ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes developing Scientific Information Systems to construct and validate theory concerning complex multi-person systems. It describes a process of successive cycles of theory refinement using information in databases. The chapter discusses the development of theory for describing crew performance in the aviation domain by statistically analyzing performance measures. It focuses on aviation crew performance using flight deck automation during the descent phase of flight. The theory that was extended to this domain was the ACT-R 4.0 cognitive architecture. The ACT-R architecture was extended to describe the highly procedural nature of crew performance in this context. One advantage of using the cognitive architecture was that a complete profile of cognition and performance could be measured for each simulation run. Higher expertise was simulated by combinations of high strength of associative links for procedural behavior, higher working memory capacity, and cognitive strategies such as the systematic reactivation of goals cued by external stimuli such as a checklist.
