forces that keep the thermals close to the ground until they break off. If the wind changes a bit, it might be all it takes to make a thermal release. In paragliding, you know you are about to enter a thermal when you start to feel turbulence or even go down a bit. You actually judge your angle of attack into the thermal by looking at how the wing turns as you enter it. If your wing flies straight but surges back evenly, you entered it straight on. If your wing turns, part of your wing hit the thermal first causing the turn. If your wing surges forward, you probably just left the thermal. It is very easy on a large paragliding wing for half of your wing to be in a thermal and the other half not – causing all sorts of fun things – like asymmetric collapses. You could “hear” them in your wing all the time, they sounded like fabric getting loose then springing tight. Big asymmetrics could collapse more than half a canopy. On very active thermal days, only the advanced would dare to fly paragliding canopies/wings because you could experience all sort of "asymmetric collapses” or other dynamic unexpected events. Paragliders are rated by DHV ratings, 1 thru 4 where 1 is the safest to fly, which rate their handling in stalls and collapses. My DHV 1 GIN Bolero glider turns 90-180 degrees in an asymmetric collapse and must spontaneously recover to get the DHV 1 rating. Gliders rated higher might need pilot intervention to recover from a collapse. Turning = loss of altitude = hit the ground hard any way you look at it. Have you ever studied what might happen to your canopy under an asymmetric? How do you fix it? To avoid thermals close to the ground, I avoided ground treatments that absorb heat, like rock (pea gravel) or cement. In paragliding – we liked the green soccer fields, but I don’t think DZ have those. Thermals are caused by heated air on the ground being abnormally hotter than the air above. They “break” off of any pointed object, as small as a shrub. We were taught – turn the ground upside down after a rainstorm and anywhere water would drip off is where thermals rise. It is a mistake to think thermals only happen on hot days, because temperature difference, not just warm air, causes thermals. If the atmosphere is cold and the tarmac is hot – expect a greater thermal than normal even if the outside air temperature is freezing. There are all sorts of mathematical equations used to predict thermals and the strength of thermals, some available on the 1-800-WXBRIEF FAA Flight Service Center pre-flight briefing system, such as the “wave soaring forecast” and the “K index”. The K index measures stability in the atmosphere. You can also speak to a pre-flight briefer who can help interpret the data – but since I don’t speak pilot, I was always intimidated to talk to the humans and only played the recorded messages. If you are interested, you can study the “lapse rate” which is the phenomenon that as air gets thinner higher you go up in the atmosphere, the air pressure goes down and so does temperature. Physics says pressure and temperature are related due to fact higher pressure causes molecules to be closer to each other. Pure science says that the “dry adiabatic lapse rate” is 5.5 degrees per 1000 feet. This means, if you jump out of a plane 12K above the ground, expect it to be 66 degrees colder at 12K than at the DZ because the air is under less pressure. But our flying areas do not exist in scientific test tubes – there is instability in the atmosphere. If the actual temperature, lets say 2K up, is more than 11 degrees colder than the ground temperature – you are bound to experience even more aggressive thermals than normal as the atmosphere tries to find balance. Oh, thermals cause clouds – the reason why paragliders fly “cloud streets” of thermals across country. It is possible to experience “cloud suck” also, where the thermals are so strong you get trapped in a cloud and must use advanced techniques to lose altitude. Note – I am not an expert at this. Someone with more experience is invited to correct me. But my point is: aggressive thermals can cause turbulence close to the ground, which can very easily cause landings to be rough.

The competitor with the lowest total time at the end of the 5 rounds of competition is the winner. The performance is recorded using a very high powered camera on the ground, the competitor leaving the aircraft at 2200 mts and after a few seconds to build up speed commence their sequence. The world record time is currently 5.18 sec (Male) and 6.10 sec (Female). In skysurfing, a jumper attaches a board, similar to a snowboard or wakeboard but made specifically for skydiving, to his feet and performs aerial acrobatics in freefall, including flips and spins. Lew Sanborn and Jacques Istel started the first commercial drop zone and training center in 1959. While skysurfing is visually appealing and has been included in events like ESPN’s X Games, few jumpers still pursue this challenging discipline. When leaving an aircraft, for a few seconds a skydiver continues to travel forward as well as down, due to the momentum created by the aircraft's speed (known as "forward throw"). The perception of a change from horizontal to vertical flight is known as the "relative wind", or informally as "being on the hill". Each event has a “working time” within which to repeat the sequence as many times as possible. During the tandem jump the instructor is responsible for emergency procedures in the unlikely event that they will be needed, therefore freeing the student to concentrate on learning to skydive. Skydivers reach terminal velocity (around 120 mph (190 km/h) for belly to Earth orientations, 150–200 mph (240–320 km/h) for head down orientations) and are no longer accelerating towards the ground. In freefall, skydivers generally do not experience a "falling" sensation because the resistance of the air to their body at speeds above about 50 mph (80 km/h) provides some feeling of weight and direction. Other training methods include static line, IAD (Instructor Assisted Deployment), and AFF (Accelerated Free fall) also known as Progressive Free-Fall (PFF) in Canada. A demanding freefall exercise of specified turns and loops executed very precisely at speed, and under tight control. At normal exit speeds for aircraft (approx 90 mph (140 km/h)) there is little feeling of falling just after exit, but jumping from a balloon or helicopter can create this sensation. The panel of judges judge from the recording media. The first three concern teams of either 8 or 4 plus their camera flyer performing a series of pre-determined patterns (formations) in a repetitive sequence whilst flying in a face to earth configuration. Style and Accuracy remained the primary discipline throughout the 1960s, and Relative Work continued to develop with the first 6 and 8 man formations being completed. Many people make their first jump with an experienced and trained instructor – this type of skydive may be in the form of a tandem skydive. All of their work is recorded by the camera-flyer, and the panel of judges sit in front of a screen and make their individual decisions. Each competitor is timed from the start of the “series” to the end and time points are added for penalties such as a turn completed off heading or a loop deviating from the axis. At this point the sensation is as of a forceful wind. The 1960s saw the beginnings of the first non-military drop zones, and non-military training methods. They developed a civilian training method with the belief that any intelligent person could be taught the basics of a parachute jump and jump the same day. They are judged on the number of correctly completed figures they make, and the team with the highest number at the end of 10 rounds of competition will be declared the winner.

Technology has greatly helped aviation professionals when it comes to security. Modern equipment has made life easier for riders who venture into the sky to protect us from enemies. 1. What are these items? This equipment simulates parachute for emergency exits. One such device is highlighted by its quality in graphic detail and faithful performance during simulation, because you can imagine yourself in midair and plummeted. 2. What do they do? The sensations are basically the same for an emergency situation trying to make almost one real moment of danger. 3. How does it work? The pilot is inside the device that looks like a real parachute and put a helmet and has a motion sensor. The pilot should be in full uniform as if in a confrontational situation in midair, making it even more faithful simulation. 4. When connected. The device, when connected, is being monitored by an experienced trainer and a specialist in the system, which will be recorded all data collected during the simulated flight for further research. 5. What more simulator used by these professionals? One of the most widely used equipment for testing the simulator is created by the company e.sigma. This simulator is called SOKOL and has a wide range of resources capable of solving problems that occur during flight. He has a different system for more complete simulator training for emergencies in the air. 6. The pilot. The pilot, when the simulator should be fully equipped for safety and to look real. The pilot visualize the environment in a free fall and feel the difficulty of the force of the wind and rain through a "glasses" 3D quality equipped with a motion sensor, with which the pilot may make light or rapid head movements that not lose sight of the focus of the landing. In addition to the visual effects are sound effects that are nearly real simulate the sound of wind, rain and other climatic obstacle or not. 7. Virtual environment .. The simulation begins with the rider "in" the aircraft, then it jumps, which actually is skipping a step equipment. But there is a simulation of an ejection cabin of an airplane, which in an emergency can make the difference between surviving or dying. The software allows to simulate different environments perfectly fall, terrain and weather, not to mention that before starting the workout safety instructor will program without knowing the pilot, some emergency situations that may occur in normal flight. 8. The equipment. The simulation system consists of support where the rider is, computer monitoring, sensors that are connected to computers and the pilot, as well as specific software. The system is very interactive and easy to use, anyone can operate it. The simulator is suitable for specific training, therefore, are used to simulate situations of extreme emergency, however, are also used in military selections, ie, it is not a virtual toy, but a life saving device.

Measuring “Spotlight Effect” Interference On a Peripheral Vision Matching Task. ChrisD Abstract In historical peripheral studies, peripheral stimuli are presented and measures are taken on known central task behaviors and the effect on the main task is measured. In this experiment a dual task peripheral stimulus is presented and a central task is presented using Eriksen & Eriksen’s (1974) “Attentional Spotlight” paradigm. What makes this study interesting is that the central field is completely flooded with stimulus thus making parallel processing aka Treisman’s “features and objects” paradigm compared with very fast and multiple serial searches, independent of the search/ experimental paradigm used. Thus regardless of the serial or parallel search debate, effects of a central stimulus presented in a varying attentional spotlight area can be measured reliably regardless of the attention demands of a task. Early results suggest stimuli presented within the attention spotlight have a pronounced and unavoidable linear negative effect on varying levels of peripheral task performance. Discussions on subject age and behavior/ occupation requiring a high degree of attentive awareness/ vigilance such as driving or piloting are discussed also. Introduction Current perceptual/ cognitive research may be limited by methodological hindrances. Computer screens by their very nature limit current visual field measurements, which generally cover 1 degree to 20 degrees of the visual field depending upon the subjects distance from the computer screen. Further complicating visual research paradigms is the fact that perception is mainly a binocular phenomenon. This complicates visual search paradigms considering pre-attentive features that may or not, “pop-out” (Treisman, 1986), primarily a parallel search process, as compared with more attention driven, serial search paradigms. Further complicating this is the switch from a wide processing area to a relatively small and restricted area for intense serial processing during periods of intense concentration or high stress (Murata 2004). Understanding these two paradigms has great implications for any subject that depends upon these visual perceptual systems for their particular task, such as pilots or motor vehicle operators. Many researchers have suggested two distinct visual attentional systems. One wide area resource gathering system that quickly switches to a serial search with a very narrow, less than 2 degrees of visual field angle, field of view which is also called the “spotlight effect.” (Spotlight effect known about since the 1950s, generally attributed to Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974, and Posner, various.) This switching effect which Rufin VanRullen (2004) points out is highly dependent on attentional load or how many tasks an individual is involved in. He refers to dual task activities as the: “…two distinct attentional resources paradigm.” However with small computer screens this visual spotlight effect, parallel, serial search processing paradigm suffers as subjects can readily switch search areas or due to the narrow visual field, they can readily conduct a quick search of relevant features with their attentional spotlights. As an example Crundall, et al., (1998, 2002) research supports this as when experienced drivers visual information acquisition is different than compared with inexperienced drivers that use different and limited visual field areas as an example (Ruff 2004, et al.). This highlights the parallel/ serial confound by studies using limited visual areas as the subjects can utilize fast serial searches due the restricted viewing area and or utilize parallel searches due the same reason. Other research paradigms present realistic driving simulators and or real driving studies and label the driving task as the primary or spotlight effect and vary and measure the effects of various peripheral stimuli and the effects of these peripheral stimuli upon the central (spotlight) task performance (Ruff 2004). Frequently the perceptual tasks whether dual or single, complicated or simple place extraneous demands upon the simulation (Recarte et al. 2003, Ivanoff et al. 2003). Additional studies have subjects attend to varying visual tasks to measure the area of this attentional visual field narrowing by varying central task loads (Horrey et al. 2004). This amounts to a perspective switching in a sense as too exactly which is the spotlighted effect or the peripheral task becoming the spotlighted area. Perspective switching between central tasks being affected by varying peripheral loads or intrusions, compared with peripheral tasks becoming the central task. In other words the subject can move the spotlight; the subject determines which is the spotlighted area merely by directing attention to the stimulus, whether in the central area or the peripheral area! A corollary to this idea is the general dearth of research on central field of view influence on peripheral tasks. Whereas there is much research and a generally accepted view that certain peripheral stimulus can attract attention even in high attentional demanding environments, this experiment tries to study the effect of a central stimulus while performing a dual peripheral vision task, independent of the constraints imposed upon the subject by narrowed visual fields popular in computer research and imposed by the dominance of task experienced in real or driving studies. I.e. in real driving or acquisition type studies the subject by the very nature of the task is pre-occupied with that same task! In this experiment the peripheral area is flooded with stimulus and the effects of a central intrusive distractor flood the area of this spotlight regardless of any search paradigm or eye position. Thus the effects of this spotlight can be discerned from a peripheral task when the subject (hypothetically) is unable to use the central spotlight to complete the peripheral task. Additionally discussed are general effects of the narrowing attentional spotlight whether it is a perceptual phenomenon or a cognitive phenomenon and the effects of stress upon subjects of varying ages (Roge 2004, Recarte et al. 2003,) and of particular concern is the phenomenon of perceptual blindness/ inattentional blindness experienced by some subjects during the course of this experiment (Simons, Chabris 1999, Lavie 2005). Method Seven participants ranging in age from 24 to 72 “volunteered” to be subjects for this experiment, although not all subjects finished a full set of trials. Occupations ranged from retired, full time professionally employed, disabled, to college students. The setup and apparatus included commercially available emergency warning “strobe” lights, a hand stopwatch and various manual switching devices and a power supply. The lights came from the factory with 12 pre-programmed flash patterns, depending upon pattern selected, the flash patterns ranged from a simple one second flash to a barely discernable 4 flash in 500 millisecond alternating with a persistence delay of 250 milliseconds with an intervening blank period of 150 milliseconds. The lights were, according to the manufacturer capable of being synchronized to a very high degree of reliability less than 50 milliseconds of variance and the flash duration less than 1 millisecond of residual after glow. Two amber lights capable of 3000/ meter candela (daylight) were positioned at the periphery of a centrally seated subject at about 180 degrees to 160 degrees of visual angle. The lights were roughly 5 feet apart. The lights were synchronized to flash in various patterns. The patterns were categorized into three distinct degrees of difficulty: easy, med., and hard, based upon subjective subject reports, and initial practice runs based upon increasing reaction times for a correct response. Responses were limited to “same” for conditions when the right and left peripheral lights flashed the exact same pattern. And “different” for when the flashes were not the same pattern. A central distractor white light was positioned roughly in front of the subject about 30 inches away, this light was capable of 16,000 candela’s (roughly the amount of light on a clear day in a blinding reflecting snowfield.) All lights were adjusted to roughly the subject’s eye level in height from the floor. Gender and age information was the only personal information taken although most subjects volunteered any relevant medical and occupational information. All subjects were asked if they had any prior epileptic or seizure medical conditions, as lights of this intensity and duration have induced seizures in test subjects sensitive to these disorders. Basically a triangular pattern was formed with the subject in the center. The procedure consisted of setting the peripheral side amber lights to flash either the same or different, only response times for correct trials were collected as it became problematic to collect incorrect identifications, either the response time persisted into minutes or a correct discrimination was impossible. See Recarte 2003 p. 124 for a more complete discussion of this rational. 10 combinations of flash patterns were selected, categorized and presented to subjects in a random fashion. Two sets of these patterns were a repeated designs measure to enhance internal and construct validity. After an initial 500 or no millisecond delay a white distractor flash was concurrently presented in all trials, the only thing that varied as far as the white distractor was the initial onset of 0 millisecond delay to 500 millisecond delay. This created two conditions: a peripheral matching task, and a peripheral matching task with a central distractor, the white distractor delay could not be accurately measured and was not included to make more than two conditions. Initially the distractor was presented immediately after the matching task, but it became evident that a rapid identification was taking place so the distractor presentation and matching tasks were randomized to eliminate this “learning effect.” A more robust and or accurate timing system to measure reaction times was desired by this experimenter to see if any interaction effects could be discerned as this setup only allowed for reaction times to be roughly taken for the two conditions of correct responses. Some subjects reported “they thought” they had an initial decision but the central field distractor delay “might” have influenced this. More accurate reaction time measures could have teased this out. Sample Data Collection Form: Flash Pattern RT RT + Distractor Single Flash + Single Flash ------------- ---------------- Single Flash + Double Flash ------------- ---------------- Signal Alert + Signal Alert ------------- ---------------- Double Flash + Double Flash ------------- ---------------- Double Flash + Signal Alert ------------- ---------------- Signal Alert + Signal Alert ------------- ---------------- Signal Alert + Double Flash ------------- ---------------- Single Flash + Com Alert ------------- ---------------- Double Flash + Double Flash ------------- ---------------- Comet Flash + Com Alert ------------- ---------------- Gender Age --------- ----------- Data: Paired Samples Test Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Pair 1 EasyFlashDistractor - EasyFlash 1.43773 2.55078 .54383 .30678 2.56868 2.644 21 .015 Paired Samples Test Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Pair 1 MedFlashDistractor - MEDFlash .62842 1.38316 .31732 -.03824 1.29508 1.980 18 .063 Paired Samples Test Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Pair 1 HardFlashDistractor - HardFlash 1.76200 1.26944 .56771 .18579 3.33821 3.104 4 .036 Results and Discussion: The results show a very pronounced distractor effect on the peripheral matching task, the reaction time increase of 1.44 seconds for the easy condition, .63 seconds for the medium condition, and almost 2 seconds for the hard condition. Cited in Horrey (2004), Horrey & Wickens (2002) found reaction time losses of up to 2.9 seconds in a study where they manipulated two peripherally located tasks, in fact they found that one peripheral task and one central task was about as half demanding as the two peripheral task. Recarte (2003,) also found similar reaction times and adds: “The abrupt onset of a stimulus may produce a stimulus-driven attentional capture…This capture may or may not occur or may lead to processing impairment” (p.120). This matching task experiment when in the distractor mode is in agreement with this “exogenous” shift (Ivanoff et al. 2003). In other words some of these real world peripheral events are not under the subject’s control. Endogenous shifts are defined as having some “volitional control,” where exogenous shifts are an automatic process (Ivanoff 2003). This experiment tries to produce distractions of the exogenous shifts in attention. Which means the spotlight effect is or takes place wherever the subject places his/ her attention. This also places great weight that topics such as cognitive workload and visual field funneling are cognitive processes more than a perceptual phenomenon. Joe Lin Chiuhsiang phrases this as: “…higher the cognitive task the worse the performance… (2006). In other words any stimulus that takes away from the task at hand has the ability to reduce the performance of the primary task at hand. Two subjects in this experiment whose data was not included in the mean totals may have experienced this perceptual blindness, as evidenced by the repeated measures results. In the first trial the subjects including the 71 year old male performed reasonably well, being able to discriminate matching patterns in the easy and med. Categories. Then by random assignment a hard perceptual task was presented. After the hard task which basically “locked-up” the subject, poor across the board performance was noted and the subject was unable to finish all of the trials. This same subject reported that “they were highly concerned about their performance” and “by trying harder” (greatly increased cognitive load) they were unable to “see the flashes, anymore.” In an effort to show the subject in fact the peripheral flashes were different or same the visual angle was moved successively decreasing to about 5 degrees of central visual angle. At this point in time the subject was able to discern correct responses only if they were over 1 full second, whereas a few minutes before hand they were doing reasonable well with 250 millisecond discriminations. This is exactly similar to what Chun & Wolfe (2000) mean when they say: “What you see is determined by what you attend to…,” this is also the danger hidden in Simons and Chabris work. On an Aquatics blog the following quote sums up many researchers’ findings and opinions on this subject: Real-life case studies of this blindness include drivers running over bicyclists, train engineers plowing into cars, submarine pilots surfacing under ships and airline pilots landing on other planes. In each case, the object or obstruction should have been easily noticed but was not. That’s because even though the observers were “looking” right at the missed events, their attention was focused on other visual stimuli, or they were otherwise cognitively engaged (e.g., talking on a cell phone). Strikingly, those involved in these crashes usually have no idea there was an object there, and cannot explain their failure to have seen it. http://www.aquaticsintl.com/2004/nov/0411_rm.html One observation worthy of mention is in the medium task difficulty category mean time is less than the hard or easy category. This is the point where the experimenter noticed different strategies being applied to the matching task. As the difficulty level increased as compared with the easy condition the subjects could no longer count the flashes or turn their head fast enough, it was at this point the matching experiment truly became a peripheral task and also a stumbling block for many of the older subjects and some younger ones as well. Many studies: Olsson et al. 2000, Crundall 2002, and others also refer, sometimes indirectly, to various search/scan paradigms, that differing levels of experience and training on subjects has on performance. A complete discussion of this is beyond the scope of this paper but the author is well versed on the subject. Suffice to say older drivers and many others have physical as well as cognitive strategies that narrow the useful field of vision whether perceptual or cognitive required to operate complex fast moving machinery where mistakes have dire consequences. This experiment supports much of published studies similar in nature and should be kept in mind every time you place a cell phone call, reading a road map, eating anything, dropping anything, looking at road signs, following too closely, or just about any activity other than…while operating this equipment. References Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Australian Government. Limitations of the See and Avoid Principle. 1991/ 2004 reprint. Chun M., & Wolfe J. (2000). Visual Attention. Blackwell Handbook of Perception, Chapt. 9. CogLab reader, Various. Crundall D., & Underwood G. (1998). Effects of experience and processing demands on visual information acquisition in drivers. Ergonomics, V. 41. N. 4. 448-458. Crundall D., & Underwood G., and P. Chapman (2002). Attending to the Peripheral World While Driving. Applied cognitive psychology, 16, 459-475. Department of Transportation, Electronic Billboards and Highway Safety 2003. Goolkasian P. (1994). 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