ABSTRACT
Team tasks such as air traffic control, emergency response, and military command and control can be characterized as cognitively complex and embedded in a sociotechnical environment. Recent works have expressed opposition to studying behavior and cognition apart from the natural context in which it occurs (e.g., Hutchins, 1995; Zsambok, 1997), and these have prompted the search for a new research paradigm that preserves the task richness and complexity of work domain, yet provides more experimental control than typical field settings. STEs (synthetic task environments), or “research tasks constructed by systematic abstraction from a corresponding real-world task” (Martin et al., 1998), offer a solution. The objective of STEs is to be able to reproduce behavior and cognitive processes associated with these complex settings in the laboratory, where some experimental control and measurement capabilities can be preserved. An STE is a task environment in which a number of different task scenarios can be simulated. Compared with simulations, STEs tend to be more task-centric (i.e., faithful to behavioral and cognitive dimensions of task) and less equipment-centric.
