IJSEP, 2006, 4, 369-375 © 2006 West Virginia University t eam cognItIon and expert t eamS: deVelopIng InSIghtS from croSS-dIScIplInary analySIS of exceptIonal t eamS STEPHEN M. FIORE AND EDUARDO SALAS University of Central Florida abStract The sports sciences have long been involved in investigations of team process and performance; nonetheless, there is a surprising paucity of cross-disciplinary interac- tion between researchers in team cognition and sports psychology. The overarch- ing purpose of this invited special issue is to redress this problem by providing an outlet for leading researchers in the field of team cognition to discuss their own and related work in the context of sports psychology. The cognitive processes arising during the complex and dynamic interaction of teams are the focus of this special is- sue. In order to ground these discussions, in this lead article to our special issue we discuss some of the key concepts emerging from the literature on team cognition. First, we briefly describe the study of cognition in teamwork and then we discuss the etymology of a subset of key concepts emerging from this study. Our goal is to highlight the utility of such discussions and provide some initial insights for how to strengthen cross-disciplinary research. Corresponding author: Dr. Stephen Fiore, University of Central Florida, 3100 Technology Parkway, Orlando, FL 32826; Email: sfiore@ist.ucf.edu The sports sciences have long been involved in investigations of team process and performance, nonetheless, there is a surprising paucity of cross-disciplinary interaction between researchers in team cognition and sports psychology. The overarching purpose of this invited special issue is to redress this problem by providing an outlet for leading researchers in the field of team cognition to discuss their own and related work in the context of sports psychology. The cognitive processes arising during the complex and dynamic interaction of teams are the focus of this special issue. Specifically, regardless of the context, team members must have a requisite set of knowledge enabling them to perform their team tasks, and our goal is to discuss how theoretical and empirical approaches can inform one another across domains. Contributors to this special issue discuss how it is that team process and performance are impacted by inter-individual and intra-individual factors and discuss this in the context of sports teams. To ground this, in this introduction to our special issue we discuss some of the key concepts emerging 369 IJSEP-4-4.indb 369 11/15/06 8:49:15 AM