Building a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive drivers of performance under pressure: An international multi-panel Delphi study

Introduction: The ability to perform optimally under pressure is critical across many occupations, including the military, first responders, and competitive sport. Despite recognition that such performance depends on a range of cognitive factors, how common these factors are across performance domains remains unclear. The current study sought to integrate existing knowledge in the performance field in the form of a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie performance under pressure. Methods: International experts were recruited from four performance domains [(i) Defense; (ii) Competitive Sport; (iii) Civilian High-stakes; and (iv) Performance Neuroscience]. Experts rated constructs from the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework (and several expert-suggested constructs) across successive rounds, until all constructs reached consensus for inclusion or were eliminated. Finally, included constructs were ranked for their relative importance. Results: Sixty-eight experts completed the first Delphi round, with 94% of experts retained by the end of the Delphi process. The following 10 constructs reached consensus across all four panels (in order of overall ranking): (1) Attention; (2) Cognitive Control-Performance Monitoring; (3) Arousal and Regulatory Systems-Arousal; (4) Cognitive Control-Goal Selection, Updating, Representation, and Maintenance; (5) Cognitive Control-Response Selection and Inhibition/Suppression; (6) Working memory-Flexible Updating; (7) Working memory-Active Maintenance; (8) Perception and Understanding of Self-Self-knowledge; (9) Working memory-Interference Control, and (10) Expert-suggested-Shifting. Discussion: Our results identify a set of transdisciplinary neuroscience-informed constructs, validated through expert consensus. This expert consensus is critical to standardizing cognitive assessment and informing mechanism-targeted interventions in the broader field of human performance optimization.