Paul J. Feltovich

Robert R. Hoffman

Paul Ward

Stephen M. Fiore

Lia Dibello

Speed in acquiring the knowledge and skills to perform tasks is crucial. Yet, it still ordinarily takes many years to achieve high proficiency in countless jobs and professions, in government, business, industry, and throughout the private sector. There would be great advantages if regimens of training could be established that could accelerate the achievement of high levels of proficiency. This book discusses the construct of ‘accelerated learning.’ It includes a review of the research literature on learning acquisition and retention, focus on establishing what works, and why. This includes several demonstrations of accelerated learning, with specific ideas, plans and roadmaps for doing so. The impetus for the book was a tasking from the Defense Science and Technology Advisory Group, which is the top level Science and Technology policy-making panel in the Department of Defense. However, the book uses both military and non-military exemplar case studies. It is likely that methods for acceleration will leverage technologies and capabilities including virtual training, cross-training, training across strategic and tactical levels, and training for resilience and adaptivity. This volume provides a wealth of information and guidance for those interested in the concept or phenomenon of "accelerating learning"— in education, training, psychology, academia in general, government, military, or industry.

Training for High Proficiency in a Complex World

Accelerated Expertise

Gary Klein

Gary A. Klein

Senior Research Scientist Robert R Hoffman

Beth Crandall

Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) helps researchers understand how cognitive skills andstrategies make it possible for people to act effectively and get things done. CTA can yieldinformation people need -- employers faced with personnel issues, market researchers who want tounderstand the thought processes of consumers, trainers and others who design instructional systems,health care professionals who want to apply lessons learned from errors and accidents, systemsanalysts developing user specifications, and many other professionals. CTA can show what makes theworkplace work -- and what keeps it from working as well as it might. Working Minds is a true handbook, offering a set of tools for doing CTA: methodsfor collecting data about cognitive processes and events, analyzing them, and communicating themeffectively. It covers both the "why" and the "how" of CTA methods, providing examples, guidance,and stories from the authors' own experiences as CTA practitioners. Because effective use of CTAdepends on some conceptual grounding in cognitive theory and research -- on knowing what a cognitiveperspective can offer -- the book also offers an overview of current research oncognition. The book provides detailed guidance for planning and carrying out CTA,with chapters on capturing knowledge and capturing the way people reason. It discusses studyingcognition in real-world settings and the challenges of rapidly changing technology. And it describeskey issues in applying CTA findings in a variety of fields. Working Minds makes the methodology ofCTA accessible and the skills involved attainable.

A Practitioner's Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis

Working Minds

K. Anders Ericsson

Neil Charness

This 2006 book was the first handbook where the world's foremost 'experts on expertise' reviewed our scientific knowledge on expertise and expert performance and how experts may differ from non-experts in terms of their development, training, reasoning, knowledge, social support, and innate talent. Methods are described for the study of experts' knowledge and their performance of representative tasks from their domain of expertise. The development of expertise is also studied by retrospective interviews and the daily lives of experts are studied with diaries. In 15 major domains of expertise, the leading researchers summarize our knowledge on the structure and acquisition of expert skill and knowledge and discuss future prospects. General issues that cut across most domains are reviewed in chapters on various aspects of expertise such as general and practical intelligence, differences in brain activity, self-regulated learning, deliberate practice, aging, knowledge management, and creativity.

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

How to collect data about cognitive processes and events, how to analyze CTA findings, and how to communicate them effectively: a handbook for managers, trainers, systems analysts, market researchers, health professionals, and others. Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) helps researchers understand how cognitive skills and strategies make it possible for people to act effectively and get things done. CTA can yield information people need—employers faced with personnel issues, market researchers who want to understand the thought processes of consumers, trainers and others who design instructional systems, health care professionals who want to apply lessons learned from errors and accidents, systems analysts developing user specifications, and many other professionals. CTA can show what makes the workplace work—and what keeps it from working as well as it might. Working Minds is a true handbook, offering a set of tools for doing CTA: methods for collecting data about cognitive processes and events, analyzing them, and communicating them effectively. It covers both the "why" and the "how" of CTA methods, providing examples, guidance, and stories from the authors' own experiences as CTA practitioners. Because effective use of CTA depends on some conceptual grounding in cognitive theory and research—on knowing what a cognitive perspective can offer—the book also offers an overview of current research on cognition. The book provides detailed guidance for planning and carrying out CTA, with chapters on capturing knowledge and capturing the way people reason. It discusses studying cognition in real-world settings and the challenges of rapidly changing technology. And it describes key issues in applying CTA findings in a variety of fields. Working Minds makes the methodology of CTA accessible and the skills involved attainable.

Researchers have revealed that real expertise, while applied to well-defined tasks with highly circumscribed contexts, often stretches beyond its routine boundaries. For example, a medical doctor may be called upon to diagnose a rare disease or perform emergency surgery outside his or her area of specialization because other experts are not available. Moreover, in some cases, the context for expertise is in a constant state of flux, such that no one case is identical. Expertise Out of Context is a culmination of some of the most insightful studies conducted by researchers in the fields of cognitive systems engineering and naturalistic decision making in the effort to better understand expertise and its development. Born out of the Sixth International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making, a conference that gathers researchers who study cognition, perception, and reasoning outside of the traditional laboratory, this book is organized in five parts, the first of which provides an overview of the topic and presents varied perspectives. Consequent sections cover how to make sense of things, tools for thinking out of context, how to cope with uncertainty in a changing workplace, and teams operating out of context. As researchers in naturalistic decision making have investigated such areas as the knowledge and decision-making skills of expert firefighters, critical care nurses, military commanders, and aircraft pilots, this volume is of importance to an expansive audience, including individuals in business, government, industry, and society at large.

Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making

Expertise Out of Context

Arthur B. Markman

No matter how advanced the technology, there is always the human factor involved - the power behind the technology. Interpreting Remote Sensing Imagery: Human Factors draws together leading psychologists, remote sensing scientists, and government and industry scientists to consider the factors involved in expertise and perceptual skill. This boo

Human Factors

Interpreting Remote Sensing Imagery

Daphne S. Ladue

H. Michael Mogil

Paul J. Roebber

J. Gregory Trafton

A detailed study of research on the psychology of expertise in weather forecasting, drawing on findings in cognitive science, meteorology, and computer science. This book argues that the human cognition system is the least understood, yet probably most important, component of forecasting accuracy. Minding the Weather investigates how people acquire massive and highly organized knowledge and develop the reasoning skills and strategies that enable them to achieve the highest levels of performance. The authors consider such topics as the forecasting workplace; atmospheric scientists' descriptions of their reasoning strategies; the nature of expertise; forecaster knowledge, perceptual skills, and reasoning; and expert systems designed to imitate forecaster reasoning. Drawing on research in cognitive science, meteorology, and computer science, the authors argue that forecasting involves an interdependence of humans and technologies. Human expertise will always be necessary.

How Expert Forecasters Think

Minding the Weather

Peter A. Hancock

Raja Parasuraman

Mark W. Scerbo

James L. Szalma

The Cambridge Handbook of Applied Perception Research covers core areas of research in perception with an emphasis on its application to real-world environments. Topics include multisensory processing of information, time perception, sustained attention, and signal detection, as well as pedagogical issues surrounding the training of applied perception researchers. In addition to familiar topics, such as perceptual learning, the Handbook focuses on emerging areas of importance, such as human-robot coordination, haptic interfaces, and issues facing societies in the twenty-first century (such as terrorism and threat detection, medical errors, and the broader implications of automation). Organized into sections representing major areas of theoretical and practical importance for the application of perception psychology to human performance and the design and operation of human-technology interdependence, it also addresses the challenges to basic research, including the problem of quantifying information, defining cognitive resources, and theoretical advances in the nature of attention and perceptual processes.

The Cambridge Handbook of Applied Perception Research

Lia DiBello

Dee H. Andrews

Laura G. Militello

This volume is the first comprehensive history of task analysis, charting its origins from the earliest applied psychology through to modern forms of task analysis that focus on the study of cognitive work. Through this detailed historical analysis, it is made apparent how task analysis has always been cognitive. Chapters cover the histories, key ideas, and contributions to methodology of a number of communities of practice, including: Sociotechnics, European Work Analysis, Naturalistic Decision Making, Cognitive Systems Engineering, Ethnography, Human Factors. Further, integrative chapters focus on the purposes of cognitive task analysis. It is shown how all the various communities of practice are living in the same scientific universe, though are in many ways distinctive in terms of their key concerns and main theories. It is a historiography of task analysis, and the people who invented task analysis. It is also an explanatory primer on what cognitive task analysis is all about and what it can do. Perspectives on Cognitive Task Analyis will be of value to professionals in allied disciplines who might come to rely on cognitive task analysis in their system development programs. It will be invaluable to students who need to know what task analysis and cognitive task analysis are really all about. For practitioners of cognitive task analysis, this volume is a major presentation of what their scientific universe is all about.

Historical Origins and Modern Communities of Practice

Perspectives on Cognitive Task Analysis

Robert R. Hoffman

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