Towards the Development of Quantitative Descriptions of the Neurodynamic Rhythms and Organizations of Teams

Abstract

The goal was to begin developing quantitative approaches for modeling the neurodynamic rhythms and organizations of teams. Raw EEG signals from team members were first transformed into es-timates of cognitive workload and transformed again into neurodynamics symbols showing the second-by-second workload of each individual as well as the team. Periods of increased or decreased symbol organiza-tion in the data streams were hypothesized to reflect periods of increased or decreased organization around the cognitive construct of workload. These segments were identified by a moving average smoothing of the Shannon entropy over the length of the performance and then related to team speech, actions and team responses to endogeneous and exogeneous task changes. Two-person teams in an unscripted map naviga-tion task developed a common, dominant coordination dynamic for workload whose rhythm was disrupted by exogeneous changes to the task. The entropy fluctuations during these disruptions differed in magnitude and duration within and across performances and were associated with qualitative and quantitative changes in team organization. Similar results were obtained with three and six person teams on other complex tasks. These results indicate that neurodynamic measures may be reliable, sensitive and valid indicators of the changing neurodynamics of teams around which standardized quantitative models can be developed.