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LIT-1058: Soft constraints in interactive behavior: the case of ignoring perfect knowledge in-the-world for imperfect knowledge in-the-head

2 min read

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StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-15 from the publisher's typeset PDF (Cognitive Science 28(3), pp. 359–382), as posted on a Drexel University course page (www.cs.drexel.edu/~dds26/courses/cs680-s11/BK/readings/Gray-CS04.pdf). The authors' own copy on Gray's RPI page, and the Internet Archive's 2004 capture of it, could not be reached from this environment. Unpaywall and OpenAlex list the work closed, and Wiley, ScienceDirect and DTIC refused direct requests. Worth reading as the standard experimental case that people choose between recalling information and looking it up by a non-deliberate comparison of effort, in which memory time and perceptual-motor time count alike. In a simulated VCR task, adding a click (an estimated 1,000–1,500 ms against 500 ms for an eye movement) cut look-ups of perfect on-screen information, and checks of finished settings rested on memory. The group that memorized the information first made the fewest errors. The millisecond costs are model estimates, the error difference between the two on-screen conditions was not significant, and the ACT-R models only estimate effort; none models the choice. For QUESTION-095 it prices only the read-back side of the trade, setting aside encoding and search, and it shows that a result left in the world goes unused once recall is cheaper; it says nothing of amortized inference. For CLAIM-296 and TERM-055 it shows a change of arrangement alone changing use of the information, and that the procedure actually chosen is the cheapest, not the best available. It bears on CASE-085 only by analogy, because its task removes search, which is where the EMT case failed.
Tagscognition
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-864 — Gray & Fu — Soft constraints in interactive behavior
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-346 — When information stays in view at a known place, people consult it less and rely on memory more as the time to reach it rises, in a graded trend across added delays from 0 to 3.2 seconds, even where the memory is weak and the display perfect; in one copying task a model that prices memory and display access in time alone, with no preference for either source, fits how many items people encode per look

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Gray, W. D. and Fu, W.-T. (2004). Soft constraints in interactive behavior: the case of ignoring perfect knowledge in-the-world for imperfect knowledge in-the-head. Cognitive Science 28(3), 359–382. DOI 10.1207/s15516709cog2803_3

Key takeaways

Read in full (NOTE-864). In a simulated VCR-programming task, people with show information always available on screen still made errors that comparing against the display would have prevented. Making that information cost a mouse move and click instead of an eye movement (an estimated 1,000–1,500 ms against 500 ms) cut how often they looked it up, and most checks came right before a setting, almost none while or after setting it. The group made to memorize the information first made the fewest errors. Gray and Fu read this as non-deliberate least-effort choice among microstrategies, with memory time and perceptual-motor time weighed alike (“milliseconds matter”). The access costs are model estimates, not measured or varied parametrically. The error difference between the two on-screen conditions was not significant, the free-access look-up data come from a separate eye-tracking study of eight people, and the Memory-Test condition differed from the others in more than retrieval cost.

Why this is here

The owner, after the cockpit reading (LIT-1066): “amortized retrieval is actually a kind of amortized computation. there’s probably a clearer relationship here that I imagine has likely been clarified/formalized at some point in the 30 years since the cockpit essay was published.” Registered with six others for QUESTION-095.

The tradeoff the EMT case (CASE-085) shows failing: the cheaper route was recall, and it failed. Gray and Fu make the choice between head and world a cost comparison.

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