A Rule-Based Model of Human Problem Solving Performance in Fault Diagnosis Tasks

Human problem-solving is considered with emphasis on situations involving human-machine interaction in detecting, diagnosing, and compensating for failures in engineering systems. An overall model is presented that considers the breadth and robustness of human problem solving behavior in dynamic environments typical of engineering systems. A realization of the general structure of this model within a particular rule-based computer program is discussed. In this program the human behavior in controlling a dynamic process is represented by a set of production rules. The selection of appropriate production rules for a given situation is performed by ordering the rules for specific tasks and by a control mechanism. The latter provides a means to access only a small part of the knowledge base at a time in order to derive decisions as opposed to searching the whole knowledge base. This program was applied to model human-problem solving in a process control task. Results from comparing model and subject behavior are presented and discussed.