Two-person Teams Research Articles

Effects of 2D Online and 3D Virtual World Meeting Spaces on the Performance of a Concept Selection Task by Engineering Design Teams

This research investigates engineering design teams’ performance of a concept selection task in three meeting spaces: face-to-face, 2D online and 3D virtual world. Cisco Systems’ WebEx and Sun Microsystems’ Wonderland were used as the 2D online meeting space and the 3D virtual world, respectively. Twenty-four two-person design teams were formed and randomly assigned to one of the three meeting spaces. The teams performed a cell-phone concept selection task in the meeting space to which they were assigned. Four dependent variables were measured: task completion time, team satisfaction, self-evaluated process quality and expert-evaluated process quality. Following data collection, one-way ANOVA was used to analyze each variable to determine the differences, if any, among the meeting spaces. ANOVA results did not support rejection of the null hypothesis for any variable. These results suggest that 3D virtual worlds support design concept selection as well as 2D online meeting spaces and that both of these te...

Interactions of team mental models and monitoring behaviors predict team performance in simulated anesthesia inductions.

In the present study, we investigated how two team mental model properties (similarity vs. accuracy) and two forms of monitoring behavior (team vs. systems) interacted to predict team performance in anesthesia. In particular, we were interested in whether the relationship between monitoring behavior and team performance was moderated by team mental model properties. Thirty-one two-person teams consisting of anesthesia resident and anesthesia nurse were videotaped during a simulated anesthesia induction of general anesthesia. Team mental models were assessed with a newly developed measurement tool based on the concept-mapping technique. Monitoring behavior was coded by two organizational psychologists using a structured observation system. Team performance was rated by two expert anesthetists using a performance-checklist. Moderated multiple regression analysis revealed that team mental model similarity moderated the relationship between team monitoring and performance; a higher level of team monitoring in the absence of a similar team mental model had a negative effect on performance. Furthermore, team mental model similarity and accuracy interacted to predict team performance. Our findings provide new insights on factors influencing the relationship between team processes and team performance in health care. When investigating the effectiveness of a specific team coordination behavior, team cognition has to be taken into account. This represents a necessary and compelling extension of the popular process-outcome relationship on which previous teamwork research in health care has focused. Moreover, the current study adds further external validity to the concept of team mental models by highlighting its usefulness in health care.

The relationship between Workload, Teamwork, Situation Awareness, and Performance in Teams: A microworld study

In modern military organizations teamwork performance is central, yet the underlying factors contributing to such performance are debated. The purpose of this paper was to investigate how several known teamwork measures relate to a prior model of operator performance (Nahlinder et al, 2004). This study expands this model to the team level and in the command and control domain. Specifically, this paper studies the relationship between individual and team workload measures, situation awareness measures, and performance measures in 18 two-person teams. The study has two major findings: Firstly, the various team cognition measures statistically cluster into four meaningful concepts (workload, teamwork, situation awareness and performance). Secondly, a Structural Equation Model indicates that the relationship between the various individual and team measures can be described in a model resembling the model found in previous studies (Nahlinder et al, 2004). In particular, the results show that the general workload in the microworld study has a negative effect on both teamwork and situation awareness. Teamwork, in turn, also affects situation awareness, which has major impact on performance.

The effects of extended work under sleep deprivation conditions on team-based performance

Teamwork is becoming increasingly common in today's workplaces; however, little research has examined how well teams perform under sleep deprivation conditions. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of extended work under sleep deprivation conditions on team performance. A total of 24 participants were sleep deprived for 30 h and completed 16 h of sustained operations during the last portion of the sleep deprivation period. The participants completed the Wombat, a complex task including vigilance and cognitive components, with a partner in four 24-min testing sessions during the sustained operations period. The results indicated that team performance increased during the work period while, within each testing session, team performance on vigilance tasks remained stable and overall performance decreased. The current results suggest that performance on two-person teams results in improved performance but does not fully counteract the decreases in performance within each work period. Performance in two-person teams increased across an extended work shift under sleep deprivation conditions. However, vigilance performance remained stable while overall performance decreased when examining performance in 8-min segments. These results suggest that averaging team-based performance over a longer testing period may mask the negative effects of sleep deprivation. Statement of Relevance: Performance in two-person teams increased across an extended work shift under sleep deprivation conditions. However, vigilance performance remained stable while overall performance decreased when examining performance in 8-min segments. These results suggest that averaging team-based performance over a longer testing period may mask the negative effects of sleep deprivation.

Adaptation in anaesthesia team coordination in response to a simulated critical event and its relationship to clinical performance

Recent studies in anaesthesia and intensive care indicate that a team's ability to adapt its coordination activities to changing situational demands is crucial for effective teamwork and thus, safe patient care. This study addresses the relationship between adaptation of team coordination and markers of clinical performance in response to a critical event, particularly regarding which types of coordination activities are used and which team member engages in those coordination activities. Video recordings of 15 two-person anaesthesia teams (anaesthesia trainee plus anaesthesia nurse) performing a simulated induction of general anaesthesia were coded, using a structured observation system for coordination activities. The simulation involved a critical event-asystole during laryngoscopy. Clinical performance was assessed using two separate reaction times related to the critical event. Analyses of variance revealed a significant effect of the critical event on team coordination: after the occurrence of the asystole, team members adapted their coordination activities by spending more time on information management-a specific type of coordination activity (F(1,28)=15.17, P=0.001). No significant effect was found for task management. The increase in information management was related to faster decisions regarding how to respond to the critical event, but only for trainees and not for nurses. Our findings support the claim that adaptation of coordination activities is related to improved team performance in healthcare. Moreover, adaptation and its relationship to team performance were found to vary with regard to type of coordination activities and team member.

Process and Performance in Human-Robot Teams

The authors are developing a theory for human control of robot teams based on considering how control difficulty grows with team size. Current work focuses on domains, such as foraging, in which robots perform largely independent tasks. Such tasks are particularly amenable to analysis because effects on performance and cognitive resources are predicted to be additive, and tasks can safely be allocated across operators because of their independence. The present study addresses the interaction between automation and organization of human teams in controlling large robot teams performing an urban search-and-rescue (USAR) task. Two possible ways to organize operators were identified: as individual assignments of robots to operators, assigned robots, or as a shared pool in which operators service robots from the population as needed. The experiment compares two-person teams of operators controlling teams of 12 robots each in the assigned-robots condition or sharing control of 24 robots in the shared-pool condition using either waypoint control in the manual condition or autonomous path planning in the autonomy condition. Automating path planning improved system performance, but process measures suggest it may weaken situation awareness.

Can Teams Help to Close the Gender Competition Gap?

We investigate the effect that competing in teams has on gender differences in choosing to enter competitions. In our experiment, subjects chose whether to compete based on the combined performance of themselves and a teammate. We find that competing in two-person teams reduces the gender competition gap by two-thirds. Independent of the sex of one’s partner, female subjects prefer to compete in teams whereas male subjects prefer to compete as individuals. We find that this result is driven primarily by gender differences in competitive preferences, as opposed to other potential explanations such as risk aversion, feedback aversion or confidence.

A multi-level approach of evaluating crew resource management training: a laboratory-based study examining communication skills as a function of team congruence

The article proposes a multi-level approach for evaluating communication skills training (CST) as an important element of crew resource management (CRM) training. Within this methodological framework, the present work examined the effectiveness of CST in matching or mismatching team compositions with regard to hierarchical status and competence. There is little experimental research that evaluated the effectiveness of CRM training at multiple levels (i.e. reaction, learning, behaviour) and in teams composed of members of different status and competence. An experiment with a two (CST: with vs. without) by two (competence/hierarchical status: congruent vs. incongruent) design was carried out. A total of 64 participants were trained for 2.5 h on a simulated process control environment, with the experimental group being given 45 min of training on receptiveness and influencing skills. Prior to the 1-h experimental session, participants were assigned to two-person teams. The results showed overall support for the use of such a multi-level approach of training evaluation. Stronger positive effects of CST were found for subjective measures than for objective performance measures. Statement of Relevance: This work provides some guidance for the use of a multi-level evaluation of CRM training. It also emphasises the need to collect objective performance data for training evaluation in addition to subjective measures with a view to gain a more accurate picture of the benefits of such training approaches.

Team Member Personality, Performance and Stress in a RoboFlag Synthetic Task Environment

Effective teamwork is an important component in the control of multiple unmanned vehicles (UVs). Personality traits of individual team members may be a factor influencing overall team performance and individual levels of perceived workload and stress. In this study, a multiple UV environment was simulated by use of the RoboFlag game. Participants played the RoboFlag game individually or in two-person teams and were presented with this sequence of task-phases: RoboFlag alone, RoboFlag with a secondary task, RoboFlag alone. It was predicted that the RoboFlag performance would relate to ‘Big Five’ personality traits. It was also expected that Neuroticism would relate to higher workload and stress, especially in more demanding task conditions. The results suggested that the influence of personality is generally limited, but may sometimes be important. Specifically, high Neuroticism individuals showed higher workload and stress in a team player condition, which may impose social as well as task demands.

Nursing Contributions to the Development of Palliative Care Programs

Demand for expert palliative and end-of-life care has far outpaced the availability of specialty trained healthcare providers and the unique programs required to address this need. Educating healthcare professionals is a first step in meeting this palliative and end-of-life call. This article describes a palliative and end-of-life care professional education course and discusses successful nurse-led team projects initiated after the course. Two-person interdisciplinary healthcare teams from nationwide cancer centers were trained to recognize and care for the special needs of the palliative and end-of-life patient population. Following a 3-day course, 199 teams returned to their institutions to implement customized goals for improving patient care. Long-term follow-up evaluation provided examples of teams with nurse members who were successful in initiating palliative care culture changes and in developing/fine tuning palliative and end-of-life care programs. The increasing need for new and expanding palliative and end-of-life programs continues. Nurses are especially adept in developing/monitoring new programs, at leading institutional culture changes, and in addressing palliative and end-of-life patient needs. Harnessing the expertise of professional nurses to lead new programs offers a practical strategy in addressing the many critical opportunities for palliative and end-of-life care.

Are two heads better than one? An experiment with novice share traders

We compare the performance of individual and two-person teams in an electronic share-trading task. Trader profits are negatively related to the amount of trader market activity and positively related to trader confidence. While we find no evidence of a difference in trading profit between individual and team traders, profit volatility is more sensitive to trading activity for teams. Team trading profit is positively related to attitude and negatively related to perceptions of the difficulty of the task, with overall team trading activity negatively related to views of team members’ abilities. JEL Code: D44, G14

The Role of Context and Team Play in Cross-Game Learning

One of the dividing lines between economics and psychology experiments is that economists favor abstract context while psychologists favor meaningful context. We investigate the effects of meaningful versus abstract context on cross-game learning in a signaling game experiment. With individual decision makers (1 times 1 games) meaningful context promotes positive cross-game learning in moving from a pooling equilibrium to a separating equilibrium, whereas abstract context yields negative cross-game learning. In 1 times 1 games a change in the (meaningful) context which accompanies “superficial” changes in the game stalls the learning process compared to an abstract context that does not change. In contrast, with two-person teams the same change in meaningful context has no disruptive effect on strategic play, with teams also having substantially higher levels of strategic play than the 1 times 1 games. We relate the effects of meaningful versus abstract context on cross-game learning to the psychology literature on deductive reasoning processes. (JEL C72, C92, D82, L12)

Deception and its Detection Under Synchronous and Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication

As part of an ongoing research program investigating features of computer-mediated communication (CMC) that affect deception and its detection, an experiment was conducted to test the impact of synchronicity on communication processes, credibility assessments, deception detection, and team performance. At issue is whether various forms of CMC enable or deter successful deception. Synchronous (real-time) CMC was hypothesized to foster more involvement and mutuality during communication, more credibility for team members, and hence less detection of deception when it was present. Team performance was hypothesized to suffer under deception due to deceivers capitalizing on synchronous communication to build their credibility. Two-person teams conducted a decision-making task in real time (synchronous) or over the course of several days (asynchronous). In half of the pairs, one party was asked to be deceptive. The results indicated that participants in the synchronous mode were more involved, perceived more mutuality, and viewed their partners in a more favorable light, than participants in the asynchronous mode. Deceivers portrayed themselves as somewhat more credible than truthtellers. However, they were not perceived as more persuasive than truth-tellers. Participants in the deceptive condition made poorer decisions than participants in the truthful condition. Implications for CMC and future study are discussed.

Testing the Value of Checklists in Code Inspections

Checklists are an important part of code and design inspections. Ideally, they aim to increase the number of faults found per inspection hour by highlighting known areas of previous failure. In practice, although some researchers have quantified checklists' benefits, the conclusions' statistical robustness hasn't been as well represented. The author subjects checklists' effectiveness to formal statistical testing, using data from 308 inspections by industrial engineers over a three-year period. The results showed no evidence that checklists significantly improved these inspections. Further analysis revealed that individual inspection performance varied by a factor of 10 in terms of faults found per unit time, and individuals found on average about 53 percent of the faults. Two-person teams found on average 76 percent of the faults.

Effects of Long Audio Communication Delays on Team Performance

Mediated communication in sociotechnical systems is quite common but the effects of long audio delays remain unexplored. In the current study, two-person teams (N=67) completed a modified NASA Multi-Attribute Task Battery with closed-loop audio communication delays 0 to 16 seconds in length. In addition to a joint fuel management task, each team member had simultaneous responsibility for either a compensatory tracking or a system monitoring task. As communication delay increased, performance on the joint task degraded in a cubic fashion while individual tasks were unaffected. These results imply that audio communication delay degrades team performance in a non-linear fashion while simultaneous tasks not requiring communication are unaffected. Implications for the design of sociotechnical systems with long audio communication delays are discussed.

Disseminating end-of-life Education to Cancer Centers: Overview of program and of evaluation

Systematic provision of compassionate end-of-life (EOL) care requires strategic training of health professionals. Disseminating EOL Education to Cancer Centers (DELEtCC) targeted education of interdisciplinary institutional teams. Competitively-selected two-person teams participated in a national three-day EOL conference. Nationally recognized faculty created and presented the curriculum. Project faculty supported teams over 18 months as they implemented EOL goals. Conference evaluations were very positive. Independent participant and administrative evaluations reported successful implementation of goals aimed an improving EOL care. DELEtCC disseminated education representing best EOL practices, and participants used this knowledge to create and implement goals aimed at improving EOL care.

Using brain-based measures to compose teams: How individual capabilities and team collaboration strategies jointly shape performance

Advances in understanding neural processes open the possibility of using brain-based measures to compose collaborative work teams. Neuroimaging studies have shown that individual differences in patterns of brain activity can predict differences in performance of specific tasks. We extended this finding by examining performance not simply by a single brain, but by pairs of brains. We used measures derived from brain-based studies to compose 100 two-person teams in which members’ roles were either congruent or incongruent with their individual abilities. The assessed abilities are rooted in the visual system, which comprises independent “spatial” and “object” subsystems. The team task required one member to navigate through a virtual maze (a spatial task) and the other to remember “tag” repetitions of complex “greebles” (an object-properties task). Teams in which members’ role assignments were congruent with their abilities performed better than incongruent teams and teams in which both members scored high on only one of the abilities. In addition, verbal collaboration enabled members of incongruent teams to overcome their compositional disadvantage but did not enhance the performance of congruent teams—and actually impaired performance in teams in which both members were adept in only one of the two necessary abilities. The findings show that knowledge about brain systems can not only be used to compose teams, but also provides insights into how teams can best perform.

Connectedness and Citizenship: Redefining Social Integration

Connectedness and Citizenship: Redefining Social Integration

Preparing professional staff to care for cancer survivors

Oncology health care professionals frequently lack the background to implement needed survivorship activities and follow-up care. The purpose of this project is to assist providers in the clarification and initiation of potentially durable changes in survivorship care by developing a health professional curriculum, recruiting participants, implementing the course, conducting course evaluation and following participants' defined goals over time. The curriculum was developed based on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine Report-From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor--Lost in Transition. Three concepts were used to structure the course: cancer survivorship quality of life, changing practice via performance improvement, and principles of adult education. Expert faculty designed and implemented the curriculum and teaching methods using adult learning principles and an interactive approach. Competitively-selected, two-person interdisciplinary teams for the first course (July 12-15, 2006, Pasadena, California) were selected based on stated interests, three projected goals, and letters of commitment from administrators. Participants represented 52 cancer care settings from 28 states. Teams included Nurses (48.1%), Social Workers (20.7%), Physicians (18.8%), Directors/Administrators (6.6%), Psychologists (2.8%), and others (3%). The institutional barriers identified by teams were lack of survivorship knowledge (94 %), financial constraints (61%), lack of administrative support (6%), and staff philosophy that excluded survivorship (15%). Evaluation of content from the first course was consistently positive. Dissemination of survivorship education for health care professionals stimulates participants to define and begin to implement goals for improving survivors' care. A training program such as the one described provides professional knowledge regarding survivorship that has the potential to facilitate change in the health care that cancer survivors receive thus ideally improving long term health and well being.

Cognitive diversity and team performance in a complex multiple task environment

This article examines the multiple effects of cognitive diversity in teams operating complex human-machine-systems. The study employed a PC-based multiple-task environment, called the Cabin Air Management System, which models a process control task in the operational context of a spacecraft's life support system. Two types of cognitive diversity were examined: system understanding and team specialization. System understanding referred to the depth of understanding team members were given during training (low-level procedure-oriented vs. high level knowledge-oriented training). Team specialization referred to the degree to which knowledge about system fault scenarios was distributed between team members (specialized vs. non-specialized). A total of 72 participants took part in the study. After having received 4.5 h of training on an individual basis, participants completed a 1-h experimental session, in which they worked in two-person teams on a series of fault scenarios of varying difficulty. Measures were taken of primary and secondary task performance, system intervention and information sampling strategies, system knowledge, subjective operator state, communication patterns and conflict. The results provided evidence for the benefits of cognitive diversity with regard to system understanding. This manifested itself in better primary task performance and more efficient manual system control. No advantages were found for cognitive diversity with regard to specialization. There was no effect of cognitive diversity on intra-team conflict, with conflict levels generally being very low. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the engineering of cognitive diversity in teams operating complex human-machine-systems.