In contrast to the usual indirect comparison of cognitive activity with a normative model, direct comparisons were made between the relative efficacy of highway experts' use of analytical, quasi-rational and intuitive cognition on three different tasks, each displayed in three different ways. Indices were developed for measuring the location of each task condition on a continuum ranging from intuition inducing to analysis inducing and for measuring the location of each expert's cognition on a continuum ranging from intuition to analysis. Individual analyses of each expert's performance over the nine conditions showed that the location of the task on the task index induced cognition to be located at the task on the task index induced cognition to be located at the corresponding region on the cognitive continuum index. In contrast to results from with the customary indirect comparisons, intuitive and quasi-rational cognition frequently out-performed analytical cognition in terms of empirical accuracy. The large but infrequent errors of analytical cognition did not wholly explain its lower performance. Judgmental accuracy was related in part to the degree of correspondence between the task location and the location of the experts' cognitive activity on the cognitive continuum. (Author)