Critical decisions are made every day by teams of individuals who must coordinate their activities to achieve effectiveness. Researchers recently suggested that a shared mental model (SMM) among team members may help them to make successful decisions. Several avenues for developing SMMs in teams exist, one of which is planning. We explored the relationship between team planning, SMMs, and coordinated team decision making and performance. Results indicated that effective planning increased the SMM among team members, allowed them to utilize efficient communication strategies during high-workload conditions, and resulted in improved coordinated team performance. In addition, the communication strategy alone affected the degree of coordinated performance attained by teams during periods of increased workload. Implications of these results and team functioning are discussed. Actual or potential applications of this research include performance and training in settings that require interdependent actions among operators.

Multioperator tasks often require complex cognitive processing at the team level. Many team cognitive processes, such as situation assessment and coordination, are thought to rely on team knowledge. Team knowledge is multifaceted and comprises relatively generic knowledge in the form of team mental models and more specific team situation models. In this methodological review paper, we review recent efforts to measure team knowledge in the context of mapping specific methods onto features of targeted team knowledge. Team knowledge features include type, homogeneity versus heterogeneity, and rate of knowledge change. Measurement features include knowledge elicitation method, team metric, and aggregation method. When available, we highlight analytical conclusions or empirical data that support a connection between team knowledge and measurement method. In addition, we present empirical results concerning the relation between team knowledge and performance for each measurement method and identify research and methodological needs. Addressing issues surrounding the measurement of team knowledge is a prerequisite to understanding team cognition and its relation to team performance and to designing training programs or devices to facilitate team cognition.

The authors report an effort aimed at developing and evaluating measures of taskwork and teamwork team knowledge for teams in which members differ in knowledge backgrounds. These measures were used in a study with 36 teams to explore the cognitive underpinnings of team performance variations due to cross-training regime. The authors demonstrate that these measures are valid and provide team performance information that complements outcome and behavioral measures. Teams exposed to full cross-training acquired more taskwork and teamwork knowledge than control teams or teams exposed to a conceptual version of cross-training. Measures of team knowledge provide information regarding team task performance critical for system design and training programs.

Crew resource management (CRM) has been the most widely used instructional strategy to enhance teamwork skills within aviation. However, few studies have provided empirical evidence that this strategy results in increased use of teamwork behaviors. The current paper describes 2 evaluation studies of CRM training that were conducted with 96 naval aviators and followed a multiple assessment approach. Results indicated that highly experienced aviators benefited from the training, which focused on increasing the use of several critical teamwork skills. These rare evaluation data suggest that CRM training is a viable strategy for improving teamwork in the cockpit. Implications for team training are discussed.

Although the importance of team training has become widely recognized, research is needed to more clearly understand what instructional strategies actually lead to enhanced teamwork and performance. This research incorporates a theoretical framework, based on the work of J. A. Cannon-Bowers, S. I. Tannenbaum, E. Salas, and C. E. Volpe (1995), to guide the systematic development of training that targeted specific team competencies (i.e., knowledge, skills, and attitudes). The theoretically designed training was delivered to 42 male aviators from an undergraduate naval aviation community. A comprehensive evaluation of this training was conducted using a multiple-measurement approach. Results provide strong support for the effectiveness of this team training in improving critical team competencies.