Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

An intelligent agent acting in a complex and unpredictable world must be able to both plan ahead and react quickly to changes in its surroundings. In particular, such an agent must be able to react quickly when faced with unexpected opportunities to fulfill its goals. W e consider the issue of h o w an agent should respond to perceived opportunities, and w e describe a method for determining quickly whether it is rational to seize an opportunity or whether a more detailed analysis is required. Our system uses a set of heuristics based on reference features to identify situations and objects that characteristically involve problematic patterns of interaction. W e discuss the recognition of reference features, and their use in focusing the system's reasoning onto potentially adverse interactions between its ongoing plans and Uie current opportunity.