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Cognitive Underspecification

Its Variety and Consequences

  • Chapter
Experimental Slips and Human Error

Part of the book series: Cognition and Language ((CALS))

Abstract

If cognitive science is to make a useful contribution to the safety and efficiency of future technological systems, it must be able to offer designers some workable generalizations regarding the information-handling characteristics of a system’s human participants (see Card, Moran, & Newell, 1983). This chapter explores the generality of one such approximation:

When cognitive operations are under specified, they tend to default to contextually appropriate, high-frequency responses.

Professor Reason’s ideas as presented in this chapter are developed in more detail in his recent work Human Error (1989).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

    James T. Reason

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  1. James T. Reason
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Wright Institute, 2728 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, California, 94704, USA

    Bernard J. Baars

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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Reason, J.T. (1992). Cognitive Underspecification. In: Baars, B.J. (eds) Experimental Slips and Human Error. Cognition and Language. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1164-3_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1164-3_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-1166-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-1164-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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