This thesis describes the development of an instrument for assessing shared understanding in teams. The purpose was to develop an instrument that would be usable, understandable, objective, flexible and self-explanatory. Teams working in naturalistic settings are expected to have a shared understanding concerning common goals and how to achieve these. The problem investigated in this thesis is that current techniques and instruments for assessing shared understanding in teams generally suffer from one or more of the following drawbacks, namely that they are expensive, difficult to use, time-consuming, requiring expertise, and are often based on subjective perceptions. Departing from existing theory in team cognition techniques and theories, the research questions posed in this thesis are: 1) How can shared understanding be measured without the disadvantages of existing methods? 2) How can shared understanding be assessed without the bias of self-ratings and/or assessments by experts/observers? 3) Can team performance be better understood by the outcomes of an instrument that measures shared understanding? These research questions are answered through six studies that are presented in this thesis. Over the six studies an instrument was iterated and subsequently developed, called the “shared priorities instrument”. When using this instrument, team members are instructed to generate items and rank these in order of importance. By comparing these rank orders from different participants, a team measure of shared understanding can be calculated. The advantages of this instrument compared to earlier measures are that it is less expensive, easier to use, less time-consuming, does not require subject matter expertise, and that the instrument is distanced from subjective perceptions. Furthermore, the final study provides results where outcomes from the shared priorities instrument correlate with performance, supporting earlier research connecting shared understanding in teams with team performance. A structural equation model, a result of the final study, shows that the instrument is both valid and reliable. / Denna avhandling beskriver utvecklingen av ett mätinstrument för att värdera delad förståelse hos team. Syftet har varit att utveckla ett mätinstrument som är användbart, förståeligt, objektivt, flexibelt och självförklarande. Team som arbetar i naturalistiska miljöer förväntas ha en delad förståelse för gemensamma mål och hur dessa ska uppnås. Befintliga tekniker och mätinstrument för värdering av delad förståelse hos team är att de ofta lider av ett eller flera av följande problem: de är dyra, svåra att använda, tidskrävande, kräver expertis, och bygger många gånger på subjektiva bedömningar. Genom att utgå från teoribildningen inom teamkognition ställs följande forskningsfrågor: 1) Hur kan delad förståelse i team mätas utan nackdelarna hos befintliga metoder? 2) Hur kan delad förståelse i team mätas utan att riskera att färgas av partiskheten hos egenbedömningar och/eller experters värderingar? 3) Kan teamprestation förstås bättre med hjälp av ett instrument som mäter delad förståelse? Dessa frågeställningar besvaras i de sex delstudier som presenteras i denna avhandling där ett instrument (som kallas shared priorities) utvecklats för att mäta delad förståelse. Tillämpningen innebär att medlemmarna i ett team individuellt får generera och rangordna faktorer som de anser vara viktiga för att teamet ska nå sitt/sina gemensamma mål och därefter rangordna varandras faktorer. Genom att beräkna överensstämmelsen i dessa rangordningar erhålls ett mått på teamets delade förståelse. Fördelen med detta instrument, i jämförelse med tidigare mått, är att det kostar mindre, är lättare att använda, tar mindre tid, inte kräver någon domänexpertis, och att mätmetoden inte bygger på rent subjektiva bedömningar. I den sista delstudien erhålls resultat där instrumentet shared priorities korrelerar med prestation, vilket stöder tidigare forskning om delad förståelse. En statistisk modell (SEM) visar på instrumentets validitet och reliabilitet.

abstract: The American Heart Association (AHA) estimates that there are approximately 200,000 in-hospital cardiac arrests (IHCA) annually with low rates of survival to discharge at about 22%. Training programs for cardiac arrest teams, also termed code teams, have been recommended by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and in the AHA's consensus statement to help improve these dismal survival rates. Historically, training programs in the medical field are procedural in nature and done at the individual level, despite the fact that healthcare providers frequently work in teams. The rigidity of procedural training can cause habituation and lead to poor team performance if the situation does not match the original training circumstances. Despite the need for team training, factors such as logistics, time, personnel coordination, and financial constraints often hinder resuscitation team training. This research was a three-step process of: 1) development of a metric specific for the evaluation of code team performance, 2) development of a communication model that targeted communication and leadership during a code blue resuscitation, and 3) training and evaluation of the code team leader using the communication model. This research forms a basis to accomplish a broad vision of improving outcomes of IHCA events by applying conceptual and methodological strategies learned from collaborative and inter-disciplinary science of teams. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Human Systems Engineering 2017

abstract: This research evaluates a cyber test-bed, DEXTAR (Defense Exercises for Team Awareness Research), and examines the relationship between good and bad team performance in increasingly difficult scenarios. Twenty-one computer science graduate students (seven three-person teams), with experience in cybersecurity, participated in a team-based cyber defense exercise in the context of DEXTAR, a high fidelity cybersecurity testbed. Performance measures were analyzed in addition to team process, team behavior, and workload to examine the relationship between good and bad teams. Lessons learned are reported that will inform the next generation of DEXTAR. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Applied Psychology 2016

Purpose: Shared mental models (SMMs) represent commonly held understandings of task and team related knowledge within a team. Thought to facilitate implicit and adaptive coordination without the need for explicit communication, the construct has been thoroughly studied in non-health care settings. There has been increasing interest in the topic in the healthcare setting, but recent reviews have found that the construct is poorly defined and has significant heterogeneity in how it is measured (Floren et al., 2018). We conducted a scoping review examining the construct of SMMs in medical teams within the acute care setting. Method: Following the Arksey and O’Malley (2005) framework, five data bases were searched: Medline, CINAHL, PsychInfo, Web of Science, and Embase. Eligible studies examined SMMs in the context of medical teamwork in the acute care setting. Definitions, methods, and general study characteristics were examined. Results: Of the 1397 articles retrieved, 25 met eligibility criteria. The studies encompassed a variety of areas of clinical practice. There was no common definition for SMMs across the studies examined. The majority of studies (20/25) used quantitative methods with surveys, questionnaires, and observation being the most common. Conclusions: The construct of the SMM is poorly defined in the setting of acute care medical teams. Although many standard types of SMM measurement exist, few of the studies used these common methods. The lack of direct measurement of SMMs, especially in the case of observation, questions the validity of these studies. We propose a definition for SMMs in this context and a path forward for studying SMM in the acute care setting. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Health care is a team sport and as health care systems become more complex, teamwork becomes increasingly important. However, a team of experts does not make an expert team and highly effective teams possess a particular set of characteristics that allow them to perform high quality care. One characteristic that is receiving an increasing amount of attention is the Shared Mental Model. The purpose of this study was to examine what is already known about these shared mental models in the context of acute care medical teams. This study will act as a launching point for future research exploring how teams think and how it impacts the quality of care they can provide.

Les études de psychologie des industries et des organisations montrent que la compréhension partagée (CP) conditionne la performance collective. Nous mobilisons le concept de la Team Situation Awareness pour identifier les éléments qui concourent à la CP et à son évolution au cours de l'action. Une analyse en handball nous a permis d'identifier (a) 4 formes typiques d'articulation des activités individuelles, (b) 7 contenus typiques et (c) 6 processus typiques interindividuels. Nos résultats montrent que les formes de partage sont locales et ponctuelles, alternant entre trois modes de coordination en cours d'action : (1) application du plan, (2) ajustement transitoire en fin d’action, (3) adaptation en temps réel au contexte de jeu. L’analyse de la dynamique du partage met en évidence que le sentiment de performance collective est subordonné à une fluidité dans l'enchaînement des actions et au jugement de sécurité quant à l'évaluation de la situation. L'analyse en théâtre d'improvisation conforte la classification proposée dans la première étude. Notre étude a permis d'apporter des éléments sur les activités collaboratives en situation dynamique, et notamment sur la fonction de la CP qui peut être considérée comme un phénomène dynamique dont la principale fonction est de maintenir un potentiel de coordination suffisant entre les partenaires d'une équipe. À partir de nos résultats, nous proposons une modélisation qui rend compte des mécanismes de CP à deux échelles : (1) à l'échelle de l'équipe, nous proposons une modélisation qui renseigne l'alternance des modes de coordination en fonction des contraintes de l'environnement ; (2) à une échelle locale, nous proposons une modélisation qui rend compte de la régulation du partage entre les agent de l'équipe. / In the field of I/O psychology, most of studies estimate that team performance under temporal pressure is directly related to shared understanding (SU) within a team. In order to account for the dynamics of SU within a team, we have studied the evolution of contents, forms and mechanisms of the sharing process, as a function of context variability and temporal pressure. We primarily work in line with the Team Situation Awareness model, that is usually mobilized in work situations. A first study allowed us to identify the various elements of SU and its dynamics in feminine handball competitions. The analysis permitted to identify (a) four typical forms of shared understanding, (b) seven typical contents shared and (c) six typical interaction processes between teammates. Results shows that sharing forms are local and punctual, alternating between two main modes of SU : either a preestablished plan follow-up, together with possible adaptation to conclude a given action, or a real-time adaptation to the context of action. A second study deals with improvisational theatre, regulated in real time by the director through earphones. Our results show that the sharing typical forms, contents and processes that rise in this activity also correspond to the classification we made in the first field study, which strengthens the genericity of our proposal. These results invite us to think that online regulation may either enhance or hamper the SU and thus the collective performance, respectively by improving the update and interaction processes between actors, or by overloading the cognitive activity of the team members in the course of action. Based on these results, we propose to consider the SU as a process that works over two space and time scales: on the global scale, SU may envolve over long periods within a team; and on a local scale, SU is actually developed through interpersonal updating and in situ adjustment processes. In order to account for these two scales, we proposed a team coordination model together with an interindividual regulation model. Our work opens the way to the study of the correlation between local mechanisms of shared understanding and the global dynamics of a collaborative activity.

Les études de psychologie des industries et des organisations montrent que la compréhension partagée (CP) conditionne la performance collective. Nous mobilisons le concept de la Team Situation Awareness pour identifier les éléments qui concourent à la CP et à son évolution au cours de l'action. Une analyse en handball nous a permis d'identifier (a) 4 formes typiques d'articulation des activités individuelles, (b) 7 contenus typiques et (c) 6 processus typiques interindividuels. Nos résultats montrent que les formes de partage sont locales et ponctuelles, alternant entre trois modes de coordination en cours d'action : (1) application du plan, (2) ajustement transitoire en fin d'action, (3) adaptation en temps réel au contexte de jeu. L'analyse de la dynamique du partage met en évidence que le sentiment de performance collective est subordonné à une fluidité dans l'enchaînement des actions et au jugement de sécurité quant à l'évaluation de la situation. L'analyse en théâtre d'improvisation conforte la classification proposée dans la première étude. Notre étude a permis d'apporter des éléments sur les activités collaboratives en situation dynamique, et notamment sur la fonction de la CP qui peut être considérée comme un phénomène dynamique dont la principale fonction est de maintenir un potentiel de coordination suffisant entre les partenaires d'une équipe. À partir de nos résultats, nous proposons une modélisation qui rend compte des mécanismes de CP à deux échelles : (1) à l'échelle de l'équipe, nous proposons une modélisation qui renseigne l'alternance des modes de coordination en fonction des contraintes de l'environnement ; (2) à une échelle locale, nous proposons une modélisation qui rend compte de la régulation du partage entre les agent de l'équipe.

Members of distributed teams often have difficulty sharing unique information with their teammates during decision making tasks. These communication problems may hinder the development of cognitions that allow team members to reach a similar understanding of the content and structure of task information. The C-MAP intervention (Rentsch, Delise, & Hutchison, 2008) was designed to assist team members in sharing their information through behaviors that convey the content and structure of information by using specific communication behaviors and developing a knowledge object. In the present study, the knowledge object took the form of a white board where information was posted and organized. The development of the team knowledge object was the focus of the study. Using the knowledge object, team members could post a piece of unique information, highlight it, and organize it into clusters, thereby illustrating the content and structure of information through knowledge object development (KOD) behaviors. The present study evaluated the relationships among four types of KOD behaviors (posting content, highlighting content, conveying structure within domain, and conveying structure across domains) used to externalize pieces of unique information and two team cognition variables (transferred and interoperable knowledge) that develop with respect to each piece of unique information. Results provided evidence that posting content behaviors and highlighting content behaviors were positively related to transferred knowledge. Results also indicated that conveying structure within domain behaviors were negatively related to interoperable knowledge. However, conveying structure across domains behaviors were positively related to interoperable knowledge. Implications of these findings for the C-MAP intervention and suggestions for future research are presented.

abstract: Human-agent teams (HATs) are expected to play a larger role in future command and control systems where resilience is critical for team effectiveness. The question of how HATs interact to be effective in both normal and unexpected situations is worthy of further examination. Exploratory behaviors are one that way adaptive systems discover opportunities to expand and refine their performance. In this study, team interaction exploration is examined in a HAT composed of a human navigator, human photographer, and a synthetic pilot while they perform a remotely-piloted aerial reconnaissance task. Failures in automation and the synthetic pilot’s autonomy were injected throughout ten missions as roadblocks. Teams were clustered by performance into high-, middle-, and low-performing groups. It was hypothesized that high-performing teams would exchange more text-messages containing unique content or sender-recipient combinations than middle- and low-performing teams, and that teams would exchange less unique messages over time. The results indicate that high-performing teams had more unique team interactions than middle-performing teams. Additionally, teams generally had more exploratory team interactions in the first session of missions than the second session. Implications and suggestions for future work are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2019

No description available.

abstract: Cyber threats are growing in number and sophistication making it important to continually study and improve all dimensions of cyber defense. Human teamwork in cyber defense analysis has been overlooked even though it has been identified as an important predictor of cyber defense performance. Also, to detect advanced forms of threats effective information sharing and collaboration between the cyber defense analysts becomes imperative. Therefore, through this dissertation work, I took a cognitive engineering approach to investigate and improve cyber defense teamwork. The approach involved investigating a plausible team-level bias called the information pooling bias in cyber defense analyst teams conducting the detection task that is part of forensics analysis through human-in-the-loop experimentation. The approach also involved developing agent-based models based on the experimental results to explore the cognitive underpinnings of this bias in human analysts. A prototype collaborative visualization tool was developed by considering the plausible cognitive limitations contributing to the bias to investigate whether a cognitive engineering-driven visualization tool can help mitigate the bias in comparison to off-the-shelf tools. It was found that participant teams conducting the collaborative detection tasks as part of forensics analysis, experience the information pooling bias affecting their performance. Results indicate that cognitive friendly visualizations can help mitigate the effect of this bias in cyber defense analysts. Agent-based modeling produced insights on internal cognitive processes that might be contributing to this bias which could be leveraged in building future visualizations. This work has multiple implications including the development of new knowledge about the science of cyber defense teamwork, a demonstration of the advantage of developing tools using a cognitive engineering approach, a demonstration of the advantage of using a hybrid cognitive engineering methodology to study teams in general and finally, a demonstration of the effect of effective teamwork on cyber defense performance. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Applied Psychology 2014