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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Disagreements help team perception, study finds:

Team disagreements might be the key to helping soldiers identify objects in battle, researchers say. While studies on combat identification typically focus on how technology can help identify enemy forces, researchers sought to understand how teams work together to identify armored vehicles—using only their training and each other.

"We wanted to know what factors would contribute the most to their success," said Dr. Anthony Baker, a scientist at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory, who executed the study while a doctoral student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "While previous lab studies of combat identification have looked at the performance of an individual, this is the first lab study to our knowledge that considers team combat identification, especially without any technological aids like an automated combat identification system. This was key for helping us understand the aspects of the team, and its members, that contribute the most to their ability to understand and identify what they are seeing."

The Human Factors journal published the research, "Team Combat Identification: Effects of Gender, Spatial Visualization, and Disagreement," in its February issue.

[...] Researchers found that teams that disagreed more performed better at combat identification, regardless of whether their disagreements actually resulted in more correct answers. The data suggested that disagreeing with a team member's first guess caused the team to verify why they identified a vehicle a certain way.

"In other words, when the team disagreed, they had to justify an answer by recounting the details of what they had seen," Baker said. "This process of recalling and discussing details caused teams to think more deeply about their original responses, compared to teams with fewer disagreements that may have simply trusted what the other teammate believed."

[...] This research reinforces that to understand how a team does its job, one must consider both individual differences such as spatial skills, and team processes such as communication, Baker said.

Journal Reference:
Anthony L. Baker, Joseph R. Keebler, Emily C. Anania, David Schuster, John P. Plummer. Team Combat Identification: Effects of Gender, Spatial Visualization, and Disagreement. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2020; 001872082090228 DOI: 10.1177/0018720820902286

Original Submission