Modeling Human Decision Processes in Command and Control

The primary goal of this ongoing project is to model human behavior in specific situations and, in particular, to model high-level decisionmaking for antisubmarine warfare commanders. To abet this modeling effort the SHOR paradigm is presented as a structure for analyzing human cognitive decisionmaking. SHOR describes decisionmaking as a cascading of four activities, they are: information processing, hypothesis generation and evaluation, option generation and evaluation, and decision execution. The commander's decisionmaking process is cast into the SHOR framework. A Bayesian (optimal) mathematical model of the decisionmaker's hypothesis evaluation procedure is developed. The inputs to the model are the hypotheses and sensor data, and its outputs are the posterior probabilities of the hypotheses' being true and their respective states of nature. It is assumed that these outputs are sufficient for the commander to perform the option generation and evaluation activities. A brief example of how the posterior probabilities of the hypotheses evolve in the light of new data and implications of the model are presented. (Author)