Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Project Nemo examines the cognitive processes and representational structures used by submarine Commanders while attempting to locate an enemy submarine hiding in deep water. This report provides a precis of the first phase of this effort. Protocol data, collected from commanders with 20 years of submarine experience, have been transcribed and analyzed. The data suggest a shallow goal structure with a basic level of subgoals that are used by all Commanders throughout the task. Relatively few operators are required for each subgoal. The results are congruent with a schema theory interpretation in which the process of schema instantiation provides the control of cognition.