Search

Peer support promotes the overall wellness of people with mental illness by establishing mutual partnerships throughout their different stages of recovery. In health research, investments in patien...

Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental illness that poses significant challenges. While many pharmacological and psychosocial interventions are available, many treatment-resistant schizophrenia patients continue to suffer from persistent psychotic symptoms, notably auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH), which are highly disabling. This unmet clinical need requires new innovative treatment options. Recently, a psychological therapy using computerized technology has shown large therapeutic effects on AVH severity by enabling patients to engage in a dialogue with a computerized representation of their voices. These very promising results have been extended by our team using immersive virtual reality (VR). Our study was a 7-week phase-II, randomized, partial cross-over trial. Nineteen schizophrenia patients with refractory AVH were recruited and randomly allocated to either VR-assisted therapy (VRT) or treatment-as-usual (TAU). The group allocated to TAU consisted of antipsychotic treatment and usual meetings with clinicians. The TAU group then received a delayed 7weeks of VRT. A follow-up was ensured 3months after the last VRT therapy session. Changes in psychiatric symptoms, before and after TAU or VRT, were assessed using a linear mixed-effects model. Our findings showed that VRT produced significant improvements in AVH severity, depressive symptoms and quality of life that lasted at the 3-month follow-up period. Consistent with previous research, our results suggest that VRT might be efficacious in reducing AVH related distress. The therapeutic effects of VRT on the distress associated with the voices were particularly prominent (d=1.2). VRT is a highly novel and promising intervention for refractory AVH in schizophrenia.

Tactical command and control (C2) operations under conditions of complexity, uncertainty, stress, and time pressure impose significant cognitive demands on the Tactical Army Commanders' (TAC) ability to successfully prosecute their missions. The objective of the present study was to apply Hollnagel's (1998) Contextual Control Model (COCOM) to the identification of time-critical Situation Awareness (SA) requirements for TACs engaged in time-critical tactical C2 operations. SA requirements relevant to the successful completion of a broad range of tactical C2 missions – convoy escort, checkpoint security, combat, and cordon and search – were identified. These SA requirements were then prioritized into a subset of ‘critical’ SA requirements and then further analyzed in terms of classifying them into one of four COCOM control modes (i.e., strategic, tactical, opportunistic and scrambled). Through this analysis, areas that impact the development of decision aids, and other forms of decision support techniques, for TACs were identified.

Temporal awareness is key to successful decision making in a wide range of command and control situations, yet little explicit support to maintaining temporal awareness is provided by Decision Support Systems (DSS) for time-critical decisions. In the context of simulated weapon-target scheduling, the present study compared the decision support gained from two display formats: typical geospatial display and temporal display. The results demonstrated that the temporal display facilitates scheduling performance though its beneficial impact seems to require greater familiarization.

The present study aims to investigate how teams respond to workload transition due to a sudden and unexpected event in a complex and dynamic command and control (C2) environment. The C3Fire microworld (Granlund, 1998), a forest fire-fighting simulation, is used to compare divisional (territory-specific) and functional (role-specific) teams. Workload transition is induced by the sudden appearance of a second fire. Results show that functional teams' performance decreases while their communication frequency increases following the workload transition. However, they are faster to detect the second fire. This pattern of results suggests that in the context of C2 environments, the impact of a workload escalation varies as a function of team structure (functional vs. divisional) and the type of task (fire detection vs. fire fighting).

The present study is about the effect of temporal uncertainty on the control of a dynamic task. Two types of temporal uncertainty are defined: Data Uncertainty (DU), the variability in temporal information, and Knowledge Uncertainty (KU), the complexity in the temporal structure of a situation. The effect of temporal data uncertainty on the control of a dynamic task with high knowledge temporal uncertainty is tested experimentally. Fifty-seven participants practiced the computerized game ‘Save the Whale’, with three levels of data uncertainty about the moment of occurrence of critical events, DU0, DU1 and DU2. Results show that performance is better in the DU0 than in the other two conditions, which do not differ from each other. The performance improves with practice at the same rate, regardless of the level of uncertainty. It is also shown that the control strategies reported by the participants become more variable with an increase in uncertainty. It is concluded that temporal data uncertainty does not...

Because of their intrinsic nature, it is fundamental to consider the temporal dimension when studying control in dynamic situations. However, the temporal aspect is often taken for granted and not accounted for in cognitive or control models. The present study aims to understand the role of temporal estimation in the control of a dynamic task, within the Contextual Control Model (COCOM). Particularly, the main objective is to evaluate how time pressure influences the estimation of available and required time. A dynamic situation, which includes two sub-tasks, the pursuit of a target and the avoidance of hostile contacts, is used. Results show that both available and required estimated times, as well as performance, decrease with increased time pressure. These findings suggest that when faced with a high level of time pressure, people adapt their strategies by giving up an offensive mode of control, in favor of a more defensive one, earlier in the game.

In this paper, we report results from a large-scale military experiment with Canadian Forces (CF) officers on the impact of collaborative work support systems—in the present experiment, a set of integrated tools such as operations planning systems, joint fire systems and other logistics tools—on individual and shared situation awareness (SA). In order to measure SA and the ability to share SA, we used the Quantitative Assessment of Situation Awareness (QUASA) technique: We first analyzed SA quality (sensitivity, response bias, accuracy) and metacognition (level of confidence, and calibration bias), and then computed the level of response concordance within and across groups (three different Operational Commands of the CF). The addition of the new support system led to a significant improvement in shared SA. However, this beneficial effect comes with a drop in both objective and perceived individual SA. From this pattern of results, we conclude that there might be a tradeoff between SA sharedness and quality. Supporting the process of sharing SA through enhanced means of information integration and exchange, communication and coordination can also lead to a considerable decrease in individual SA and meta-SA.

Problematic command and control situations are often characterized with high levels of uncertainty and severe time constraints. In time compressed situations where only a limited number of information can be considered by the decision-maker, it becomes critical that the information available is the most relevant for taking action in that situation. This paper presents a Framework for the Analysis of Information Relevance (FAIR). The objective with this stepwise framework is to guide filtering and prioritization of information based on its level of relevance to the situation. The rationale is that with adequate filtering and prioritization processes, the decision-maker is left with only the most relevant information to act within a time-constrainted window of opportinity.

In this paper, we use the Cognitive Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (C-OODA) model in a Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) analysis. CIMIC requires intelligent decision making over many activities, variables, and effects. We utilize the Complex Decision Making Experimental Platform (CODEM) from Lafond, DuCharme, and Rioux to provide situation observation, environmental orientation, relational decision making, and action selection, evaluation, and feedback. With the development of complex CIMIC activities, users require effects-based analysis of all civil and military actions for contextual reasoning and situation understanding. For pragmatic information CIMIC system design and analysis, the user (commander or operator/analyst) needs timely and accurate information to conduct proactive actionable intelligence over complex situations. In this paper, we use the C-OODA model in a CIMIC analysis using the CODEM simulation to support the modeling of stability and sustainment operations.

The development of Decision Support System (DSS) is challenging, as it must include the participation of system designers and human factor specialists to ensure the cognitive fit between the DSS and the decision-maker in order to maximize decision-making effectiveness. The validation step from the DSS development process is often skipped due to money and time constraints and lack of appropriate validation tools. This paper describes ongoing work at the Defence R&D Canada - Valcartier to develop an "operational-like" human-machine interface design environment called CODSI (Command Decision Support Interface). The paper describes and shows the validation capability of CODSI and the advantages of integrating CODSI in the DSS development process.

Situation Awareness (SAW) is essential for commanders to conduct decision-making (DM) activities. Situation Analysis (SA) is defined as a process, the examination of a situation, its elements, and their relations, to provide and maintain a product, i.e., a state of SAW for the decision maker. Operational trends in warfare put the situation analysis process under pressure. This emphasizes the need for a real-time computer-based Situation analysis Support System (SASS) to aid commanders in achieving the appropriate situation awareness, thereby supporting their response to actual or anticipated threats. Data fusion is clearly a key enabler for SA and a SASS. Since data fusion is used for SA in support of dynamic human decision-making, the exploration of the SA concepts and the design of data fusion techniques must take into account human factor aspects in order to ensure a cognitive fit of the fusion system with the decision-maker. Indeed, the tight human factor aspects in order to ensure a cognitive fit of the fusion system with the decision-maker. Indeed, the tight integration of the human element with the SA technology is essential. Regarding these issues, this paper provides a description of CODSI (Command Decision Support Interface), and operational- like human machine interface prototype for investigations in computer-based SA and command decision support. With CODSI, one objective was to apply recent developments in SA theory and information display technology to the problem of enhancing SAW quality. It thus provides a capability to adequately convey tactical information to command decision makers. It also supports the study of human-computer interactions for SA, and methodologies for SAW measurement.© (2001) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Short-term memory or working memory has been proposed as a cognitive structure contributing to time estimation. Thus, in a previous experiment, retrieving a stored item during a temporal-interval production lengthened the interval in proportion to the number of items in the memory set. In the present study, this issue was analyzed further by testing whether the proportional lengthening is induced by the load itself (i.e., the number of items) or by comparing the probe with memorized items. In a first experiment, a memory set was maintained during a temporal production, and the comparison of the probe with memorized items was postponed until the end of time production. Varying the number of items in the memory set had no effect on temporal intervals produced during its retention, suggesting that mental comparison was the source of the lengthening of time intervals. In succeeding experiments, tasks requiring processing in working memory but involving no memory load were combined with temporal production. In Experiment 2, increasing the number of syllables in a rhyme-judgment task proportionally lengthened temporal intervals that were produced simultaneously. In Experiment 3, increasing the amount of mental rotation in a task involving visuospatial processing also lengthened simultaneous temporal production. This interference between processing in working memory and time estimation suggests that working memory, defined as a work space for active processing of current information, contributes to time estimation.