Improving Team Cognitive Readiness through the Multi-Agent System for Targeting Team Mental Models (MAST-TMM)

Navy command and control (C2) personnel must make decisions about events and activities they are not able to directly perceive. They must interpret information represented on an interface or over a communication device into a mental picture of the relevant environment - a mental model of the current situation. Sustaining high levels of team performance in this environment is difficult. A tool to predict and improve team cognitive readiness in this domain could pay dividends in improving performance in a demanding environment. SA Technologies proposes to develop a comprehensive, theoretically derived multi-agent system for targeting Team Mental Models (MAST-TMM). The proposed research will develop a cognitive readiness assessment tool that provides a comprehensive assessment of TMM to predict team performance in a variety of operational environments, and identify areas of team convergence and divergence that allows prescriptive action. We will develop a cognitive readiness assessment system that provides a comprehensive assessment of TMM by integrating measures of both explicit and tacit knowledge structures, team member skills and abilities, and team member attitudes, combining these elements using fuzzy cognitive modeling in a multi-agent method, and including periodic model updating using automated communication analysis.