Abstract
This paper presents an engineering model of cognitive behaviour in the task of specification understanding. The model is an attempt to pesent some established hypotheses on the cognitive system functioning, in a way amenable to more precise analysis. It focuses on the control mechanisms that drive opportunistic and goal-oriented behaviours, in particular on their reactive and distributed characterization. The models proposed is based on an interpretation of the model human processor [2, 131 and described in terms of a set theoretical visual formalism, the state-graph, able to represent concurrent and distributed components. As a conclusion, in contrast to the view in which opportunistic behaviour is described as plan violation, the model suggests that opportunistic behaviour does not totally rule out goal-oriented behaviour. A number of understanding activities can operate in parallel and, to some extent, this enables the cognitive system to keep the course of actions according to plan while undertaking other cognitive activities. The model provides a plausible explanation for the mechanisms that underlie this concurrence.
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Simplicio-Filho, F.C. (1993). A Distributed Model of Cognitive Behaviour in Specification Understanding. In: Lemut, E., du Boulay, B., Dettori, G. (eds) Cognitive Models and Intelligent Environments for Learning Programming. NATO ASI Series, vol 111. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-11334-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-11334-9_8
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