Coding Verbal Interactions in a Prototype Future Force Command and Control Simulation

摘要

As the U.S. Army undergoes transformation, it will need reliable means of measuring and training complex new skills. Acquiring those will require analysis of human behavior in the context of human-in-the-loop simulations of Future Combat Systems (FCS) still in the concept exploration phase. The goal of the present effort was to establish and measure command group behavior observed in such a human-in-the-loop simulation via analysis of the verbal interactions of the command group. A coding scheme for command group verbal interactions was devised and applied to several simulation runs in which a command group of 4 experienced Army Lt. Col.'s controlled an array of simulated unmanned air and ground platforms to accomplish a deliberate attack mission. This report documents the development of the coding scheme, the analysis results, and considers various other approaches for analyzing verbal data.