Microgames for Acquiring and Rehearsing Cognitive Schemas for Perception (MARCS)

In the last decade, Marines have been challenged by an unconventional warfare environment where they are hunted by snipers and terrorists. To improve combat effectiveness, the USMC has implemented the Combat Hunter Program, focused on teaching Marines perceptual skills needed to become the hunter, rather than the hunted. These skills rely on establishing cognitive baselines, or schemas, that identify what shouldand should notbe expected in combat settings. This Combat Hunter training has focused on specific cognitive schemas for current deployment settings. However, even small changes to these settings require significantly changing these schemas. To enable context switching and skill transfer, Marines need tools to train the meta-cognitive skills to construct and adapt cognitive schemas to new settings. Successful training tools will be accessible to the Marines who must use them, minimizing the burden of acquisition and rehearsal, engaging Marines in the training process, and providing meaningful and encouraging feedback. To address these requirements, we propose to design and demonstrate the feasibility of Microgames for Acquiring and Rehearsing Cognitive Schemas for Perception (MARCS), a suite of light-weight deployable games focused on teaching Combat Hunters to construct or adapt schemas for particular settings or situations to enhance perception of threats.