Individual Differences in Metacognitive Decision Making and Situation Assessment

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Abstract
28 senior naval officers (experts) and 48 junior naval officers (novices) (1) categorized tactical situations, (2) performed pairwise similarity ratings of them, and (3) represented their metacognitive models of tactical decision making as graphic weighted networks. Multidimensional scaling was conducted employing subjects’ pairwise similarity ratings of tactical situations. Using classification measures and multidimensional weights as dependent variables and salient metacognitive link weights as independent variables, two one-way multivariate analyses of covariance between experts and novices and associated statistics were computed. Some of the results of canonical and regression analyses and product-moment correlations validated an important aspect of a metacognitive model of naturalistic schema-driven tactical decision making. They established significant associations of the two link weights connecting event sequence and similarity recognition to situation assessment with actual performances on the two experimental tasks requiring situation assessment. These findings demonstrated (1) the importance of event sequence and similarity recognition as necessary input to situation assessment, and (2) these two metacognitive links are significantly associated with the recognition of similar scenarios. Experts and novices did not differ significantly in (1) the number of categories, scenarios per category, and times to classify the tactical situations during sorting and resorting, and (2) their derived weights along the two dimensions, warfare tempo and reaction time, of the multidimensional scaling solution.

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