1. Working Paper, January 2013
Naturalistic Decision Making: A Pheno-Cognitive Study of
the Experience of Trauma in Action
Paul THERON
CREST Research Group, France, crest.researchgroup@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Introduction: For fire fighters, experiencing Critical Incidents (CI) is common. CIs might affect
their capacity to make decisions in action. The clinique of trauma reports possible ill-adaptive
reactions but literature does not evidence incidents due to CIs in the field. The reason may be
peritraumatic resilience while psychological and NDM research points to ill-known peritraumatic
cognitive processes. This paper reports the study of a fireman’s cognitive experience of trauma in
action. Method: Guided recalls from the subject’s autobiographical memory yield a first-person
narrative, semantically analysed to evidence his sequence of cognitive operations. Decision Tree
Algorithms were used to study the variability of cognitive processes. Results and discussion:
Four cognitive patterns were identified. Decision Networks, modelling these patterns, show their
variability. The stressfulness of situations seems to be the determinant factor of this variability. A
high level model of Decision-Making-in-Action summarises our findings.
KEYWORDS
Trauma; Decision-Making-in-Action; Peritraumatic Resilience; Pheno-Cognitive Analysis; Fire-fighters.
INTRODUCTION
In French fire fighters’ operations, urban violence has seriously increased over the past years (Beignon, 2003), a
trend confirmed by the French Observatoire de la Délinquance1
. Recent research (Keenan, 2008 ; Regehr et al.,
2005) confirms this view: Critical Incidents (CI) are a common experience, one of a serious threat to life.
For Mitchell (1983) CIs are extreme events of a psychologically traumatic nature experienced individually. For
Tuckey (2007) they are "a potentially traumatic event". For Marmar et al. (2006) CIs are traumatic. Bertrand
(2007) characterises CIs as extreme situations that are 1) violent and intense, 2) sudden and unexpected, 3)
impossible for the subject to handle by resorting on his usual routines and resources. Gershuny & Thayer (1999)
show that trauma entails an exceptional level of affective excitation : “intense fear, helplesness, or horror”, and
that the experience of trauma is “subjective” and depends on one’s familiarity with adversity. For Lebigot (2005,
pp. 28-29) trauma is a long lasting intrusion into one’s psyche resulting from a “fright”, from terror, the subject
being untimely confronted with the reality of death, an unbearable shock due to the “sudden encounter with a
detail that takes the subject beyond what he had ever thought horror could be” (ibid, p 19). Laplanche &
Pontalis (2004, p. 500) also indicate that trauma may lie not only with a “very violent event alone” but also with
“an accumulation of excitations each of which would be tolerable”. The experience of a CI is a staged process
taking place within the context of a given, delimited, situated action, for instance a fire-fighting intervention.
Before the intervention is the “pre-traumatic stage”, during which fire-fighters may be trained. The intervention
itself is the “peritraumatic stage” , the time during which trauma is experienced, from the start of the
intervention, through early warning signs (if any) and the actual exposure, until the subject has finished his
mission, left the field and returned to the station. After the intervention, the “post-traumatic stage” is the one
during which PTSD symptoms are likely to appear, within days and weeks and up to years and the remain of
one’s life. Clervoy (2007, p. 48) and Kowalski (1995) point to the potentially “devastating” effect of trauma on
emergency workers. This devastating character of the traumatic experience is explained by individuals’
vulnerability, a state of psychological unpreparedness for surprise, which Bertrand (2007) describes as “the
absence of prior ad hoc protecting psychological mechanisms”. For Crocq (2007b), the peritraumatic,
immediate, in-action reaction to trauma exposure may be adaptive, maladaptive or pathological, and this along
four folds : cognitive, affective, conative and behavioural.
Similarly, for Lazarus (1993b) stress and emotions, fear or anxiety for instance, may also lead to different
degrees of failure in action (Idzikowski & Baddeley, 1983). For Clervoy (2007, pp. 28-29) the experience of
trauma has to be distinguished from stress though. Stress refers only to a temporary pressure on the individual’s
psyche, caused by situations mostly anticipated or expectable. It disappears once the individual has ceased to be
exposed to the stressor. For Lebigot (2005) it is some light suffering generating anxiety that the subject can
1
www.ond.fr

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handle, a notion that Cox et al. (2000) depict as a negative balance between a cognitive demand and one’s
cognitive capacity to handle the latter. This view of stress equates to a kind of linear, progressive, scalable,
equation of demand (difficulty) and capability, whereas trauma has no gradation. Lazarus (1993) generalises the
concept of stress into that of emotions, which are of a “transactional” nature, and depicts the cognitive reaction
to a stressor as a staged process: “1. a causal external or internal agent, which Hooke called a load and others
call stress or a stressor. […]; 2. an evaluation (by a mind or a physiological system) that distinguishes what is
threatening or noxious from what is benign; 3. coping processes used by the mind (or body) to deal with
stressful demands; and 4. a complex pattern of effects on mind and body, often referred to as the stress
reaction.”. Schönpflug (1983), Lazarus (1993b) and Carver et al. (1989), Lazarus & Folkman (1984) highlight
two “coping strategies”, one that aims at reducing the stressor, the other aiming at enhancing the way the stress
reaction is handled. Skinner & Zimmer-Gembeck (2007) call for a “microgenetic” study of the process of coping
as it remains ill-known.
Resilience refers more specifically to the experience of trauma. For Gerrard et al. (2004), to be resilient one
needs the ability to “cope”, “defined as getting by, being adaptable, and withstanding future adversities”. But
Anaut (2006, p. 86) stresses the necessary correlation between resilience and traumatic events, and she defines
resilience as an individual’s capacity to rebound after coming out victoriously of traumatic situations, with
further strengths, and as his capacity to keep control of his identity and to continue to project himself in the
future in a way that conforms to this identity. Cyrulnik (2006), Pynoos et al. (1997, p. 275) or else Jacelon
(1997) assert that resilience is also an adaptative and interactive cognitive process. Jacelon (1997) underlines the
two phases along which resilience is displayed, disruption and reorganisation, the latter being driven by a need
for homeostasis. But, like in stress and emotion research, Anaut (2006) and van der Kolk (1997) advocate the
need to study now more in depth the cognitive process by which peritraumatic (i.e., during the time of a given
action in the field) resilience is produced. Such a study has not been attempted yet. NDM research has focused
mainly on stressful situations, while Psychiatry seeks ways to help patients and to resolve the long-term effects
of trauma exposure, PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), (Matthews & Chu 1997). For Pynoos et al. (1997),
peritraumatic resilience is studied by psychiatrists only for its predictive character of the severity of PTSD
syndroms.
The study of the experience of trauma at the peritraumatic stage is fully relevant in NDM research : people’s
safety is at stake ; circumstances exercise a dramatic pressure on individuals, a form of “higher degree” of stress
or emotion : trauma, a horrific encounter with Death ; their ability to control their performance is in jeopardy ; it
is a cognitive process. And like emotions are deemed now to have an impact on cognition and the rationality of
our decisions (Slovic et al., 2002 ; Livet, 2002 ; Thompson, 2007 ; Lazarus, 1993b), it is interesting to study how
trauma contributes to shaping decision making processes in real-life situations.
The present paper reports a research on a subject’s cognitive experience of trauma in action, a French Fireman,
Lieutenant A, who is called to the field to supervise the rescue of two women seriously wounded by their two
rottweiler dogs. After he arrives on scene, he attends to the women and carers inside the pavilion while police
point their guns at the dogs outside, in the garden. When he sees the victims are well attended to by medics and
his own men, he goes back into the garden to attend to the dogs. In an atmosphere of anxiety, for the dogs are a
potential threat to him and colleagues, suddenly the father and husband of the victims irrupts and shouts “kill my
dogs !”, threatening the fragile equilibrium of peace. When the man refuses Lieutenant A’s invitation to calm
down, a policeman brings him to the ground, sparking a reaction of attack in the dogs. At this moment,
Lieutenant A faces them while policemen discharge their guns on the dogs in an attempt to stop and kill them, 45
bullets altogether, three chargers. Under such dramatic circumstances, the subject experiences peritraumatic
dissociation. Space becomes like a tube (Derealisation). He sees the bullets going across the dogs’ bodies in
slow motion (Time distortion). He becomes the spectator of himself (Depersonalization).Just as the shooting
ends, someone shouts that one of the dogs is missing. Lieutenant A follows others in the subsequent search.
When the dog is found dying, in fact near the other (dead) dog, he watches her and seeks answers to his
question: “what exactly happened ?”. He gets a picture of the events from police officers and discusses the
matter with colleagues in a kind of immediate self-debriefing. And when this is all accomplished he re-attends to
the victims and supervises their evacuation to nearby hospitals. Then he returns to the Station.
METHOD
This research has performed an idiographic (Willig, 2008) study of Lieutenant A’s cognitive experience of a
traumatic Critical Incident in the field . The topical question it wanted to answer was : what is it like, from a
cognitive, subjective, perspective to experience a Critical Incident and to react to it resiliently, in the field ?
Another way to express it was : how can a fire fighter, exposed to trauma in the course of an intervention,
resume action immediately after the exposure ? A specific research design was elaborated, Pheno-Cognitive
Analysis (PCA). The study was performed during the last half of 2007 at the Brigade des Sapeurs-Pompiers de
Paris (BSPP). I spent four months in a mini-ethnography at the Montmartre Fire Station, living, working,

3. Paul THERON - Naturalistic Decision Making: A Pheno-Cognitive Study of the Experience of Trauma in Action
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dressing with and like other firemen. In total six of them were referred to me as having potentially experienced
trauma in action. Only one qualified, Lieutenant A, for this research. With all due precautions with regards to the
study of human subjects2
, I performed an (EI) Explicitation Interview (Vermersch, 2006) with him. This
technique produces a guided, non challenging recall of a subject’s episodic memories of a given episode of
experience, which transcribes into a first-person narrative. As such a narrative is “messy”, the subject delivering
his memories in an un-orderly fashion, the first step of the data processing is the chronological re-arrangement of
the subject’s speech clauses into a storyline true to the reality. This was validated with Lieutenant A in
November 2007. Data processing continued with the semantic analysis of each speech clause in order to elicit
the actions and cognitive operations performed by the subject. In total, 460 cognitive operations and actions
(altogether called “CogOp”) were discerned, of which 30% were assumed, i.e., either implied in speech clauses
or logically deduced when there were “gaps” in the narration or when the subject had not mentioned any
conscious decision or any form of psychological urge to act in his account. Five principles were applied to
ensure the scientificity of the study of Lieutenant A’s case : veridicality, i.e., the production of authentically
phenomenological3
recalls of the facts of a lived experience ; validity, i.e., the adhesion to the principles of the
EI ; open listening, i.e., the researcher’s faculty to read plainly speech clauses and to consider that words mean
exactly what they say ; distantiation4
, i.e., the re-encoding of data derived from Lieutenant A’s speech clauses,
several times, and at intervals of several months without an involvement in the research during these intervals ;
traceability : A Phenomenographic Database was elaborated in order to handle the numerous data so produced
and their relations and to ensure the traceability of the analysis. As it is a relational database, the methodological
process itself as well as the data of the case were modelled. For CogOps were conceived of as pairs of {cognitive
act ; cognitive object} in the phenomenological sense (Husserl, 1977 ; Marbach, 1993 ; Thompson, 2007), a
cognitive ontology was elaborated as CogOps were discerned. The chronological sequence of CogOps
performed during each of the 44 Present Moments (PM) composing the subject’s episode of experience was
modelled as Decision Networks, equivalent to process models. A Present Moment (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2007 ;
Stern, 2004 ; Gusdorf, 1951 ; Bachelard, 1932 ; Bergson, 1934 ; Keen, 1975 ; Husserl, 1977) is the smallest
sensemaking segment of cognitive experience in a lived episode of experience, like Lieutenant A’s intervention.
A PM can be remembered as a significant step in the story. A PM is the sequence of cognitive operations
performed by an individual between the moment he perceives a significant change in circumstances and the
moment he takes a significant action to act upon the world. Because of this reference to a significance in
consciousness, a PM can be only loosely assimilated to a decision making cycle. An episode of experience is a
sequence of Present Moments. The elaboration of Decision Networks revealed the variability of the cognitive
pattern of Present Moments. The search for the explicative factors of its variations was attempted through the
naïve5
use of Quinlan’s (1993) C4.5 Decision Tree and Breiman’s (2001) Random Forest algorithms. A high
level model of Decision-Making-in-Action summarises our findings.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Decision-Making-in-Action (DMA) was defined as the cognitive process that controls one’s action in the field
during a Present Moment, and in Lieutenant A’s case under the traumatic circumstances of a Critical Incident.
DMA patterns are the patterns of the cognitive process (cognitive trajectories) of DMA.
Data Processing revealed the phases of Lieutenant A’s experience of the CI6
(Table 1). The shaded zone
indicates that a CI starts when the first elements of “bottom line” stress appear in the subject’s experience. The
experience of the CI ends when the subject himself ends his action. From the moment he arrives back at the fire
station he enters the post-traumatic phase.
2
In accordance with the British Psychological Association’s rules and with the authorisation of the University of Glasgow’s Ethical
Committee.
3
In a “pure evocation stance” the subject evokes (recalls and narrates) only his past experience, i.e., only psychological and physical facts
without retrospective social reconstructions, theorisations or generalisations of circumstances.
4
This principle was made necessary as I could not find researchers available to perform double coding of Lieutenant A’s narrative. Intervals
were of 8 to 10 months.
5
Naïve here refers to the fact that the design of the research was originally qualitative, and therefore interpretative. But when the variability
of the cognitive process of Decision-Making-in-Action became evident, it was decided to apply these algorithms on the structured data held
in the Phenomenographic Database.
6
Phases marked in italic characters stand out of the scope of the study

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Table 1 : Phases of the experience of the Critical Incident (EP)
The analysis of DMA patterns yields four findings :
• Finding 1 : Four DMA patterns were identified, in which affects play an important part
• Finding 2 : The variability of the DMA pattern appears as the general law
• Finding 3 : The shape of cognitive trajectories falling within each DMA pattern is itself unpredictable
• Finding 4 : Memory and metacognition play an unclear part in DMA.
Four main DMA patterns were identified :
1. DB_NA = a Decision-based driving (most frequent) cognitive trajectory with No alternative (less frequent)
cognitive trajectory, noted in 26 occurrences out of 44 PMs7
, i.e., 59,1% of all PMs
2. AB_NA = an Affect-based driving cognitive trajectory with No alternative (14 occurrences, 31,8% of all
PMs)
3. DB+AL_NA = a Decision-based driving cognitive trajectory INCLUDING an Affective loop (a set
cognitive CogOps aiming at elucidating the situation) with No alternative (2 occurrences, 4,55% of all PMs)
4. AB+DL_NA = an Affect-based driving cognitive trajectory INCLUDING a Decision loop with No
alternative (2 occurrences, 4,55% of all PMs).
Affect-based trajectories refer to cognitive trajectories in which affect is determinant in sparking ACTION, and
decision-based trajectories refer to those in which an informed choice of the action plan is determinant in
sparking ACTION. PMs’ DMA Patterns are indicated in Table 2. This table also indicates the correspondence
between CI Experience Phases and Present Moments.
EP8
Present Moment DMA Pattern
0 01 - Waiting to see… DB_NA
02 - Deciding to intervene DB_NA
03 - Deciding to park in the garden DB_NA
04 - Deciding to attend to the victims DB_NA
05 - Attending to the victims and leaving DB+AL_NA
06 - Deciding to close the front gate on the way back to dogs DB_NA
07 - Deciding to send an ambience message to BSPP DB_NA
1 08 - Distracting from anxiety AB_NA
09 - A glimpse of the victims DB_NA
2 10 - The father irrupts… AB_NA
3 11 - The dogs attack !!! Shoot them ! Shoot ! Shoot ! AB+DL_NA
12 - The fright AB+DL_NA
4 13 - Searching the missing dog DB_NA
14 - Continuing the search and being astonished by the dogs unit AB_NA
15 - Following the dogs unit into the adjacent parcel DB_NA
16 - Searching the adjacent parcel : worrying ! AB_NA
17 - Going back into the garden DB_NA
18 - Searching the cellar AB_NA
19 - No luck with the cellar : restarting the search DB_NA
5 20 - The dog has been found ! DB_NA
21 - Seeing the dogs dying DB_NA
6 22 - First realisation of what went on AB_NA
23 - A quick chat with a colleague… DB_NA
24 - Asking questions about the shooting AB_NA
25 - Further questions about the shooting DB_NA
7
PM : Present Moment
8
CI Experience Phase
Ante-Action* Non stressful – Non traumatic
0 Ante-CI Occasionally stressful – Non traumatic
1 Pre-CI Signals Stressful
2 Pre-CI Tension Stressful
3 CI Trauma Exposure Traumatic
4 Post-CI Reconnection Stressful
5 Post-CI Relief Stressful
6 Post-CI Active Homeostatic Recovery Stressful
7 Post-CI Action Resumption Stressful
8 Post-CI Self-Defusing Stressful
Post-CI* Nominal

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26 - First answers… AB_NA
27 - 15 Bullets ?… AB_NA
28 - Even more DB+AL_NA
29 - 45 bullets ! AB_NA
30 - Why do they carry envelops ? DB_NA
31 - They need to collect the bullets DB_NA
32 - Good luck with the bullets then ! AB_NA
7 33 - Deciding to go back inside DB_NA
34 - What happened ?, she asks DB_NA
35 - It sounded like heavy gun fire, colleagues say DB_NA
36 - Could neighbours have been shot too ?… DB_NA
37 - Deciding to ask where victims are to be dispatched DB_NA
38 - Asking about the daughter DB_NA
39 - You can't walk that woman in her condition ! AB_NA
40 - The crowd are watching : bring the PSR inside ! DB_NA
41 - The mother departs : time to report and go DB_NA
42 - Back in the car, sending radio message DB_NA
8 43 - Starting to think and talk about the events AB_NA
44 - Reflecting upon the course of things AB_NA
Table 2 : Distribution of the four DMA patterns among Present Moments in Lieutenant A’s story
Given the nature of the experience of trauma, a dominant role of affect in the election of the subject’s reactions
appeared as a fair initial hypothesis. But Decision-based DMA patterns 1 and 3 total 63,65% of all PMs. When
looking at EPs (Table 2 shows that CI Experience Phases group several Present Moments), their Decision
Networks seem mostly driven by affects (Figure 1), indicating that abstract views distort reality. Decision
Networks in Figure 1 are based on CogOps represented by oval objects showing {CogAct ; CogObj}.
Figure 1 : The Decision Networks of the 9 CI Experience Phases (based on CogOps) showing the variability of the DMA Pattern
The variability of cognitive trajectories observed throughout Lieutenant A’s 44 PMs was further analysed
through the application of Quinlan’s (1993) C4.5 Decision Tree and Breiman’s (2001) Random Forest
algorithms over Lieutenant A’s 460 CogOps dataset. Early trials showed that the CogOp level was too detailed
for this analysis and suggested to move up to a higher level of abstraction : DM Steps9
(decision making steps).
The global Decision Network calculated on the basis of DM Steps is presented in Figure 2.
9
DM Steps are a higher level of synthesis of the cognitive activity : they group a variety of types of CogOps, consistent from the perspective
of their cognitive function. Once this grouping is made, a DM Step is assigned to each CogOp.

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Figure 2 : Global Decision Network (based on DM Steps)
Decision Tree algorithms did not yield a neat conclusion :
• The “stressfulness of the situation”, measured on a “nominal stressful traumatic” scale, appeared as
the only factor of variation of the shape of cognitive trajectories, but evidence of this was not very strong.
• We could not identify other significant explicative attribute of phenotypic links between DM Steps.
• The “time available”10
factor of variation mentioned in Orasanu & Fischer’s (1997) Decision Process Model
could not be discerned in Lieutenant A’s narrative and was therefore not analysed.
A High-Level Model of Decision-Making-in-Action (Figure 3) was derived from DM Step-based Decision
Networks. It takes into account the role played by emotion and highlights the role of attention, metacognition
and memory. It complements NDM models such as Klein’s (1998) RPD Model.
Figure 3 : High-level DMA Model
10
Time to make a decision and spark an action

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This high-level model of Decision-Making-in-Action (Figure 3) highlights decision-based cognitive trajectories
(bold, black arrows), affect-based cognitive trajectories (bold, red arrows) and less predictable phenotypic
cognitive links (thin arrows).
CONCLUSION
The Pheno-Cognitive Analysis (PCA) of a subject’s singular, delimited, enacted and situated episode of
experience yields a great amount of data, even if a subject’s narrative probably never exhausts his episodic
memories. Its development was justified by the particular circumstances of traumatic encounters that forbid the
use of other protocols. Provided that the scientific quality of the subject’s Explicitation Interview and of the data
processing and data analysis stages are satisfactory, this PCA research has shown the important role affects play
in the cognitive control of human performance, while decision-based cognitive patterns keep predominant. The
variability of the DMA pattern is the law rather than the exception. This supports Thompson’s (2007) idea of the
unpredictability of the mental experience as well as Naccache’s (2006) view that the transition between
successive cognitive operations finds its root at the very unpredictable level of cortical physiological processes.
The PCA study of the experience of critical incidents proves interesting in NDM research as it yields consistent
empirical data about a single subject’s cognitive processes in a series of nominal, stressful and traumatic
situations. Further similar idiographic PCA studies are needed to consolidate the initial results of this project.
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9. Paul THERON - Naturalistic Decision Making: A Pheno-Cognitive Study of the Experience of Trauma in Action
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