Training and Assessment of Decision-Making Skills in Virtual Environments

This is a ARMY RESEARCH INST FOR THE BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES FORT BENNING GA report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A776983. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: This report describes a preliminary research effort to: (1) determine the effectiveness of using a virtual environment to train real world decision- making skills; (2) examine the feasibility of using a virtual environment as a test bed for developing situation awareness (SA) measurement instruments and; (3) empirically assess the role of SA in decision-making in simulated dismounted infantry environments. Seven experienced and seven inexperienced officers, role- playing a dismounted infantry platoon leader, individually conducted four urban operation scenarios (missions) in a virtual environment setting. Decision-making capability and SA were assessed for each mission. Objective decision-point accuracy improved significantly over missions. Level of experience did not impact the rate of learning. Experience did play a significant role in SA assessments. Selected SA measures also predicted a significant portion of the variance in objective decision-point scores. The research showed that real world decision-making skills could be trained using virtual environment technologies. To insure maximum benefit, virtual training must be combined with the appropriate field experience and mentoring. Conducting research in a controlled virtual environment setting permitted closer empirical scrutiny of the linkage between decision-making and SA in dismounted infantry operations and suggested new directions for further work in these areas.