Regional Expertise and Cultural Proficiency

This report describes the development of an operational tool for planners that enables them to identify REC capability requirements during the planning process.

Measuring and Reporting Leadership and Core Competency Domains

This interim report summarizes the results of an independent assessment of Department of Defense (DoD) personnel systems and databases, focused on the identification and differentiation of what personnel data exist, where, and at what organizational level, as well as what is done with those data.

The Infusion of Language, Regional, and Cultural Content into Military Education

This report documents the Institute of Defense Analyses' examination of the infusion of language, regional, and cultural (LRC) content into Professional Military Education (PME) across the Services, from pre-commissioning through the General Officer/Flag Officer (GO/FO) level.

Conceptualizing Multicultural Perspective Taking Skills

Increasingly, the United States Army operates in multinational, and therefore, multicultural, environments. Teamwork within such settings requires the ability to see events as members of other cultures see them. The goal of the research was to define a set of multicultural perspective taking skills that will enable Army leaders to function effectively in multinational alliances.

Cracking the Nonverbal Code: Intercultural Competence and Gesture Recognition Across Cultures

The purpose of this set of studies was to assess whether the ability to distinguish between real and fake gestures in a foreign setting is positively associated with cultural adjustment to that setting.

Nonverbal Communication in the Contemporary Operating Environment

This report describes a conceptual framework for teaching specific nonverbal behavior (NVB) concepts and cues designed to provide maximum benefit to Soldiers and makes specific recommendations about how such a curriculum may be taught.

Toward a Dialect Theory: Cultural Differences in the Expression and Recognition of Posed Facial Expressions

Two studies provided direct support for a recently proposed dialect theory of communicating emotion, positing that expressive displays show cultural variations similar to linguistic dialects, thereby decreasing accurate recognition by out-group members.

Advising the Command: Best Practices from the Special Operations Advisory Experience in Afghanistan

The purpose of this report is to identify best practices in operational-level advising from the special operations advisory mission in Afghanistan. The report also identifies key recommendations that are intended to help address key challenges in operational-level partnering.

Human Dimension Capabilities Development Task Force White Paper

The US Army’s diverse strategic interests around the globe require its Soldiers and leaders to be comfortable and effective working in a variety of cultural contexts.

Special Topics Issue of the Journal for the Study of Culture and Language

In this initial special topics issue, Robert Greene Sands and Pieter DeVisser suggest, in their detailed look at the DoD’s language, regional expertise and culture (LREC) program, that there lacks any kind of sufficient assessment mechanism to provide organizations critical understanding of their LREC capability, while failing to also provide the individual learner with a measure of performance useful to professional career development.