The cognitive complexity of groups. A critical look at team cognition research

Team cognition has received considerable attention during the last decades and several theoretical developments and concepts (e.g. shared cognition, team mental models, distributed cognition, transactive memory) have emerged in an attempt to understand how groups process information. Even though at the theoretical level these approaches acknowledge the group as an information-processing unit (e.g. Hinsz, Tindale & Vollrath, 1997) and the crucial role of group interaction in information processing, few empirical studies have been consistent with this conceptualization of groups. The present study introduces the concept of group cognitive complexity in the context of team cognition and its possible implications and applications are discussed in light of the conceptualization of groups as complex socio-cognitive systems. KEY-WORDS: group cognitive complexity, cognitive maps, team cognition

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