Assessing Team Situation Awareness in Simulated Military Missions

Abstract

We developed a measure of team situation awareness (SA) to capture team members' shared mental model of the team. The measure assesses the congruence among team members about what actions they were performing at salient events during a simulated mission. We used this measure in a research program investigating adaptive architectures for command and control (A2C2). As hypothesized, the measure of team SA was positively correlated with team performance and process measures in three A2C2 experiments in which it was used. The relationship between team SA and a teamwork measure that is comprised of such underlying team processes as coordination behavior and communication behavior supports the underlying premise of a link between team mental models and team SA. Team SA was negatively correlated with a measure of team workload, suggesting that increased levels of workload adversely affect team SA.