Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Prompt comprehension in UNIX command production.

S M Doane1, D S McNamara, W Kintsch

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign 61820.

Memory & Cognition
|July 1, 1992
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Summarizing scrambled stories.

Memory & cognition·2013
Same author

ADAPT: a predictive cognitive model of user visual attention and action planning.

User modeling and user-adapted interaction·2002
Same author

Retention and transfer of morse code reception skill by novices: part-whole training.

Journal of experimental psychology. Applied·2001
Same author

Reading both high-coherence and low-coherence texts: effects of text sequence and prior knowledge.

Canadian journal of experimental psychology = Revue canadienne de psychologie experimentale·2001
Same author

Working memory capacity and strategy use.

Memory & cognition·2001
Same author

Shortcomings of generic retrieval structures with slots of the type that Gobet (1993) proposed and modelled.

British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953)·2000
Same journal

The properties of personal semantics.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Music enhances associative generalization: Evidence from a memory integration task.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Video, text, and memory: An emotional verbal overshadowing effect.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Limited protective effects of multilingualism against age-related cognitive decline.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Validation of illustrated texts: Can pictures raise awareness of inconsistencies?

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

I remember (and forget) your happy smiling face: Directed forgetting of emotionally expressive faces of in-group and out-group members.

Memory & cognition·2026
See all related articles

This study uses cognitive theory to understand difficulties in generating complex UNIX commands. Experts benefit from abstract prompts, while novices need concrete information and command ordering for skill acquisition.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Science Education

Background:

  • Generating complex commands in the UNIX operating system presents challenges for users with varying experience levels.
  • Existing models of comprehension, like the construction-integration theory, offer a framework for analyzing these difficulties.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To test if the construction-integration model can predict difficulties in generating complex UNIX commands.
  • To investigate how different types of help prompts affect novice and expert users' command generation performance.

Main Methods:

  • Empirical testing of the Doane, Kintsch, and Polson (1989, 1990) construction-integration model.
  • Observing users with diverse UNIX experience generate complex commands and providing targeted help prompts for errors.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Expert users responded better to abstract information prompts, while novices and intermediate users benefited from concrete information.
  • Specific prompts improved performance for less expert users but were insufficient for complete error correction.

Conclusions:

  • Cognitive analysis, informed by the construction-integration theory, effectively predicts difficulties in UNIX command generation.
  • Skill acquisition in UNIX requires addressing both knowledge and memory load issues, with novices needing information on command ordering.