Measuring Team Adaptation Through an Analysis of Physiological Synchrony

Dynamic, high-stakes environments demand continual adaptation from teams operating within them. A key expression of adaptability is the regulation of cognitive demands, known as team mental workload (TMWL). Effective adaptation involves managing individual workload and redistribution across members to sustain coordinated performance. Traditional approaches often aggregate individual metrics, overlooking teamwork’s emergent nature. Physiological synchrony (PS), the alignment of responses like pupil dilation between teammates, offers a dynamic alternative. Physiological Synchrony preserves the temporal dynamics of interaction and reveals how teams distribute workload in real time. In this study, Cross Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA) was used to compute PS between paired operators, each responsible for a vehicle within a larger combat team executing simulated missions. Synchrony was tracked to identify shifts in team coordination. To characterize adaptation at the team level, we applied Collective Systems Adaptation (CSA) analysis to these synchrony time series. Two CSA-derived metrics quantified typical and cumulative adaptation. Results revealed that larger typical adaptation events were associated with reduced damage received and improved accuracy, while excessive fluctuation in synchrony predicted worse performance. These findings offer a scalable method for real-time adaptation assessment in complex environments.