2014 US RAND RR750 Enhancing performance under stress - stress innocuation training in battlefield airmen
Third Phase of Stress Inoculation Training After successfully acquiring the skills needed to perform effectively under stress, individuals begin to train under conditions that closely simulate the operational environment. Exposure to these stressors allows individuals to practice and reinforce the skills learned during the second phase. In this phase, it is important to identify the full range of stressors that might be experienced during a mission. Many of these stressors maybe general, such as information overload, time pressure, and ambiguity other stressors maybe specific to a particular mission, such as weather conditions, equipment failure, and translation of a foreign language with dialects unfamiliar to the operators. Although trainees should experience the full range of stressors during training, initial exposure to multiple stressors simultaneously may interfere with skill acquisition. To optimize the integration of stressors into training, Keinen and Friedland (1996) recommend increasing the intensity of stressors after each successful demonstration of task proficiency. Limited evidence also suggests that this graduated intensity should continue to a ceiling, which has been previously communicated to trainees. Without this ceiling, trainees might develop exaggerated expectations about the severity of future stressors” (p. 264).
