Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

As problems increase in complexity it becomes impossible for any one person lo know all the things necessary to make good decisions. A group of specialists, even if ihey possess the requisite knowledge, remain a collection of individuals until their expertise can be jointly brought to bear. The problem of fusing expertise where individuals have very detailed knowledge in their own areas and much weaker understanding of others is that no one knows what anyone else needs to know. This impasse cannot be broken until shared mental models are developed to provide the common perception needed to focus the activity of the group. This p^)er presents characteristics of shared menial models and a model of the effect, nature, and process of the formation of shared menial models in cooperative problem solving by a team of specialists.'