Pragmatic Action

This paper begins with a discussion of two features of the everyday task environment. First, the everyday task environment is designed, and an important part of the design is the provision of explicit information to guide the individual in the adaptation of his activity. Second, some task environments are semipermanent. These two features of the task environment reveal some important characteristics in the psychology of the individual. When novelty occurs, expansion in the range of behavior of the individual is guided by a process of internalization of information provided in the task environment by another. Because of the semi-permanence of home task environments, there is pay-off in organizing behavior in terms of the particulars of those environments. The body of this paper examines these ideas from the perspective of FLOABN. FLOABN is a computational cognitive model of an individual acquiring skill at using household and office devices.