EL AUTÉNTICO MARXISMO

The term „simulation‟ refers to high fidelity replications of complex, dynamic, real life events that measure credibility on the extent experienced decision makers take them seriously and engage as they would in operational settings (Klein & Woods, 1993). Simulations are often used to enhance performance of practitioners because skills learned in simulations may be transferred to applied settings (Ward, Williams, & Hancock, 2006). Using simulation based training (SBT) practitioners such as the police and other emergency services are able to practice making judgments and decisions in environments similar to those faced in the field without putting real lives at risk (Crichton, Flin, & Rattray, 2002). The purpose of such training is to move novices beyond procedurally based thinking toward a situational based style of processing that is adaptive and responsive to events as they unfold and to novel situations (Ross, Phillips, Klein, & Cohn, 2005). These skills are essential for proficient decision making in naturalistic contexts such as those encountered by police officers (Crandall, Klein, & Hoffman, 2006). However, transferability of skills is dependent on the extent simulated environments replicate the complexity of real incidents so that learning transfers to „on the job‟ performance (Rosen, Salas, Silvestri, Wu, & Lazzara, 2008).

Fidelity, the extent to which a simulation is able to replicate the operational environment, is an important aspect of encouraging practitioners to engage in simulated environments so that they think, feel and behave as they would in real situations. Issenberg and Scalese (2008) distinguish between physical, environmental and psychological fidelity with physical fidelity referring to the accuracy with which a simulation replicates the operational environment. Environmental fidelity refers to the extent the simulation represents visual, motion and other sensory cues that would be present in reality. Finally, psychological fidelity refers to the extent a simulation requires the user to experience the same sensory and cognitive processes for task completion as they would in operational settings.

Issenberg and Scalese (2008) further note that level of fidelity should be based on whether physical or cognitive tasks are under investigation and on the goals of training. Presently, the issue is to examine the impact accountability has on anticipated regret, appraisals of advice importance, motivational goals, and advice quality. These issues are predominantly cognitive and as such require simulations that focus on psychological fidelity. These simulations would therefore need to create the perceptions, emotions and behaviours that occur in real crises (Raybourn, 2006), such as tension, time pressure, risk, uncertainty, frustration and a sense of inadequate information (Borodzicz, 2004). However, because physical fidelity is a secondary consideration it is not necessary for participants to be in an environment that requires physical activity. Instead computer based simulated environments such as those used in microworlds would be suitable.

The term microworld is used to refer to complex computer based simulations that replicate some aspect of reality and allow examination of participant interaction with the simulation (Berndt & Dörner, 1993). Funke (2001) states that all microworlds have three general characteristics in common: complexity, dynamicity, and opaqueness. Complexity arises out of the number of features participants must consider in order to make decisions, or the numerous sometimes conflicting goals that must be traded or prioritised. Also, because microworlds are interactive (participants‟ responses to information presented alters feedback received) and allow participants to choose from many possible courses of action, there will be side effects for any given course of action. Microworlds are dynamic because they react to decisions and actions made by participants in real time without participants having control over decision pace. Finally, microworlds are said to be opaque because some aspects of the system are not visible, which means that participants will be required to use previous experiences to make inferences or develop hypotheses.

Throughout the course of engaging with a microworld, participants are presented with numerous different problems as opposed to single, well-defined tasks. Selecting problems or tasks to present to participants can be a useful mechanism for examining specific research questions. For example, complexity, time allocated for completion and content of tasks can be altered to induce stress or emotional responses. To complete tasks, participants will be required to use both previous experience and knowledge as well as what they learn about the hidden structure of the microworld (such as time constraints) to make judgments and decisions and develop contingency plans. Participants must constantly assess the status of the

microworld environment to evaluate the success of their strategies but must also decide when it is appropriate to stop searching and start planning. In doing so they are required to coordinate macrocognition skills such as thinking, planning, problem solving and decision making rather than working on isolated tasks. Berndt and Dörner (1993) state that “to these cognitive demands come the more or less strong emotions that are elicited by success or failure, and by the events in the microworld and their importance…Thus, the subjects have to cope with their own emotions” (p. 178).

The strengths of microworlds for conducting research lie in their ability to produce environments that replicate reality and to present participants with complexities present in field-based research (the strengths of naturalistic paradigms). With microworlds it is also possible to have more experimental control than is present in most naturalistic research because researchers can manipulate the complexity of the environment to some extent and all participants begin at the same base point within the microworld (the strength of experimental paradigms). However, the control afforded still does not match that of experimental research. The nature of the independent (IV) and dependent (DV) variables differs to that of traditional experimental research as IVs are system characteristics (e.g. complexity or feedback structure) as oppose to discrete stimuli, and DVs cannot be easily mapped on to system characteristics to form neat stimulus-response laws. Furthermore, consistency will be compromised as feedback participants receive will depend on judgments, decisions and actions they have made. Thus, although participants start off at the same baseline with identical stimuli, input and stimuli will rapidly alter between participants as they interact. Drawing comparisons between participants therefore becomes increasingly difficult as a result of this compromise between experimental control and realism (Gonzalez, Vanyukov, & Martin, 2005).

Despite methodological drawbacks, simulations that contain some advantageous features of the microworld still represent the best form of methodology for research within this thesis. In using computer based simulations researchers do not have the problem of attempting to gain access to practitioners in naturalistic settings where threat may be presented to the running of the incident and the safety of the researcher. For example, with research focus on crisis situations, any disruptions to the running of an incident could be devastating. Researchers are unlikely to be granted access by the police as their presence may provide a distraction to all parties involved. Also, the occurrence of such incidents cannot be predicted and so even if

access were granted, knowing when and where to collect data would be infeasible. Additionally, each crisis incident is different and attempting to draw comparisons between judgments and advice provided at each incident would pose difficulties. However, Negotiator Coordinators‟ experiences of real crisis situations are invaluable to the development of narratives for simulations ensuring that problems generated are realistic and elicit relevant emotions and cognitions. It is important that content is challenging and contains environmental factors present in naturalistic situations; therefore practitioner involvement in simulation development is valuable for achieving such goals (Zimmerman, Sestokas, & Burns, 2011).

To reconcile difficulties, this research makes use of a tactical decision scenario (TDS) design. A TDS is a simulation comprised of a series of scenarios and dilemmas that require participants to make decisions and take actions that could impact on the behaviour of others (Crichton et al., 2002). The goal of a TDS is to place individuals in a cognitively complex exercise where they are required to provide a detailed description of how they would respond to unfolding complex situations (Zimmerman et al., 2011). It is referred to as low fidelity becauseinformation is predetermined and standardised rather than interactive. Whilst it may be argued that this detracts from reality where individuals would be able to interact with their environment and actively seek information (as with microworlds), the narrative of the TDS was developed to minimise this weakness. For example, the information given to participants reflected the type of information they would feasibly have access to in real crisis situations and it was realistic that further advice participants may request would not always be available. Overall, the strength of a TDS lies in its ability to provide contexts and problems or tasks that are similar to those practitioners would face in reality in terms of complexity and pressures (time constraints, uncertainty, lack of information and control over pace, ill-defined or conflicting goals and stress). It may be argued that a weakness of the TDS methodology is that it is not interactive, but this lack of interaction gives rise to a host of strengths. For example, participants all receive standard information in the same sequence with the same time delays between presentations of new feeds. Participants therefore all engage in exactly the same procedure meaning there is greater consistency and researchers have greater control over the simulation. It is thus possible to draw firmer conclusions than may be drawn with microworlds but still allowing some complexity present in naturalistic settings. Due to consistency in narrative and procedure TDSs may also be conducted on numerous participants

at once, saving both time and financial cost. Whilst TDSs sacrifice some fidelity possessed by traditional microworlds, they still maintain much of the environmental richness and complexity in addition to allowing researchers greater experimental control. This is a necessary trade-off to make within this research given the novelty of the topic under examination.