A Cognitive Model of Learning to Navigate

Our goal is to develop a cognitive model of how humans acquire skills on complex cognitive tasks. We are pursuing this goal by designing computational architectures for the NRL Navigation task, which requires competent sensorimotor coordination. In this paper, we analyze the NRL Navigation task in depth. We then use data from experiments with human subjects learning this task to guide us in constructing a cognitive model of skill acquisition for the task. Verbal protocol data augments the black box view provided by execution traces of inputs and outputs. Computational experiments allow us to explore a space of alternative architectures for the task, guided by the quality of fit to human performance data.