Team Cognition and Reflective Functioning: A Review and Search for Synergy

摘要

Background: Reflective functioning has roots in developmental-clinical psychology and refers to an individual's capacity to understand one's own and others' social and cooperative behaviors in terms of mental states. Team cognition has roots in socialorganizational psychology and refers to organized cognitive structures that allow team members who interact with each other to share, store, and retrieve individual and collective knowledge. These theories emerged in separate silos despite the potential conceptual overlap. The goal of this article is to examine if the theories of reflective functioning and team cognition can inform each other's research and practice. Method: This article describes the concepts of reflective functioning and team cognition, and also selectively reviews some of the research by focusing on metaanalyses and some key studies in each domain. Results: Research indicates that team cognition is related to team processes and team performance. Research also indicates that deficits in reflective functioning are related to psychopathology and to poorer psychological treatment outcomes including in group therapy. Team reflexivity, a team cognition function, may be hampered in the context of prementalizing reflective capacity of team members. And team psychological safety bears a striking resemblance to the reflective functioning concept of epistemic trust. Conclusion: Research and theory of reflective functioning, a clinical psychology construct, may be advanced by considering it also as an emergent property of groups and teams. Conversely, research on team cognition, a social/organizational construct, may move forward by considering how it is affected by individuals' capacities for reflective functioning and team composition along this dimension.