CMSC 477/677 - Spring 2005

Discussion Questions for Class #5, February 15

Reading: ACT-R website overview; Anderson, "ACT: A simple theory of complex cognition"

You may also want to look at the tutorial slides (from the ACT-R website, click Tutorials, then open the "Introductory Tutorial. It's a little hard to follow, since it's just a presentation without context, but will give you a flavor of what an ACT-R model looks like.

Note that your paper summary need only cover the assigned Anderson paper, but it's fine if you include commentary/summary of the tutorial slides, or any other related material that you choose to read.

Questions:

What's a cognitive architecture?
What does ACT-R stand for?
What is Anderson's main claim in the article? (Be prepared to give the direct quote, and also to summarize in your own words.)
Production rules are the fundamental component of cognitive reasoning in ACT-R.

What's a production rule?
How are production rules triggered?
What is the mechanism for resolving conflicts between competing competitions?
How are the conflict-resolution weights learned?

What is a chunk in ACT-R?

How are chunks activated?
What are the components of the activation level?
What is meant by spreading activation?

What does Anderson mean by declarative vs. procedural knowledge?
Walk through the example in Figure 3. Does this seem to you to be a reasonable model of how people solve simple equations? Why or why not? Do you think that this approach would scale well to complex cognitive behaviors such as planning a trip or selecting courses for the spring semester? Why or why not?
Describe some domains that you think ACT-R would be especially well suited for.
Describe some domains that you think ACT-R would not be well suited for.
Do you think that ACT-R is a good model of human cognition? Why or why not?
Do you think that ACT-R is a good model to use for implementing artificial cognition? Why or why not?