Cognitive control of real-time event-driven systems

The paper discusses the development of cognitive skills in control of real-time, event-driven systems with long time lag. Using simulators of ship steering, and based on thinking-aloud protocol experiments, it is shown that unskilled persons may devote most of the initial period of learning control skills to understanding the causal behavior of the human-machine interface. Experts employ goal-oriented strategies, planning from a relatively global view-point. A possible explanation for the development of cognitive strategies is presented to account for the gathering of information about the control interface, the acquisition of various kinds of strategies, and the learning of control skills for real-time, event-driven systems with long time lag. A computer simulation model is presented that merges cognitive and control theory models, and that simulates the process of strategy development.