This paper describes how meaning can be extracted from large-scale dynamical data to make inferences about teamwork that are useful in both the theoretical and practical sense. The dynamics of an anesthesiology team are viewed from the perspectives of: 1) changes in the team’s neurodynamic organizations with large and small changes in the task; 2) how team member’s neurodynamics contribute to team neurodynamics; 3) the relationships between task events, heart-rate and neural dynamic organizations; 4) the linkages between speech flow, team and team member neurodynamics and topic discussions during Debriefing; and, 5) the micro-scale neural dynamics reflecting the involvement of the parietal lobes and gamma frequencies. These examples show how different sources of team data can contribute to multi-modal understandings of individual and teams dynamics that span micro and macro scales of teamwork.
We explored the possible linkages between expert observational ratings of team performance and the fluctuating neurodynamics of healthcare and submarine navigation teams while they conducted realistic training in natural settings. Second-by-second symbolic representations were created of team member’s electroencephalographic (EEG) power across the 1-40 Hz EEG spectrum, and quantitative estimates of the changing dynamics were calculated from the Shannon entropy of the data streams. Significant correlations were seen between the symbol streams entropy levels and ratings of team performance by observers using TeamSTEPPS® (healthcare), or Submarine Team Behavior Toolkit (submarine teams) rubrics. These results suggest that the frequency, magnitude, and / or durations of the teams’ neurodynamic fluctuations might reflect performance aspects detected by expert raters.
The information within the neurodynamic data streams of teams engaged in naturalistic decision making was separated into information unique to each team member, the information shared by two or more team members, and team-specific information related to interactions with the task and team members. Most of the team information consisted of the information contained in an individual’s neurodynamic data stream. The information in an individual’s data stream that was shared with another team member was highly variable being 1-60% of the total information in another person’s data stream. From the shared, individual, and team information it becomes possible to assign quantitative values to both the neurodynamics of each team member during the task, as well as the interactions among the members of the team.
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