Modeling Human and Organizational Behavior Application to Military Simulations (1998) / Chapter Skim
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9 Behavior Moderators
9 Behavior Moderators
Pages 242-268
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From page 242... ...
This chapter examines the role of a class of variables we refer to as behavior moderators and how such variables might be used in engagement simulations. These are the individual difference variables (e.g., task stress, emotion)
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From page 243... ...
For example, she undertook to assemble and interpret data from Army field exercises that characterized the decline in soldier performance as a consequence of continuous operations, fatigue, and fear. In this regard, she was among the first to see the potential contribution of empirical data on soldier behavior under stress conditions to the development of a computational model of human behavior under battlefield conditions.
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From page 244... ...
has proposed a general approach to modeling the effects of a wide range of individual differences, including cognitive styles, individual preferences, training, personality, and emotion; the approach moderates specific components of the overall cognitive architecture so as to indirectly affect explicit behavioral outcomes. There are many behavior moderators and many human behaviors that might be influenced by these moderators.
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From page 245... ...
For example, if a unit is filled with rested soldiers who are perfectly trained and in ideal physical condition, external factors such as extreme heat, long hours of continuous work, and exposure to toxins or the requirement to operate in protective gear to guard against toxins can only serve to degrade performance. Physiological Stressors Environment Several environmental factors, including temperature, toxic substances, noise, and vibration, can degrade both the mental and physical performance of soldiers.
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From page 246... ...
Also, changes in manifest mood can appear early.2 Another important consideration from the standpoint of modeling variations in performance concerns soldiers' ability to perform their tasks in the protective gear they must wear in the presence of a toxic threat. Similar issues arise for soldiers wearing heavy clothing to protect them from extreme cold.
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From page 247... ...
In the past, studies of environmental stressors were designed with the goal of specifying limits for effective performance, rather than demonstrating performance decrements over time as a function of various levels of the stressor. The results of these studies were used in making decisions about equipment design, task design, and mission length; they were not intended for use in developing
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From page 248... ...
on performance. These studies have demonstrated some quantitative changes in performance that might be used in building computational models of troops operating over extended periods of time.
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BEHAVIOR MODERATORS 1 00% 80% In 60% 40% 20% r n n ~ 4 5 6 7 8 l l Days of Continuous Operations FIGURE 9.2 Hits during first model cycle after 24 hours of sustained operations followed by continuous operations. 1 00% 80% ~n I C' Q X 60% 40% 20% ~L~ 1 2 3 4 5 Days of Continuous Operations FIGURE 9.3 Hits during first model cycle after 1-5 days of continuous operations.
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From page 250... ...
INTERNAL MODERATORS OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR Internal moderators of human behavior include variables such as intelligence, level and type of expertise, personality traits, emotions/affective factors, attitudes/expectations, and cultural values. These moderators are complex, they interact, and they can influence performance in multiple directions.
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From page 251... ...
Data such as these could be used to introduce variability into models of human performance. Level and Type of Expertise and Cognitive Abilities Rather than discussing education, training, and level and type of experience as internal behavior moderators, we focus here on level and type of expertise (which should be a function of those factors)
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Personality, Emotions, Attitudes, and Cultural Values Although this section briefly addresses personality, emotions, attitudes and expectancies, and cultural values separately, it is clear that there is great overlap among these variables. For example, the personality trait of neuroticism has many of the same defining characteristics as depression and anxiety, the latter being treated by some authors as emotions.
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, individual differences are also significant (Rogers, 1983~. Some individuals are clearly more innovative and more accepting of innovations than others.
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Over the past 10 years, however, important discoveries in neuroscience and experimental psychology have contributed to an interest in the scientific study of emotion. A growing body of evidence from neuroscience research points to the existence of neural circuitry processing emotionally relevant stimuli (i.e., stimuli that threaten or enhance the survival of the organism or its species)
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From page 255... ...
Perhaps the bestdocumented phenomenon is mood-congruent recall in memory (Bower, 1981; Blaney, 1986) , whereby a particular affective mood induces recall of similarly valenced memories (e.g., a depressed mood enhances recall of past negative experiences, including negative self-appraisals)
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, the efforts to date have been limited, and most of the research is not centrally relevant to military operations. While anthropological studies reveal that cultural values have a profound effect on the behavior of the individual warrior (Thomas, 1994)
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Power distance is interpreted as a characteristic of the culture, rather than an individual differences dimension. Basically, it corresponds to the degree to which societal organizations stress status hierarchies.
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Other Intrinsic Variables In addition to personality, emotion, and cultural values, a number of other intrinsic behavior moderators may impact performance and can be parameterized (Hudlicka, 1997~. These include, at the individual level, the following: · Cognitive styles (attentional factors, metacognitive skills, susceptibility to cognitive bias, assimilating versus accommodating, analytic versus initiative, goal-directed versus data-directed)
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We then examine an approach to the specific problem of incorporating emotion into the simulation of command decision making proposed by Hudlicka (1997~. Finally, we describe some alternative approaches to modeling the effects of intrinsic moderator variables on perception and situation awareness.
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Several investigators in artificial intelligence and computer science have begun work on incorporating affective variables such as personality and emotion into synthetic agents (Brehmer and Dorner, 1993; Nass et al., 1997~. This work is at a fairly primitive level and, as noted above, has been pursued primarily to provide a vehicle for further study of human behavior or to develop more
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From page 261... ...
However, none of these implementations is directly germane to the simulation of military engagements. Approaches to Modeling the Effects of Moderator Variables on Perception and Situation Awareness5 In this section, we describe how individual difference variables could be used to moderate perception and situation awareness within the context of the 5Borrows heavily from Hudlicka and Zacharias (1997)
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From page 262... ...
Stressor/moderator parameters of this model could include the following: · Content parameters sophistication and accuracy of the internal estimator model, number of events that can be detected, preference for particular events · Process parameters number of variables that can be processed simultaneously, speed and accuracy of state prediction and event detection The primary individual differences that could be represented in the state estimator and event detector include training, skill level, and individual history, which affect both the number and type of state variables predicted and events detected (i.e., sophistication of the commander's internal model) and the efficiency of prediction and detection (e.g., well-trained events are detected more readily, requiring lower signal strength or fewer triggering cues)
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From page 263... ...
That discussion is directly pertinent as well to a situation awareness model based on expert systems. Models Based on Case-Based Reasoning An approach similar to that used for models based on expert systems can be used to incorporate stressor/moderator effects into situation awareness models based on case-based reasoning.
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From page 264... ...
Stressor/moderator parameters of this model could include the following: · Content parameters content of belief network nodes, number of nodes, network topology, belief network conditional probability tables, number of distinct belief networks · Process parameters speed of propagation of probabilities along belief network links, speed of node belief updating, affective valence associated with particular nodes (e.g., a value associated with a particular situation or feature indicating whether it is desirable or undesirable) All categories of individual difference variables identified earlier in this chapter can be represented in a belief network-based situation assessor.
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. The basic approach focuses on the use of symbolic, modular cognitive architectures that support parameter-controlled processing, where the parameter vectors represent distinct individual differences across the range of variables discussed earlier.
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The above behaviors can be modeled with a cognitive architecture in two ways: · By modifying the model content to reflect the desired characteristics, that is, by constructing the model knowledge base in such a way that the desired behavior can be generated . By setting the model processing parameters to reflect a particular emotional orientation or emotional state, thereby biasing the model processing in a particular direction Both of these approaches are illustrated below by examples showing how some of the specific conditions and behaviors could be represented in a model of human performance that assumes the architectural features of Soar and ACT-R.
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From page 267... ...
Example 2 Lack of Time Increases Anxiety in an Obsessive Leader To model this phenomenon successfully, a model would require the following features: . ness A parameter indicating commander traits, set to indicate high obsessive · A link between this parameter value and a set of planning preference parameters, such as time required to make a decision and number of decision iterations · A link between the planning preference parameters and the current anxiety state of commander, allowing an increase in anxiety if the time available is less than the time required or if the number of iterations possible is less than the number of iterations required Example 3 Anxious Leader Overestimates Potential Danger of Situation and Commits a Larger-than-Necessary Number of Troops and Resources To model this phenomenon successfully, a model would require the following features: · A parameter indicating the current affective state of the commander · A representation of alternative plans in terms of specific features, such as number of units committed, amount of resources allocated to each unit, placement of units relative to each other, and maneuver type · An indication of how the value of each of the above features varies with different affective states (e.g., increased anxiety increases resource requirements)
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From page 268... ...
Yet there is a great deal of overlap among the variables classified under personality, emotion, attitude, and cultural values, and most of the empirical data in this area are subjective and qualitative. Some preliminary success has been achieved with the introduction of internal behavior moderators into models of human behavior.
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