The Cognitive Sciences Laboratory (CSL) studies how individuals and teams think, learn, coordinate, and solve complex problems. Our research connects cognitive science, team science, human factors, artificial intelligence, expertise, simulation-based training, and collaborative problem solving in complex sociotechnical environments.

Download brief summaries of major CSL research areas:

CSL pursues interdisciplinary research on individuals and teams to understand cognition broadly construed. At the broader level, CSL has pursued a form of scientific stewardship in the development of the field of team cognition, a melding of cognition with research on how humans interact socially and with technology. This includes the development of a number of edited volumes that have brought together researchers from different disciplines to present their perspectives on team cognition, on complex collaborative problem solving, and on interdisciplinary approaches for studying shared cognition. We have also pursued the development of journal special issues in order to reach targeted audiences who may not be familiar with certain disciplinary perspectives on collaborative cognition. Collectively, these efforts contributed to the overall field of team cognition by bringing together experts in varied fields to present their work in a unified volume or issue to new audiences. At a more narrow range, this includes thinking on teamwork by considering issues surrounding the design and development of human-agent teams, that is, teams composed of humans interacting with autonomous or semi-autonomous intelligent agents or robots. Research in CSL has also studied the development of expertise and pursued interdisciplinary thinking on cognitive processes at the highest levels of proficiency. Research on learning and training by CSL pursues a two-pronged effort involving simulation-based training. We have examined knowledge acquisition and integration in complex domains where the learner has to understand the connection between disparate concepts to comprehend and perform their task and we have examined how multimedia manipulations of learning content (e.g., diagrams and animations), and how interventions designed to scaffold cognitive processes (i.e., metacognitive prompting), can alter knowledge integration.

Featured Recent Work

• Spence, H.R., Fiore, S.M., Kohn, D., & Santisteban Avila, R. (2026). Convening for Ocean Memory: An Adaptable Framework for Collaborative Inquiry Across Disciplines. Elementa Journal, 14(1): 00063. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2025.00063
• Baur, M., Reeves, P.M., Roney, J., & Fiore, S.M. (2025). Expanding Roles for Research Administration and Research Development Professionals: A Team Science Coaching Program. Journal of Research Administration, 55, 7–27. Winner of the 2025 Rod Rose Award for Research Article Excellence in the Journal of Research Administration, Society of Research Administrators International.

 

Human-AI Teaming		Garibay, O. et al. (2023). Six human-centered artificial intelligence grand challenges. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 39(3), 391–437. doi:10.1080/10447318.2022.2153320 >> Highlighted in UCF Today
Newton, O. B., Saadat, S., Song, J., Fiore, S. M., & Sukthankar, G. (2022). EveryBOTy counts: Examining human-machine teams in open source software development. Topics in Cognitive Science. doi:10.1111/tops.12613		Williams, J., Fiore, S. M., Jentsch, F. (2022). Supporting artificial social intelligence with theory of mind. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 5, 750763. doi:10.3389/frai.2022.750763
VR and Learning		McGowin, G., Fiore, S. M., Oden, K. (2023). Towards a theory of learning in immersive virtual reality: Designing learning affordances with embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended cognition. In T. Cherner & A. Fegely (Eds.), In Bridging the XR Technology-to-Practice Gap: Methods and Strategies for Blending Extended Realities into Classroom Instruction. AACE.
McGowin, G., Fiore, S. M., & Oden, K. (2021). Learning affordances: theoretical considerations for design of immersive virtual reality in training and education. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 65, No. 1, pp. 883-887). Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications. doi:10.1177/1071181321651293		Xi, Z., McGowin, G., Newton, O., Sukthankar, G., Fiore, S.M., & Oden, K. (2020). Predicting student flight performance with multimodal features. In R. Thomson, H. Bisgin, C. Dancy, A. Hyder, and M. Hussain (Eds.), Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling. SBP-BRiMS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp. 277-288). Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-61255-9_27
Project Spotlight		Understanding Individual and Team Cognition in Support of Future Space Missions (Minerva Research Initiative, DoD) This project studies the inter-relation of individual and team cognition in complex environments such as those relevant to space, to better understand team process and performance by identifying how individual decrements in cognition cascade to the team level to impact the team performance, and potential interventions for such effects.
Pinter-Wollman, N., Penn, A., Theraulaz, G., & Fiore, S. M. (2018). Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour. Special Issue in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373(1753), 20170232. doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0232		Fiore, S. M., Graesser, A., & Greiff, S. (2018). Collaborative problem-solving education for the twenty-first-century workforce. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(6), 367–369. doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0363-y

 

 

Professional Honors and Scholarly Recognition

• Named Senior Fellow, International Network for the Science of Team Science, 2025.
• Best Article Award, Society of Research Administrators International (SRAI), 2025 Rod Rose Award for Research Article Excellence in the Journal of Research Administration.
• Best Paper Award, Fourth Workshop on Gender Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering at the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2023.

UCF Awards

• Pegasus Professor, Office of the President, University of Central Florida, 2023. The Pegasus Professor designation is UCF’s highest faculty designation.
• Research Incentive Award, Recognition for faculty who have excelled at research, Office of the Provost, University of Central Florida, 2022.
• Scroll & Quill Society, University of Central Florida, Recognition for faculty who have made an international impact through their scholarship, 2020.
• Luminary Award, University of Central Florida, Recognition for having significant impact on the world, 2019.

Academic Adviser to Graduate Students Awards

• Research Adviser, Best Student Led Paper Award, Modeling & Simulation Track, Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics Conference, AHFE 2023.
• Academic Adviser, University Award for Outstanding Dissertation in the Social Science, Humanities, Education, Business, Art, and Health category, University of Central Florida, 2023. Awarded to Olivia Newton.
• Academic Adviser, College of Graduate Studies Award for Outstanding Dissertation, University of Central Florida, 2023. Awarded to Olivia Newton.
• Academic Adviser, 1st Place, Best Student Led Paper Award, Training Technical Group, 63rd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2019.
• Academic Adviser, 2nd Place, Best Student Led Paper Award, Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making Technical Group, 62nd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2018.