<p>The main reason for these failures is mental fatigue and lost of concentration, in conjuction with the weak target signals.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_(psychology)#Vigilance_decrement" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Vigilance decrement</a> is defined as "deterioration in the ability to
  remain vigilant for critical signals with time, as indicated by a
  decline in the rate of the correct detection of signals". Vigilance
  decrement is most commonly associated with monitoring to detect a weak
  target signal. Detection performance loss is less likely to occur in
  cases where the target signal exhibits a high saliency. ... Under most
  conditions, vigilance decrement becomes significant within the first
  15 minutes of attention, but a decline in detection performance can
  occur more quickly if the task demand conditions are high ... More recent studies 
  indicate that vigilance is hard work, requiring the allocation of
  significant cognitive resources, and inducing significant levels of
  stress.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Habituation plays very little role in these failures.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Early theories of vigilance explained the reduction of
  electrophysiological activity over time associated with the vigilance
  decrement as a result of neural <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_(psychology)#Lack_of_habituation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">habituation</a>. ... <strong>More recent</strong> ERP
  studies indicate that when performance declines during a vigilance
  task, N100 amplitude was not diminished. These results indicate that
  vigilance is not the result of boredom or a reduction in neurological
  sensitivity</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Training and motivation can decrease failures.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_(psychology)#Practice_and_sustained_attention" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Training and practice</a> significantly reduce the vigilance decrement,
  reduce the false alarm rate, and may improve sensitivity for many
  sustained attention tasks. Training improvements may also occur due to
  the reduced mental workload associated with task automaticity. In
  pilotage and airport security screening experiments, trained or expert
  subjects exhibit better detection of low salience targets, a reduction
  in false alarms, improved sensitivity, and a significantly reduced
  vigilance decrement. In some cases the vigilance decrement was
  eliminated or not apparent.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-22T07:43:22.430Z
2017-06-22T07:43:22.430Z
DesignerAnalyst
<p>The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has "red teams" who try to sneak dangerous items through airport security.  The security personnel often fail <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851" rel="noreferrer">up to 95% of these tests</a>. Is this high failure rate to be expected because of habituation to visual stimulus?  Specifically, a screening agent is expected to find a single weapon amidst thousands of X-rays without a weapon.</p>

<p>If this is habituation, are there techniques for reducing its impact in scenarios such as this?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-19T22:52:31.990Z
Huh: an interesting question! This may foster mostly opinionated answers, though... All the same, I wonder to what degree this has to do with the [false positive paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox)
mflo-ByeSE
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-19T22:58:33.607Z
Jobs like this (radiology, security, quality assurance, etc) are getting replaced with AI, which is more accurate and not susceptible to habituation or fatigue.
Arnon Weinberg
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-22T04:39:04.147Z
For clarification, is this question asking if habituation is directly and solely responsible for inaccurate airport screenings, or if it is one facet of inaccurate airport screenings? I believe I have an answer either way, but would like to know how to word it.
Reed Rawlings
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-22T12:57:15.780Z
I intended to ask whether habituation was a substantial factor contributing to the inaccurate screenings. If there are other significant factors, I'd enjoy hearing about those too.
mndrix
<vision><habituation>
Is habituation responsible for inaccurate airport security screenings?
mndrix
# Is habituation responsible for inaccurate airport security screenings?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-06-19)

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has "red teams" who try to sneak dangerous items through airport security. The security personnel often fail [up to 95% of these tests](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851). Is this high failure rate to be expected because of habituation to visual stimulus? Specifically, a screening agent is expected to find a single weapon amidst thousands of X-rays without a weapon.

If this is habituation, are there techniques for reducing its impact in scenarios such as this?

**Tags:** vision, habituation

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Huh: an interesting question! This may foster mostly opinionated answers, though... All the same, I wonder to what degree this has to do with the [false positive paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox)  
> **username_2**: Jobs like this (radiology, security, quality assurance, etc) are getting replaced with AI, which is more accurate and not susceptible to habituation or fatigue.  
> **username_3**: For clarification, is this question asking if habituation is directly and solely responsible for inaccurate airport screenings, or if it is one facet of inaccurate airport screenings? I believe I have an answer either way, but would like to know how to word it.  
> **username_0**: I intended to ask whether habituation was a substantial factor contributing to the inaccurate screenings. If there are other significant factors, I'd enjoy hearing about those too.  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2017-06-22. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

The main reason for these failures is mental fatigue and lost of concentration, in conjuction with the weak target signals.

> [Vigilance decrement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_(psychology)#Vigilance_decrement) is defined as "deterioration in the ability to
> remain vigilant for critical signals with time, as indicated by a
> decline in the rate of the correct detection of signals". Vigilance
> decrement is most commonly associated with monitoring to detect a weak
> target signal. Detection performance loss is less likely to occur in
> cases where the target signal exhibits a high saliency. ... Under most
> conditions, vigilance decrement becomes significant within the first
> 15 minutes of attention, but a decline in detection performance can
> occur more quickly if the task demand conditions are high ... More recent studies
> indicate that vigilance is hard work, requiring the allocation of
> significant cognitive resources, and inducing significant levels of
> stress.

Habituation plays very little role in these failures.

> Early theories of vigilance explained the reduction of
> electrophysiological activity over time associated with the vigilance
> decrement as a result of neural [habituation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_(psychology)#Lack_of_habituation). ... **More recent** ERP
> studies indicate that when performance declines during a vigilance
> task, N100 amplitude was not diminished. These results indicate that
> vigilance is not the result of boredom or a reduction in neurological
> sensitivity

Training and motivation can decrease failures.

> [Training and practice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_(psychology)#Practice_and_sustained_attention) significantly reduce the vigilance decrement,
> reduce the false alarm rate, and may improve sensitivity for many
> sustained attention tasks. Training improvements may also occur due to
> the reduced mental workload associated with task automaticity. In
> pilotage and airport security screening experiments, trained or expert
> subjects exhibit better detection of low salience targets, a reduction
> in false alarms, improved sensitivity, and a significantly reduced
> vigilance decrement. In some cases the vigilance decrement was
> eliminated or not apparent.


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