711 HPW/RH guest speaker: How to think more clearly about thinking more clearly

  • Published
  • By John Schutte
  • 711th Human Performance Wing
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE --  Dr. Gary Klein, a Principal Scientist at Applied Research Associates, will lead a seminar entitled "The Cognitive Dimension" at 2:00 PM on December 10, 2009 at the Air Force Institute of Technology's Kenney Hall auditorium in Area B at Wright-Patterson AFB.

The 90-minute seminar will explore the concept that many professionals try to develop tools and methods to support cognition--that is, to help people think more clearly and effectively. Dr. Klein will explain what it means to "support cognition" and will offer some methods by which people can think more clearly about helping people to think more clearly.

Dr. Klein is visiting under an ongoing guest speaker series sponsored by the 711th Human Performance Wing, Human Effectiveness Directorate  and coordinated by 711 HPW Chief Scientist Dr. Morley Stone.

The presentation will identify some of the key human cognitive functions that need to be supported and describe some of the common beliefs about how these functions are performed. It will explain the limitations of these beliefs, and will offer some replacements that should be more effective in natural settings.

Dr. Klein was instrumental in founding the field of Naturalistic Decision Making, a cognitive theory that examines the interplay of context and cognition together.

Dr. Klein developed a Recognition-Primed Decision model to describe how people actually make decisions in natural settings. He also developed methods of Cognitive Task Analysis for uncovering the tacit knowledge that goes into decision making.

He has written: Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (1998); The Power of Intuition (2004) and Working Minds: A practitioner's guide to Cognitive Task Analysis (Crandall, Klein, & Hoffman, 2006). Dr. Klein's latest book, Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the keys to adaptive decision making, was published in October 2009.

He was selected as a Fellow of Division 19 of the American Psychological Association in 2006, and in 2008 he received the Jack A. Kraft Innovator Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Dr. Klein received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1969. He was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Oakland University (1970-1974) and worked as a research psychologist for the U.S. Air Force (1974-1978).

The research and development company he founded in 1978, Klein Associates, was acquired in 2005 by ARA, an international research and engineering company.

The seminar is open only to WPAFB personnel; it is not open to the general public. The Kenney Hall auditorium is Room 2200 of Building 642 in the AFIT complex at 2950 Hobson Way.

For more information, please contact John Schutte at 937-255-3796.