Gray, Kirschenbaum, & Ehret, 1997

Gray, W. D., Kirschenbaum, S. S., & Ehret, B. D. (1997). The précis of Project Nemo, phase 1: Subgoaling and subschemas for submariners. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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 précis 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.