Search results

MOVES Institute Research Project ; The research aims to gain insight into optimal wargaming decision making mechanisms using neurophysiological measures by investigating whether brain activation and visual scan patterns predict attention, perception, and/or decision-making errors through human-in-the-loop wargaming simulation experiments. We investigate whether brain activity and visual scan patterns can explain optimal wargaming decision making and its development with a within- person design; ie, the transition from exploring the environment to exploiting the environment. In this report, we first describe ongoing research that uses neurophysiological predictors in two military decision making tasks that tap reinforcement learning and cognitive flexibility.

Current Army doctrine stresses a need for military leaders to have the capability to make flexible and adaptive decisions, based on a future unknown environment, location, and enemy. To assess a military decision-maker's ability in this context, we modified the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), which assesses cognitive flexibility, into a military-relevant map task. Thirty-four military officers, from all service branches, completed the map task. The purpose of this study was to (1) modify a current psychological task that measures cognitive flexibility into a military-relevant task, and (2) understand the underlying causes of individual variability in the decision making and cognitive flexibility behavior of active duty military officers on this task. Results indicated that nonperseverative errors were a strong predictor of cognitive flexibility performance on the map task. Decomposition of nonperseverative error into efficient errors and random errors revealed that participants who did not complete the map task changed their sorting strategy too soon within a series, resulting in a high quantity of random errors. This study serves as the first step in customizing cognitive psychological tests for a military purpose and understanding why some military participants show poor cognitive flexibility. ; Army Research Office (ARO), PO Box 12211, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2211 ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Purpose
Current Army doctrine stresses a need for military leaders to have the capability to make flexible and adaptive decisions based on a future unknown environment, location and enemy. To assess a military decision maker's ability in this context, this paper aims to modify the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test which assesses cognitive flexibility, into a military relevant map task. Thirty-four military officers from all service branches completed the map task.


Design/methodology/approach
The purpose of this study was to modify a current psychological task that measures cognitive flexibility into a military relevant task that includes the challenge of overcoming experiential bias, and understand underlying causes of individual variability in the decision-making and cognitive flexibility behavior of active duty military officers on this task.


Findings
Results indicated that non-perseverative errors were a strong predictor of cognitive flexibility performance on the map task. Decomposition of non-perseverative error into efficient errors and random errors revealed that participants who did not complete the map task changed their sorting strategy too soon within a series, resulting in a high quantity of random errors.


Originality/value
This study serves as the first step in customizing cognitive psychological tests for a military purpose and understanding why some military participants show poor cognitive flexibility.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JDAL-05-2017-0007 ; Purpose Current Army doctrine stresses a need for military leaders to have the capability to make flexible and adaptive decisions based on a future unknown environment, location and enemy. To assess a military decision maker's ability in this context, this paper aims to modify the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test which assesses cognitive flexibility, into a military relevant map task. Thirty-four military officers from all service branches completed the map task. Design/methodology/approach The purpose of this study was to modify a current psychological task that measures cognitive flexibility into a military relevant task that includes the challenge of overcoming experiential bias, and understand underlying causes of individual variability in the decision-making and cognitive flexibility behavior of active duty military officers on this task. Findings Results indicated that non-perseverative errors were a strong predictor of cognitive flexibility performance on the map task. Decomposition of non-perseverative error into efficient errors and random errors revealed that participants who did not complete the map task changed their sorting strategy too soon within a series, resulting in a high quantity of random errors. Originality/value This study serves as the first step in customizing cognitive psychological tests for a military purpose and understanding why some military participants show poor cognitive flexibility.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/mil0000080 ; One key component of optimal military decision making is that the decision maker demonstrates reinforcement learning. The modification of psychological tasks gives insight into understanding how to effectively train military decision makers and how experienced decision makers arrive at optimal or near optimal decisions. We developed a task modeled after the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) to measure military decision making performance. This new task focuses on high stakes and uncertain environments particular to military decision making conditions. Thirty-four U.S. military officers from all branches of service completed the tasks yielding decision data for validation. The new task retains essential characteristics of the founda- tional task and gives insight into reinforcement learning of military decision makers. Results indicate that the additional metric of regret defines higher perfor- mance at a trial-by-trial level, and clustering by multiple metrics defines high performance groups.

This paper aims to provide a framework to model human belief and misperception in helicopter overland navigation. Helicopter overland navigation is known to be a challenging cognitive task, and understanding the cognitive processes associated with it is non-trivial. Twelve military personnel participated in the study and statistical analysis showed that their gaze parameters can be predicted by their level of expertise. Some pilots showed common visual misperception during the navigation task, which can be explained by the following errors: 1) confusion between inference and evidence, 2) incorrect mutually exclusive assumptions on the data, and 3) biased sampling. Simulation results on two cases observed in the experiments are given. Quantitative differences in dynamic perceptions between a Bayesian agent and misperceiving humans are presented with the suggested modeling framework.

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.3357/ASEM.2947.2011 ; Introduction: Helicopter overland navigation is a cognitively complex task that requires continuous monitoring of system and environment parameters and years of training. This study investigated potential improvements to training simulation by analyzing the influences of flight expertise on visual scan patterns. Methods: There were 12 military officers who varied in flight expertise as defined by total flight hours who participated in overland navigation tasks. Their gaze parameters were tracked via two eye tracking systems while subjects were looking at out the window (OTW) and topographic Map views in a fixed based helicopter simulator. Results: Flight performance measures were not predicted by the expertise level of pilots. However, gaze parameters and scan management skills were predicted by the expertise level. For every additional 1000 flight hours, on average, the model predicted the median dwell will decrease 28 ms and the number of view changes will increase 33 times. However, more experienced pilots scanned more OTW than novice pilots, which was contrary to our expectation. A visualization tool (FEST: Flight and Eye Scan visualization Tool) to replay navigation tasks and corresponding gaze data was developed. Qualitative analysis from FEST revealed visual scan patterns of expert pilots not only looking ahead on the map, but also revisiting areas on the map they just flew over to retain confidence in their orientation. Discussion: Based on the analysis provided above, this work demonstrates that neurophysiological markers, such as eye movements, can be used to indicate the aspects of a trainee's cognitive state that are useful for cuing an instructional system.

Helicopter overland navigation is a cognitively complex task that requires continuous monitoring of system and environment parameters and many hours of training to master. This study investigated the effect of expertise on pilots' gaze measurements, navigation accuracy, and subjective assessment of their navigation accuracy in overland navigation on easy and difficult routes. Methods: Twelve military officers who ranged in flight experience, as measured by total flight hours (TFH) completed a simulated overland task. They first completed map study of a route including easy and difficult route sections, and then had to 'fly' this simulated route in a fixed-based, helicopter simulator. They also completed pre-task estimations and post-task assessments of how hard it would be to navigate to each waypoint in the route. Their scan pattern was tracked via two eye tracking systems. The tracking systems captured both the subject's out-the-window (OTW) and topographical map scan data. Results: TFH was marginally correlated with navigation accuracy only for the easy routes, and was not associated with RMS error for either leg. For the easy routes, experts spent less time scanning out the window, yet had as many fixations as less expert pilots. For the difficult routes, experts appeared to slow down their scan by spending as much time scanning out the window as the novices, while also having fewer overall fixations and MAP fixations. However, TFH was not significantly correlated with more accurate estimates of route difficulty. ; This work is funded by Naval Modeling Simulation Office (NMSO) and Office of Naval Research (ONR).

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.3357/ASEM.3372.2013 ; Introduction: Helicopter overland navigation is a cognitively complex task that requires continuous monitoring of system and environmental parameters and many hours of training to master. This study investigated the effect of expertise on pilots ' gaze measurements, navigation accuracy, and subjective assessment of their navigation accuracy in overland navigation on easy and diffi cult routes. Methods: A simulated overland task was completed by 12 military offi cers who ranged in fl ight experience as measured by total fl ight hours (TFH). They fi rst studied a map of a route that included both easy and diffi cult route sections, and then had to ' fl y ' this simulated route in a fi xed-base helicopter simulator. They also completed pre-task estimations and post-task assessments of the navigational diffi culty of the transit to each waypoint in the route. Their scan pattern was tracked via eye tracking systems, which captured both the subject ' s out-the-window (OTW) and topographical map scan data. Results: TFH was not associated with navigation accuracy or root mean square (RMS) error for any route section. For the easy routes, experts spent less time scanning out the window ( r 5 2 0.61) and had shorter OTW dwell ( r 5 2 0.66). For the diffi cult routes, experts appeared to slow down their scan by spending as much time scanning out the window as the novices while also having fewer Map fi xations ( r 5 2 0.65) and shorter OTW dwell ( r 5 2 0.69). However, TFH was not signi fi cantly correlated with more accurate estimates of route diffi culty. Discussion: This study found that TFH did not predict navigation accuracy or subjective assessment, but was correlated with some gaze parameters.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/107118312561399 ; Helicopter overland navigation is a cognitively complex task that requires continuous monitoring of system and environment parameters and many hours of training to master. This study investigated the effect of expertise on pilots' gaze measurements, navigation accuracy, and subjective assessment of their navigation accuracy in overland navigation on easy and difficult routes. Twelve military officers who ranged in flight experience, as measured by total flight hours (TFH) completed a simulated overland task. They first completed map study of a route comprised of easy and difficult route sections, and then had to 'fly' this simulated route in a fixed-base helicopter simulator. They also completed pre-task estimations and posttask assessments of how hard it would be to navigate to each waypoint in the route. Their scan pattern was tracked via two eye tracking systems. The tracking systems captured both the participant's out-the-window (OTW) and topographical map scan data. TFH was not associated with navigation accuracy and RMS (root mean square) error for either legs. For the easy routes, experts spent less time scanning out the window (ρ=- .61), had shorter OTW dwell (ρ=-.66), For the difficult routes, experts appeared to slow down their scan by spending as much time scanning out the window as novices, while also having fewer MAP fixations (ρ=-.65) and shorter OTW dwell (ρ=-.69). However, TFH was not significantly correlated with more accurate estimates of route difficulty. This study found that TFH did not predict navigation accuracy or subjective assessment but was correlated with some gaze parameters. It may be that TFH is too crude measure to use as a measure of expertise for task specific activities (e.g., overland navigation). ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Introduction: This paper aims to provide insights into human perception, navigation performance, and confi dence in helicopter overland navigation. Helicopter overland navigation is a challenging mission area because it is a complex cognitive task, and failing to recognize when the aircraft is off-course can lead to operational failures and mishaps. Methods: A human-in-the-loop experiment to investigate pilot perception during simulated overland navigation by analyzing actual navigation trajectory, pilots ' perceived location, and corresponding confi dence levels was designed. There were 15 military offi cers with prior overland navigation experience who completed 4 simulated low-level navigation routes, 2 of which entailed auto-navigation. This route was paused roughly every 30 s for the subject to mark their perceived location on the map and their confi dence level using a customized program. Results: Analysis shows that there is no correlation between perceived and actual location of the aircraft, nor between confi dence level and actual location. There is, however, some evidence that there is a correlation ( r 5 2 0.60 ; 2 0.65) between perceived location and intended route of fl ight, suggesting that there is a bias toward believing one is on the intended fl ight route. Discussion: If aviation personnel can proactively identify the circumstances in which usual misperceptions occur in navigation, they may reduce mission failure and accident rate. Fleet squadrons and instructional commands can benefi t from this study to improve operations that require low-level fl ight while also improving crew resource management.

This research aims to gain insight into optimal wargaming decision-making mechanisms using neurophysiological measures by investigating whether brain activation and visual scan patterns predict attention, perception, and/or decision-making errors through human-in-the-loop wargaming simulation experiments. We investigate whether brain activity and visual scan patterns can explain optimal wargaming decision making and its development with a within-person design; i.e., the transition from exploring the environment to exploiting the environment. We describe ongoing research that uses neurophysiological predictors in two military decision making tasks that tap reinforcement learning and cognitive flexibility. ; Army Research Office (ARO), PO Box 1221, Research ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.