A situated approach to the acquisition of shared SA in team contexts

Abstract

Theories of team situation awareness (SA) differ in the information they require operators to have for effective coordination. Endsley stresses shared SA, whereas distributed SA argues that coordination involves transactive and compatible SA. We distinguish between weak and strong shared SA, and argue the latter enhances communication and increases team cohesion. Although we agree with Endsley on the importance of shared SA, we argue her account of how it is acquired exceeds the working memory capacity of individual team members. We offer an account consistent with our situated SA perspective that claims individuals off-load information to their environment whenever possible to minimise effortful internal processing. We argue that our approach, in conjunction with Pickering and Garrod's (2004, Towards a mechanistic psychology of dialogue. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, pp. 169–226) interactive-alignment model, can explain how shared SA is acquired, relying on automatic processes enacted when individuals interact in conversations. This approach can be used to study team SA in many complex and distributed systems.