Expert and beginner verbal reports were compared on the basis of their temporal content during the simulation of a blast furnace malfunction. Previously published results on the same situation showed a differential effect of expertise on reasoning processes (Hoc 1991). Expertise appeared to have no effect on basic information processing mechanisms, but it did strongly affect the type of information processed#x2014;in fact it had a clear-cut effect on the framework used to analyse the situation. The present study focuses on what people say about temporal relations between events, especially in relation to supervisory activities, based on verbal protocols that operators were asked to provide. Four types of contents were analysed#x2014;dates, periods, orders, and evolutions (changes over time in the process under supervision). Although temporal aspects should be seen as crucial from the task viewpoint (especially response latencies), expertise had no clear-cut effect on the occurrence of these types of contents. On the whole, only 40 of grammatical propositions included such temporal contents. Evolutions represented 50 of these propositions, dates and orders about 25 each, periods (time intervals) only 20 (although they are important to consider in relation to the task that includes response latency processing). Only 17 of the evolutions concern the future. (These are anticipations that should play a major role in decision-making.) Results have led to recommending that the same type of support and training should be given to all operators, whatever their expertise level. A broader discussion explores the real needs for explicit temporal processing, even in this kind of task.
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