Decision Making Within and Outside Standard Operating Procedures: Paradoxical Use of Operational Discretion in Firefighters.

OBJECTIVE: To understand how firefighters' use of rules (i.e., standard operating procedures [SOPs]) and deliberative decision making (i.e., operational discretion [OD]) interacts with acute stress. BACKGROUND: Current operational guidance for UK firefighters combines the provision of SOPs, for routine incidents, with the use of OD, under prescribed conditions (e.g., when there is a risk to human life). However, our understanding of the use of SOPs and OD is limited. METHODS: Incident commanders (ICs; n = 43) responded to simulated emergency incidents, which either licensed the use of OD or required use of a SOP. Video footage of IC behavior was used to code their response as involving a SOP or OD, while levels of acute stress were assessed using a blood-based measure and self-report. RESULTS: ICs were less likely to use OD selectively in the simulated emergency incident that licensed its use than in the one for which use of an SOP was appropriate; IC command level did not affect this pattern of results; and the incident that licensed OD resulted in more acute stress than the incident that required use of a SOP. CONCLUSION: SOPs and OD were not used in the manner prescribed by current operational guidance in simulated emergency incidents. APPLICATION: These results suggest that firefighter training in SOPs and OD should be augmented alongside personal resilience training, given the impact of stress on health and wellbeing, but also to improve the deployment of SOPs and OD under stress.

Goal-oriented training affects decision-making processes in virtual and simulated fire and rescue environments.

Decisions made by operational commanders at emergency incidents have been characterized as involving a period of information gathering followed by courses of action that are often generated without explicit plan formulation. We examined the efficacy of goal-oriented training in engendering explicit planning that would enable better communication at emergency incidents. While standard training mirrored current operational guidance, goal-oriented training incorporated "decision controls" that highlighted the importance of evaluating goals, anticipated consequences, and risk/benefit analyses once a potential course of action has been identified. In Experiment 1, 3 scenarios (a house fire, road traffic collision, and skip fire) were presented in a virtual environment, and in Experiment 2 they were recreated on the fireground. In Experiment 3, the house fire was recreated as a "live burn," and incident commanders and their crews responded to this scenario as an emergency incident. In all experiments, groups given standard training showed the reported tendency to move directly from information gathering to action, whereas those given goal-oriented training were more likely to develop explicit plans and show anticipatory situational awareness. These results indicate that training can be readily modified to promote explicit plan formulation that could facilitate plan sharing between incident commanders and their teams.

An Investigation of Operational Decision Making in Situ: Incident Command in the U.K. Fire and Rescue Service.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to better understand the nature of decision making at operational incidents in order to inform operational guidance and training. BACKGROUND: Normative models of decision making have been adopted in the guidance and training for emergency services. In these models, it is assumed that decision makers assess the current situation, formulate plans, and then execute the plans. However, our understanding of how decision making unfolds at operational incidents remains limited. METHOD: Incident commanders, attending 33 incidents across six U.K. Fire and Rescue Services, were fitted with helmet-mounted cameras, and the resulting video footage was later independently coded and used to prompt participants to provide a running commentary concerning their decisions. RESULTS: The analysis revealed that assessment of the operational situation was most often followed by plan execution rather than plan formulation, and there was little evidence of prospection about the potential consequences of actions. This pattern of results was consistent across different types of incident, characterized by level of risk and time pressure, but was affected by the operational experience of the participants. CONCLUSION: Decision making did not follow the sequence of phases assumed by normative models and conveyed in current operational guidance but instead was influenced by both reflective and reflexive processes. APPLICATION: These results have clear implications for understanding operational decision making as it occurs in situ and suggest a need for future guidance and training to acknowledge the role of reflexive processes.

Renewal of extinguished instrumental responses: independence from Pavlovian processes and dependence on outcome value.

The source of renewal of instrumental responding in rats was investigated. In Experiment 1, two responses (R1 and R2) were reinforced with one outcome (O1) in contexts A and B (i.e., R1→O1, R2→O1), and then R2 was extinguished in A and R1 was extinguished in B. At test, the rate of R1 was higher than that of R2 in context A, and the reverse was the case in context B: Renewed responding was independent of the Pavlovian context→O1 associations. In Experiment 2, all rats received R1→O1 and R2→O2 trials in A and then were placed in B, where they were sated on O2 and either did (Group Extinction) or did not (Group No Extinction) receive concurrent extinction of R1 and R2. At test, we found more responding in A than in B for Group Extinction, but not for Group No Extinction, and the renewed responding in A was as sensitive to the current value of the outcome as responding that had not been subject to extinction (i.e., the rate was higher for R1 than for R2). That is, the renewed responding was goal-directed. These results identify the removal of contextual inhibion of either the response or the response→outcome associaon as potenal bases for renewal, and the response→outcome associaon as the source of renewed responding.

Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer: paradoxical effects of the Pavlovian relationship explained.

Four experiments with rats examined the origin of outcome-selective Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT). Experiment 1 used a standard procedure, where outcomes were embedded within extended conditioned stimuli (CSs), to demonstrate the basic effect: Pavlovian stimuli augmented instrumental lever presses that had been paired with the same outcomes. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that after instrumental conditioning, whereas a conditioned stimulus (CS) trained using a backward conditioning procedure produced outcome-selective PIT, forward conditioning with a CS did not. These results are consistent with the idea that backward conditioning results in the outcome provoking its associated instrumental response during the CS and thereby allows a stimulus-response association to be acquired that directly generates outcome-selective PIT at test. Experiment 4 provided direct support for the assumptions that underlie this stimulus-response analysis. These results, and other paradoxical effects of the Pavlovian relationship, are incongruent with accounts of outcome-selective PIT that rely on a stimulus-outcome-response chain.