Adapting the Taxon-Task-Taxon Methodology to Model the Impacts of Chemical Protective Gear

The Taxon-Task-Taxon method (Anno et al., 1996) is a statistical modeling approach to predict performance decrements in response to various stressors. Our research is extending this approach to accommodate new more acute stressors associated with chemical protective gear, and new tasks with greater involvement of cognitive, perceptual, and motor function. In this paper, we describe the basics of the T3 method and our approach to adapting it, and give a illustrative example that shows how the method can be used to account for performance decrements associated with wearing protective gloves. This illustration provides a substantive way in which the current T3 method can be augmented to account for performance decrements in a new subdomain, but also provides lessons for extending the method to new stressors and performance domains.