Renée J. Stout

The Role of Planning in Coordinated Team Decision Making: Implications for Training

Critical decisions are made every day by teams of individuals who must coordinate their activities to achieve effectiveness. Recently, researchers have suggested that shared mental models among team members may help them to make successful decisions. Several avenues for training shared mental models in teams exist, one of which is training in planning behaviors. The relationship between team planning, team shared mental models, and coordinated team decision making and performance is explored.

Does Crew Coordination Behavior Impact Performance

It has been well established that human error and poor management of cockpit resources contribute to aircraft accidents. For this reason, there has been a recent proliferation of aircrew coordination training programs, yet the effectiveness of these programs has not been shown definitively. The present investigation demonstrated the link between crew coordination behavior and mission effectiveness, thus supporting the continued development of programs aimed at training aircrew coordination skills. The results further suggest that interventions concentrate on pilot coordination skills, since these skills appear to be most important to mission performance.

LOW-COST SIMULATION AND MILITARY AVIATION TEAM TRAINING

Many modem job environments impose the need for teams of individuals to work together to effectively and efficiently accomplish their tasks, due to the complex nature of these tasks. Rapid changes in the workforce and workplace, such as advancements in technology and decreases in resources, suggest that teams will continue to be used to perform a variety of functions well into the future. In these settings, proficient task accomplishment depends upon teams employing appropriate and coordinated teamwork processes-. This element of teamwork is paramount hi that ineffective interaction among team members can cause severe performance effects. For some teams, such as military teams, surgical teams, and aircrews, potentially catastrophic results may occur when teamwork processes breakdown. For example, there is considerable documentation of dire consequences resulting from ineffective teamwork, including mishaps attributed to breakdowns in skills such as communication, leadership, and decision making--. The need to train these teams to coordinate their activities is obvious. This is especially apparent hi military aviation given the dynamic characteristic of cockpit conditions and the potentially extreme consequences of ineffective teamwork hi this arena-. The key to successfully training teamwork hi complex team settings is to delineate the requisite team Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes (KSAs) for effective mission accomplishment and to provide information, demonstration, practice and feedback to build these

The Development of a Scale to Assess the Teamwork Needs of Training Situations

Operational studies have revealed a need to focus attention on team training, and a need for effective teamwork skills for successful training performance. The present study was designed to develop an assessment scale that can be used by instructors of various training situations, which will yield a measure of the degree of teamwork required in their situations. Data obtained from the scale show psychometrically sound properties of the scale (high internal consistency and high item-total correlations) and initial validity of it (the ability to distinguish various training situations as to the extent of teamwork that is required). Recommendations for future research are also discussed.

Improving Teams' Interpositional Knowledge Through Cross Training

Recent investigations of team training have demonstrated advantages of cross training team members in the positions of other team members. Such benefits have been attributed to increases in interpositional knowledge. In an attempt to reduce the time demands of cross training, a conceptual cross-training condition that targeted teamwork knowledge was compared to traditional full cross-training and two control conditions. Three-person teams were assigned to a training condition and participated in two synthetic helicopter missions. Outcomes, team process behaviors, team situation awareness, taskwork knowledge, and teamwork knowledge were measured. Results indicated weak support for the benefits of full cross-training on team performance, yet minimal support for conceptual cross-training. Further, teams cross-trained in the traditional manner acquired more teamwork and taskwork interpositional knowledge than teams in any other condition. Both types of interpositional knowledge were correlated with team performance.

Situation Assessment in Aircrews: A Taxonomy for Organizing Cue-Based Information

Situation awareness is important for effective mission accomplishment and to ensure flight safety (Endsley, 1988; 1990; Fracker, 1988; Sarter & Woods, 1991). An important component of situation awareness is situation assessment (Endsley, 1995; Salas, Prince, Baker & Shrestha, 1995; Stout, Cannon-Bowers, & Salas, 1996). This study sought to explore the content of situation assessment to develop an understanding of the cues that pilots process when constructing a mental representation of a situation (i.e. SA). Tools from cognitive task analysis were used to elicit information from 46 military pilots from five different aircrafi communities about critical cues that contribute to the development and maintenance of SA. The results were used to develop a taxonomy of cues that are critical in the process of situation assessment. Directions for future research are discussed.