Training Critical Thinking Skills for Battlefield Situation Assessment: An Experimental Test.
Abstract
In battlefield situation assessment, officers must interpret information that is incomplete, unreliable, and often conflicting and gather new information to improve their assessments and plans. In previous work, a framework for these cognitive activities was developed based on interviews with activity-duty command staff, and a training method was developed. That training helped officers to find and assess the reliability of hidden assumptions and to resolve conflicting evidence. Forty-three U.S. Army officers participated in an experimental training study with scenario-based tests. Trained officers generated more accurate arguments concerning a given assessment than did controls. Improvements in quality were related to the increased relevance of their judgments. In some problems, training countered a tendency to change hypotheses too readily; in other problems, training countered a tendency to hold on to a hypothesis too long. Training did not decrease confidence in evaluations, nor did it hypersensitize officers to information.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA320892
Entities
People
- F. F. Marvin
- Jared T. Freeman
- Jon J. Fallesen
- Marvin S. Cohen
- Terry A.. Bresnick