A Comparison of Expert Ratings and Self-Assessments of Situation Awareness During a Combat Fatigue Course

Abstract

The current study compared expert-observer ratings of situation awareness (SA) with subjective self-ratings of SA in Norwegian military academy cadets during a summer combat survival course. The cadets (N = 30) completed an 8-day combat survival course characterized by sleep and food deprivation, continuous operations, and altered circadian entrainment cues. Results indicated that self-ratings of SA did not correlate consistently with expert-observer SA ratings, and self-ratings were consistently higher than expert-observer ratings. The results are congruent with expected effects of these extreme conditions on cognition and self-awareness, demonstrate a pronounced self-enhancement bias and suggest that subjective measures of SA are not likely to provide valid estimates of SA under extreme conditions. Cognitive psychology constructs are increasingly being applied to field settings to help explain and improve the performance of people engaged in highstakes, stressful jobs. Measuring such constructs in the laboratory is challenging

Improving situation awareness in crisis response teams: An experimental analysis of enriched information and centralized coordination

“…This is in stark contrast with the team members' experiences, as their understanding in the CE condition is not significantly different from their understanding in the non-enriched CNE and DNE conditions, and significantly lower than in the DE condition (see Table A3 in Appendix A). This finding confirms previous work conducted in different contexts (Matthews et al, 2011;Salmon et al, 2006) that shows that the ratings of observers are typically not in line with the team members assessments, particularly not in situations of stress and time pressure.…”

“…Although literature is sparse, there is some previous work that suggests that team members in situation of stress and time pressure tend to rate their situational awareness higher than the observers do, and that the observers are not able to capture the differences and nuances of the team members' situational awareness (Matthews et al, 2011). Therefore, we hypothesize:…”

“…In addition, we contrast this internal perspective with SART assessments of observers who did not participate in the exercises but were asked to assess the teams' performance. While observers are frequently used to rate a team's situation awareness and to provide non-intrusive feedback, the extent to which observers can accurately rate the SA of teams or individual team members has often been questioned (Matthews et al, 2011;Salmon et al, 2006).…”

Experienced Military Officer's Perception of Important Character Strengths

“…They also state that character strengths are specific phenomenon that co-exists with goals, interests, and values. Research at the NMA during a combat fatigue course revealed that cadets lost both their situation awareness and their ability to focus on certain missions while being sleep deprived (Matthews, Eid, Johnsen, & Boe, 2011: Matthews, Martinez, Eid, Johnsen, & Boe, 2007. Avoiding this will be important for a military officer during a mission.…”

A Review of Situation Awareness Assessment Approaches in Aviation Environments

“…| is the probability of chunk being retrieved successfully; | is the probability of optimal rule being chosen; is the activation level of chunk; is the activation threshold; and is the cognitive level. SA assessment using observer and self-rating methods under extremely stressful and challenging training conditions was investigated in [73]. The results show that subjective SA measures are unlikely to produce valid estimates of SA under extreme conditions.…”