http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1863309872

Measures of Platoon Leader Situation Awareness in Virtual Decision-Making Exercises

This report documents an effort to investigate the situation awareness (SA) requirements for platoon leaders in a Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT) environment. Subject matter experts with extensive infantry experience participated in a goal-directed task analysis to identify the SA requirements of platoon leaders at three levels: Level 1-perception, Level 2-comprehension, and Level 2-projection. From this analysis, objective and subjective SA measurement instruments were developed. Experienced and inexperienced officers engaged in four simulated missions in the Squad Synthetic Environment and responded to questions during halts in the simulation. Two instruments, the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT), a PC-based objective family of queries, and the Situation Awareness Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (SABARS), a subjective observer-rated instrument, both showed sensitivity to experience levels. The SAGAT scales also displayed sensitivity to the type of scenario and the point in the simulated mission at which the halt occurred. Officers with greater experience attended more to information about enemy locations and strengths, while less experienced officers attended more to information concerning friendly strengths. This has some intriguing implications for training new officers, but further investigation of these SA findings is necessary.

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