ABSTRACT
According to the dynamical systems approach to team cognition, teams are cognitive systems whose properties develop or change over time through a set of interacting components. From this perspective, team cognition is embodied in the dynamics of team member interaction across behavioral, communicative, physical, and physiological levels of analysis. Dynamical properties of team cognition are constrained by the team’s goal and task, as well as the individual properties of the team members (e.g., their capabilities, limitations, and roles). In this chapter we highlight how the dynamical systems approach (theory, models, and metrics) to team cognition offers researchers much in the form of predicting future team states and novel forms of assessment and training. Our goal in highlighting this approach is to provide the reader with an understanding of how they can apply concepts from dynamical systems to team cognition, identify regularities in system dynamics across different work domains (command and control, collaborative problem solving, healthcare, and human-autonomy teams), and incorporate methods from dynamical systems approaches into their own research. To conclude the chapter, we discuss current limitations and future directions for team dynamics research, including how to apply these methods to understand the development of team cognition in real time and possible areas for software development.
