Planning units in text editing behavior

Authors:
Scott P. Robertson;John B. Black
Affiliations:
Cognitive Science Program, Yale University, Box 2158 Yale Station, New Haven, CT;Cognitive Science Program, Yale University, Box 2158 Yale Station, New Haven, CT
Venue:
CHI '83 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
1983

Citing 3
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Abstract

The organization of text editing behavior can be characterized by graph structures containing goals, subgoals, goal outcomes, and actions. Here we propose a model to represent the goals and plans of text editor users based on goal-fate analysis (Schank & Abelson, 1977). The representation captures relationships between a user's multiple goals and shows how errors can result from badly formed plans. We discuss some data from a psychological experiment which supports the hypothesis that text editing behavior is chunked into distinct plan units. The cognitive components of pause times between keystrokes were revealed by statistically removing the physical time required between keystrokes. Finally, we suggest how a system which builds goal-fate graphs from keystroke input might be useful in providing specific help information that is keyed to a user's intentions.