ABSTRACT
Hermann Ebbinghaus, pioneer in the psychology of learning and longtime editor of one of Germany’s most prominent psychology journals, once said, “Psychology has a long past, but a short history.” Roots of psychology can be traced to the most ancient of philosophies, but as an academic discipline, psychology dates to the latter part of the 1800s. A similar thing might be said of Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA), though on a diἀerent time scale. Its roots in task analysis can be traced back to the origins of industrial psychology, but CTA gained currency only some 20 years ago. This being said, there is a contrast one might draw: Task analysis was invented largely as a consequence of industrialization. It grew hand in hand with industrial psychology from within a single discipline-academic psychology. CTA was invented largely as a result of computerization, but it emerged in the 1980s in a number of disciplines ranging from instructional design to sociology.
