Extending the Dynamic Model of Situated Cognition to Submarine Command and Control

ABSTRACT A necessary step in the process of enhancing Sea Warrior performance is the ability to analyze performance via a comprehensive HumanSystem approach. Such an approach to Human -System performance has been espoused by researchers (Miller & Shattuck, 2004) in the study of military command and control. Citing the gap between the focus of analysis of human factors practitioners and systems analysts, Miller and Shattuck describe a dynamic model of situated cognition (DMSC) in which cognitive activities are based on the data which flow from the environment through the machine portions of a complex system. This approach overcomes the limitations of measures used to assess cognitive performance, such as some situational awareness (SA) metrics, that implicitly depict the activity as a state rather than a dynamic process. Moreover, by utilizing the DMSC, military accidents can be analyzed retrospectively to pinpoint root causes and identify ways to improve future performance. As an example, this paper applies the DMSC to two Naval submarine mishaps