PLACEMENT OF CREWS COMMUNICATION AND COORDINATION TRAINING IN-PROCESSCONTROL

The effects of placement of crew's communication and coordination trai ning for teams on system performance and communication were examined u sing 40 two-person teams operating an industrial process-control simul ator. Analysis indicated that the best performance resulted when opera tors were given communication and coordination training during or afte r task training had occurred. However, performance differences were no t directly due to the number or type of communications exchanged betwe en operators. The difference in performance is probably attributable t o differences in the memory load of the conditions or in the mental mo dels adopted by the subjects.