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All signals go: investigating how individual differences affect performance on a medical diagnosis task designed to parallel a signals intelligence analyst task

Published: 21 April 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Signals intelligence analysts play a critical role in the United States government by providing essential information regarding potential threats to national security to government leaders. Analysts perform complex decision-making tasks that involve gathering, sorting, and analyzing information. The current study aimed to evaluate how individual differences influence performance in an Internet search-based medical diagnosis task designed to simulate a signals analyst task. The individual differences of interest included working memory capacity and previous experience with elements of the task, specifically health literacy, prior experience using the Internet, and prior experience conducting Internet searches. Preliminary results indicated that working memory significantly predicted performance on this medical diagnosis task; conversely, medical literacy, prior experience using the Internet, and Internet search experience were not significanant predictors of performance. These results support previous research and provide additional evidence that working memory capacity greatly influences performance on cognitively complex decision-making tasks, whereas experience with elements of the task may not. These findings suggest that working memory capacity should be considered when screening individuals for signals intelligence analyst positions. Future research should aim to generalize these findings within a broader sample of individuals, ideally utilizing a task that directly replicates those performed by intelligence analysts.

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  1. All signals go: investigating how individual differences affect performance on a medical diagnosis task designed to parallel a signals intelligence analyst task

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      cover image ACM Other conferences
      HotSoS '15: Proceedings of the 2015 Symposium and Bootcamp on the Science of Security
      April 2015
      170 pages
      ISBN:9781450333764
      DOI:10.1145/2746194
      • General Chair:
      • David Nicol
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

      Sponsors

      • US Army Research Office: US Army Research Office
      • NSF: National Science Foundation
      • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
      • National Security Agency: National Security Agency

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 21 April 2015

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      Author Tags

      1. cognition
      2. decision-making
      3. experience
      4. individual differences
      5. information search
      6. security
      7. signals intelligence
      8. working memory

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      • National Security Agency

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      HotSoS '15
      Sponsor:
      • US Army Research Office
      • NSF
      • National Security Agency

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      HotSoS '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 13 of 22 submissions, 59%;
      Overall Acceptance Rate 34 of 60 submissions, 57%

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