Emergence of Shared Mental Models During Distributed Teamwork: Integration of Distributed Cognition Traces

Team decision-making becomes more complex when problem specifications and availability of resources change over time. Time constraints may also amplify complexity. Ad hoc team response to this type of change can be studied over time by analyzing distributed cognitive traces and emergence of resource coordination response patterns during the team decision process. Knowledge of team work style patterns gained through such analysis provides criteria for design of adaptive collaborative work systems and development of more effective use patterns. 1 Motivation for the Study Research efforts have focused variously on individually held abstract concepts becoming shared (Cannon-Bowers & Salas, 2001; Langan-Fox, Code, Langfield-Smith, 2000; Levesque, Wilson, & Wholey, 2001) and distributed cognition as an approach to group problem solving (Zhang, 1998). A framework has been suggested for use of distributed cognition as a way to describe interaction (Wright, Fields, & Harrison, 2000). However, I know of no other work attempting to demonstrate, as is the case here, how ad hoc coordination of resources, supervised by a team’s emergent shared mental model, is facilitated by synthesis of emergent distributed cognitive traces. The post-interaction residue left throughout a work or learning environment is a set of cognitive fragments. A transcript of the interaction that occurred over a period of time makes up a set of traces. Traces, in the form of digital artifacts, are footprints that define the path of interaction and resource coordination taken by a team. The emergence of patterns can be tracked over time as teams structure a decision model in response to changing requirements, complexity, time constraints, and availability of resources. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how distributed cognitive traces stored in environmental artifacts are joined through discourse to form sufficient shared cognition to negotiate production of a satisfactory decision model.