Nita Lewis Miller

Extending Naturalistic Decision Making to Complex Organizations: A Dynamic Model of Situated Cognition

Naturalistic decision making (NDM) has become established as a methodological and theoretical perspective. It describes how practitioners actually make decisions in complex domains. However, NDM theories tend to focus on the human agents in the system. We extend the NDM perspective to include the technological agents in complex systems and introduce the dynamic model of situated cognition. We describe the general characteristics of NDM and the field of situated cognition, and provide a detailed description of our model. We then apply the model to a recent accident in which a US Navy submarine (USS Greeneville) collided with a Japanese fishing vessel (Ehime Maru). The discussion of the accident illustrates how decisions made are often a result of the interaction between a variety of technological and human agents and how errors introduced into the complex system can propagate through it in unintended ways. We argue that the dynamic model of situated cognition can be used to describe activities in virtually any complex domain.

Accommodating adolescent sleep-wake patterns: the effects of shifting the timing of sleep on training effectiveness.

STUDY OBJECTIVE This study evaluated the effect of accommodating adolescent sleep-wake patterns by altering the timing of the major sleep period of US Army recruits. DESIGN The quasi-experimental study compared recruits assigned to one of two training companies: one with a customary sleep regimen (20:30 to 04:30) while the other employed a phase-delayed sleep regimen (23:00 to 07:00), the latter aligning better with biologically driven sleep-wake patterns of adolescents. SETTING The study was conducted during Basic Combat Training (BCT) at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. TRAINEES: The study included 392 trainees: 209 received the intervention, while 183 composed the Comparison group. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Demographic and psychophysiological measures were collected on all trainees. Weekly assessments of subjective fatigue and mood, periodic physical fitness, marksmanship scores, and attrition rates from BCT were studied. Actigraphy was collected on approximately 24% of trainees. Based on actigraphy, trainees on the phase-delayed sleep schedule obtained 31 m more sleep/night than trainees on the customary sleep schedule. The Intervention group reported less total mood disturbance relative to baseline. Improvements in marksmanship correlated positively with average nightly sleep during the preceding week when basic marksmanship skills were taught. No differences were seen in physical fitness or attrition rates. In contrast to the Intervention group, the Comparison group was 2.3 times more likely to experience occupationally significant fatigue and 5.5 times more likely to report poor sleep quality. CONCLUSIONS Accommodating adolescent sleep patterns significantly improves mental health and performance in the training environment.

A Process Tracing Approach to the Investigation of Situated Cognition

Technologists and human factors practitioners tend to approach the measurement of situation awareness from different perspectives. Technologists compare the difference between the data available in the environment with what has been detected by the sensors built into a system. Human factors practitioners focus on perception and cognition to the exclusion of the technological parts of the system. The authors propose a Dynamic Model of Situated Cognition and use it as a framework for analyzing both the technological and human aspects of a complex system. They employ a process tracing method in the analysis of a high fidelity military command and control (C2) simulation. Their results indicate that the model and the process tracing method are effective ways in which to investigate the development of situated cognition in complex systems. In addition, their results have important implications for designers of software, hardware, and training systems.

Tactical Decision Making under Conditions of Uncertainty: An Empirical Study

Uncertainty is a fundamental characteristic of warfare. Military decision makers confront uncertainty when the data they encounter are incomplete (missing), ambiguous, or conflicting. This study examined how different categories of uncertainty (ambiguous/missing, conflicting, baseline) affect response time and type of decisions made in a low-fidelity tactical decision making task. Prior to the study, researchers elicited real-world tactical scenarios from veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom in which uncertainty was present. Nine scenarios were developed from the interviews and were given to 28 participants at the Command and General Staff College, FT Leavenworth, KS. Participants were asked to make a decision; their responses were recorded and analyzed. The results indicate that the category of uncertainty and scenario difficulty were significant factors in response time and type of decision made. These findings have the potential to improve human behavior modeling, tactical simulations, and representations of complex task environments.

Sleep Patterns and the Impact on Performance: A Study of Men and Women Enrolled at the United States Military Academy

Sleep requirements of adolescents and young adults are distinct from those of other age groups due to differences in the circadian rhythms of the sleep-controlling hormone, melatonin. This study examined the sleep patterns of cadets during their first year of training and study at the United States Military Academy (USMA). The study population included the entire USMA class of 2007 (n ∼ 1300) and a small group of upperclassmen (n=40). Actigraphy was recorded on a sample of the class (n=80). Survey results compared sleep patterns prior to reporting to USMA with sleep patterns during Cadet Basic Training and during the Fall semester, 2003. This baseline data collection effort sets the stage for follow-on interventions that will attempt to rectify inadequacies in the sleep patterns of cadets.

Human Systems Integration (HSI) Education and Training: It'S not Just Human Factors on Steroids!

This panel builds on the work of a Human Systems Integration (HSI) panel convened at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. The present panel brings together leaders of the HSI community from the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Navy. These experts discuss the challenges in educating and training HSI practitioners. Among the HSI education and training challenges are developing student expertise in numerous HSI stove-pipe domains while equipping students with the tools, processes, and skills requisite for reconciling conflicts among the domains.