Naturalistic Decision Making: Taking a (Cognitive) Step Back to Take Two Steps Forward in Understanding Experience-Based Decisions

The field of naturalistic decision making research has hugely advanced understanding of how experts make decisions in operational environments. However, there is still a drive to improve the credibility and transferability of such research. In the current work four studies are presented which used similar methods. Standardised measures of cognitive function were administered to Authorised Firearms Officers (AFOs) after completion of immersive tactical training scenarios. The tests were chosen to examine differences between information modalities (e.g., visual vs. phonological). Results indicate that the demand associated with tactical training scenarios led to cognitive adaptions, resulting in a significant increase in visual processing capacity and reductions in phonological processing capacity. The findings indicate that an adaptive switch to visual information modality may underpin experience-based decision making by AFOs. The findings provide insight into why training and policy should keep verbal and auditory demands placed on AFOs to a minimum. General Audience Summary Historically, the way people make decisions was examined from an idealistic point of view, not capturing the factors impacting decision making such as time pressures, incomplete information, ambiguity, and limited resource capacity. Naturalistic decision making (NDM) research proposes that in the real world, expert decision makers overcome these issues by using prior experience to guide decision in a faster, more intuitive fashion. The current research used standardised cognitive tests to examine whether modality specific information (e.g., visual or verbal) processing differences are observed in experts when making decisions in naturalistic environments. Four studies were conducted that examined the processing capacity of Authorised Firearms Officers (AFOs) as they completed highly realistic tactical training scenarios. The studies revealed that the visual processing capacity of AFOs increased, whilst the verbal processing capacity (speaking and listening) simultaneously decreased. This indicated that AFOs have less capacity to process verbal information, such as listening and talking, which supported previous research demonstrating that the communications strategies of operators in naturalistic environments becomes more simplistic as demand increases. However, AFOs simultaneously have increased capacity to process visual information, to inform their situation awareness of the environ