Teamwork Cognitive Diagnostic Modeling with Higher-Order Cognitive Interaction between Team Members

Abstract:
Teamwork involves individuals collaborating to achieve shared goals that exceed individual capabilities. As a team-level construct, team cognition plays a critical role in effective teamwork by integrating individual expertise and fostering shared understanding. Identifying the causes of inefficiencies or poor performance in teams is essential for implementing targeted interventions and promoting the development of team cognition. However, traditional cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs), which are limited to individual problem-solving contexts, are inadequate for diagnosing team cognition in collaborative settings.
To address this, this study introduces a teamwork DINA (Team-DINA) model, an extension of the traditional DINA model for individual cognitive diagnosis, specifically designed to analyze teamwork response data. The proposed model constructs the formation mechanism of team members’ individual cognitions into team cognition based on a higher-order latent structure. Further, it is hypothesized that individual cognition affects the mastery of individual cognitive attributes, while team cognition influences the mastery of team-level cognitive attributes. This allows for the simultaneous assessment of cognitive attribute mastery and the collective cognitive ability of both the team and its individual members. To demonstrate the practical applicability of the model, a dyadic teamwork matrix reasoning test was conducted. Additionally, two simulation studies were carried out to evaluate the psychometric performance of the model.
The results of the empirical study revealed that the Team-DINA model provides a deeper understanding of teamwork performance and identifies specific cognitive factors affecting team outcomes. The simulation studies highlighted two main findings: (1) The model demonstrates strong psychometric performance across various test scenarios, with improvements in model accuracy achieved by increasing the number of items and teams; (2) When the test includes an equal number of independent and collaborative response items, the model parameters are recovered in a balanced and appropriate manner, allowing for flexible adjustments of item proportions to enhance measurement accuracy.
Overall, the proposed Team-DINA model fills a critical methodological gap in the field of team cognition diagnosis and expands the application of cognitive diagnostic measurement paradigms from individual cognitive diagnosis to teamwork cognitive diagnosis.