BIB-VERSION:: CS-TR-v2.0
ID:: UMCP-CSD//CS-TR-2053
ENTRY:: October 15, 1998
TITLE:: Declarative and procedural knowledge in menu systems:  diagramming
cognitive maps of phone and ATM commands 
AUTHOR:: Chin, John P.
AUTHOR:: Norman, Kent L.
DATE:: June 1988
ABSTRACT:: 

There are several methodologies for collecting data for semantic
distances between word concepts.  Most methods obtain information reflecting
only declarative knowledge.  Few if any of these methods attempt to capture
both declarative and procedural knowledge present in the internal mental
representations.  The present study attempted to examine the structure of
declarative and procedural knowledge in phone and automatic teller machine
(ATM) commands.  Three different types of statistical analyses were compared:
 multidimensional scaling (MDS), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and
pathfinder network analysis.  The results show that hierarchical cluster
analysis generated the most comprehensible and coherent solution for the
phone commands, while none of the statistical analyses generated an
acceptable solution for the ATM commands.  It may be possible that procedural
knowledge is not only difficult to express verbally, but also difficult to
state explicitly or describe formally.   Some previous studies indicate that
users may not be able to easily give very accurate information regarding
their procedural knolwledge of a system.
(Also cross-referenced as CAR-TR-366)
END:: UMCP-CSD//CS-TR-2053