"Working Memory"

[Christian J Lebiere]

ACT-R has occasionally made a somewhat casual use of terminology, and
one of the most commonly mentioned sticking points is the (ab)use of the
term "working memory".  In ACT-R, it is used as a synonym for
declarative memory, i.e. the entire set of chunks encoding declarative
knowledge, which is at odds with its use in much of the literature and
some other production systems.

In order to increase the clarity of the ACT-R educational materials and
improve our consistency and communications, we are considering dropping
the term "working memory" and instead use exclusively the term
"declarative memory".  Use of the term "wme" would also be discontinued
and the term "chunk" would be used to refer to elements of declarative
memory.  Of course, this change would only bind ourselves and we would
only set an example, not engage in an Orwellian attempt to purge the
confusing words from the vocabulary of every ACT-R user.

Probably the most salient impact of this change would be in the use of
the system itself.  The acronyms for the terms "working memory" and
"working memory element" appear in many ACT-R commands (e.g. addwm,
wmfocus, etc).  The proposal is to continue providing the existing
commands, but also to supply functionally equivalent alternatives with
names more consistent with the new terminology, and to teach those
alternatives in the educational material.  The change would involve
replacing the acronyms "wm" and "wme" by "chunk(s)" in most commands and
"goal" in those that deal with the goal stack.  For example, addwm would
become addchunks and wmfocus would become goalfocus.  Again, this change
would be entirely backward-compatible and probably wouldn't take effect
until next year.

Let us know what you think, either by replying to us directly or to the list.

Thanks,

Christian