Systems Psychology Laboratory – School of Psychology

Welcome to the Systems Psychology Lab!
Left to Right: David Grimm, Terri Dunbar, Jamie Gorman, Shiwen Zhou, Julie Harrison, Matt Scalia.
Communication patterns are impacted by type of task, such as assembling blocks in Minecraft or planning a rescue operation.
Using our motion capture system, we investigate how individuals coordinate their movements with each other.
Eye-trackers (left) and visual occlusion goggles (right) allow us to examine the role of visual information in team coordination.
Communication analysis techniques can help us to identify how medical teams may respond to unexpected emergencies.

Note: Dr. Gorman accepted a position at Arizona State University, beginning in the Fall Semester 2022. The Systems Psychology Lab will no longer be physically located at Georgia Tech. Please reach out to Dr. Gorman (jamie.gorman@asu.edu) or any of the students in the “Contact Us” page if you have any questions.

Welcome to the Systems Psychology Lab! Teams are becoming more and more ubiquitous in every day life, and the need to study how to make teams effective is incredibly important. In our research, we seek to apply Dynamical Systems Theory to human behavior in the context of teams and human systems. Teams are not merely the sum of individuals- team members interact with each other to accomplish more than they could alone. We seek to understand how teams interact to become more than the sum of their parts through methods such as communication analysis, movement data analysis, physiological monitoring, and neural approaches.

Previous Announcements:

SPL lab member Julie Harrison was featured in the Spring 2021 Newsletter for the NSF AI National AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming! See the iSAT newsletter here.

Congratulations to Dr. Gorman for receiving several grants! One of them is for a project called the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming (iSAT), located in Colorado. This is a grant lasting approximately five years. The second is with the Air Force Research Lab over the course of four years. The goal is to develop and validate a team dynamics measuring system for a battery of training applications. Finally, the last one is entitled Trusted Distributed Human-Machine Teaming for Safe and Effective Space-based Missions and is a seedling grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research done in collaboration with Arizona State University.

December 2020: Congratulations to SPL graduate student Terri Dunbar for being awarded the 2021 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award for her innovative approach to student learning! She is one of nine recipients of this award.

Congratulations to SPL graduate student Julie Harrison for successfully proposing her Master’s Thesis entitled “Characteristic Lag and the Intermanual Speed Advantage”. Great job Julie!

November 2020: Congratulations to SPL graduate student David Grimm for successfully defending his Master’s Thesis entitled “Dynamical Analysis and Modeling of Team Resilience in Human-Autonomy Teams”. Great job David!