Providing Objective Metrics of Team Communication Skills via Interpersonal coordination Mechanisms

Being able to communicate efficiently has been acknowledged as a vital skill in many different domains. In particular, team communication skills are of key importance in the operation of complex machinery such as aircrafts, maritime vessels and such other, highly-specialized, civilian or military vehicles, as well as the performance of complex tasks in the medical domain. In this paper, we propose to use prosodic accommodation and turn- taking organisation to provide objective metrics of communica- tion skills. To do this, human-factors evaluations, via a coordi- nation Demand Analysis (CDA), were used in conjunction with a dynamic model of prosodic accommodation and turn-taking organisation. Using conversational speech from airline pilots involved in a collaborative task (decision-making exercise), our study reveals that interpersonal coordination mechanisms are indicative of human evaluation of pilots’ communication skills. We discuss our results in terms of relevance for training simu- lation for personnel in safety or mission critical environments