The Construction of Programming Knowledge from System Explorations and Explanatory Text: A Cognitive Model

The methods of artificial intelligence (AI) have recently been applied not only to develop programs which perform particular tasks in the best way one can think of at the time, but also to model the information processing of humans. Such research, which has been termed cognitive modelling, may not only yield a better understanding of human information processing and intelligence but, hopefully, it will also reveal insights into pronciples of intelligence in general (Cohen & Feigenbaum, 1982, Vol. III, p.3; Schmalhofer & Wetter, in press). Cognitive modelling research is also useful in more applied problems such as making computer systems more usable. A formal specification of human information processing would assist computer scientists in their efforts to tailor systems to the needs of the human user (Newell, 1985; Polson, 1986).