ABSTRACT
Teams think. That is, they assess the situation, plan, solve problems, design, and make decisions as an integrated unit. We refer to these collaborative thinking activities as team cognition. Why is team cognition important? A growing number of tasks take place in the context of complex sociotechnical systems. The cognitive requirements associated with emergency response, software development, transportation, factory and power plant operation, military operations, medicine, and a variety of other tasks exceed the limits of individual cognition. Teams are a natural solution to this problem, and so the emphasis on teams in these domains is increasing.
