Trading off "Memory" vs "Optimization" I've been researching the following topic. Or rather, I would like to but I can't find anything because I'm not sure what to look for.

I am interested weather there are some concepts or models that explain how humans (or cognitive systems in general) trade off remembering what to do in a particular situation versus thinking about the board state and devising a new solution. Consider the following example:

A person plays chess. On their turn they must decide what to do. They could act according to one of the following extreme strategies:


Remembering all possible board configurations and how the game ended (we'll call that Memory)
Use the known set of rules to simulate the game in their mind and choose the optimal path (Optimization)


I'd say the best choice is a trade off between these two. But how? When to choose one of the strategies?

Is there a research field that is working on these kind of questions? What would I look for?
If you can remember everything and there's no randomisation in your outcome like chess, there is absolutely no reason not to do that. Anybody who can remember all the possible board configurations in chess, by definition plays perfect chess. A perfect player would never lose.

Unfortunately, most practical problems can't be solved by brute-force, and that includes chess. All chess players learn general chess principles. Nobody could memorize all possible opening variations.

If you can somehow memorize every possibility, why not? But can you?