CMSC 477/677 - Spring 2005

Discussion Questions for Class #5, February 13

Reading: Anderson, "ACT: A Simple Theory of Complex Cognition"; Anderson et al., "An Integrated Theory of the Mind."

You may also want to look at the tutorial slides (from the ACT-R tutorial website, click on the Introduction to ACT-R 5.0 slides (they don't seem to have updated the slides for ACT-R 6.0). 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 papers, but it's fine if you include commentary/summary of the tutorial slides, or any other related material that you choose to read. The 1996 paper is a nice, relatively short overview. The 2004 paper is more up to date, and contains some interesting results, but you will probably want to skim through some of the details of the experiments.

Questions:

Soar vs. ACT-R