Understanding the Impact of Induced Stress on Team Coordination Strategy in Multi-user Environments.

Abstract

Managing air traffic control, medical emergencies and multi-robot systems are prime cases where human teams have to work on complex tasks. In such cases, these teams are continuously working under stress induced by instability, complexity and time pressure. The success of such teams is primarily driven by effective team coordination. The objective of this study is to understand the impact of induced stress on human team coordination strategy. In this study, two online tasks were designed to induce stress in participants, one in single-user and the other in multi-user collaborative environments, measuring individual and collaborative teamwork performances respectively. Both experiments were conducted under induced time pressure and auditory distraction. Our analysis showed that team members prefer to switch between different strategies and thus, the coordination shifts from explicit to implicit coordination. However, in the single-user environment, the participant's performance was influenced by their competitor's performance, regardless of the participant's abilities. Future research will determine how these effects interact with physiological signals.