Team Mental Model Similarity,Quality And Their Relationship With Diagnostic Task Performance

In complex industrial systems like nuclear power plants,team members need to cooperate with each other to keep systems functioning well.When an accident occurs,they have to find the cause of the accident,make decisions and take actions efficiently to make the system function well again.Mental model is the organized knowledge structures that help people interact with the environment.A team's mental model can be integrated into mental model similarity,which describes the similarity of team members' mental models,and mental model quality,which describes the extent to which team members' mental models reflect real environment.Team mental model similarity and quality might influence team performance.Moreover,mental model type that influences team performance varies with task type.In this study,six types of team mental models are defined based on the existing literature and characteristics of diagnostic tasks in a nuclear power plant,including mental model on equipment operation principle,on correlation among parameters,on relationship between parameters and accidents,on each parameters' importance during monitoring,on each parameters' importance for diagnosis and on each parameters' severity of deterioration.Their measurement methods are then proposed.To examine the relationship of team mental model similarity and quality with diagnostic performance,decision-making process,communication process in diagnostic tasks in a nuclear power plant,an experiment was conducted with 48 participants(24 teams).Every team completed two diagnostic tasks in a simulated nuclear power plant experimental platform.The data collected included six types of mental models and data of diagnostic performance,decision-making process,and communication process.The result shows that there was some significant positive correlations between team mental model similarity/quality measures and team performance variables.Mental model similarity on equipment operation principle,mental model similarity and quality on relationship between parameters and accidents,mental model similarity and quality on each parameters' importance for diagnosis had positive correlation with diagnostic performance.Mental model similarity and quality on relationship between parameters and accidents,mental model similarity and quality on each parameters' importance for diagnosis,mental model quality on each parameters' severity of deterioration had positive correlation with score of decision-making process.Mental model similarity on relationship between parameters and accidents had positive correlation with score of communication process.Communication process was measured from three dimensions: score of key information during communication,score of communication smoothness and score of expression.Mental model similarity and quality on relationship between parameters and accidents,mental model similarity and quality on each parameters' importance for diagnosis,mental model quality on each parameters' severity of deterioration were found to have positive correlation with score of key information during communication.No significant results were found on score of communication smoothness and score of expression.