ARA uses behavioral psychology to develop decision-centered solutions for understanding the interactions of people with technology, products, situations, and other people. The combining of these cognitive capabilities with other ARA technical capabilities in the physical sciences enable ARA to bring a unique problem solving capability to our client's problems.

Our solutions enhance the performance of those confronted with judgments and decisions in situations marked by high stakes, time pressure, ambiguous or conflicting information, or rapidly changing situations.

We develop these solutions through understanding how decision-makers process personal experiences that they encounter within the context of their own environments.

Our staff is composed of individuals with backgrounds in psychology and human factors with interests in a range of related areas including decision making, cognitive science, memory processes, problem solving, cognitive systems engineering, human-computer interaction, and the nature of expertise.

Our methods span the breadth of cognitive/psychology methods with both quantitative and qualitative approaches. We have applied our methods to domains of expertise and developed solutions for them to include consumer decision making, operational command centers, weather forecasters, firefighters, critical care nurses and physicians, air traffic controllers, electronic warfare specialists, pilots, civil law mediators, FAA inspectors, systems analysts, software program debuggers, AWACS weapons directors, battle planners, intelligence analysts, military commanders, and submarine sonar operators.

ARA's work approaches applied cognition from the following perspectives:

• Consumer decision making consumer and customer cognition
• Information processing information assessment and knowledge management
• Multi-person/group interaction collaborative work
• Performance enhancement and training skills, performance, and expertise
• System design cognitive system engineering
• Technology development cognitive science