From cl at andrew.cmu.edu Thu Sep 7 14:56:33 2000 From: cl at andrew.cmu.edu (Christian Lebiere) Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 14:56:33 -0400 Subject: 2001 Post-Graduate Summer School Message-ID: As John mentioned at the 2000 ACT-R Workshop, next year we will not offer the traditional summer school and workshop, but instead we will organize a post-graduate summer school targeted at experienced users of ACT-R. After seven years of organizing the summer school and workshop, it seemed like a good time to take a sabbatical and reflect on ACT-R. We encourage ACT-R modelers who would have presented their research at the workshop to instead submit it to ICCM-2001, the Fourth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling that will take place at George Mason University from July 26 to July 28, 2001. See http://hfac.gmu.edu/iccm/ for details. The format of the post-graduate summer school will probably consist of half-days devoted to specific topics, starting with a tutorial-like lecture lasting one to one-and-a-half hour, followed by free-flowing discussion and exchanges. Topics can include specific areas (e.g. language), mechanisms (e.g. production rule learning), techniques (e.g. eye tracking) and general aspects of cognitive modeling (e.g. education). We really want to find out what topics you would be interested in seeing discussed. Please send us any topics that occur to you or other suggestions by replying to this message or email cl+ at cmu.edu. Tentative plans are to hold the post-graduate summer school immediately before ICCM-2001, from Saturday July 21 to Wednesday July 25, in Berkeley Springs, a quaint West Virginia town located about 3 hours from Pittsburgh and two hours from Washington, DC. Locations being considered include the Country Inn (www.countryinnwv.com), a large Georgian-style Inn in the middle of town, and Coolfont (www.coolfont.com), a resort located in the mountains about 5 miles outside of town. Again comments are welcome. Thank you for your input, Christian Lebiere John Anderson From Kevin.Gluck at williams.af.mil Thu Sep 7 21:12:03 2000 From: Kevin.Gluck at williams.af.mil (Gluck Kevin A Civ AFRL/HEAA) Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 18:12:03 -0700 Subject: Stephanie Doane Message-ID: longer at UIUC. I'd like to learn more about her instrument flying model. ---------------------------------------------- Kevin A. Gluck, PhD Air Force Research Laboratory Warfighter Training Research Division 6030 S. Kent St. Mesa, AZ 85212-6061 Tel: 480-988-6561 ext. 234 / DSN 474-6234 Fax: 480-988-6575 From trafton at itd.nrl.navy.mil Thu Sep 7 22:06:26 2000 From: trafton at itd.nrl.navy.mil (Greg Trafton) Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 22:06:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Stephanie Doane Message-ID: Stephanie Doane greg From ldaily at shepherd.edu Fri Sep 8 09:48:56 2000 From: ldaily at shepherd.edu (Larry Z. Daily) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 09:48:56 -0400 Subject: 2001 Post-Graduate Summer School Message-ID: Berkeley Springs is just down the road from me. As a bit of local color, you may be interested in knowing that Coolfont is very close to Berkeley Castle, the only Norman English (or is it English Norman?) castle in the states. It was recently sold to a group from Warrenton, Virginia who bought it because, they say, it is haunted. The buyers showed up at their pre-bid inspection tour with all sorts of electromagnetic equipment that they said could detect ghosts. On a more serious note, if I can help with the organization of this event, please feel free to call. And, of course, I'd like to extend an invitation to visit Shepherd College to anyone who attends the post-graduate summer school. Regards, Larry ************************************************************ Larry Z. Daily Department of Psychology White Hall, Room 213 Shepherd College Shepherdstown, West Virginia 25443 phone: (304) 876-5297 email: ldaily at shepherd.edu WWW: http://webpages.shepherd.edu/LDAILY/index.html > -----Original Message----- > From: Christian Lebiere [mailto:cl at andrew.cmu.edu] > Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 2:57 PM > To: act-r-users at andrew.cmu.edu > Subject: 2001 Post-Graduate Summer School > > > Dear ACT-R-users: > > As John mentioned at the 2000 ACT-R Workshop, next year we will not offer > the traditional summer school and workshop, but instead we will > organize a > post-graduate summer school targeted at experienced users of > ACT-R. After > seven years of organizing the summer school and workshop, it > seemed like a > good time to take a sabbatical and reflect on ACT-R. We encourage ACT-R > modelers who would have presented their research at the workshop > to instead > submit it to ICCM-2001, the Fourth International Conference on Cognitive > Modeling that will take place at George Mason University from July 26 to > July 28, 2001. See http://hfac.gmu.edu/iccm/ for details. > > The format of the post-graduate summer school will probably consist of > half-days devoted to specific topics, starting with a > tutorial-like lecture > lasting one to one-and-a-half hour, followed by free-flowing > discussion and > exchanges. Topics can include specific areas (e.g. language), mechanisms > (e.g. production rule learning), techniques (e.g. eye tracking) > and general > aspects of cognitive modeling (e.g. education). We really want to > find out > what topics you would be interested in seeing discussed. Please send us > any topics that occur to you or other suggestions by replying to this > message or email cl+ at cmu.edu. > > Tentative plans are to hold the post-graduate summer school immediately > before ICCM-2001, from Saturday July 21 to Wednesday July 25, in Berkeley > Springs, a quaint West Virginia town located about 3 hours from > Pittsburgh > and two hours from Washington, DC. Locations being considered > include the > Country Inn (www.countryinnwv.com), a large Georgian-style Inn in the > middle of town, and Coolfont (www.coolfont.com), a resort located in the > mountains about 5 miles outside of town. Again comments are welcome. > > Thank you for your input, > Christian Lebiere > John Anderson > > From VEN11600 at nifty.ne.jp Fri Sep 15 01:10:55 2000 From: VEN11600 at nifty.ne.jp (=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCO3tIeCEhRlgbKEI=?=) Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 14:10:55 +0900 Subject: question about use an English sentence Message-ID: I was wondering if someone could help me (a Japanese) understand an English sentence. The sentence, ``It can/could be argued that ....", has frequently confused me. I think this sentence brings two meanings, that is, it implys ``I can/could say that ... , but there is room for argument on this point." Is my understanding correct? I shold apologize to you for asking the question irrelevant to ACT-R. Atsushi Terao Department of Human system Science Tokyo Institute of Technology From r.m.young at herts.ac.uk Mon Sep 18 09:54:16 2000 From: r.m.young at herts.ac.uk (Richard M Young) Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 14:54:16 +0100 Subject: Picture in Guiness Book of Records Message-ID: Congratulations -- apparently the most recent Guiness Book of Records has a photograph of you surrounded by zillions of "Crisp" (i.e. potato chip) packets! -- Richard From VEN11600 at nifty.ne.jp Wed Sep 20 09:09:19 2000 From: VEN11600 at nifty.ne.jp (=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCO3tIeCEhRlgbKEI=?=) Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 22:09:19 +0900 Subject: Thank you. Message-ID: of how to use an English sentence. It was a great help. Thank you very much. ---- Atsushi Terao Department of Human System Science Tokyo Institute of Technology terao at cog.tp.titech.ac.jp From ritter at ist.psu.edu Wed Sep 20 22:47:28 2000 From: ritter at ist.psu.edu (ritter at ist.psu.edu) Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 22:47:28 -0400 Subject: Cog Modelling Conference + 2 jobs, tutorials, etc. Message-ID: http://hfac.gmu.edu/iccm/ 26-28 July 2000 paper deadline: 1 March 2000 This is the formal first announcement of the 2001 International Cognitive Modelling Conference. I am mailing this to you because you attended a previous conference, you asked to be added, or I added your name for some reason I might no longer remember. I do send this out by hand. I have again included a bunch of announcements related to Cognitive modelling that may be of related interest. Adds/deletes to this list --> ritter at ist.psu.edu I try to send out announcements only around the intro to the conference, reminder about papers, and program announced. I am happy to answer questions about any of these announcements, although I know more about some than others. Cognitive Science Society Tutorial program at CogSci 2001 conference http://ritter.ist.psu.edu/cogsci2001/tutorials.html Job announcement at Penn State in IST (e.g., cog sci, HCI) http://www.ist.psu.edu/jobposts/track2_062700.html We are hiring 5-7 people for the next 4 years. Job announcement at George Mason in Cognition http://hfac.gmu.edu/opening.html AISB'01 Convention Call for Symposium Proposals http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/~simonco/conferences/AISB01 Simulated Human Agents, AAAI Fall 2000 Workshop http://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/ihi/cognition/personnel/freed/sha/ Tutorial notes from Cognitive Science 1999 1/2 off of $10 (or 6.50 pounds), postage included. Proceeds to the CogSci Socitt iety. http://www.cedcc.psu.edu/ritter/cogsci99-books.txt Cheers, Frank Frank Ritter at ist.psu.edu School of Information Sciences and Technology The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16801-3857 ph. (814) 865-4453 fax (814) 865-5604 From wschoppe at gmu.edu Thu Sep 21 11:29:11 2000 From: wschoppe at gmu.edu (Wolfgang Schoppek) Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 11:29:11 -0400 Subject: 2001 Post-Graduate Summer School Message-ID: I suggest that associative learning should be one of the issues to be discussed at the post-graduate summer school. I understand that turning on associative learning often leads to unpredicted (and often disturbing) effects. But instead of eliminating a core concept of psychology from ACT-R, we should try to improve the associative learning mechanism. I had a closer look at the details of the current mechanism and found that one of the biggest problems lies in the estimation of the initial rji value. Sure, the equation rji*=m/n is derived from rational analysis, but this is worthless when you don't have accurate estimates for m and n ("garbage in - garbage out"). Also, the theoretical justification why newly created IAs ("soft links", not slot relations) have an rji*=1 is not clear to me. This "rji*=1 assumption" leads to the effect that new chunks, when they become associated with old chunks get more and more negative sjis as the run proceeds - all other things being equal! I tried out some modifications, which are listed below (slot relations are called "hard links", purely associative Sjis are called "soft links"): - *wme-number* is a constant (or parameter) now, default value is 250 (interpreted as the "semantic neighborhood") - I removed the default self-activation of chunks (cf. create-wme) but kept the initial value of fan at 1 (that means that the actual fan is always 1 less than the calculated) (this change remdies the "retrieving the same chunk over and over again effect") - Soft links are treated the same way as hard links, i.e. chunk i (the target) is included in the fan list (wme-fan) of chunk j (the cue) and the fan is increased by 1. - Also, the initial rji (called rji*) for soft links does no longer default to 1, but is calculated the same way as for hard links, i.e. *wme-number* / wme-fan(j). In my tests, the new mechanism produces more plausible sjis, and the wme-fans don't get unreasonably high. I'll continue my testing. Btw.: the model of "a pilot flying a 747-400" (which I presented at the 2000 Workshop see: http://www.uni-bayreuth.de/departments/psychologie/ACTR-2000/index.htm ) uses the modified learning mechanism and runs fine (hundreds of cycles). If anyone is interested in these modifications, please let me know. Finally one more little ad: I've developed a (mathematical) ACT-R model of the keeping track task which has some interesting implications about interference in memory. Don't worry: no associative learning there. You can read it in the CogSci 2000 proceedings or download it ( http://www.ircs.upenn.edu/cogsci2000/PRCDNGS/SPRCDNGS/posters/schoppek.pdf ) Cheers, -- Wolfgang -------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Wolfgang Schoppek <<< Tel.: +1 703-993-4663 <<< HUMAN FACTORS & APPLIED COGNITION PROGRAM, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030-4444 http://www.uni-bayreuth.de/departments/psychologie/wolfgang.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------- From byrne at rice.edu Fri Sep 1 16:41:11 2000 From: byrne at rice.edu (Mike Byrne) Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 15:41:11 -0500 Subject: ACT-R/PM in press Message-ID: Two papers ACT-R/PM papers are now slated to be "in press," so now there are journal article references for RPM. They are: Byrne, M. D., & Anderson, J. R. (in press). Serial modules in parallel: The psychological refractory period and perfect time-sharing. To appear in _Psychological Review_. Byrne, M. D., (in press). ACT-R/PM and menu selection: Applying a cognitive architecture to HCI. To appear in _International Journal of Human-Computer Studies_. You can download PDF versions from my publications Web page: http://chil.rice.edu/byrne/pubs.html Abstracts follow: Serial modules in parallel -------------------------- This paper describes an integrated theory of cognition, perception, and action called ACT-R/PM. The theory consists of the ACT-R production system as the underlying theory of cognition and a set of perceptual-motor modules much like those found in EPIC (Meyer & Kieras, 1997a, 1997b). Cognition and each of the perceptual-motor modules are essentially serial, but they all run in parallel with one another. This extended version of ACT-R can model simple dual tasks such as the psychological refractory period, including subtle results previously explained with EPIC. The principal difference between the theories is that EPIC claims productions implementing central cognition can fire in parallel whereas ACT-R/PM claims they fire serially. Therefore, three experiments were run employing novel dual-task situations with more demanding cognitive requirements (e.g. arithmetic). The data indicate that the cognitive processing for the two tasks in these experiments was not overlapping. The true power of ACT-R/ PM is demonstrated with models of these experiments. In particular, ACT-R's activation-based retrieval processes are critical in accounting for the timing of these tasks and for explaining the slow-down in performance in a dual-task situation. ACT-R/PM and menu selection --------------------------- Understanding the interaction of a user with a designed device such as a GUI requires clear understanding of three components: the cognitive, perceptual, and motor capabilities of the user, the task to be accomplished, and the artifact used to accomplish the task. Computational modeling systems which enable serious consideration all of these constraints have only recently begun to emerge. One such system is ACT-R/PM, which is described in detail. ACT-R/PM is a production system architecture that has been augmented with a set of perceptual-motor modules designed to enable the detailed modeling of interactive tasks. Nilsen's (1991) random menu selection task serves two goals: to illustrate the promise of this system and to help further our understanding of the processes underlying menu selection and visual search. Nilsen9s original study, two earlier models of the task, and recent eye-tracking data are all considered. Drawing from the best properties of the previous models considered and guided by information from the eye-tracking experiment, a series of new models of random menu selection were constructed using ACT-R/PM. The final model provides a zero-parameter fit to the data that does an excellent, though not perfect, job of capturing the data. Thanks to all of you who helped make these papers happen! -Mike =========================================================== Mike Byrne, Ph.D. byrne at acm.org Assistant Professor, Psychology Department Rice University, MS-25 http://chil.rice.edu/byrne/ 6100 Main Street +1 713-348-3770 voice Houston, TX 77005-1892 +1 713-348-5221 fax