I have written a paper for the International Conference on Groupware in Autrans, France (Sunday 28, September – Thursday 2, October 2003). Here is the abstract :
The Impact of Awareness Tools on Mutual Modelling in a Collaborative Video-Game
This paper describes the findings of an experimental research concentrating on collaboration in a multi-player video game. The overall goal is to study the cognitive impacts of the awareness tools. The focus is in finding an effect on performance as well as on the representation an individual build of what his partner knows, plans and intends to do (i.e. Mutual Modelling). Using an awareness tools has a significant effect by improving task performance. However, the players who were provided with this tool did not show any improvement of their mutual modelling. Further analysis on contrasted groups revealed that there was an effect of the awareness tool on mutual modelling for players who spent a large amount of time using the tool.
This research was conducted for my MSc dissertation. I still want to work on the very issue of studying the socio-cognitive impacts of awareness. I think my focus will be directed towards context-awareness or location-awareness and thus relations between space and cognition.