From cl+ at andrew.cmu.edu Mon Dec 7 11:15:22 1998 From: cl+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Christian J Lebiere) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 11:15:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: 1999 ACT-R Summer School Message-ID: SIXTH ANNUAL ACT-R SUMMER SCHOOL ================================ Carnegie Mellon University - August 1999 ======================================== 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. The most recent advances of the ACT-R theory were detailed in the recent book "The Atomic Components of Thought" by John R. Anderson and Christian Lebiere, published in 1998 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 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 1999 ACT-R Summer School will be held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh from August 1 to 10. The 1999 ACT-R Workshop will be held from August 11 to 14 at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, and will be the subject of a separate announcement. The summer school will take place from Sunday August 1 to Tuesday August 10. 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 7 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. After a free day, the final two days of the summer school will be devoted to individual research projects. Computing facilities for the tutorials, assignments and research projects will be provided. Due to space considerations, admission is limited to a dozen participants, who must submit by APRIL 1 an application consisting of a curriculum vitae and statement of purpose. Applicants will be notified of admission by APRIL 15. Admission to the summer school is free. A stipend of up to $750 is available to graduate students for reimbursement of travel, housing and meal expenses. To qualify for the stipend, students must be US citizens and join to their application a letter of reference from a faculty member. 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 expected to attend. Transportation from the summer school to the workshop will be provided. An application form is appended below and is also available on the ACT-R web site (http://act.psy.cmu.edu/). ________________________________________________________ Sixth Annual ACT-R Summer School August 1 to 10, 1999 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh APPLICATION =========== Name: .................................................................. Address: .................................................................. .................................................................. .................................................................. Tel/Fax: .................................................................. Email: .................................................................. Applications are due APRIL 1. Acceptance will be notified by APRIL 15. Applicants MUST include a curriculum vitae and statement of purpose. 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. Check here to apply for stipend: ........ Housing is available in Resnick House, a CMU dormitory that offers suite-style accommodations. Rooms include air-conditioning, a semi-private bathroom and a common living room for suite-mates. This year's rates were $157.50/week/person or $31.50/night/person for single rooms and $118.00/week/person or $23.50/night/person for double rooms. Housing reservations will be taken after acceptance to the summer school. Do not send money. Send this form and other application materials by email, fax or mail to: 1999 ACT-R 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 ljs24 at psu.edu Mon Dec 7 13:58:15 1998 From: ljs24 at psu.edu (Lael Schooler) Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 13:58:15 -0500 Subject: Michael Anderson Message-ID: Hi, I was wondering whether anybody has worked out an ACT-R model that handles Michael Anderson's retreival based inhibition experiments. Anderson, M.C. & Spellman, B.A. (1995) On the status of inhibitory mechanisms in cognition: memory retrieval as a model case. Psychological Review. 102, 68-100 thanks, Lael From ja+ at CMU.EDU Mon Dec 7 14:42:00 1998 From: ja+ at CMU.EDU (John Anderson) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 14:42:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: Michael Anderson Message-ID: Anderson & Reder (in press) report a study calling into question the relevance of the Michael Anderson result to anything direct in the ACT-R domain. It remains a question how to understand his results. Anderson, J. R. & Reder, L. M. (in press). The fan effect: New results and new theories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. From reder+ at CMU.EDU Wed Dec 9 21:36:26 1998 From: reder+ at CMU.EDU (Lynne M Reder) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 21:36:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: a bit more on post doc ads Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Please excuse another email intrusion, but I am on sabbatical and away from my desk until mid-March. I am slightly nervous about losing track of mailed applications. Therefore if you know of someone who is applying for a postdoc position with me, would you please ask him or her to also send me email advice indicating that I should watch out for the application? Thanks very much and happy new year. --Lynne Reder * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Lynne M. Reder, Professor Department of Psychology Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 phone: (412)268-3792 fax: (412) 268-2844 email: reder at cmu.edu URL: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~reder/reder.html From ja+ at CMU.EDU Fri Dec 18 09:15:01 1998 From: ja+ at CMU.EDU (John Anderson) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:15:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: Season Greetings Message-ID: This is our annual update on the CMU scene between ACT-R meetings. The publication of the new book has begun a year of transitions. Christian Lebiere has successfully defended his thesis. Kevin Gluck, Lisa Haverty, Frank Lee, and Dario Salvucci will all be finishing their degrees by the end of this summer or earlier. John and Lynne are going for a Abe-shortened sabbatical to Stanford. There they have almost no plans or commitments. A company, Carnegie Learning Inc., was formed to market the high-school mathematics tutors and other things. Don't ask me about it because I don't know. Al Corbett and Ken Koedinger would. Steve Ritter has joined the company. We have begun fMRI research adding another link to the claim that ACT-R is a model of the human brain. Jon Fincham is working on this. We have officially retired the U in the ACT-R LUV research agenda. The U was concerned with making ACT-R usable as a tool and easy to learn. We consider this goal now achieved and will be focusing on its use in research. However, thanks to Dan Bothell, we will continue to maintain and update our excellent interfaces and Web-based facilities. The V in the ACT-R research agenda was concerned with the visual interface. We have become more concerned with interaction at the terminal more generally (eye movements, vision, speech, audition, keyboard, mouse) and so have decided to rename this agenda item Interaction. We needed a vowel anyways. A number of ongoing research projects (anti-air warfare coordinator, unmanned air vehicle) have become concerned with the detail of interaction with dynamic problem-solving interfaces. This is research that is occupying Mike Byrne, Scott Douglass, and Myeong-Ho Sohn. L, the learning agenda, remains. One focus here on the issue of how experimental instructions get turned into the productions that we all use to model our experiments. Marsha Lovett has been looking at the issue of credit assignment in complex strategy learning situations. We have decided to add language as our third major focus. There are a number of interesting projects outside of CMU but within CMU we have Raluca Budiu working on on-line semantic processing, Mike Matessa on discourse, and Christian on instruction following. This leads to the rather weak acronym for the local ACT-R agenda: LIL. But at least it is pronounceable. Suggested improvements are welcome. The summer school dates have been set and the workshop will this year be at George Mason. See you all there if not sooner.