A Model Of Human Problem Solving In Dynamic Environments

The increased use of automation in aircraft, ships, process plants, transportation networks, and other large-scale systems is changing the human's role in such systems. The manual activities of the human operator are increasingly supplanted by monitoring of automation and occasional problem solving activities. This thesis focuses on these problem solving activities. Models of human problem solving are reviewed, with emphasis on those applicable to situations involving human-machine interaction in detecting, diagnosing, and compensation for system failures. From this review it emerges that most models developed thus far focus on a single aspect of problem solving. An overall model is presented, which considers the full breadth and robustness of human problem solving behavior in dynamic environments. A realization of the general structure of this model within a particular rule-based computer program is discussed. Results are presented from applying this program to modeling human problem solving in a process control task. (Author).