ABSTRACT
So far, the ideas explored in the book have been from the perspective of an individual operator. The purpose of this chapter is to apply Neisser’s (1976) perceptual cycle model (PCM) to a team activity and explore how the approach translates. The PCM has traditionally been concerned with the individual level of analysis; however, this is not as relevant in the study of modern, complex socio-technical systems that are characterised by teamwork. By way of a case study method, the chapter investigates decision-making processes of a search and rescue (SAR) helicopter team when dealing with a critical incident. Traditional perceptual cycle representations and novel network-based representations are compared and contrasted for different phases of the critical incident. A distributed cognition perspective of the PCM applied to SAR team decision-making requires a shift from the traditional notion of the PCM that focuses on the individual to one that focuses on the team. The network approach has been successfully applied to investigate distributed cognition in a variety of domains including energy distribution (Salmon et al., 2008), air traffic control (Walker et al., 2010), submariner decision-making (Stanton, 2014) and driving (Salmon et al., 2014). However, traditional network analysis does not explicitly consider the interaction between a person and the world and how this impacts decision-making.
