Macrocognition in Teams Theories and Methodologies

Team collaboration involves many operational tasks such as team decision-making or course of action selection, developing shared understanding, and intelligence analysis. These operational tasks must be performed in many situations, often under severe time pressure, with information and knowledge uncertainty, large amounts of dynamic information and across different team characteristics. Recent research in this area has focused on various aspects of human collaborative decision-making and the underlying cognitive processes while describing those processes at different levels of detail, making it difficult to compare research results. The theoretical construct of ’macrocognition in teams’ was developed to facilitate cognitive research in team collaboration, which will enable a common level of understanding when defining, measuring and discussing the cognitive processes in team collaboration. Macrocognition is defined as both the internalized and externalized mental processes employed by team members in complex, one-of-a-kind, collaborative problem solving. Macrocognition in Teams provides readers with a greater understanding of the macrocognitive processes which support collaborative team activity, showcasing current research, theories, methodologies and tools. It will be of direct relevance to academics, researchers and practitioners interested in group/team interaction, performance, development and training.

Contents: Preface; Macrocognition in teams, Michael Letsky and Norman W. Warner; Empirical model of team collaboration: focus on macrocognition; Norman W. Warner and Michael P. Letsky; Shared mental models and their convergence, Sara A. McComb; Communication as team-level cognitive processing, Nancy J. Cooke, Jamie C. Gorman and Preston A. Kiekel; Collaboration, training and pattern recognition, Steven Haynes and C.A.P. Smith; Towards a conceptual model of common ground in teamwork, John M. Carroll, Gregorio Convertino, Mary Beth Rosson, Craig H. Ganoe; Agents as collaborating team members, Abhijit V. Deshmukh, Sara A. McComb and Christian Wernz; Transferring meaning and developing cognitive similarity in decision making teams: collaboration and meaning analysis process, Joan R. Rentsch, Lisa A. Delise and Scott Hutchison; Processes in complex team problem-solving: parsing and defining the theoretical problem space, Stephen M. Fiore, Michael Rosen, Eduardo Salas, Shawn Burke and Florian Jentsch; Augmenting video to share situation awareness more effectively in a distributed team, David Kirsh; EWall: a computational system for investigating and supporting cognitive and collaborative sense-making processes, Paul Keel, William Porter, Mathew Sither and Patrick Winston; DCODE: a tool for knowledge transfer, conflict resolution and consensus building in teams, Robert A Fleming; Modeling cultural and organizational factors of multinational teams, Holly A.H. Handley and Nancy J Heacox; CENTER: critical thinking in team decision making, Kathleen P. Hess, Jared Freeman and Michael D. Coovert; Measuring situation awareness through automated communication analysis, Peter W. Foltz, Cheryl A. Bolstad, Haydee M. Cuevas, Marita Franzke, Mark Rosenstein and Anthony M. Costello; Converging approaches to automated communications-based assessment of team situation awareness, Shawn A. Weil, Pacey Foster, Jared Freeman, Kathleen Carley, Jana Diesner, Terrill Franz, Nancy J. Cooke, Steve Shope and Jamie C. Gorman; Shared lightweight annotation technology (SLATE) for special operations forces, Mark St. John and Harvey S. Smallman; JIGSAW - joint intelligence graphical situation awareness web for collaborative intelligence analysis, Harvey S. Smallman; The collaboration advizor tool: a tool to diagnose and fix team cognitive problems, David Noble; Collaborative operational and research environment (CORE): a collaborative testbed and tool suite for asynchronous collaboration, Elizabeth M. Wroblewski and Norman W. Warner; Plug-and-play testbed for collaboration in the global information grid, Alex Bordetsky and Susan Hutchins; Naturalistic decision making based collaboration scenarios, Elizabeth Wroblewski and Norman W. Warner; Macrocognition research: challenges and opportunities on the road ahead, Stephen M. Fiore, C.A.P. Smith and Michael P. Letsky; Index.

Dr Michael P Letsky is currently Program Officer for the Collaboration and Knowledge Interoperability Program at the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Arlington, Virginia. He manages a research program of academic grants and innovative small business projects seeking to understand team cognition and team performance. He previously worked for the Army Research Institute of the Behavioral and Social Sciences where he developed their long range strategic research plan and also served on the Army Science Board on Highly Maneuverable Forces. Dr. Letsky's education includes a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (Northeastern University), an MBA and DBA in Operations Research (George Washington University). Norman Warner, Ph.D. is a senior scientist at the Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland. His expertise is in Human Factors Engineering in the areas of automated decision support, human decision-making and team collaboration. Over the past 27 years, he has conducted research with a variety of organizations (i.e. Naval Air Systems Command, Office of Naval Research, Air Force, Army). He was awarded two patents in decision support technology and has published over 25 peer reviewed articles. Currently, his research focus is on understanding team decision-making and the cognitive mechanisms used during asynchronous, distributed team collaboration. Stephen M. Fiore, Ph.D. holds a joint appointment with the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Simulation and Training and the Cognitive Sciences Program in the Department of Philosophy. He earned his Ph.D. degree (2000) in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, Learning Research and Development Center. He maintains a multidisciplinary research interest that incorporates aspects of cognitive, social, and organizational psychology in the investigation of human behavior in individuals and small groups. Dr. Fiore has co-authored a number of scientific publications in the areas of learning, memor