Shared-Knowledge and Team Performance: A Cognitive Engineering Approach to Measurement
Abstract
A three-year research effort is described in which a synthetic team task was developed in the context of Uninhabited Air Vehicle operations. The synthetic task was abstracted from actual team operations of Air Force's Predator, guided by multiple research and pragmatic constraints. This synthetic environment, including a number of custom-designed experimental control and data collection measures and tools, provided a backdrop for various methodological developments and research on team cognition and its relation to team performance. Team cognition can be viewed as the collective cognition of the individual team members as processed by team behaviors such as communication and coordination. A number of measurement issues were identified relevant to this perspective. In this light, measures and metrics of team knowledge and team situation awareness were developed and evaluated in two empirical studies in the synthetic environment. Results indicate that a measure of team taskwork knowledge based on relatedness ratings and a query-based measure of team situation awareness were predictive of team performance differences. Further, patterns of team skill acquisition and effects of a training intervention were examined. Findings support the premise that the synthetic environment provides a rich and complex test bed for future research on team cognition.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 29, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA391532
Entities
People
- Nancy J Cooke
- Preston A. Kiekel
- Steven M. Shope
Organizations
- New Mexico State University