About this Research Topic

Background

Modern-day combat situations may require cognitive readiness as well as the ability to make dynamic decisions against hostile adversaries in a short time. One important aspect of improving decision-making in combat situations is related to training personnel using traditional (2-dimensional) and immersive (3-dimensional) visual technologies. Traditional visual technologies (e.g., 2-dimensional displays) may help support full-spectrum, 360 – degree awareness operations both locally and remotely. In contrast, 3-dimensional visual technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) may provide a high-fidelity immersive experience to people.

Although both traditional and immersive visual technologies have been developed and used, an understanding of the cognitive, perceptual, and neuro-physiological challenges in these technologies in combat situations currently lacks in the literature. Also, less attention has been paid to how these different visual technologies may enable better tactical thinking, strategy formulation, and decision-making through training in combat situations over time.

This Research Topic is meant to focus on the decision-making and cognitive processes of people when they interact with different visual technologies in combat situations. This Research Topic will publish contributions containing state-of-the-art advances from major areas of decision-making and cognition, focusing on sound empirical studies that advance our understanding of cognitive mechanisms and processes of human stakeholders in combat situations involving the use of different visual technologies. This Research Topic will help the cognitive science community to test theories, methods, and models in applied combat situations while people learn task-related variables via two-dimensional displays, virtual reality, or augmented reality. Furthermore, defense forces may benefit from the integration of cognitive theories and processes that explain how different stakeholders make decisions against different visual technologies. This integration will help defense forces to incorporate decision processes of stakeholders while relying on visual technologies in real-world combats.

Areas
- Empirical research involving human decision-making in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat situations
- Effect of different training paradigms in 2-D / 3-D displays on decision-making in combat situations
- Tracking technologies in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat situations
- Analytics and visualization in combat situations
- Evaluation and assessment methods in combat situations
- Human factors and Ergonomics challenges in combat situations while using 2-D /3-D displays
- Social and ethical issues in 2-D/3-D displays in combat situations
- Human-Machine collaboration studies involving 2-D / 3-D displays in combat situations
- Navigation and kinesis in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat situations
- Perception and attention in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat situations
- Computational modeling and simulation in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat situations
- Situational Awareness in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat situations
- Physiological and neurophysiological issues in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat situations

Keywords: visual displays, 2-dimensional displays, virtual reality, augmented reality, decision-making, cognition, perception, attention, computation modeling, combat situations

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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