Laws that Govern Cognitive Work

These Laws synthesize basic findings about the nature of cognitive work and how to support it. Discussions among research teams within the ADA CTA have used these Laws to develop a set of basic functions that define how to support cognitive work (Figure 1). High performance cognitive work depends on providing support for Coordination and for Resilience. Klein, Feltovich, Bradshaw and Woods (in press) provide the basic criteria for supporting coordinated activity in terms of anticipation, synchronization, and shared commitment to balance multiple goals. In the previous work on ‘Laws” and under RT 04TA4-SP1-RT2, Woods developed criteria for Resilience in terms of terms of how broadening checks produce convergence and avoid premature narrowing in cognitive work. Coordination and Resilience are each supported by 5 functions: Observability (feedback that provides insight into a process), Directability (ability to direct/re-direct resources, activities, priorities as situations change and escalate), Control of Attention (ability to re-orient focus in a changing world), Inter-predictability (building and testing a common ground across distributed agents), and Shifting Perspectives (contrasting points of view). Previous work in the ADA CTA has developed means for fusing data through event patterns to achieve observability, providing control of perspective in 3-D displays, providing multiple perspectives to aid in perceiving remote environments through robotic sensors, and enhancing the control of attention through multimodal interfaces.

Posted by woods on August 7, 2002 10:49 PM