In many emergency situations, hum an operators are required to derive countermeasures based on contingency rules whilst under time pressure. In order to contribute to the hum an success in playing such a role, the present study intends to examine the eOE ectiveness of using expert systems to train for the time-constrained decision domain. Emergency managem ent of chem ical spills was selected to exemplify the rule-based decision task. An Expert System in this dom ain was developed to serve as

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... e training tool. Forty subjects participated in an experiment in which a com puterized information board was used to capture subjects' rule-based performance under the manipulation of time pressure and training. The experiment results indicate that people adapt to time pressure by accelerating their processing of rules where the heuristic of cognitive availability was employed. The simplifying strategy was found to be the source of hum an error that resulted in undesired decision performance. The results also show that the decision behaviour of individuals who undergo the expert system training is directed to a norm ative and expeditious pattern, which leads to an improved level of decision accuracy. Implications of these ® ndings are examined in the present study.