We review scientific research concerning the effects of high levels of psychological stress on hu... more We review scientific research concerning the effects of high levels of psychological stress on human performance of complex tasks, and relate these to wildland firefighter safety. Findings across studies involving different stressors, participants, and tasks suggest that high levels of stress may compromise individuals’ wildfire safety-related decisions and actions on the fireground in at least four ways: (a) attention is likely to become narrowly focussed on only a few aspects of the developing situation so emerging threats may not be acted upon; (b) important tasks may take longer than anticipated and mistakes may be more likely; (c) working memory is likely to be impaired and important information may not be remembered; and (d) forming sound judgements and making good decisions may become progressively more difficult as thinking becomes more rigid. These have important implications. For training: wildland firefighter ‘survival mode’ procedures need to be simple, and practiced fre...
We review scientific research concerning the effects of high levels of psychological stress on hu... more We review scientific research concerning the effects of high levels of psychological stress on human performance of complex tasks, and relate these to wildland firefighter safety. Findings across studies involving different stressors, participants, and tasks suggest that high levels of stress may compromise individuals’ wildfire safety-related decisions and actions on the fireground in at least four ways: (a) attention is likely to become narrowly focussed on only a few aspects of the developing situation so emerging threats may not be acted upon; (b) important tasks may take longer than anticipated and mistakes may be more likely; (c) working memory is likely to be impaired and important information may not be remembered; and (d) forming sound judgements and making good decisions may become progressively more difficult as thinking becomes more rigid. These have important implications. For training: wildland firefighter ‘survival mode’ procedures need to be simple, and practiced fre...
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Papers by Joel Suss