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?