Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We study human sequential decision-making in large state spaces using a puzzle game called Rush Hour. A puzzle consistsof a dense configuration of rectangular cars on a 6x6 grid. Each car moves only horizontally or vertically. The goal isto move a target car to an exit. In a given state (board position), a subject (n=86) could move a car, restart the puzzle,or surrender. A move is correct if it reduces the distance (number of moves) to the goal. Using mixed-effects logisticregression modeling, we find that the probabilities of an error, a restart, and a surrender are higher with a longer distanceto goal, higher mobility, and when the previous move was an error. The effects of distance to goal and mobility areconsistent with tree search. As a next step, we plan to investigate the heuristics that people might use for such tree search.