Cognitive entrainment in engineering design teams

In this article, the authors rest the hypothesis that cycles of speaking an d turn taking during group design discussions are entrained to rhythmic shi fts in group-level modes of reasoning. Video recordings of six teams of eng ineering students performing realistic design tasks were coded for instance s of figural and conceptual reasoning, rates of turn faking, and group part icipation. Exploratory spectral analysis pointed to rhythmic oscillations e very 5 to 10 minutes between periods of predominantly figural or conceptual discussion, whereas structural equations modeling indicated a lend-lag rel ationship between peaks in figural reasoning and lowered levels of conceptu al reasoning group participation, and turn taking. The authors interpret th ese results as evidence for cognitive entrainment in group discussion and i llustrate the potential of frequency and pooled time series techniques for studying the temporal structure of group interaction.