Scenario Trainer for Intuition (ASCERTAIN)

Warfighter cognitive readiness has grown increasingly important as the emphasis of military operations shifts towards asymmetric and unpredictable irregular warfare and changing military doctrine provides the Warfighter with greater autonomy. In modern operations, Warfighters must make decisions under heavy time constraints and with partial or incomplete information, using intuitive decision making. The relation between effective intuitive decision making and experience suggests that intuition can be improved through scenario based training, an experiential and interactive form of training, in virtual environments. However, to train intuition, 1) the virtual environment must promote a sense of presencetrainees must feel that they are actually in the situationand 2) trainers must be able to assess and diagnose errors in trainee intuition. To meet these needs, we propose to design and develop the feasibility of A Scenario Trainer for Intuition (ASCERTAIN). ASCERTAIN is an extensible, immersive scenario based training environment that employs neurocognitive assessment for intuitive decision making training. Our approach builds on our existing scenario based training tools, already demonstrated in high-profile events, incorporating drama management to improve presence and facilitate scenario execution and incorporating neurocognitive assessment to assess and diagnose trainee intuition.