ABSTRACT
There is good theoretical reason to believe that the application of explicit rules does not proceed in a strictly context free manner, whereby the features stipulated by the rule are simply checked one by one. The fact that specifications of general knowledge seem inherently prone to exception suggests that a more flexible approach is required. One way of balancing the simplicity of rules with the need for flexibility is through the combination of rule application with the monitoring of instance-similarity. As a test of this hypothesis, this paper reports an experiment which examines effects of instance similarity on the speed with which a simple explicit rule can be applied, both as a function of experience with the rule and its complexity.
