Debriefing in support of dynamic decision making: an empirical study

This paper describes an empirical, laboratory-experiment-based evaluation of the effectiveness of debriefing in the context of interactive learning environments. A comprehensive model consisting of 4 evaluation criteria are developed and used: task performance, structural knowledge, heuristics, and cognitive effort. On these criteria, debriefing versus no debriefing are compared. It is found that debriefing was effective on all 4 criteria; debriefing improves task performance, helps user learn more about the decision domain, develop heuristics, and expend less cognitive effort in decision making.