Book Description
Situation assessment provides the basis for decisions by battlefield commanders and their staff during both planning and operations. In previous work, we developed a framework for battlefield commanders' situation assessment from interviews with active-duty command staff and from published work in cognitive psychology. The present report describes methods for training cognitive skills in situation assessment based on that framework. Two training methods have been developed, both of which focus on metacognitive skills involved in verifying and improving assessments and plans. The first method helps officers find and assess the reliability of hidden assumptions. It includes a devils' advocate technique that forces officers to imagine that their assessment is wrong and to explain why, as well as techniques for handling potential problems that are found. The second method helps officers find and resolve conflicting evidence. It includes techniques for trying to explain the conflicting data in terms of the current assessment, evaluating the plausibility of the explanations, and generating alternative assessments. The training techniques have been experimentally tested with active-duty officers, and the results of that testing are described in a companion report.
