People chose different strategies for performing tasks, and that choice often plays a key role in performance. We investigate the use and evolution of strategic behavior in the Kanfer-Ackerman Air Traffic Controller© task, a fast-paced, dynamic task. We present strategies in two dimensions for one aspect of the task, examine how people use them and switch between them, and how their use relates to final performance. We also discuss the implications that the observed variety of strategic behavior has for cognitive modeling.

Cooper and Shallice (1995) raise many issues regarding the unified theories of cognition research program in general, and Soar in particular. In this paper, we examine one specific criticism of Newell's (1990) treatment of immediate behavior and use it to explain the notion of the modeling idiom within a cognitive architecture. We compare a dual-task model using Newell's architecture and idiom to two other models that use different architectures and idioms (EPIC and an experimental version of Soar). We also look at the models' dependency on their respective cognitive architectures, and the theory/implementation gap also identified by Cooper and Shallice (1995).