Mental Workload in Command and Control Teams: Musings on the Outputs of EAST and WESTT

Abstract

The EAST methodology (Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork) has recently been developed as a means for analyzing command and control scenarios. Its counterpart, the WESTT computer-based analytical prototyping tool (Workload, Error, Situation awareness, Time and Teamwork) allows analysts to visualize, model and measure these command and control networks and activities. Recent studies applying EAST and WESTT to the military domain have led to simplistic inferences about the relative levels of demands during phases of task activity. The present paper takes these inferences a step further, suggesting alternative methods for evaluating mental workload based on human information processing models and network metrics such as latent semantic analysis. Whilst much development work is implied, these analyses offer the possibility not only to quantify mental workload across the network, adding further value to the EAST/WESTT toolkit.

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(Any views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the UK MoD)