Dunbar Terri A, Gorman Jamie C
Systems Psychology Laboratory, School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2020 Sep 8;14:332. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00332. eCollection 2020.
Throughout training and team performance, teams may be assessed based on their communication patterns to identify which behaviors contributed to the team's performance; however, this process of establishing meaning in communication is burdensome and time consuming despite the low monetary cost. A current topic in team research is developing covert measures, which are easier to analyze in real-time, to identify team processes as they occur during team performance; however, little is known about how overt and covert measures of team process relate to one another. In this study, we investigated the relationship between overt (communication) and covert (neural) measures of team process by manipulating the interaction partner (participant or experimenter) team members worked with and the type of task (decision-making or action-based) teams performed to assess their effects on team neural synchronization (measured as neurodynamic entropy) and communication (measured as both flow and content). The results indicated that the type of task affected how the teams structured their communication but had unpredictable effects on the neural synchronization of the team when averaged across the task session. The interaction partner did not affect team neural synchronization when averaged. However, there were significant relationships when communication and neural processes were examined over time between the neurodynamic entropy and the communication flow time series due to both the type of task and the interaction partner. Specifically, significant relationships across time were observed when participants were interacting with the other participant, during the second task trial, and across different regions of the cortex depending on the type of task being performed. The findings from the time series analyses suggest that factors that are previously known to affect communication (interaction partner and task type) also structure the relationship between team communication and neural synchronization-cross-level effects-but only when examined across time. Future research should consider these factors when developing new conceptualizations of team process measurement for measuring team performance over time.
在整个训练和团队表现过程中，可以根据团队的沟通模式进行评估，以确定哪些行为对团队表现有贡献；然而，尽管金钱成本较低，但在沟通中确立意义的这个过程既繁琐又耗时。团队研究中的一个当前话题是开发隐蔽测量方法，这种方法更易于实时分析，以便在团队表现过程中识别团队过程；然而，对于团队过程的公开和隐蔽测量方法之间如何相互关联，人们知之甚少。在本研究中，我们通过操纵团队成员与之合作的互动伙伴（参与者或实验者）以及团队执行的任务类型（决策或基于行动）来研究团队过程的公开（沟通）和隐蔽（神经）测量方法之间的关系，以评估它们对团队神经同步（以神经动力学熵衡量）和沟通（以流畅性和内容衡量）的影响。结果表明，任务类型会影响团队组织沟通的方式，但在整个任务过程中进行平均时，对团队的神经同步有不可预测的影响。平均而言，互动伙伴不会影响团队神经同步。然而，由于任务类型和互动伙伴的原因，在对神经动力学熵和沟通流畅性时间序列进行随时间的沟通和神经过程检查时，存在显著关系。具体而言，当参与者与另一名参与者互动时、在第二个任务试验期间以及根据执行的任务类型在不同的皮层区域，随时间观察到了显著关系。时间序列分析的结果表明，先前已知会影响沟通的因素（互动伙伴和任务类型）也构建了团队沟通与神经同步之间的关系——跨层次效应——但仅在随时间检查时才会如此。未来的研究在开发用于随时间测量团队表现的团队过程测量的新概念时应考虑这些因素。
