The Role of Experience in Operational Incident Commanders' Decision Making Expertise: Typical and Procedure-Based Decisions

Abstract

This study set out to identify the basis of decision making expertise by the operational incident commander in an industrial emergency response organisation, involving domain-specific problem solving strategies and skills, and knowledge developed through normal operations and training. Perspectives from NDM, and the specialised working memory component view in cognitive psychology were integrated as Engineers (n = 16) from a high risk industrial environment participated in a dual-task paradigm involving a context-specific computer-based decision task combined with a secondary visuo-spatial distractor task. Response times, quality, and difficulty of decisions, categorised as typical/atypical and procedure/no procedure, were examined across duration of experience (high experience/low experience). Results provide evidence of fast, high quality, low difficulty schema-based decision making. However being covered by a procedure did not assist fast recall from LTM. Targeted experiential training to develop schemas in LTM is emphasised.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Crichton

(in prep). Nature of emergency decision making using a computer-based decision making task. Cognition, Technology & Work..

Ericsson

K. A.

Poison

P. G.

(1988). A cognitive analysis of exceptional memory for restaurant orders. In Chi

Glaser

Farr

(Eds.), The nature of expertise (pp. 23–70) Hillsdale, NJ: LEA.

Fischer

(2001). Probing spatial working memory with the corsi blocks task. Brain and Cognition, 45, 143–154.

Fischer

Orasanu

(1996). Experience and role effects on expert pilots' judgments of problem situations. International Journal of Psychology, 31(3–4), 5171–5171.

James

L. R.

Demaree

R. G.

Wolf

(1984). Estimating within-group interrater reliability with and without response bias. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69(1), 85–98.

Patel

V. L.

Groen

G. J.

(1991). The general and specific nature of medical expertise: A critical look. In Ericsson

K. A.

Smith

(Eds.), Toward a general theory of expertise (pp. 93–125) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schraagen

J. M.

(1997). Discovering requirements for a naval damage control decision support system. In Zsambok

C. E.

Klein

(Eds.), Naturalistic decision making (pp. 227–232) Mahwah, NJ: LEA.

Shadbolt

Burton

(1990). Knowledge elicitation. In Wilson

J. R.

Corlett

E. N.

(Eds.), Evaluation of human work. A practical ergonomics methodology (pp. 321–345) London: Taylor & Francis.

Shattuck

L. G.

Talcott

Matthews

M. D.

Clark

Swiergosz

(2002). Constructing battlefield understanding: A comparison of experienced and novice decision makers in different contexts. Paper presented at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD.

10.

Stokes

Raby

(1989). Stress and cognitive performance in trainee pilots. Paper presented at the Human Factors Society, Santa Monica, CA.

11.

Stokes

A. F.

Kemper

Kite

(1997). Aeronautical decision making, cue recognition, and expertise under time pressure. In Zsambok

C. E.

Klein

(Eds.), Naturalistic decision making (pp. 183–196) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.