Jessica Villarreal

University of Quindío · Modern Languages Program

U.S. service members maintain constant situational awareness (SA) due to training and experience operating in dynamic and complex environments. Work examining how military experience impacts SA during visual search of a complex naturalistic environment, is limited. Here, we compare Active Duty service members and Civilians’ physiological behavior d...

Exposure to stress and trauma is associated with military deployments, leading to a high prevalence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is associated with an attentional bias toward threatening stimuli and scanning behavior which is indicative of hypervigilance in the context of static scenes. Work exploring the impact of PTSD on visual a...

Military deployments often expose personnel to highly threatening and stressful circumstances that put them at greater risk for developing Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD may alter internal processes that affect one’s ability to maintain situational awareness (SA). Military personnel conducting patrols must maintain SA to search for thre...

The US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Army Research Laboratory has a long-term effort toward enhancing our understanding of the physiological and behavioral components of Warfighter-relevant tasks, such as situational awareness (SA) acquisition and maintenance. A critical component of this effort is to understand the effects...

Full text available from: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1109153.pdf Electroencephalography EEG and eye-tracking technologies have each been essential tools within the perceptual sciences community for many years. A growing number of studies now combine these two measurement technologies to elucidate the neural processes that underlie free viewi...

Mindfulness meditation training (MMT) is effective in reducing stress and improving performance. However, it is unknown if young, active duty soldiers can, or will, use such training in their daily work. This pilot study investigated an abbreviated MMT format with U.S. soldiers (n = 19) to obtain feedback on its utility, acceptability, and feasibil...

Battlefields are dynamic environments that require robust cognitive skills and rapid responses. Temporal (timing and rhythm) training may improve coordination and cognition. This study examined Soldiers’ reaction times and working memory following neurocognitive temporal training. Forty-two soldier volunteers were assigned to either a temporal trai...

Approximately 13 to 30% of service members returning from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Institute of Medicine, 2012). The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between self-identified PTSD and self-reported coping abilities. Active duty and veteran volunteers (n=...

Soldier resilience is of paramount importance to the U.S. Military. Mindfulness and Resilience are positively correlated to one another in research focused on civilian populations. Since mindfulness can be learned, if the correlations remain consistent over time, then perhaps resilience can be increased by learning to be mindful. However, no publis...

Second Life (SL) is one of the most popular Virtual Worlds (VW) available on the web, with over 15 million registered accounts and over 50,000 registered users online at any given time (de Freitas, 2008). A number of universities offer classes taught via VWs, however little information is available on the human factors issues associated with teachi...