APTIMA INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: The unpredictable and complex environment of current military operations poses significant

Description

The unpredictable and complex environment of current military operations poses significant cognitive challenges on today"s Warfighters. Superior cognitive function is necessary for Warfighters to be able to critically assess their surrounding environment, quickly and effectively solve problems, make decisions, and adapt to changing or unanticipated situations. Recent scientific advances suggest that cognitive training could lead to increased general cognitive abilities, including enhancement in fluid intelligence. Despite the encouraging results suggesting improvement in fluid intelligence through cognitive skills training, there is still very little consensus in the literature on how to develop effective cognitive skills training or how to evaluate it, including assessing transfer to real world situations. Aptima"s solution for training and improving cognitive function called PACT (Portable Adaptive Cognitive Training). PACT will be an ultra-portable, platform agnostic, adaptive training game system that will enhance cognitive capacity in healthy as well as cognitively impaired individuals through the use of empirically validated cognitive exercises embedded into an engaging and motivating game environment. PACT will utilize an innovative approach for bridging the science-game divide by transforming validated cognitive training exercises into core game mechanics that can be applied to a variety of different gaming environments.