Michael Tolston

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. | Ball Aerospace

Human-machine teaming is expected to provide substantive benefits to team performance; however, introduction of machine agents will also impact teamwork. Agents are likely to exert substantial influence on team dynamics, even if they possess only limited abilities to engage in teamwork processes. This influence may be mitigated by team size and exp...

Natural systems exhibit diverse behavior generated by complex interactions between their constituent parts. To characterize these interactions, we introduce Convergent Cross Sorting (CCS), a novel algorithm based on convergent cross mapping (CCM) for estimating dynamic coupling from time series data. CCS extends CCM by using the relative ranking of...

Time-delay stability (TDS) analysis is a method for quantifying interactions in multivariate systems by identifying stable temporal relationships in time series data [1]. This method has been used to create network representations of complex systems. As originally presented, the TDS method relies on cross-correlation—a linear analysis that is restr...

Semantic alignment is a key process underlying interpersonal and team communication. However, semantic similarity is difficult to quantify, and statistical approaches designed to measure it often rely on methods that make the identification of the relative importance of key words difficult. This study outlines how conceptual recurrence analysis (CR...

Progression toward sophisticated machines with the capacity to act as partners in tactical and strategic situations means that human operators will increasingly rely on collaborative input from agent teammates (e.g., Masiello, 2013). However, plans to team autonomous agents with humans raise new questions regarding the effects that such teammates m...

Team communication analyses can provide insight into critical team processes. However, such methods often rely on time-consuming subjective rater evaluations, or on techniques that need extensive preparation and yield results that may be difficult to interpret. As part of an effort to identify reliable automated techniques that can be used on small...

This study evaluated the effect of biasing information on team communication and cognition in a distributed team decision-making task. Teams received misleading or irrelevant information (control) either early or late in their information queue, and Conceptual Recurrence Analysis (CRA) was used to quantify conceptual structure in team communication...

Previous research indicates that measures of joint attention provide unique insight into team cognition and performance. In this study, we examined the effects of practice and joint attention on team performance improvement using multivariate mixed models, with an emphasis on exploring the correlation structure between the variances in growth traje...

This study examined order effects of task-load (TL) transitions on team task performance and interpersonal postural coordination. Twenty-three dyads played a cooperative video game (Air Force Spaceship Simulator-AFSS) under two task-load order conditions (high-low-high; low-high-low). Performance was affected by task-load, with dyads performing mor...

The present study investigated how constraining movement affects interpersonal coordination and joint cognitive performance. Pairs of participants worked cooperatively to solve picture-puzzle tasks in which they conversed to identify differences between pictures in 3 degree-of-constraint conditions: both participants were free to move their hands (...

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals engaged in conversation spontaneously coordinate their postural sway patterns. Prior research has also shown that individuals alter their speech patterns to be similar to those of their conversational partners. We ask whether the coordination that is evident in movement dynamics is related to the...

This chapter describes a methodological strategy for studying the influence of coupling constraints on interpersonal coordination using cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). In Study 1, we investigated interpersonal coordination during conversation in virtual-reality (VR) and real-world environments. Consistent with previous studies, we...

Bingham et al. discovered a perceptible affordance property, composed of a relation between object weight and size, used to select optimal objects for long-distance throwing. Subsequent research confirmed this finding, but disconfirmed a hypothesis formulated by Bingham et al. about the information used to perceive the affordance. Following this, Z...