A COMMENTARY ON "TEAM COGNITION AND EXPERT TEAMS: EMERGING INSIGHTS INTO PERFORMANCE FOR EXCEPTIONAL TEAMS"

This article offers a critical evaluation of the team cognition and performance literature and, in particular, the concepts, ideas, and research discussed by the authors contributing to this special issue. We begin by examining how some of the terms introduced have been defined previously and assess the appropriateness of and theoretical rationale for their use. Next, the concept of "sharedness" is considered. We specifically focus on the role of planning or plan sharing in becoming an "expert team." Following this, we discuss the relationship between those concepts introduced and performance. We pay particular attention to the underlying mechanisms responsible for superior performance, at both the individual and team level, with a special consideration given to understanding if and why this relationship is important. Finally, we consider the added value of adopting this approach and how the research on teams might be used in improving the approaches, methods, and paradigms currently adopted in sports science and beyond. Although we play devil's advocate throughout this commentary-primarily to offer a constructive introduction of this research to the sport science community and to provide the best feedback to the I/O community from the perspective of researchers from sport psychology and motor behavior-we assert that each field can benefit enormously from research collaborations and constructive debate on research topics held in common.