Simulation of Three-person Cooperation - Effect of Mutual Beliefs on Team Performance

Many human factor studies have explored the cognitive and behavioral factors that affect team performance by verbal protocol analysis and behavioral analysis. However, since the measurements used in these studies focused only on observable and recordable data, there is a fundamental limitation for understanding cognitive mechanisms behind those data. Computer simulation is an alternative method for exploring the cognitive aspects of human factors in team cooperation. In our previous study, therefore we developed an agent-based simulation of team cooperation using a team cognition model based on the concept of mutual beliefs and investigated how mutual beliefs affect better team performance. While the previous study modeled and focused only on a two-person team, the actual team in the real world often consists of three or more people, where more complicated cognitive processes are required than those in two-person cooperation. In this study, we developed an agent-based simulation of three-person team cooperation, employing the extended team cognition model considering mutual beliefs and mental subgrouping. This extended model describes cognitive processes in a team of three or larger with three different layers namely self-cognition, direct belief, and projected belief. We applied this model and simulation to the cooperative diagnosis problem of car failures and observed how a team collaboratively collects information on car parts, shares with other members, and identifies broken car parts. The results showed that the teams could share information effectively and identify the correct failures. The results also suggested that the communication generated by the mutual beliefs worked effectively and enhanced the team performance. We believe that our simulation is a promising method to compensate for the limitations of conventional human factor methods and explore cognitive aspects of team cooperation.