ABSTRACT
Newell and Simon (1972) examined the relation between intuition and shared mental models. While studying differences between expert and nov ice chess players, they found a strong correlation between the quality of mental models and the level of proficiency. This expertise was dependent on content-specific knowledge about the task; however, an equally important as pect was the expert's ability to access and use the knowledge in ways that were more efficient than that of the novice. Simon (1983) described this effi ciency in accessing and using the knowledge in mental models as intuition. If shared mental models can be considered a group-level representation of mental models, then the research associating intuition with highly developed mental models can be extrapolated to explain shared mental models as the construct by which teams make intuitive decisions.
