Abstract
<p>Collective cognition in team settings is shaped not only by what is communicated, but by the temporal dynamics of how communication unfolds. Multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs) in oncological care offer a naturalistic window into collective decision-making under real-world constraints, where teams of medical clinicians must jointly process complex patient cases. In this study, we examine the temporal structure of speech turn durations in oncological MDTMs using burstiness, a measure of how irregularly communication is distributed over time, as a quantitative index of communicative temporal organization. We applied two complementary burstiness metrics, the burstiness parameter (B) and the length-normalized variant (Aₙ(r)), to meeting and case-level speech turn data, and used random intercept models to examine associations between burstiness, case complexity, and case processing time. Communication was predominantly bursty, exceeding levels expected under a random process. More complex cases were associated with higher burstiness, suggesting that irregular temporal communication structure has potential to serve as an observable marker of collective cognitive load. Growth curve modeling further revealed significant main effects of burstiness and case order on case processing time, as well as interactions moderated by MDT sample. These results indicate that temporal communication dynamics and case processing is context dependent varying systematically across meeting types and as meetings progress. These findings suggest that burstiness may reflect meaningful variation in the collective cognitive dynamics of MDTMs and may offer a promising foundation for real-time monitoring of team interactions and decision-making.</p>