The Acquisition and Asymmetric Transfer of Interactive Routines

The Acquisition and Asymmetric Transfer of Interactive Routines Wayne D. Gray & V. Daniel Veksler Cognitive Science Department Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [grayw; vekslv] @rpi.edu Abstract does not, however, postulate that behavior reflects an optimal adaptation (Fu & Gray, 2004). The expected utility of an interactive routine changes as experience with its cost and success accumulates in the current task environment. The central controller makes no functional distinction between knowledge in-the-head versus in-the-world or the means of acquiring that information (such as eye movement, mouse movement and click, or retrieval from memory, see, e.g., Clark, in press; Gray & Fu, 2004). Stable sequences of interactive routines often develop for accomplishing subtasks during interactive behavior. Such stable sequences give the appearance of deliberately adopted strategies, however, the timescales involved would seem to preclude extended deliberation. Without taking sides on the deliberate versus non-deliberate debate, in our prior work (Gray & Boehm-Davis, 2000) we have referred to these stable sequences as microstrategies. Despite the ubiquity of interactive routines, few studies have examined how one set of interactive routines versus another comes to be deployed in a given task environment (Gray, 2000; Gray & Fu, 2004; Gray, Sims, Fu, & Schoelles, submitted for publication). Fewer still have carefully examined both the development of interactive routines and their transfer to different interfaces. Indeed, the only detailed study of transfer of which we are aware is one of our own (Fu & Gray, 2004). That study focused on stable, suboptimal performance - the persistent use of one set of interactive routines when another set is demonstrably more efficient. The Fu and Gray study examined the sets of suboptimal interactive routines that were used after 20 and 40 hrs of practice with one interactive system, and after 2-yrs of experience with a second system. It did not provide a detailed examination of how the set of interactive routines was acquired or of the factors that influenced their transfer to a new task environment. Current work begins the systematic study of the acquisition and transfer of sets of interactive routines across variations in interface design. We carefully collected and tabulated data on trials-to-criterion, performance time, and information acquisition during training on one interface and transfer to a new interface. The two interfaces are largely identical; the variations between them are small. Indeed, it was not obvious to us a priori whether the soft constraints inherent to the two variations would be sufficient to result in stable differences in the interactive routines favored during training. We investigate the ways in which small changes in the cost of using an interface influence interactive behavior. During the Training Phase of the study, subjects in two interface conditions acquired two different sets of interactive routines for programming the shows. During the Transfer Phase we observed asymmetric transfer. In one case, Subjects immediately abandoned the interactive routines they had used during training and adopted the other set of routines. In the other case, Subjects held steadfast to their original set. We discuss both acquisition and asymmetric transfer in terms of cost-benefit tradeoffs in interacting with the two task environments. Keywords: Cognitive Science, complex systems, human factors and human-computer interaction, interactive behavior, human experimentation Interactive Routines Interactive routines are a complex mixture of elementary cognitive, perceptual, and action operations (Gray & Fu, 2004; Gray, Schoelles, & Myers, 2005). They represent basic patterns of interactive behavior and are analogous to Ullman’s visual routines (Hayhoe, 2000; Ullman, 1984). For any given task environment, the set of possible interactive routines is defined by the available set of interactive objects and interactive devices (Gray & Boehm- Davis, 2000). Interactive objects include text fields, text- based drop-down or pop-up menus, scroll-bars, 2-D and 3-D icons, static graphics with and without text, 2-D and 3-D animations, sound, and so on. Interactive devices include the standard fare of modern computer interfaces; that is, the mouse, keyboard, and human eye. At the same time, new technologies have expanded the range of interactive devices to include ancient devices such as handwriting and gestures as well as newer devices such as the force joystick, data glove, or point of gaze as a selection tool. The set of interactive routines that are used in a given task environment is a subset of those that are possible. One interactive routine is selected over another based on soft constraints. The Soft Constraints approach builds on the notions of bounded rationality (Simon, 1956, 1992) and rational analysis (Anderson, 1990, 1991) to apply the rational, expected utility framework to selecting the basic activities that occur at the 1/3 to 3 sec level of analysis. It embraces methodological adaptationism (Godfrey-Smith, 2001) in that it assumes that behavior, even behavior at less than 1000 msec, reflects an adaptation to the task environment. It