Human error modeling in computer generated forces: A team coordination analysis tool

Understanding interactions among team members is critical for developing effective team-level training systems and for designing responsive decision support technologies. Communications among team members under exposure to various stressors is a research area that has received substantial experimental attention. Sustained access to human subjects, though, poses problems given the great demands on skilled practitioners' time. An approach to reducing reliance on human subjects while creating flexible research opportunities is to create a suite of human behavioral models, each representing a member of a team, and expose those models to various sources of stress in order to observe the response of each model and the overall patterns of team behavior. We present results of a preliminary effort in adopting this approach using Team Interaction Analysis with Reusable Agents (TIARA), an implementation platform for modeling interactive behaviors and human decision processes in stressful conditions. The current instantiation of TIARA models mission crew positions within the E2-C airborne early warning aircraft and allows for variable proficiency levels in one crew member. We describe our framework for controlling various stressors confronting the simulated crew and summarize our preliminary analysis of team behaviors and communication patterns arising from (1) the presence of those stressors; and (2) proficiency of the variable crew member.