Training and Improving Warfighter Intuition using Immersive Scenarios

Across the services, military missions continue to pose complex cognitive and perceptual challenges such as detecting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or anomalous civilian behaviors. These challenges do not allow time for deliberation and evaluation; in fact, the ability to make quick and accurate decisions in these situations is often cited by Warfighters as key to survival. This ability is called intuition. While it has been recognized that intuitive decision making is essential for battlefield success, there are no existing training applications for improving such skills in Warfighters. There are, however, key insights from the educational and neuroscience literature that suggest how to approach the task of training intuition. Accordingly, Aptima proposes to develop immersive scenario-based training that will improve Warfighter intuition skills by (1) presenting Warfighters with necessary opportunities to discover the underlying principles of the problem/challenge, as well as (2) providing Warfighters with strategically-scheduled feedback on relevant contextual and environmental cues that influence expert intuition. This training will enable novices to (1) comprehend and store underlying principles the way experts do, more quickly and efficiently, (2) reduce their dependence on the surface features and rule-based problem solving, and (3) improve their intuition so that it leads to correct solutions.