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<div><font face="New York" color="#000000">Again I hope you all have
had a profitable year modeling. <br>
<br>
On the surface, the major event this year would seem to be the fact
that Christian Lebiere has taken a leave of absence to assume a
full-time job at MAAD. However, he continues to be a
Pittsburgh resident, he assures us we will still see a lot of him, and
he continues his central role in the ACT-R community. In my view
and his, this is a test of the maturity of ACT-R and of whether it is
ready for prime time.<br>
<br>
Our group has two major foci of research. One is a much more
elaborate attack on the learning problem. Both with respect to
the CMU-ASP synthetic task and our algebra tutor we have taken on
seriously the goal of modeling the student/learner at the level of
processing the actual display, processing presented instruction, and
matching in detail data on key strokes and eye movements. The
ultimate goal in this project is to build models of synthetic students
with which we can evaluate proposed instructional
interventions. We are looking forward to the arrival of
Niels Taatgen this March and expect that he will have a lot to
contribute to the direction of this research.<br>
<br>
The second major focus of research concerns use of fMRI and other
brain imaging methods to inform the architecture. We have found
brain regions that reliably reflect the retrieval buffer and the
manual buffer in ACT-R. Brain imaging data in a number of tasks
has led us to postulate an imaginal buffer. We are currently
working to find brain regions that will indicate the visual buffers,
the aural buffer, the vocal buffer, and the goal buffer. We are
also hoping to find a mapping of the patterns of activation that we
see in the basal ganglia onto indications of productions and
production rule learning.<br>
<br>
ACT-R 5.0 has more or less settled into a form that most are using on
a regular basis. It will serve as the basis for the 2003 Summer
School. An announcement about the 2003 Summer School and
Workshop will be issued shortly. Dan Bothell will also soon
begin the discussion of the issues involved in a future ACT-R 6.0.
The intention for 6.0 is mainly to "clean-up" the ACT-R
developments to date. This includes reworking the software and
making the behavior of the system more consistent. One of our
goals is to facilitate modular use of the system so that alternative
modules can be plugged into ACT-R and so that its modules can be
plugged into other architectures.<br>
<br>
Best Wishes for the New Year. I hope I will see many of you at
ICCM 2003 at Bamberg.<br>
<br>
--John Anderson</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">-- <br>
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<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">John R. Anderson<br>
Carnegie Mellon University<br>
Pittsburgh, PA 15213<br>
<br>
Phone: 412-268-2788<br>
Fax: 412-268-2844<br>
email: ja@cmu.edu<br>
URL: http://act.psy.cmu.edu/</font></div>
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