IMPACTS: A tool for Improving And Measuring Perceptual, Attentional, and Critical Thinking Skills

Problem: Marines in the field rely heavily on their ability to survey the human landscape for potential insurgents and other individuals of interest. To support this activity, the Marines’ Combat Hunter program trains behavioral “profiling”, a set of skills used by military and civilian experts to read people and their interactions in complex environments. However, the Combat Hunter program has several critical limitations; it lacks throughput capacity, performance measures, and scientific grounding. Solution: Aptima proposes to develop the capability to address these limitations. IMPACTS will be a multi-media software system that provides Marines with behavioral profiling education, and exercises identifying cues in still and video imagery. IMPACTS will collect trainee performance data to diagnose skill deficiencies, provide diagnostic feedback for improving performance, and select subsequent IMPACTS training activities. These capabilities will support pre-training preparation (before live classes), trainee selection, training evaluation, and proposed scientific research to better define the core knowledge and skills of expert profilers. IMPACTS Phase I won a Phase III transition contract from PM TRASYS, as well as endorsements from the Marine Corps’ owner of Combat Hunter at TECOM and the principal civilian trainer of Combat Hunter profiling.