Towards the Development of Quantitative Descriptions of the Neurodynamic Rhythms and Organizations of Teams

摘要

The goal was to begin developing quantitative approaches for modeling the neurodynamicrhythms and organizations of teams. Raw EEG signals from team members were first transformed into estimatesof cognitive workload and transformed again into neurodynamics symbols showing the second-bysecondworkload of each individual as well as the team. Periods of increased or decreased symbol organizationin the data streams were hypothesized to reflect periods of increased or decreased organization aroundthe cognitive construct of workload. These segments were identified by a moving average smoothing ofthe Shannon entropy over the length of the performance and then related to team speech, actions and teamresponses to endogeneous and exogeneous task changes. Two-person teams in an unscripted map navigationtask developed a common, dominant coordination dynamic for workload whose rhythm was disruptedby exogeneous changes to the task. The entropy fluctuations during these disruptions differed in magnitudeand duration within and across performances and were associated with qualitative and quantitative changesin team organization. Similar results were obtained with three and six person teams on other complextasks. These results indicate that neurodynamic measures may be reliable, sensitive and valid indicators ofthe changing neurodynamics of teams around which standardized quantitative models can be developed.