Decision-Centered Training

What can the Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) perspective tell us about training people to make better decisions? The NDM framework offers four guidelines for training. (i) Build expertise, rather than teaching generic analytical strategies; (ii) Support, rather than replace, the strategies people use; (iii) Make the decision requirements specific to the task context; (iv) Model the cognitive processes of subject-matter experts. Training can be implemented using better scenarios and through cognitive modeling. A recent project is described, in which decision-centered training was used at the National Emergency Training Center to revise a set of course materials. The revisions emphasized opportunities to improve situation awareness skills through better specification of critical cues and patterns, and recommendations about using the debriefs following exercises to probe for cognitive processes underlying judgments and decisions.