Navigating the Human Terrain: Development of Cross-Cultural Perspective Taking Skills

The success of many U.S. military missions depends on working effectively with others from different countries. To do this requires, at all levels of our force structure, an appreciation of the intricacies of societal and tribal cultures and the complexity of human-to-human interactions. The current effort focuses particularly on junior military personnel (E1-E5; O1-04) and the type of intercultural interactions that they typically encounter. Soldiers at this level must know how to establish a relationship with the local populace based on understanding, trust, and mutual interest. The goal of this SBIR effort is to design an automated, deployable culture-general training system. The ultimate product will be deliverable via web technology or CD-ROM and will be SCORM compliant. This document describes our rationale and approach for developing an engaging culture-general training system that will provide high quality knowledge and skill training. The main components of the system will be a curriculum designed to systematically build intercultural knowledge and skills, using multi-media training tools to effectively convey the training content and to provide practice on relevant skills.