Distortion of “mental maps” as an exemplar of imperfect situation awareness

This paper provides the first results of dissertation research that seeks to develop and apply an experimental milieu for the study of imperfect Situation Awareness/Situation Understanding (SA/SU) and of decision-making based on that SA/SU. It describes an agent-based simulation and initial results of simulation experiments conducted with that framework. The simulation experiments explore a specific, easily understood, and quantifiable example of human behavior: intelligent agents being spatially “lost” while trying to navigate in a simulation world. The paper concludes with a discussion of on-going and planned research based on modifications to that simulation and conduct of additional experiments.