Rational Analysis as a Link between Human Memory and Information Retrieval

Rational analysis has been successful in explaining a variety of different aspects of human cognition (Anderson, 1990; Chater & Oaksford, 1999; Marr, 1982; Oaksford & Chater, 1998). The explanations provided by rational analysis have two properties: they emphasize the connection between behavior and the structure of the environment, and they focus on the abstract computational problems being solved. These properties provide the opportunity to recognize connections between human cognition and other systems that solve the same computational problems, with the potential both to provide new insights into human cognition and to allow us to develop better systems for solving those problems. In particular, we should expect to find a correspondence between human cognition and systems that are successful at solving the same computational problems in a similar environment. In this chapter, we argue that such a correspondence exists between human memory and internet search, and show that this correspondence leads to both better models of human cognition, and better methods for searching the web.