Evaluating Team Functioning in Virtual Environments through Multiple Physiological Synchrony Measures

Virtual collaboration challenges effective teamwork, creating a need for objective indicators of team functioning. This exploratory study examined whether different physiological synchrony metrics capture distinct aspects of collective team dynamics in virtual reality. Fifteen five-person teams completed a collaborative task while cardiovascular and electrodermal activity were recorded. Synchrony was quantified using variance-, correlation-, and recurrence-based approaches. Different metrics showed heterogeneous and partly opposing associations with established indicators of team functioning. These findings highlight that synchrony estimates depend on both the physiological modality and analytical approach, underscoring the importance of metric selection and providing a methodological foundation for future confirmatory research.