Hoffman R.R., Militello L.G. Perspectives on Cognitive Task Analysis: Historical Origins and Modern Communities of Practice

Psychology Press, 2008, -540 p.The purpose of this book is to provide a context for understanding Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) in terms of its historical roots and recent origins in the traditional disciplines and emerging communities of practice. In the chapters of this book, we show how CTA came to be what it is today. We show where the many CTA methods have come from and what they are intended to do. We also provide integration by showing the relations, dovetailings, common themes, and common purposes of the various disciplines that have contributed to our modern understanding of CTA. We especially focus on the convergence with regard to the design of information systems, including intelligent technologies.This book is intended to be a companion to Working Minds: A Practitioner’s Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis (Crandall, Klein, & Hoffman, 2006), which goes into detail about the actual conduct of CTA methods. This book can also be seen as having a companion — Neville Moray’s History and Scope of Human Factors (2005), which reprints many of the classic writings that are cited and encapsulated in this Perspectives book, including works by John Annett, Frederick Gilbreth, Donald Norman, Jens Rasmussen, David Woods, the classic paper on man-machine task analysis by R. B. Miller, and others.In addition to providing a summary at the end of each chapter, we included an advance organizer at the beginning of each chapter. These organizers take the form of Concept Maps that lay out the key ideas. As concept mapping spreads around the world in its various applications in research, education, and Web work (see Cacas et al., 2003; Cacas & Novak, 2006; Hoffman, Coffey, Novak, & Cacas, 2005; Hoffman & Lintern, 2006; Novak, 1998), we present here a somewhat novel use of Concept Maps — to serve, in effect, as executive summaries.History
Introduction to Section 1: History.
A History of Task Analysis.
The Evolution of Task Analysis into Cognitive Task Analysis: From Time and Motion Studies to Man–Machine Systems.
Defining and Bounding Cognitive Task Analysis.
Emergence of the Communities of Practice.The Perspectives
Introduction to Section 2: The Perspectives.
Cognitive Systems Engineering.
Expertise Studies.
Naturalistic Decision Making.
Work Analysis.
Sociological and Ethnographic Perspectives.
Human-Centered Computing.Synthesis
Introduction to Section 3: Synthesis.
Synthesis: Divergences of the Perspectives.
Synthesis: Convergences of the Perspectives.
Synthesis: Convergence on the Topic of Teamwork and Team Cognition.
Synthesis: Methodological Challenges for Cognitive Task Analysis.