Individual Differences
Our research on individual differences focuses on how different people handle complex problems. In particular, how do people adjust their problem-solving approaches when problems are memory intensive? Different people may respond differently. We are developing computational models to help us understand the commonalties in individuals' performance across different tasks. This can allow product designs to be more proactive in offering help when people are likely to need it and remaining unobtrusive when the users are better off left alone.

Recent publications on this project:

• Daily, L. Z., Lovett, M. C., & Reder, L. M. (2001). Modeling individual differences in working memory performance: A source activation account in ACT-R. Cognitive Science, 25, 315-353. [lead article] (Article)

• Schunn, C. D., Lovett, M. C., & Reder, L. M. (2001). Awareness and working memory in strategy adaptivity. Memory & Cognition, 29, 254-266. (Abstract)

• Lovett, M. C., Daily, L. Z., & Reder, L. M. (2000). A source activation theory of working memory: Cross-task prediction of performance in ACT-R. Cognitive Systems Research, 1, 99-118. (Article)

Sponsors:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.9983183. and by the Office of Naval Research under Grant No. N00014-02-1-0269.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation 

Collaborators:
Christian Lebiere (CMU), Lynne Reder (CMU)  

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