Modeling Accurate Cultural Behaviors for Effective Training of Humans (MACBETH)

The Global War on Terror requires coalition forces to engage with diverse cultures. This requires robust knowledge of cultures and skill at handling them. Current cultural training devices fail to leverage the theory, data, or interfaces necessary to deliver culturally rich training and mission rehearsal. We propose to develop a system for Modeling Accurate Cultural Behaviors for Effective Training of Humans (MACBETH), which addresses these challenges by providing a comprehensive framework (theory) for describing culturally derived behavior; a data capture and modeling tool to use for generating representations of behavior; and a systematic method for evaluating interfaces for cultural training. Specifically, the MACBETH team will: (1) develop a framework for representing cultural behaviors, (2) develop scenarios that exercise the framework, (3) define techniques for capturing behavioral data, evaluate gaming environments, (4) demonstrate our technical results, and (5) craft a Phase II validation plan.