ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies ways of studying six key macrocognitive functions: decision making, sensemaking, problem detection, planning, adapting, and coordinating. It also identifies some of the most common paradigms for collecting data on macrocognitive functions. The macrocognitive function of adapting covers a wide range of activities. It distinguishes three of these—adapting a plan, adapting goals, and adapting mental models. Quality of forming and revising mental models that can be measured involves recovery from fixation, and escaping from a garden path. The basic Garden Path paradigm attempts to lead participants down the wrong road in interpreting a situation. Researchers may prefer to examine different aspects of sensemaking. Four potential aspects of sensemaking are: seeking information, forming and revising mental models, noticing anomalies/detecting problems, and applying frames/mental models. Seeking information can be measured by the time spent on a document, rating the quality or the perceived information value of the document being studied, or the perceived quality of documents selected for review.
