Elicitation of British Army Commanders' Personal Constructs

Abstract : The design of information systems to aid the attainment of Situation Awareness would benefit from an understanding of the mental models that commanders reference in assessing situations. This paper presents novel experimental research conducted to elicit the personal constructs that constitute the fabric of British Army commanders' mental models. For a given scenario, it is shown that four out of the twenty-one identified constructs accounted for the majority of individual situation assessments made; three of these four were, in fact, common to all ten participants. There were, however, individual differences: four of the participants referenced a specific pair of constructs in the majority of their assessments whilst the remainder used a far wider set. The constructs were mapped onto Endsley's three levels of Situation Awareness and a significant positive correlation was found between experience level and the mean Situation Awareness level of the constructs referenced. This suggests that experience influences the fabric of commanders mental models and indicates how this manifests itself in terms of constructs.