Cognitive Engineering of Training for Adaptive Battlefield Thinking

Abstract

Individual military decision-makers and the military staff, as a decision-making team, are currently under increased pressure to make quick assessments more often and under more unusual conditions than ever before. Advances in information technology, changing operational missions, and re-designed, “flattened” organizations all contribute to the new performance requirements. U.S. Army leadership has defined the general skill underlying the performance requirements as “adaptive thinking.” Our goal was to further the systematic and early development of that ability during officers' careers. We used a learning model derived from cognitive theory and a descriptive model of military expertise to engineer training interventions. We developed two training interventions that embody the learning model in this specific domain of expertise. We also identified research needed to further clarify how the learning model should be used in training development in the military as well as in other training settings.