Mental Representation of Circuit Diagrams.

Abstract : This work is concerned with the knowledge that electronics technicians possess of electronic equipment, and more generally, with how people operate in tasks that draw upon a complex spatial symbolic knowledge base. A technician's knowledge base is postulated to consist of three types of related knowledge: (a) structural/functional knowledge, which pertains to the actual configuration of a circuit and the role that its components play in the operation of the device; (b) prototypical knowledge, which pertains to the general properties common to circuits of a given type; and (c) procedural knowledge, which pertains to the way that a circuit can be modified and to the interaction among knowledge elements of all three types of knowledge. Early phases of this work focused on a study of individual differences in structural knowledge and an experiment conducted to investigate individual differences in procedural knowledge. Novice and expert subjects performed tasks in which they had to either locate and correct an error in a circuit, change the function of a circuit, or complete a missing segment in a circuit. Keywords include: circuit diagrams; cognitive models; electronic circuits; expert systems; functional knowledge; individual differences; knowledge representation; mental representation; structural knowledge; symbolic knowledge; procedural knowledge; and procedural guidelines.

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