T.O.T.E.

The T.O.T.E. or TOTE, standing for "Test - Operate - Test - Exit", is an iterative problem solving strategy based on feedback loops. It was described by George A. Miller, Eugene Galanter, and Karl H. Pribram in their 1960 book, Plans and the Structure of Behavior which outlined their conception of cognitive psychology.

By 1960, psychology had come to be dominated by behaviorism and learning theory, which emphasized the observable stimulus and response components of human and animal behavior while ignoring the cognitive processes that mediate the relationship between the stimulus and response. The cognitive phenomena occurring within the "black box" between stimulus and response were of little interest to behaviorists, as their mathematical models worked without them. In 1960, the book Plans and the Structure of Behavior, authored by George A. Miller, Eugene Galanter, and Karl H. Pribram, was published. In this volume, Miller and his colleagues sought to unify the behaviorists' learning theory with a cognitive model of learned behavior. Whereas the behaviorists suggested that a simple reflex arc underlies the acquisition of the stimulus-response relationship, Miller and his colleagues proposed that "some mediating organization of experience is necessary" somewhere between the stimulus and response, in effect a cognitive process which must include monitoring devices that control the acquisition of the stimulus-response relationship. They named this fundamental unit of behavior the T.O.T.E.

The self-control mechanisms in human tasking are explained in terms of both operations and monitoring processes. Each recurring operation would be associated to a monitoring process, to test if the intended control was yes or not.

Its premise is that a common algorithm for solving non-deterministic problems in a complex system, is to test where the system is currently, then perform some operation that makes a change, then retest again, and to repeat this until the answer is satisfactory, at which point the process is complete and ends (or exits).

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