"Enhancing Adaptive Performance: Task variation, Team Mental Models, and Strategy Development"

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the role of task variability training, a technique proposed to enhance adaptive outcomes at the individual level, as a determinant of adaptive team outcomes. We hypothesized that the effectiveness of encountering variation during practice for future team performance lies in the potential variations offer teams to develop long-term adaptive skills related to appropriate learning mechanisms and strategy development. We further predicted that the effects of variation on the development of these capabilities will be enhanced when the team understands the initial task space comprehensively and flexibly, which we attributed to the development of flexible team mental models. In an experiment with 23 teams (n = 69) exposed to variation during the work on a practice task, we found that the development of complex and divergent team mental models, which we termed flexible team mental models, enhanced the teams’ effective usage of strategies on a novel more complex task. Strategy usage on the novel task in turn affected positively team performance novelty and performance efficiency. These results address the importance of considering the mechanisms via which training techniques enhance adaptive transfer, with special consideration to the role of team cognition.