scholarly journals Approaches for assessing communication in human-autonomy teams

Author(s):  
Anthony L. Baker ◽  
Sean M. Fitzhugh ◽  
Lixiao Huang ◽  
Daniel E. Forster ◽  
Angelique Scharine ◽  
...  

AbstractEvaluation of team communication can provide critical insights into team dynamics, cohesion, trust, and performance on joint tasks. Although many communication-based measures have been tested and validated for human teams, this review article extends this research by identifying key approaches specific to human-autonomy teams. It is not possible to identify all approaches for all situations, though the following seem to generalize and support multi-size teams and a variety of military operations. Therefore, this article will outline several key approaches to assessing communication, associated data requirements, example applications, verification of methods through HAT use cases, and lessons learned, where applicable. Some approaches are based on the structure of team communication; others draw from dynamical systems theory to consider perspectives across different timescales; other approaches leverage features of team members’ voices or facial expressions to detect emotional states that can provide windows into other workings of the team; still others consider the content of communication to produce insights. Taken together, these approaches comprise a varied toolkit for deriving critical information about how team interactions affect, and are affected by, coordination, trust, cohesion, and performance outcomes. Future research directions describe four critical areas for further study of communication in human-autonomy teams.

Author(s):  
Serghei Musaji ◽  
Julio De Castro

Despite the continuous interest in studying entrepreneurial teams, the relationship between team composition and, particularly, team diversity and performance remains fertile ground for active debate. Taking roots in the knowledge-based view and organizational learning literatures, this chapter argues that performance in entrepreneurial teams is contingent on (a) the overlap between team members’ knowledge/competences and the content of the performed tasks, (b) the duplication of the team members’ knowledge in the areas with that content, (c) the nature of tasks (exploration or exploitation), (d) the team’s flexibility to adapt to changes in the content and nature of those tasks, and (e) the rate of environmental change. Because an important source of ambiguity in the understanding of how team diversity and performance are linked ties to issues of how team diversity is conceptualized and operationalized, the chapter also proposes a new way of looking at diversity in future research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-65
Author(s):  

It is the position of American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) that all inpatient interdisciplinary teams include a diabetes educator to lead or support improvement efforts that affect patients hospitalized with diabetes or hyperglycemia. This not only encompasses patient and family education but education of interdisciplinary team members and achievement of diabetes-related organizational quality metrics and performance outcomes.


Author(s):  
Anthony L. Baker ◽  
Sean M. Fitzhugh ◽  
Daniel E. Forster ◽  
Kristin E. Schaefer

The development of more effective human-autonomy teaming (HAT) will depend on the availability of validated measures of their performance. Communication provides a critical window into a team’s interactions, states, and performance, but much remains to be learned about how to successfully carry over communication measures from the human teaming context to the HAT context. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the implementation of three communication assessment methodologies used for two Wingman Joint Capabilities Technology Demonstration field experiments. These field experiments involved Soldiers and Marines maneuvering vehicles and engaging in live-fire target gunnery, all with the assistance of intelligent autonomous systems. Crew communication data were analyzed using aggregate communication flow, relational event models, and linguistic similarity. We discuss how the assessments were implemented, what they revealed about the teaming between humans and autonomy, and lessons learned for future implementation of communication measurement approaches in the HAT context.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (23-24) ◽  
pp. 4817-4837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nkiru Nnawulezi ◽  
Cris M. Sullivan ◽  
Suzanne Marcus ◽  
Latoya Young ◽  
Margaret Hacskaylo

The choice of research design affects not only internal and external validity but ecological validity as well. Ecological validity refers to the extent to which data are based in and relevant to real-world settings. One way for researchers to maximize the likelihood of achieving ecological validity is to design studies with community partners that use participatory approaches. Engaging deeply with community partners in determining what to study, how to measure constructs of interest, interpreting results, and using findings to create change is one means of conducting research that is likely to produce findings that are meaningful to communities. Conducting in-depth, participatory research within agencies providing crisis supports to individuals who have experienced trauma creates an additional level of complexity in the research process. This article presents a case example of how academic researchers and staff members of a nonprofit organization working with survivors of intimate partner violence collaborated on an evaluation of the community partner agency. As part of this process, the team members had to be continually aware of and responsive to the nature of crisis-focused work. We provide a reflexive account of the lessons learned and recommendations for future research.


Author(s):  
Xian-Xun Yuan ◽  
Iliya Nemtsov

Built upon a seven-year local calibration study of Ontario’s flexible pavements, this paper provides a summary of the calibration results and design impact and, more importantly, shares the experience and lessons learned from the process. The best results have been achieved on the local calibration of the rutting, bottom-up fatigue cracking, and international roughness index (IRI) distress models minimizing the residual sum of squares (RSS) while maintaining the average bias at zero. Significant efforts have been made to calibrate the other distress models with limited success. A design impact study found that local calibration of the rutting models was very important, whereas the alligator fatigue cracking did not usually govern the design in Ontario, although the global model was found to under-predict the cracking damage. The performance of the calibrated IRI model in the design of heavy traffic freeways for both reconstructed and rehabilitated sections was unsatisfactory and needs further study. The paper also presents several open questions for future research. These include the handling of section-length effects of observed cracking data, the determination of initial IRI, the updating of standard deviation functions and the overall reliability models, and the prioritization of pavement research under the new paradigm of the Mechanistic–Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG).


2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 429-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gergana Markova ◽  
John T. Perry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate interactions among members of self-managed teams (SMTs). The authors were interested in how leader emergence, group potency, and opinion compliance were related to team cohesion and member well-being. Design/methodology/approach – In a simulated business environment, the authors surveyed 236 students working in 54 SMTs. Participants reported their interactions and experiences at several points of time during class. Individual responses about team cohesion and group potency were aggregated for the purposes of the analysis. Findings – The paper found that leader emergence was associated with reduced cohesion among members and diminished individual well-being. Group potency was modestly associated with better cohesion among team members. Participants of more cohesive groups reported higher individual well-being. Opposite to the predictions, opinion compliance was not significantly related to individual well-being. Research limitations/implications – Within the limitations of the study design, the results suggest that leader emergence may have adverse effect on team interactions. Future research should investigate the positive and negative implications of an emerging leader in SMTs. Practical implications – The broad application of SMTs in organizations necessitates a critical examination of team dynamics and individual experiences of members. Along with team productivity, managers should consider the effects of team interactions on employees’ well-being. Employees who are drawn to more discretionary work such as SMTs may not favor leader emergence. Originality/value – The findings suggest that leader emergence may have negative implications for other team members and the overall team functioning.


Author(s):  
Victoria Sanderson ◽  
Amanda Vandyk ◽  
Jean Daniel Jacob ◽  
Ian D. Graham

Engaging knowledge users (KUs) as research team members throughout the research process helps generate relevant knowledge and may improve uptake of research results. The purpose of this article is to describe how an integrated knowledge translation (iKT) approach was embedded within a master’s thesis project comprising a mixed-methods systematic review. KUs were engaged in four distinct phases of the systematic review process, including (1) proposal development; (2) development of the research question and approach; (3) creation of an advisory panel; and (4) an end of study meeting to interpret findings and plan dissemination of findings. The extent of each KU’s engagement on the research team fluctuated during the study. Challenges included maintaining the same KUs throughout the project and maintaining the scope of the project to align with a master’s thesis. Our suggestions for optimizing graduate student iKT projects include having regular team meetings and periodically checking in with team members to encourage reflection on overall engagement and progress of the project. Overall, KUs helped create a research project designed to address their needs and provided input on how results might translate into implications for clinical practice, education, academic policy, and future research within their respective contexts.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob J Keech ◽  
Sheina Orbell ◽  
Martin S Hagger ◽  
Frances O'Callaghan ◽  
Kyra Hamilton

Introduction: Beliefs about the consequences of stress, stress mindsets, are associated with health and performance outcomes under stress. This article reports the development and examination of the psychometric properties of a measure of stress mindset: The Stress Control Mindset Measure (SCMM). The measure is consistent with theory on mindsets about self-attributes and conceptualizes stress mindset as the extent to which individuals endorse beliefs that stress can be enhancing. Methods: The study adopted a correlational cross-sectional survey design in two student samples. Undergraduate students from an Australian university (Sample 1, N = 218) and a UK university (Sample 2, N = 214) completed the SCMM and measures of health and wellbeing outcomes. Results: Confirmatory factor analyses supported a four-factor structure and strict measurement invariance across samples (ΔCFI < .01). Reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and concurrent validity of the overall SCMM was supported in both samples. Incremental validity was supported for most outcomes, accounting for significantly more variance (between 2.2% and 5.9%) in health and wellbeing outcomes than an existing measure. Conclusions: Current data provide preliminary support for the SCMM as a reliable and valid measure with good psychometric properties and theoretically consistent relations with health outcomes under stress. Findings provide initial evidence supporting the potential utility of the SCMM in future research examining relations between stress mindsets and health and performance outcomes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-251
Author(s):  
Hayley M. Trainer ◽  
Justin M. Jones ◽  
Jacob G. Pendergraft ◽  
Cynthia K. Maupin ◽  
Dorothy R. Carter

Driven by views of teams as dynamic systems with permeable boundaries, scholars are increasingly seeking to better understand how team membership changes (i.e., team members joining and/or leaving) shape the functioning and performance of organizational teams. However, empirical studies of team membership change appear to be progressing in three largely independent directions as researchers consider: (a) how newcomers impact and are impacted by the teams they join; (b) how teams adapt to member departures; or (c) how teams function under conditions of high membership fluidity, with little theoretical integration or consensus across these three areas. To accelerate an integrative stream of research on team membership change, we advance a conceptual framework which depicts each team membership change as a discrete team-level “event” which shapes team functioning to the extent to which it is “novel,” “disruptive,” and “critical” for the team. We use this framework to guide our review and synthesis of empirical studies of team membership change published over the past 20 years. Our review reveals numerous factors, across conceptual levels of the organization, that determine the strength (i.e., novelty, disruptiveness, criticality) of a team membership change event and, consequently, its impact on team functioning and performance. In closing, we provide propositions for future research that integrate a multilevel, event-based perspective of team membership change and demonstrate how team membership change events may impact organizational systems over time and across levels of observation.


Author(s):  
Craig J. Johnson ◽  
Mustafa Demir ◽  
Nathan J. McNeese ◽  
Jamie C. Gorman ◽  
Alexandra T. Wolff ◽  
...  

Objective This work examines two human–autonomy team (HAT) training approaches that target communication and trust calibration to improve team effectiveness under degraded conditions. Background Human–autonomy teaming presents challenges to teamwork, some of which may be addressed through training. Factors vital to HAT performance include communication and calibrated trust. Method Thirty teams of three, including one confederate acting as an autonomous agent, received either entrainment-based coordination training, trust calibration training, or control training before executing a series of missions operating a simulated remotely piloted aircraft. Automation and autonomy failures simulating degraded conditions were injected during missions, and measures of team communication, trust, and task efficiency were collected. Results Teams receiving coordination training had higher communication anticipation ratios, took photos of targets faster, and overcame more autonomy failures. Although autonomy failures were introduced in all conditions, teams receiving the calibration training reported that their overall trust in the agent was more robust over time. However, they did not perform better than the control condition. Conclusions Training based on entrainment of communications, wherein introduction of timely information exchange through one team member has lasting effects throughout the team, was positively associated with improvements in HAT communications and performance under degraded conditions. Training that emphasized the shortcomings of the autonomous agent appeared to calibrate expectations and maintain trust. Applications Team training that includes an autonomous agent that models effective information exchange may positively impact team communication and coordination. Training that emphasizes the limitations of an autonomous agent may help calibrate trust.


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