Theories of Team Cognition: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

Cognitive processes in teams have been a valuable arena for team researchers to explore. Team cognition research advances and informs a variety of disciplines, including cognitive and social sciences, engineering, military science, organizational science, human factors, medicine, and communications. There has been a great deal of progress in the team cognition literature, yet the field is still in its early stages of maturity. There is much more to be gained from the field's insights and there is a need to unite the diverse array of scholarly ideas that permeate the field. This movement will serve to organize the research and ideas that have surfaced in the field, thereby making them more accessible to different disciplines while at the same time, motivating continued progress in the field. This book aims to be a step in this direction and acts as a forum for leading scholars to share their ideas, theories, models, and conceptions about what matters and where more attention is needed in the field of team cognition.

Eduardo Salas is University Trustee Chair and Pegasus Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and program director for the Human Systems Integration Research Department at UCF’s Institute for Simulation and Training. Salas is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (SIOP and Divisions 19, 21, and 49), the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. He was editor of Human Factors in 2000-2004. For 15 years, he was a senior research psychologist and head of the Training Technology Development Branch of NAVAIR-Orlando. Salas served as a principal investigator for numerous R&D programs focusing on teamwork, team training, simulation-based training, decision-making under stress, learning methodologies, and performance assessment. He helps organizations foster teamwork, design and implement team training strategies, facilitate training effectiveness, manage decision-making under stress, develop performance measurement tools, and design learning and simulation-based environments. Salas has coauthored more than 330 journal articles and book chapters and has co edited 20 books. He has served as an editorial board member for numerous journals and is an associate editor of the Journal of Applied Psychology. He received a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Old Dominion University in 1984.

Stephen M. Fiore, PhD is faculty with the University of Central Florida’s Cognitive Sciences Program in the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory at UCF’s Institute for Simulation and Training. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, Learning Research and Development Center. He maintains a multidisciplinary research interest that incorporates aspects of the cognitive, social, and computational sciences in the investigation of learning and performance in individuals and teams. He is co-Editor of recent volumes on Macrocognition in Teams (2008), Distributed Learning (2007), Team Cognition (2004), and he has co-authored over 100 scholarly publications in the area of learning, memory, and problem solving at the individual and the group level. As Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator he has helped to secure and manage approximately ＄15 Million in research funding from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Dr. Michael P. Letsky is currently Program Officer for the Collaboration and Knowledge Interoperability Program at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Arlington Virginia. He manages a research program of academic grants and innovative small business projects seeking to understand team cognition and team performance. He previously worked for the Army Research Institute of the Behavioral and Social Sciences where he developed their long range strategic research plan and also served on the Army Science Board on Highly Maneuverable Forces. Dr. Letsky’s education includes a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (Northeastern University), an MBA and DBA in Operations Research (George Washington University).