Special Section Preface

The complexity of many modern systems places unprecedented demands on human operators. Furthermore, as technological sophistication advances, it can be argued that decision making will become more complex in future systems. One need only consider events such as the downing of an Iranian airliner by the U.S.S. Viizceiiites, the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor incident, and the recent crash of an airliner in Colombia to understand the catastrophic consequences of human error. Fortunately, a surge in interest in decision-making research has occurred over the last 10 years. Moreover, many modem decision-making researchers are concerned with studying decision making in its “naturalistic” state-that is, how it occurs in real, complex, time-compressed, stressful settings. Therefore, the driving purpose of this special section is twofold. The first is to document some of the recent theoretical, empirical, and practical efforts that have been conducted in this crucial area. The second is to challenge the decision-making research community to advance the field in a manner that supports the accumulation of knowledge about decision making and the application of this knowledge to real-world problems. To address this issue, several theoretical articles are included in this section. In the first, Cannon-Bowers, Salas, and Pruitt discuss recent trends and a relatively new paradigm for decision-making research. This paradigm, which is based on naturalistic decisionmaking (NDM) theories, emphasizes how decision makers make decisions in complex, real-world environments. According to the authors, in order to be useful in guiding decisionmaking research, the boundaries of NDM must be better defined. To this end, they propose a series of factors that they contend should constitute the core of NDM research. In the second theoretical piece, Cohen, Freeman, and Wolf describe a theoretical framework-metarecognition-for explaining critical thinking strategies when decision makers are confronted with uncertainty and novelty. This issue also contains several empirical articles demonstrating that decision making is now being studied in a number of complex and interesting areas. Endsley and Smith’s article looks at fighter pilots’ tactical decision-making performance and attention. Their results provide some insights into decision making in combat situations. Adelman, Bresnick, Black, Marvin, and Sak examined how Patriot air defense officers handled information in a simulation. Their findings have implications for display design in timestressed situations. The article by Flin, Slaven, and Stewart analyzed, via interviews, the decision-making requirements in emergencies for offshore oil personnel. The study provides a description of the selection and training factors that must be considered for each situation. Pierce’s article addresses a number of issues and critical concerns about unaided decisions in health care. The qualitative interviews suggest specific indicators of how patients make decisions. Finally, Kaempf, Klein, Thordsen, and Wolf used the recognition-primed decision model as their conceptual framework to investigate how experienced naval officers made decisions in command-and-control settings. Their findings suggest ways in which discussion support systems can be designed. Little is known about how to train decision making for complex environments. However. Kirlik, Walker, Fisk, and Nagel studied the impact of training interventions on perceptual and recognitional activities and found that these interventions significantly accelerated skilled performance in dynamic environments.