COMPATIBILITY IN TEAM COGNITION: MOVING BEYOND SIMILARITY

Abstract

Team cognition is a well-recognized antecedent of team processes and performance. Compatibility of mental representations is critical to many theoretical frameworks and approaches to team cognition. However, compatibility is often relegated to an unexplored assumption or assumed to be sufficiently captured by the similarity or overlap of mental representations. This paper extends the Team-Task Representation (TTR) framework proposed by Strauss (2022) to (1) define and (2) operationalize compatibility, (3) proposes a process through which compatibility relates to team processes and performance, and (4) provide empirical tests of these relationships. A study was conducted using an online, cooperative, gamified task to test the relationship between TTR compatibility and coordination and the extent to which coordination mediated the relationship between compatibility and performance. Compatibility did not predict coordination and coordination was not found to mediate the relationship between compatibility and performance. Conclusions and consequences for the field of team cognition are discussed.