Efficacy of Stress Exposure Training on Target Acquisition in Combat Simulations

Abstract

Transfer of training from simulators to real-world environments has recently come under investigation, as the generalizability of task-specific training has come into question. New hypotheses recommend that, to ensure effective performance under stress in real-world environments, one should supplement skill-based training with Stress Exposure Training (SET). Stress Exposure Training has further benefits in that it may serve as a more generalizable form of training and transfer across tasks and stressors. The impact of improving performance and reducing perceived stress and workload is of vital importance to many military operations, especially in high technology and high workload situations such as Landwarrior or Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs; Mouloua, Hancock, & Gilson, 2003), in which mistakes are costly in terms of economics as well as life. In this paper the limits of SET transfer between laboratory training and field performance are investigated in regards to simulated combat target identification tasks.