Error modeling

[Troy Kelley]

I would like to hear the group's thoughts on this.

Don Norman has noted that there are basically two types of errors.
Slips and mistakes.  Slips are errors where you, "intend to do one
action, but do another" and mistakes, "result from the choice of
inappropriate goals".  Norman notes that there are many types of slips:
capture errors, description errors, data-driven errors, associative
activation errors, loss-of-activation errors, and mode errors.

In ACT-R there seem to be two primary ways to produce errors: errors of
commission and errors of omission.  It would seem that both of these map
nicely onto what Norman has called "slips".  An error of commission maps
nicely onto a type of slip called associative activation errors and
errors of omission map somewhat nicely onto loss-of-activation errors.

I am wondering how what Norman calls "mistakes" map to the types of
errors that can be simulated in ACT-R?  It would seem like "mistakes"
would result from having inappropriate chunks in declarative memory, but
I would like to hear some other thoughts on this.

Also, has there been any work in representing schemes in ACT-R?  An
inappropriate scheme might produce the type of errors Norman has
identified as "mistakes".

Troy