Page 205 - Demo

203Situation awareness (SA) is the ability to know what is going on around you so that you know what to do. It is central to professions that require skill in real-time, dynamic decision-making under stress %u2014 situations characterized by high uncertainty, incomplete information, and high stakes. High-stakes professions, for example military, law enforcement, aviation and aerospace, healthcare, fi refi ghting, self-defense, and sports, require training to maintain situation awareness to avoid costly errors in judgment. Impaired judgment and decision-making due to loss of SA in these professions can result in major loss, even loss of life.Attentiveness is the amount of information taken in. In this study it was measured by how much the pupils dilate when observing a scene. When something important appears in one%u2019s environment, such as someone with a gun or the person one plans to marry, the pupils dilate, taking in more information. In this study, American military cadets were shown a photo of a potential enemy. For those doing TM, after six months their pupils were more wide open than the controls. This indicates that the TM practice increased their ability to take in more information. This study also found that six months of TM decreased hypervigilance, which suggests that the increased arousal is appropriate to the situation but not excessive. TM also increased attention to changes that are relevant, and decreased attention to irrelevant factors, both of which are also important for increasing SA.Increased Situation AwarenessGreater Attentiveness to Relevant StimuliAttentiveness to Relevant StimuliMean Percent Change in Pupil Dilation25.020.015.010.05.00.0-5.0-10.0TM Controlstm-019p < .05SPONTANEOUS ALERTNESS TO WHAT%u2019S IMPORTANTReferences: Bandy, C. L., Fleming, K. K., & Dulmage, J. (2013, May 23%u201326). Meditation training in rook cadets increases resilience. Paper presented at the 25th Annual Conference of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, DC.Holt, W. R., Caruso, J. L., & Riley, J. B. (1978). Transcendental Meditation vs. pseudo-meditation on visual choice reaction time. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 46(3), 726.Batorski, M. (2011). Developing situation awareness capacity to improve judgment and decision-making under stress (Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University). Pepperdine University.