Model for adaptive decision making behavior of distributed hierarchical teams under high temporal workload

Adaptive behaviors of distributed, hierarchical decision-making teams subjected to high temporal workload are not well understood. A systematic cognitive engineering study was conducted to develop a Hierarchical Decision-making Model (HDM) for investigating the decision-making behavior of distributed hierarchical teams and to instantiate it in a simulated air defense task through a seven-step cognitive engineering process. Theories of cognition, information processing, and team decision-making behavior embedded in the HDM framework guided selection of dependent measures that operationalized the cognitive capacities, ranging from low-level perception tasks to higher level cue-processing, of team members to perform the hierarchy of tasks required to make a decision. The hierarchy of measures was incorporated into a causal diagram and hypotheses were formulated concerning the effects of time pressure on team decision-making processes and performance. The hypotheses were tested, using three-person teams composed of Army ROTC Cadets, in a seven-week experiment of longitudinal design in which each of the teams was trained to a criterion level of proficiency. Following training, over a period of five weeks, teams performed the task in a series of 15-minute trial periods during which time pressure was increased. A team that failed to meet a criterion at a level of difficulty had the opportunity to adapt at that level to meet the criterion. Difficulty was increased until teams were no longer able to recover. Teams used significantly different adaptive cue-processing strategies and made dissimilar tradeoffs in subtask workload to maintain overall decision-making performance, but performance deteriorated significantly with increased time pressure. The Hierarchical Decision-making Model and the cognitive engineering process enabled the research team to make discriminations among the causal factors in adaptive team performance not supported by previously extant models. Findings were used to reengineer the human-computer interface. Additional research is recommended to determine how the reengineered human-computer interface will affect team performance on the simulated air defense task and to determine how the HDM generalizes to the general class of distributed, hierarchical team decision-making.