Chapter 4: Situational Awareness

Question 1

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What are some factors that can impact your situational awareness?

Answer 1

Chronic and acute fatigue, and attempting to multitask when performing task in a dynamically changing environment, can seriously impact SA.

Question 2

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Dr. Ensley’s definition of situational awareness

Answer 2

Being aware of what is happening around you in understanding what that information means to you now and in the future.

Question 3

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Dr. Ensley’s three levels of Situational Awareness:

Level I Situational Awareness

Answer 3

When the decision maker captures the cues and clues in the current situation. These clues and cues can be captured both consciously and subconsciously.

The decision-makers assessing the emergency scene his eyes and ears focusing on points of data, but the brain is taking and processing more than the eyes and ears are focused on.

Question 4

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What level of situational awareness is key to a decision-maker’s ability to conduct an effective size up

Answer 4

Level I situational awareness

Decision-makers cannot develop strong level I situational awareness if they fail to capture the cues and clues in the environment (size up)

Question 5

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Dr. Ensley terms level I situational awareness as…

Answer 5

The perception phase – capturing the information about what is happening. You can think of it is paying attention and it’s the beginning of situational awareness formation.

Question 6

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Dr. Ensley’s three levels of situational awareness:

Level II situational awareness

Answer 6

The comprehension phase, at this point the decision-maker takes the clues and cues captured in level I and make sense of them. This is where the decision-maker figures out what’s going on – deriving meaning from the combine clues and cues.

Level II is where assembly of the puzzle pieces begin.

The decision-maker comprehends what is happening

The point at which the decision maker might be thinking “what does this all mean”

Question 7

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What does Dr. Ensley term level to situational awareness?

Answer 7

The comprehension phase

Question 8

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What can make level II of situational awareness difficult

Answer 8

If some of the clues and cues are unfamiliar to the decision-maker or if the clues and cues do not fit the decision-maker’s belief about what he/she should be seen in the current moment regardless of what they are actually seeing.

Question 9

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Dr. Ensley’s three levels situational awareness:

level III situational awareness

Answer 9

Dr. Ensley’s term for this level is projection. Here the decision-maker makes assumptions and predictions about the future. The clues and cues captured at level I are comprehended in level II, then you used to be able to predict where the incident is going next.

Question 10

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In order to make predictions about what’s going to happen what does the decision-maker need to do?

Answer 10

The decision-maker must mentally get ahead of the current moment and think about what’s going to happen at a future point in time 5, 10, 20 minutes from now.

Question 11

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How are Dr. Ensley’s three levels of situational awareness related?

Answer 11

They are interdependent, builds on each other. Strong level II situational awareness is predicated on capturing the cues in clues in level I.

Question 12

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summary of the three levels of situational awareness

Answer 12

Level I situational awareness is using perception to capture clues and cues in the environment.

Level II situational awareness is using comprehension skills to figure out what the clues and cues mean.

Level III situational awareness is making projections of what’s going to happen – foretelling future events

Question 13

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On scene emergency situation decision-makers need to develop and maintain each level situational awareness. What does that mean?

Answer 13

That’s an ongoing process continual because the incident is ever-changing

Question 14

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Temporal distortion

Answer 14

When stress causes time distortion – can make it difficult for a decision-maker to effectively predict the future. Were the decision-makers unable to accurately assess how much time has passed.

Question 15

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The average person’s brain can capture, comprehend, and recall about _____pieces of unrelated information.

Answer 15

Seven (± two)

Question 16

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How long does it take to become an expert?

Answer 16

Research suggested on average 10 years of regular and routine acquisition of knowledge and skills practice to develop expert level knowledge and performance. If a student is in an environment of learning and/or practice two hours a day, five days each week.

Question 17

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decision-makers acquire their expertise in a four step process of progression. What are the four steps

Answer 17

Unconscious incompetence
Conscious incompetence
Conscious competence
Unconscious competence

Question 18

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Unconscious incompetence

Answer 18

People who are unconsciously incompetent are unaware (unconscious) of how little they know (incompetence).

Question 19

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Consciously incompetent

Answer 19

Second stage. Decision-makers become aware of how much they don’t know.

Question 20

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Consciously competent

Answer 20

Third stage. 3 to 5 years. Decision-makers become aware at a conscious level just how good their becoming consciously aware of how knowledgeable they have become.
-Have to think about it-

Question 21

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Unconsciously competent

Answer 21

Fourth level, highest. You become so good at what you do, so experienced, knowledgeable, and well practiced, that knowing what to do in a high stress situation seems to come naturally and automatic. Your decisions are aided by intuition derived from tactic knowledge.

Question 22

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What is a good example of unconscious competency?

Answer 22

1. Professional athletes playing their sport
2. Experience commanders will intuitively know what to do on scene
3. An adult driving a car unconscious of the actual process of driving

Question 23

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An important advantage of being unconsciously competent.

Answer 23

An expert’s limited conscious capacity (we all have limited capacity) is not consumed by the process of making sense of environmental cues and clues.

Question 24

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Why is it that a young driver is prone to have so many more accidents?

Answer 24

They process information on a conscious level, restricted by the brains limited working memory capacity, they can easily become overloaded. When they are behind the wheel with something on their mind, or if they are carrying a conversation with someone in the car there being set up to have an accident. They don’t have enough training or experience to operate with unconscious competency.

Question 25

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What is a critical component for being able to make effective recognition primed decision?

Answer 25

Developing and maintaining strong situational awareness.