From ritter at psychology.nottingham.ac.uk Fri Dec 5 17:44:57 1997 From: ritter at psychology.nottingham.ac.uk (by way of plb@cs.cmu.edu (PeterBrusilovsky) Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 17:44:57 -0500 Subject: Reminder, Second call for papers: ECCM'98 Message-ID: Please note that the paper deadline is now about a month away. Cheers, Frank ------------------------------------------------------------------ (Second) CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: ECCM-98 Second European Conference on Cognitive Modelling Nottingham, UK, 1 - 4 April 1998 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Contributions are invited for the Second European Conference on Cognitive Modelling, to be held at the University of Nottingham from 1st to 4th April 1998 (starting with a day of optional tutorials). This series of meetings was founded to encourage international, inter-disciplinary co-operation in the field of cognitive modelling. The first meeting, held in Berlin in November 1996, attracted about 60 researchers from Europe and USA working in artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, computer linguistics and philosophy of mind. Submissions are welcome on any aspect of the computer modelling of human cognition, but preference will be given to work which describes both a running computer model and its comparison to empirical data. Further information about this Call, about the format for submissions, and about the Conference itself (including invited speakers and the programme committee) can be found at the conference Web site: http://phoenix.herts.ac.uk/~rmy/eccm98/programme.html or http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ritter/eccm98/ Contributions can take the form of papers, posters, proposals for symposia, or tutorials. PAPERS FOUR copies of papers should be sent to the Programme Co-Chair (address below), to ARRIVE by 5pm on 7th January 1998. (Late submiss- ions will be returned.) Hardcopy is required: email and fax submiss- ions are not acceptable. Papers should include a cover page giving the name and contact information of the first author, and stating any requirements for audio-visual equipment. The paper itself should consist of not more than 8 sides of A4 or US (8.5" x 11") paper, set in 10 point type in two columns. For detailed formatting instruct- ions, sample pages, and templates for word processing, please consult the Web pages as given above. POSTERS Work can be submitted as a poster which for any reason is better pre- sented as a poster than as a written paper and talk. To submit a poster, send a cover sheet (see above under Papers) and FOUR copies of an abstract of up to 2 pages. Authors of accepted posters will be invited to address the audience for three minutes as part of a "poster mania" session, in order to whet the audience's appetite and encourage them to visit the poster. SYMPOSIA By a symposium, we mean a session of related work on a particular topic. The session can take any of several different forms: a group of related papers, some short presentations followed by a discussion, a panel discussion, a debate, ... . The length of a symposium session is flexible, but by default would be 90 minutes. If you would like to organise a symposium, send us a proposal outlining your ideas and the names of the contributors, by no later than 1st December. If the pro- posal is accepted, we will work with you to try to ensure the success of the symposium, but you will be responsible for arranging and running it. There will be a symposium on Act and Soar, and there is likely to be a symposium on cogntive modelling and operations research. TUTORIALS There will be one-day tutorials on both ACT-R and Soar. If you would like to present a tutorial on some other aspect of cognitive model- ling, please contact us as soon as possible, and certainly no later than the middle of October. Important dates: --------------- Symposium proposal: by 1st December 1997 Paper or poster: to ARRIVE by 5 pm on 7th January 1998 Decision: by 9th February 1998 Revised version: by 13th March 1998 Send submissions to: ------------------- Richard M Young, ECCM-98 Department of Psychology University of Hertfordshire Hatfield Herts AL10 9AB U.K. For enquiries, contact: R.M.Young at herts.ac.uk; tel: +44 (1707) 28 5051; fax: 28 5073, or Frank.Ritter at nottingham.ac.uk; tel: +44 (115) 951 5292; fax: 951 5324. From cl+ at andrew.cmu.edu Fri Dec 5 14:08:48 1997 From: cl+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Christian J Lebiere) Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 14:08:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: Fifth Annual ACT-R Summer School and Workshop Message-ID: FIFTH ANNUAL ACT-R SUMMER SCHOOL AND WORKSHOP ============================================= Carnegie Mellon University - July 1998 ====================================== ACT-R is a cognitive theory and simulation system for developing cognitive models for tasks that vary from simple reaction time to air traffic control. Each year, a summer school and workshop are held to train researchers in the use of the system and to enable current users to exchange results and ideas. The fifth Annual ACT-R Summer School and Workshop will be held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh from July 6 to 21, 1998. Each summer school and workshop participant will receive a complimentary copy of The Atomic Components of Thought, the new book to be published next summer describing the latest developments of the ACT theory. The summer school will take place from Monday July 6 to Friday July 17, with the intervening weekend free. This intensive 10-day course is designed to train researchers in the use of ACT-R for cognitive modeling. It is structured as a set of 8 units, with each unit lasting a day and involving a morning theory lecture, a web-based tutorial, an afternoon discussion session and a homework assignment which students are expected to complete during the day and evening. The final two days of the summer school will be devoted to individual research projects. Computing facilities for the tutorials, assignments and research projects are provided. Due to space limitations, admission is limited to a dozen participants, who must submit by APRIL 1 an application consisting of a curriculum vitae and statement of purpose. Applications will be strengthened if the applicants include a description of a data set that they want to model at the summer school. If students are accepted to the summer school but do not bring a data set, they must be prepared to work with other students on their data sets. Successful student projects will be presented at the workshop, which all summer school students are encouraged to attend. Applicants will be notified of admission by APRIL 15. A stipend of up to $750 is available for graduate students. To qualify for the stipend, students must be US citizens and join to their application a letter of reference from a faculty member. Admission to the summer school is free. The workshop will take place from the morning of Saturday July 18 to Tuesday July 21 at noon. Mornings will be devoted to research presentations, each lasting 30 minutes including questions. Participants are invited to present their ACT-R research by submitting a presentation title and a short abstract. Afternoons will feature discussion sessions and instructional tutorials. Suggestions for the topics of the discussion sessions are welcome. Evenings will be occupied by demonstration sessions, during which participants can gain a more detailed knowledge of the models presented and engage in unstructured discussions. Admission to the workshop is open to all and the registration fee is $100. A registration form is appended below. Additional information (detailed schedule, etc.) will appear on the ACT-R Web site (http://act.psy.cmu.edu/) when available or can be requested at: 1998 ACT-R Workshop and Summer School Psychology Department Attn: Helen Borek Baker Hall 345C Fax: +1 (412) 268-2844 Carnegie Mellon University Tel: +1 (412) 268-3438 Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 Email: helen+ at cmu.edu ________________________________________________________ Fifth Annual ACT-R Workshop and Summer School July 6 to 21, 1998 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh REGISTRATION ============ Name: .................................................................. Address: .................................................................. .................................................................. .................................................................. Tel/Fax: .................................................................. Email: .................................................................. Summer School (July 6 to July 17): ........ (check here to apply) ================================== Applications are due APRIL 1. Acceptance will be notified by APRIL 15. Applicants MUST include a curriculum vitae and statement of purpose. Check here to apply for stipend: ........ A stipend of up to $750 is available for the reimbursement of travel, lodging and meal expenses (receipts needed). To qualify for the stipend, the applicant must be a graduate student with US citizenship and include a letter of reference from a faculty member. Workshop (July 18 to 21): ........ (check here to register) ========================= Presentation topic (optional): ............................................................................ Abstract: ............................................................................ ............................................................................ ............................................................................ ............................................................................ ............................................................................ ............................................................................ An admission fee of $100 is due upon registration. Please send checks or money orders only. We cannot accept credit cards. HOUSING ======= Housing is available in the CMU dormitories. Exact rates have not yet been determined but should be similar to last year's rates, which were $38 per night or $190 per week for the Resnick/West Wing dorms (newer, AC), and $19 per night or $95 per week for the Morewood dorms (older, no AC). Complete the following to reserve a room in the dorms: I will stay from ........ to ........ in ..................... dorm. ROOM PAYMENT IS DUE UPON CHECK-IN. DO NOT SEND MONEY. The recommended hotel is the Holiday Inn University Center, located on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh within easy walking distance of CMU. Contact the Holiday Inn directly at +1 (412) 682-6200. Send this form to: 1998 ACT-R Workshop and Summer School Psychology Department Attn: Helen Borek Baker Hall 345C Fax: +1 (412) 268-2844 Carnegie Mellon University Tel: +1 (412) 268-3438 Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 Email: helen+ at cmu.edu From ritter at psychology.nottingham.ac.uk Fri Dec 5 14:36:48 1997 From: ritter at psychology.nottingham.ac.uk (ritter at psychology.nottingham.ac.uk) Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 19:36:48 GMT Subject: Reminder, Second call for papers: ECCM'98 Message-ID: <199712051936.TAA15073@vpsyc.psyc.nott.ac.uk> Please note that the paper deadline is now about a month away. Cheers, Frank ------------------------------------------------------------------ (Second) CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: ECCM-98 Second European Conference on Cognitive Modelling Nottingham, UK, 1 - 4 April 1998 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Contributions are invited for the Second European Conference on Cognitive Modelling, to be held at the University of Nottingham from 1st to 4th April 1998 (starting with a day of optional tutorials). This series of meetings was founded to encourage international, inter-disciplinary co-operation in the field of cognitive modelling. The first meeting, held in Berlin in November 1996, attracted about 60 researchers from Europe and USA working in artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, computer linguistics and philosophy of mind. Submissions are welcome on any aspect of the computer modelling of human cognition, but preference will be given to work which describes both a running computer model and its comparison to empirical data. Further information about this Call, about the format for submissions, and about the Conference itself (including invited speakers and the programme committee) can be found at the conference Web site: http://phoenix.herts.ac.uk/~rmy/eccm98/programme.html or http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ritter/eccm98/ Contributions can take the form of papers, posters, proposals for symposia, or tutorials. PAPERS FOUR copies of papers should be sent to the Programme Co-Chair (address below), to ARRIVE by 5pm on 7th January 1998. (Late submiss- ions will be returned.) Hardcopy is required: email and fax submiss- ions are not acceptable. Papers should include a cover page giving the name and contact information of the first author, and stating any requirements for audio-visual equipment. The paper itself should consist of not more than 8 sides of A4 or US (8.5" x 11") paper, set in 10 point type in two columns. For detailed formatting instruct- ions, sample pages, and templates for word processing, please consult the Web pages as given above. POSTERS Work can be submitted as a poster which for any reason is better pre- sented as a poster than as a written paper and talk. To submit a poster, send a cover sheet (see above under Papers) and FOUR copies of an abstract of up to 2 pages. Authors of accepted posters will be invited to address the audience for three minutes as part of a "poster mania" session, in order to whet the audience's appetite and encourage them to visit the poster. SYMPOSIA By a symposium, we mean a session of related work on a particular topic. The session can take any of several different forms: a group of related papers, some short presentations followed by a discussion, a panel discussion, a debate, ... . The length of a symposium session is flexible, but by default would be 90 minutes. If you would like to organise a symposium, send us a proposal outlining your ideas and the names of the contributors, by no later than 1st December. If the pro- posal is accepted, we will work with you to try to ensure the success of the symposium, but you will be responsible for arranging and running it. There will be a symposium on Act and Soar, and there is likely to be a symposium on cogntive modelling and operations research. TUTORIALS There will be one-day tutorials on both ACT-R and Soar. If you would like to present a tutorial on some other aspect of cognitive model- ling, please contact us as soon as possible, and certainly no later than the middle of October. Important dates: --------------- Symposium proposal: by 1st December 1997 Paper or poster: to ARRIVE by 5 pm on 7th January 1998 Decision: by 9th February 1998 Revised version: by 13th March 1998 Send submissions to: ------------------- Richard M Young, ECCM-98 Department of Psychology University of Hertfordshire Hatfield Herts AL10 9AB U.K. For enquiries, contact: R.M.Young at herts.ac.uk; tel: +44 (1707) 28 5051; fax: 28 5073, or Frank.Ritter at nottingham.ac.uk; tel: +44 (115) 951 5292; fax: 951 5324. From ritter at psychology.nottingham.ac.uk Sat Dec 13 12:04:41 1997 From: ritter at psychology.nottingham.ac.uk (ritter at psychology.nottingham.ac.uk) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 17:04:41 GMT Subject: update/reminder 2nd European Cog Modelling Conference (ECCM) Message-ID: <199712131704.RAA00748@vpsyc.psyc.nott.ac.uk> [This is going out to all previous attenders interested parties] There are have been a few updates about the 2nd European Cognitive Modelling Conference that I'd like to pass on you. This might also serve as a reminder about the paper deadline of 7 January. Some posts to bboards and mailing lists (which many of you are already on, alas) generated a couple of responses actually thanking me for the reminder, so I thought you deserved the same. I think that there will not be many more emails this way. UPDATES We are likely to have publisher's stands at the meeting. There will be symposia on ActR and Soar (including a model walk through). There may be symposia on the Cogent meta-architecture, representations change, and cognitive modelling at work. The tutorials are setup or falling into place. We will have a reduced fee for graduate students and are likely to be able to offer some fellowships for attendance (more on the web site as this develops). The web site remains http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ritter/eccm98 There is now even a Faq there and some further information. ACCOMODATION I would also like your wishes on accommodation. I'm sorting out blocks of rooms, and while this won't commit you and we will offer all of these types, it would help to know the relative preferences for rooms. Please, if you would, reply with what *you* would want if you were to come or will come: Hall of residence, single rooms, bathroom with shower down the hall shared with about 4 rooms. Over the conference meeting room and next door to swimming pool and tennis courts. about 20 pounds/30 US dollars per night. Hall of residence, single rooms, bathroom connected to your room. Building next to where the conference is held. about 30 pounds/45 US dollars per night. Hotel, single or double room, bathroom connected to your room. A short walk to a short taxi ride away from the conference. about 60 pounds/90 US dollars per night Cheers, Frank -- Frank.Ritter at nottingham.ac.uk + 44 (115) 951-5292 (office, will bounce to an answerphone) + 44 (115) 951-5324 (incoming fax) Psychology U. of Nottingham http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ritter/ Nottingham NG7 2RD England From cl+ at andrew.cmu.edu Tue Dec 16 16:05:41 1997 From: cl+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Christian J Lebiere) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 16:05:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: Season Greetings Message-ID: <8oZioZa00WBM08loI0@andrew.cmu.edu> At last year's workshop the remark was made that there was little opportunity to stay abreast of work happening in the ACT-R community between workshops. So we are venturing this message at the turn of the year and the midway point between meetings. The major project that is occupying us is getting the book out. This is a conceptual description of ACT-R 4.0 plus some demonstrations of its applications. We feel a bit like salesmen giving the specs on a new car and then giving some test drives to show what it can do. A Table of Contents follows, with additional principal contributors listed. The book should be available by or before the 1998 Summer Workshop: The Atomic Components of Thought. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Representation Chapter 3. Performance Chapter 4. Learning Chapter 5. Visual Interface Chapter 6. Action and Perception (Mike Byrne) Chapter 7. List Memory Chapter 8. Choice (Marsha Lovett) Chapter 9. Cognitive Arithmetic Chapter 10. Analogy (Dario Salvucci) Chapter 11. Scientific Discovery (Chris Schunn) Chapter 12. Reflections To review, since the workshop the major changes in ACT-R 4.0 have been: A power-law time decay similar to that used in the base level and strength formulas has been added to the computation of production utility parameters. The production compilation mechanism (nee analogy) now applies when a dependency structure is popped rather than in parallel with production conflict resolution. Cosmetic improvements have been made to the appearance of printed chunks and productions, the format of the !output! command and the variable names of automatically generated productions. There will probably be another one or two beta releases before the final release of ACT-R 4.0 next summer, but few if any significant changes are expected. A big push in our efforts is to increase the public accessibility of ACT-R. One step in this direction is the Published Models directory which is available from the ACT-R research page. The goal is to allow not just experienced ACT-R users but any interested researcher to try out models and inspect their code. We encourage others to submit models for this repository. The Published Models directory is intended to provide the public documentation for research papers. There is no requirement that these papers actually be "published" but they should be available. In fact, it might be nice to announce on the mailing list papers for which ACT-R 4.0 models are available. To help model that practice we list our first two such papers meeting this criterion: Anderson, J. R. & Reder, L. M. (in press). The fan effect: New results and new theories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Lebiere, C. & Matessa, M. (in press). An integrated theory of list memory. Journal of Memory and Language. While these two papers are in the memory domain, there are many other domains for which successful ACT-R models exist as the book will illustrate. It is important for the community to find traditional outlets for publication of ACT-R research. Traditional journals can be receptive to properly presented papers. We would be happy to advise on how to prepare suitable papers. On another dimension of public accessibility, it has become apparent to us that a major limitation in the access of ACT-R is difficulties researchers are having in wrapping code around their ACT-R models to administer the experiment and collect statistics. We are working on a scripting extension which should help alleviate those problems. We hope to have it in beta release soon and officially unveil it at the 1998 Summer School and Workshop. We also plan to hold a special session at the workshop devoted to that topic. On another dimension of public availability we intend to place our instructional material on the Web for general access with the publication of the book. This will include the Interbook-based (Peter Brusilovsky) tutorial and documentation and the ACT-R Environment (Jon Fincham). We welcome other suggestions about matters you perceive critical to the conceptual or technical development of ACT-R. We wish you all truly happy holidays and a prosperous (i.e. lots of successful ACT-R modeling) New Year. John Anderson Christian Lebiere From cl+ at andrew.cmu.edu Wed Dec 17 12:21:24 1997 From: cl+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Christian J Lebiere) Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 12:21:24 -0500 (EST) Subject: source activation In-Reply-To: <3498067F.982B5285@uni-bayreuth.de> References: <3498067F.982B5285@uni-bayreuth.de> Message-ID: Wolfgang, Excerpts from mail: 17-Dec-97 source activation by Wolfgang Schoppek at uni-ba > In my attempts to construct my own ACT-R (4.0) models I realized that I > don't understand the relation between "being the focus" and "source > activation". Hitherto I believed that only the chunk on top of the > goal-stack is a source of activation. But following the traces of a very > simple model I realized that pushing a chunk on the stack with > (Focus-on-Goal) does not raise the activation-level of the chunk. > Setting a source value with (sdp :Source) causes such a raise without > the chunk being the focus. I couldn't find an answer to this question > neither in the literature nor in the manual. So can anybody help me with > my fundamental problem? Unlike earlier ACT-R versions (i.e. ACT-R 2.0), in ACT-R 4.0 setting a chunk as the focus does not make it a source of activation, but instead makes its components, i.e. the chunks which appear as values in its slots, as new sources of activations. The total goal activation (aka W) is divided evenly among those sources. Therefore, the more chunks in the goal, the lower their individual level of source activation. This has been of central interest to many recent models, including those of working memory, list memory and individual differences: Anderson, J. R., Reder, L. M. & Lebiere, C. (1996) Working Memory: Activation limitations on retrieval. Cognitive Psychology, 30, 221-256. Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Lebiere, C. & Matessa, M. (in press). An integrated theory of list memory. Journal of Memory and Language. Lovett, M., Reder, L. M., Lebiere, C. Modeling Individual Differences in a Digit Working Memory Task. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Stanford, CA. August 1997. Christian From reder+ at CMU.EDU Wed Dec 17 12:44:46 1997 From: reder+ at CMU.EDU (Lynne M Reder) Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 12:44:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: source activation In-Reply-To: References: <3498067F.982B5285@uni-bayreuth.de> Message-ID: Excerpts from mail: 17-Dec-97 Re: source activation by Christian J Lebiere > Lovett, M., Reder, L. M., Lebiere, C. Modeling Individual Differences in > a Digit Working Memory Task. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the > Cognitive Science Society. Stanford, CA. August 1997. > Another reference to this work and more thorough (ask Marsha for preprints!) is: Lovett, M., Reder, L. M., Lebiere, C. (in press) Modeling Working Memory in a Unified Architecture: An ACT-R Perspective. In Miyake, A. and Shah, P. (Eds). Models of Working Memory . Oxford University Press. From Wolfgang.Schoppek at uni-bayreuth.de Wed Dec 17 12:06:07 1997 From: Wolfgang.Schoppek at uni-bayreuth.de (Wolfgang Schoppek) Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 18:06:07 +0100 Subject: source activation Message-ID: <3498067F.982B5285@uni-bayreuth.de> In my attempts to construct my own ACT-R (4.0) models I realized that I don't understand the relation between "being the focus" and "source activation". Hitherto I believed that only the chunk on top of the goal-stack is a source of activation. But following the traces of a very simple model I realized that pushing a chunk on the stack with (Focus-on-Goal) does not raise the activation-level of the chunk. Setting a source value with (sdp :Source) causes such a raise without the chunk being the focus. I couldn't find an answer to this question neither in the literature nor in the manual. So can anybody help me with my fundamental problem? -- Wolfgang -------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Wolfgang Schoppek <<< Tel.: +49 921 555003 <<< Lehrstuhl fuer Psychologie, Universitaet Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth http://www.uni-bayreuth.de/departments/psychologie/wolfgang.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------