Abstract
The aim of this article is to introduce the concept of Cognitive Fitness (CF), identify its key ingredients underpinning both real-time task performance and career longevity in high-risk occupations, and to canvas a holistic framework for their assessment, training, and augmentation. CF as a capacity to deploy neurocognitive resources, knowledge and skills to meet the demands of operational task performance, is likely to be multi-faceted and differentially malleable. A taxonomy of CF constructs derived from Cognitive Readiness (CR) and Mental fitness (MF) literature maps into phases of operational cycles from foundational to advanced, mission-ready and recovery. Foundational cognitive attributes, such as attention, executive control and co-action, were hypothesized to be trainable at the initial Cognitive Gym phase. More advanced training targets at the CR phase included stress and arousal regulation, adaptability, teamwork, situation awareness (including detection, sense-making and prediction) and decision making (de-biasing and confidence calibration). The mission-ready training phase is focused on tolerances (to sleep loss, monotony, pain, frustration, uncertainty) and resistance (to distraction, deception or manipulation). Operational Augmentation phase relies on support tools such as decision aids and fatigue countermeasures, while the Recovery phase employs reflexive (e.g., mindfulness), and restorative practices (e.g., nutrition and sleep hygiene). The periodization of cognitive training in this cycle is hypothesized to optimize both real-time cognitive performance and the resilience that enables life-long thriving. One of the most promising avenues of validating this hypothesis is by developing an expert consensus on the key CF ingredients and their relative importance in high-performance settings.
Highlights
Performance psychology is a rapidly expanding field that is of growing significance to a wide range of occupations—from competitive sport and performing arts to first responder and military professions
The construct of Cognitive Fitness (CF) developed here is a means to address the gap between the Cognitive Readiness (CR), Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) and Mental fitness (MF) literatures by offering a unifying framework to integrate the multitude of biologically traceable factors underpinning individuals’ performance in cognitively demanding tasks, to assess their trainability and inform the development of methods to improve them through training and augmentation
CF2 offers a hypothesized sequence for cognitive training in a CF training cycle
Summary
Performance psychology is a rapidly expanding field that is of growing significance to a wide range of occupations—from competitive sport and performing arts to first responder and military professions These user groups share a common focus on striving for superior performance in challenging tasks under stressful conditions, and on effective recovery to enable repeat performance across the lifespan. The physical and psychological factors contributing to task performance are tightly interconnected and go beyond mere ‘‘wellness’’ (i.e., the absence of pathology) They include, apart from knowledge and skills, a range of ‘‘capacity’’ factors, such as strength, endurance, and flexibility, that is best summarized by the concept of ‘‘fitness.’’ This article introduces the concept of Cognitive Fitness (CF) as a capacity to deploy neurocognitive resources underpinning the execution of goal-directed action and proposes a hypothetical set of its ingredients. The ingredients of PF are well established, with robust measurement protocols for muscular strength, aerobic/anaerobic endurance and range of motion/joint flexibility (Jeffreys and Moody, 2016), as well as validated training interventions such as strength and conditioning, cardiovascular fitness, or high-intensity interval training
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