Team Mental Models (TMM)

Mohammed and Dumville (2001) defined team mental models (TMM) as the “organized understanding of relevant knowledge that is shared by team members” (p. 89). In congruence with other studies on TMM, Burtscher et al. (2011) divided TMM into two separate components: accuracy and similarity.

• Accuracy
• Similarity

Accuracy represents how accurate team members’ mental representations are to one another. The accuracy component is often measured against the knowledge from an expert, which was the case in Burtscher et al.’s (2011) study.

Similarity represents team members’ shared mental representations — how similar team members’ mental representations are to one another.

Lim and Klein (2006) expanded on the definition of TMMs to include knowledge of tasks, equipment, roles, goals, and abilities.

• Knowledge of:
  • Tasks
  • Equipment
  • Roles
  • Goals
  • Abilities

By this expanded definition, they incorporated a multiple mental model representation of TMM accuracy and TMM similarity for both teamwork and taskwork.