ABSTRACT
Macrocognition is an emerging field within the area of cognitive engineering that describes the way cognition occurs in naturalistic, or real-world, decision-making events (Cacciabue & Hollnagel, 1995). When studying macrocognition, the focus is on the mental activities that must be successfully accomplished to perform a task or achieve a goal (Klein et al., 2003). These cognitive functions are generally performed during collaborative team problem solving, where the emphasis is on building new knowledge. Macrocognition is differentiated from microcognition in several ways. Microcognition places an emphasis on experimental control of tasks and theoretical accounts of specific phenomena, while macrocognition emphasizes cognition and performance under actual working conditions. Macrocognitive phenomena generally occur over longer time periods, have ill-defined goals, and do not focus on the basic cognitive functions of microcognition (e.g., attention and memory). Macrocognition encompasses cognitive processes involved in detecting problems, developing and sharing situation awareness, generating options, using analogs, mentally simulating courses of action, planning and replanning, maintaining vigilance, and assessing risk (Klein et al., 2003). Several groups of researchers maintain that research on macrocognition is needed to better understand the cognitive functions employed by teams when they collaborate to solve challenging, information-rich, time-compressed problems (Klein et al., 2003; Fiore, Smith, & Letsky, 2008; Letsky & Warner, 2008). This understanding can then be applied to improve cognitive engineering of future systems.
