Abstracting Situated Action: Implications for Cognitive Modeling and Interface Design

This chapter reports a field study in a relatively low-technology work context and a model of observed behavior using a quantitative realization of the original, perception-action version of the lens model presented in 1935 by Tolman and Brunswik. It focuses on the strategies for how both relatively inexperienced and highly experienced cooks managed cooking meat (hamburger patties) on a grill. This cooking study demonstrated the importance of the intimate, closed-loop interdependency between perception and action as a resource for fluent and adaptive behavior. The analysis and modeling approach allows one to represent the closed-loop, mutually informing nature of perception and action without the mathematically convenient yet limiting assumptions of related techniques such as feedback control theory or dynamic systems modeling.