ABSTRACT
How do people control interactive search? One type of decision that is made when performing a task such as searching the web is whether to continue to explore unattractive but immediately available links or to backup to previously experienced links. It has recently been suggested that this choice may be governed by a preset threshold. We report empirical evidence that in fact the choice is governed by memory for the quality of the unselected alternatives on previous pages. Further, we report a computational model that combines an instance-based memory for previous evaluations with display-driven action to control interactive search.
