The Impact of Cognitive Feedback on the Performance of Intelligence Analysts

Human judgement and the process of decision making have been studied in depth for the past century. More recent research has revealed that feedback is a primary element in the decision making process Feedback has been category according to its role in decision making. Some categories of feedback include cognitive, feedforward, and outcome. Cognitive feedback may hold the most promise for positively affecting the decision making process. Naval Intelligence analysis is a complex process which involves human judgement and decision making on a daily basis. This thesis sought to determine that cognitive feedback would enable intelligence analysts to make optimal choices more consistently than if they were presented with just outcome feedback. Naval Intelligence analysts were the subjects of an unclassified experiment which captured a realistic task performed routinely by analysts in the Fleet. The experiment revealed that cognitive feedback produced the most accurate and optimal results, and indicates that intelligence analysis would benefit from decision support system that incorporate the element of cognitive feedback. Impact of cognitive feedback on the performance of intelligence analysts would benefit from decision support systems that incorporate the element of cognitive feedback.