Army expands use of cognitive development training tools.

• Author: Torres, Kristen

* A wave of new simulation technologies is helping Army personnel improve their cognitive skills so they can make better decisions faster during battles.

"We are taking a neuroscience approach to simulation exercises," said Alison Rubin, executive vice president of business development at Conflict Kinetics. "We teach your mind to take an image in quicker; your body to align with your decisions quicker; and your central nervous system to react in the appropriate way."

Conflict Kinetics focuses on short, intense, purpose-built drills. Through its synthetic marksmanship training program, it is able to replicate the physical and ocular challenges of combat, according to Rubin.

"By putting all these components together, we concentrate on achieving better situational awareness and better decision making," she added.

Conflict Kinetics, which focuses on virtual small arms training, was one of several vendors who took part in the Capitol Hill Modeling and Simulation Exposition, sponsored by the National Training and Simulation Association.

The company has gunfighter gyms located in the greater Washington, D.C., area and Virginia Beach, Virginia. The walls are lined with three 8-by-12-foot screens with targets flying down at the shooter from all angles. Training goals range from identifying biases when targeting enemy fighters and improving reaction time for shooters of all levels.

"When you're in a threat situation you've got to be trained for much more than just weapon shooting," she said. "We teach in a chaotic situation to help [soldiers] make better decisions out in the field."

By teaching soldiers and commanders how to deal with stress and calmly approach high-risk situations, Rubin said both groups will be better equipped with the thought processes necessary to decide whether to use lethal force while in the field or while making leadership decisions from a base.

"Our program has an incredible return on investment--the metrics prove it. We reduce all expenses associated with live fire training while still providing real world effects and scenarios," Rubin said.

Soldiers trained by the company have shown up to 300 percent improvements in peripheral target acquisition after a single session, according to Rubin.

Modeling and simulation training systems like Conflict Kinetics' SMT collect metric evaluations to track decision-making to be extracted by users for individual analysis.

"Our metric evaluation is extremely rich," Rubin said. "We track...