Recurrence Quantification Analysis Used to Assess Team Communication in Simulated Air Battle Management

Abstract

Nonlinear time-series measures provide an opportunity to examine temporal structure in team communications. In this experiment, Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA), a nonlinear measure that quantifies visual patterns in recurrence plots, was applied to verbal communication utterances produced in a 5-person air defense simulation. Communication utterances were analyzed with three coding schemes – team position, semantic content, and combined. No differences in RQA percent determinism (%DET) driven by experimental manipulations were detected for communications coded by team position, but differences were detected for semantic content and combined. This implies that a higher resolution of coding was necessary to detect manipulated effects via RQA in this experiment. Specific changes in %DET, when paired with findings from a more traditional communication analysis, i.e., cumulative frequency, indicated positive compensatory adaptations in team communication when faced with training and task constraints. Results are discussed with emphasis on changes in %DET as a result of current experimental manipulations and integration with previous research.