Introduction to the Emerging Cognitive Science of Distributed Human-Autonomy Teams

Teams are a fundamental aspect of life-from sports to business, to defense, to science, to education. While the cognitive sciences tend to focus on information processing within individuals, others have argued that teams are also capable of demonstrating cognitive capacities similar to humans, such as skill acquisition and forgetting (cf., Cooke, Gorman, Myers, & Duran, 2013; Fiore et al., 2010). As artificially intelligent and autonomous systems improve in their ability to learn, reason, interact, and coordinate with human teammates combined with the observation that teams can express cognitive capacities typically seen in individuals, a cognitive science of teams is emerging. Consequently, new questions are being asked about teams regarding teamness, trust, the introduction and effects of autonomous systems on teams, and how best to measure team behavior and phenomena. In this topic, four facets of human-autonomy team cognition are introduced with leaders in the field providing in-depth articles associated with one or more of the facets: (1) defining teams; (2) how trust is established, maintained, and repaired when broken; (3) autonomous systems operating as teammates; and (4) metrics for evaluating team cognition across communication, coordination, and performance. Teams are a fundamental aspect of life. The cognitive sciences have sought to understand and explain cognitive processes and capacities by focusing on the individual. The current topic focuses on facets of an emerging cognitive science of teams: how to define teams, trust within and across teams, artificially intelligent teammates, and how to effectively measure team processes.