Rational and symbolic models of decision making in task-oriented exploration

We have built two models of users' choice of action in exploratory search. One of the models is a symbolic, cognitive process model (Rieman-Young-Howes, 1996), built within the Soar cognitive architecture (Newell, 1990). The other is a mathematical model of the optimal strategy for the exploratory task, based upon a "rational analysis" of the kind introduced by Anderson (1990). Comparison of the two models illuminates both them and the task. Such comparisons suggest modifications to the symbolic model that yield a discrete, symbolic, heuristic approximation to rationally optimal decision making.