Genotype and phenotype schemata and their role in distributed situation awareness in collaborative systems

Abstract

Situation awareness (SA) is a critical commodity for teams working in complex systems. This article builds on existing schema theory to postulate an explanation of how teams develop and maintain SA during collaborative activities. The perceptual-action cycle approach and schema theory are used to formulate a model of distributed SA. Extracts from a case study undertaken in the UK energy distribution domain are used to demonstrate the concept of genotype and phenotype schemata as distributed SA. The sub-concepts of compatible and transactive SA are also outlined and explored via the case study. The differences between this perspective and the more commonly cited 'shared SA' perspective is articulated. In conclusion, whilst the ideas presented in this article are quite different to those expressed by the dominant models of individual and team SA presented in the literature, it is contended that they are more appropriate for the study of SA in collaborative environments.

How to recognise a kick: A cognitive task analysis of drillers’ situation awareness during well operations

“…Deepwater Horizon; Roberts et al, 2015b;Texas City;Khan & Amyotte, 2007; explosion at the chemical production facility West Virginia Institute, Naderpour, Nazir & Lou, 2015). A range of SA theories has been proposed (e.g., Smith and Hancock, 1995;Stanton, Salmon, Walker & Jenkins, 2009;Wickens, 2002). Despite a continuing theoretical debate on SA (e.g.…”

“…The ACTA provisionally suggests that Endsley's (1995) (Endsley & Jones, 2011;Salas, Prince, Baker & Shrestha, 1995), as well as the more recent socio-technical theory of distributed situation awareness (Stanton et al, 2009;). Given that there is a continuing debate over the concept of SA (see special issues of Cognition Technology & Work (2015) and Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making (2015)) and whether SA models (e.g.…”

The impact of non-technical issues on decision-making by coal mining incident management teams

“…However, as with the problems that arose with assuming decision-making was a methodical and analytical process, researchers struggled to explain how people could make rapid predictions [195,194]. An example of this is a fire fighter who knows he needs to get out of a room and escapes just in time before it collapses, yet he cannot articulate why he knew he must get out.…”

“…Therefore, the problems generally associated with poor situation-awareness are those that limit an individual's cognitive capacity such as being tired or stressed [191]. Situation-awareness has primarily been assumed to exist solely in the head of the observer [190] without acknowledgement of the observer-world interaction that is prescribed by systems engineering theorists [194,195].…”

“…Level 2 is where the observer makes sense of the data using the interaction of existing schemata with knowledge and data [195,194]. Level 3 is about predicting how the situation is likely to develop and requires higher levels of cognitive processing than the preceding levels.…”