Abstract
In many situations, teams of experts are made responsible to react accurately and swiftly to critical situations. Examples are command-and-control teams during crisis-situations, management teams, or flight crews. Given the evident importance of effective teamwork in these circumstances, there is a pressing need to understand behaviors and abilities of teams when solving problems that are time-compressed and high-stake, supported by complex, ambiguous data.
What did remain mostly out of sight in this line of research, is the specific influence of stress. This does not mean that 'pressure' is not acknowledged, but it is mainly considered a contextual issue, and it is seldom questioned how stress impacts the processes studied. Only actual and continuous measurement of stress in these situations can provide insight in the dynamics of stress within these teams and its effect on information processing.
The current project proposal forwards research that applies the measurement of physiological markers of stress via wearable sensors in the context of teamwork. This allows questioning the effect of dynamics of stress on information processing in teams under pressure.
It does so by applying both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to study the interrelationship between stress, as measured through Electrodermal Activity, and information-processing. We start with rigorous work under controlled conditions, and conduct thereafter studies in ecological valid team-settings.
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