Shared cognition in intercultural teams: collaborating without understanding each other

This paper presents a network‐based approach for analyzing team coordination and shared cognition in engineering design teams. The research setting is an Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE) laboratory in which teams of approximately 20 engineers are collocated to conduct rapid conceptual design of scientific spacecraft. A design structure matrix (DSM) of expected interactions is constructed from technical information flow data, and DSM representations of reported interactions are created using survey data from 10 ICE design teams. A comparative analysis of expected and reported interactions is used to calculate a metric of team coordination called socio‐technical congruence (STC). To examine shared cognition, pairwise shared mental models (SMMs) are measured using pre‐ and post‐session surveys on system design drivers. Shared knowledge networks (SMMs as edges) are constructed, and team learning is measured as the change in network structure over time. Analysis reveals statistically significant correlations between team learning and each of three technical attributes (system development time, launch mass, and mission concept maturity) and between team learning and team coordination. These results indicate that team members learn most from each other when working on difficult or unfamiliar problems and when expected and reported interactions are aligned. The paper concludes that team coordination and the design product in ICE are not necessarily directly related to each other but that both are related to shared cognition. Although this study focuses on conceptual design, it lays the foundation for future work examining the role of team coordination and shared cognition in full‐scale system development programs.

Mental models are knowledge structures employed by humans to describe, explain, and predict the world around them. Shared Mental Models (SMMs) occur in teams whose members have similar mental models of their task and of the team itself. Research on human teaming has linked SMM quality to improved team performance. Applied understanding of SMMs should lead to improvements in human-AI teaming. Yet, it remains unclear how the SMM construct may differ in teams of human and AI agents, how and under what conditions such SMMs form, and how they should be quantified. This paper presents a review of SMMs and the associated literature, including their definition, measurement, and relation to other concepts. A synthesized conceptual model is proposed for the application of SMM literature to the human-AI setting. Several areas of AI research are identified and reviewed that are highly relevant to SMMs in human-AI teaming but which have not been discussed via a common vernacular. A summary of design considerations to support future experiments regarding Human-AI SMMs is presented. We find that while current research has made significant progress, a lack of consistency in terms and of effective means for measuring Human-AI SMMs currently impedes realization of the concept.

What signal is your inspection team sending to each other? Using a shared collaborative interface to improve shared cognition and implicit coordination in error-detection teams

Shared mental models theory normally takes the individual as its unit of analysis. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for studying shared mental models in which the model is considered to be distributed amongst the team. From this framework a cognitive process is predicted which describes how shared mental models are run. A team reasoning task requiring planning was used to illustrate this framework and test predictions derived from it. Two aspects of sharing mental models were studied; the degree of overlap between team members' mental models and the organization of the division of the model between team members. Experimental results showed that the cognitive processes used were distributed amongst the team and support was found for most, but not all, aspects of the proposed process of running a shared mental model. The organization of sharing was found to influence this process.

Development and initial validation of the Team Mental Models Instrument (TMMI): A psychometric tool to measure shared and complementary mental models in sports

This study takes a direct observation research approach to examine how the impact of collaboration mode on team productivity and process satisfaction is mediated by shared mental model. Team cognition and social impact theories are integrated to provide a framework for explaining how technology-mediated collaboration constrains or enhances team shared mental model development and its subsequent impact on task outcomes. Partial least squares analysis revealed that technology-mediated collaboration impacts shared mental model development. The results also demonstrate that timely and accurate development of shared mental model facilitates increases in both productivity and team process satisfaction. Direct observation of team process behaviors suggests that collaboration modes differ not only in their impact on communication facilitation but efficacy-based, motivational, and social influence factors (e.g., self-efficacy and team-efficacy, perceived salience and credibility of contributions, social influence on action, etc.) as well. Shared mental model development requires quality communication among team members that are motivated to participate by a positive team climate that promotes idea convergence.

This paper presents an investigation on the relationship between social network distances and shared mental models in military command and control organizations. Previous research has shown that physical distance is the gold standard for high performance (Olson & Olson, 2000). However, social network distance may be equally or more important, as social network graphs inherently take into account the group's context and environment (Krackhart, 1994). We conducted this research on a new 56-member command and control organization using computer-based collaborative tools as they engaged in a five day simulation exercise. As military command and control organizations are difficult to evaluate based on outcome and performance, we chose shared mental models as a proxy. We hypothesized that in a command and control organization, social network distance and physical distance are independent of one another. Further we hypothesized that social network distance would be a predictor of mental model congruence. We found that there is a very weak positive correlation between social network distance and physical distance. Further, we found that, controlling for physical distance, social network distance is a predictor of mental model congruence. This research validates that high frequency of communication, mediated by computer based collaborative tools, can effectively generate shared mental models.

Purpose: To date, there are no published data to suggest structured handover following pediatric inter-facility transport results in the development of a shared mental model. We sought to determine if this association exists by measuring the degree of congruence between handover participants as a surrogate for development of a shared mental model. Methods: We performed a prospective, observational cohort study in children aged 0-18 years transferred to our tertiary, stand-alone pediatric referral center before and …

Large corporations increasingly use multinational teams to integrate their global operations. To perform this complex task efficiently, team members need to develop shared mental models (SMMs), i.e. an organized understanding of the knowledge base they are sharing. In multinational teams, the heterogeneity of team members makes SMM formation especially challenging. While previous research has investigated the influence of different diversity factors on SMMs, the impact of language differences has surprisingly been neglected so far. To address this important gap we investigate how different elements of the language barrier impede the formation of different types of SMMs. Based on 84 semi-structured interviews with team leaders, members and senior managers of 15 multinational teams in three German automotive corporations we develop a model showing how pragmatic and paraverbal barriers between team members obstruct SMMs about roles, responsibilities and interaction patterns and how shortcomings in lexical, syntactical and phonetic proficiency impede SMMs about team members' preferences, strengths, weaknesses as well as values and attitudes. These findings integrate linguistic and psychological theories with management studies and complement our understanding of the antecedents of SMMs in multinational teams. This is of crucial importance since SMMs have been established as important prerequisites for team performance.

Shared understandings are important for software development as they guide effective individual contributions and coordination of the software development process. However, it is not clear if such understandings can be developed in highly distributed groups that do not regularly meet face-to-face. In this paper, we present the results of a preliminary analysis of shared mental models within a Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development team. We analyzed mental models using cognitive mapping and process analysis and compared the models of four developers from the Apache Lucene Java project. Our analysis suggests that there is a high level of sharing among core developers but the sharing is not complete, with some differences related to tenure and role in the project. Finally, we suggest directions for further research on shared mental models in FLOSS teams.

When musicians improvise together, they tend to agree beforehand on a common structure (e.g. a jazz standard) which helps them coordinate. However, in the particular case of collective free improvisation (CFI), musicians deliberately avoid having such a referent. How, then, can they coordinate? We propose that CFI musicians who have experience playing together come to share higher-level knowledge, which is not piece-specific but rather task-specific: an implicit mental model of what it is to improvise freely. We tested this hypothesis on a group of 19 expert improvisers from the Parisian CFI community, who had various degrees of experience playing with one another. Drawing from the methodology of team cognition, we used a card-sorting procedure on a set of 25 short improvised sound sequences to elicit and represent each participant’s mental model of the CFI task. We then evaluated the similarity between the participants’ models, and used the measure in a nearest neighbour classification algorithm to retrieve clusters of participants who were known to play together. As hypothesized, we found that the degree of similarity in participants’ mental models predicted their degree of musical familiarity with better-than-random accuracy: musicians who played together tended to ‘think’ about improvised music in the same way.

The construct of shared mental models has garnered interest among team researchers as a means to explain how teams develop into highly coordinated units. McComb (this volume) contributes to this body of work by synthesizing a host of empirical findings and theoretical assertions into a model of mental model convergence. This advancement is significant, because it begins to shed light on how shared mental models may develop in teams. The present commentary takes McComb's work a step further by combining it with findings from the area of team training. The result is a set of propositions describing when various training interventions may be most beneficial to the team and the mental model convergence process, and why. These propositions are intended to stimulate further efforts to empirically validate team-training strategies as a means to foster development of shared mental models.

Pharmacists are increasingly engaged in general practice to contribute to rational prescribing and to reduce the workloads. To further improve patients' outcomes, a new patient-centered medication review (MR) model in primary care for polypharmacy patients was developed. This model involves patients in an initial 'problem detection meeting' with the pharmacist and in a meeting with the pharmacist and the General Practitioner (GP) to discuss MR findings. To pilot test the new MR model to supplement existing program theory. Qualitative descriptive nonparticipatory observations of the MR model were carried out in two general practices in Denmark to identify Context elements and determine how the Intervention was enacted. Semistructured interviews with GPs, patients and the pharmacist were conducted to establish Outcomes. Through principles of realist evaluation, Mechanisms, i.e., links connecting Context, Intervention and Outcomes, were inferred. The new model led to satisfaction among patients and GPs. Three central mechanisms were: 1) alignment between the pharmacist and the GP in their understanding of MR work; 2) investment in relational work; and 3) flexibility, allowing the model to fulfill the needs of GPs despite differences in experiences with polypharmacy, working styles, and knowledge of enrolled patients. The new model illustrates how pharmacists can support GPs. New program theory regards the importance of compatible perspectives between pharmacists and GPs on appropriate polypharmacy work, i.e., 'shared mental models', the ways GPs can develop their mental models when interacting with pharmacists, and the usefulness of relational work when the models clash.

This chapter describes a multi-level adaptive network modelAdaptive network models for mental processesMental process making use of shared mental modelsShared mental model in the contextContext of organisational learningOrganisational learning in teamTeam-related performances. The chapter describes the value of using shared mental modelsShared mental model to illustrate the concept of organisational learningOrganisational learning, and factors that influence teamTeam performances by using the analogy of a teamTeam of match officialsMatch officials during a game of football and show their behavior in a simulation of the shared mental modelShared mental model. The chapter discusses potential elaborations of the different studied concepts, as well as implications of the research in the domain of teamworkTeamwork and teamTeam performance, and in terms of organisational learningOrganisational learning.

The effects of shared mental models on the relationship between episodic team behavioral processes and performance were investigated, while teams were using an experimentally stimulated construction project planning program. The results indicated that episodic team processes made positive contributions to the team performance. Furthermore, a hierarchical linear regression indicated that the convergence of shared teamwork mental models moderated the effects of team processes on team performance. Specifically, the positive impact of team processes on performance was found to be improved for those teams who shared more similar teamwork mental models than for teams who hold fewer similar teamwork mental models. Potential implications and relevant impacts on future research are discussed.