From byrne at rice.edu Wed Aug 1 14:56:52 2001 From: byrne at rice.edu (Mike Byrne) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 13:56:52 -0500 Subject: Human Perf Modeling Special Issue Message-ID: approaching and Wayne and I thought a reminder might be in order. My apologies to those of you getting this twice. -------------------------------------------------- Call for Participation SPECIAL ISSUE of the Human Factors journal: Quantitative Formal Models of Human Performance CO-EDITORS: Michael D. Byrne & Wayne D. Gray One of the goals of research in Human Factors is the prediction of human performance. While verbal theories and empirical results clearly add to the science, they are not especially useful for quantitative performance prediction. Formal models, on the other hand, can be used to make specific quantitative predictions about human performance. This special issue is intended to examine the use of quantitative formal models in understanding and predicting human performance in a human factors context. "Formal models" are construed to include both computational and mathematical models, and "human performance" is construed widely to encompass the full range of human performance including cognition, perception, and motor control, as well as physical aspects of performance such as biomechanics and anthropometrics. We are especially interested in models that span a broad range of performance, for example, those including vision, cognition, and manual control. In addition, we explicitly acknowledge that human performance does not exist in a vacuum-it is a function of the tasks undertaken, artifacts used to perform the task, and environments in which it occurs. Thus, we invite submissions that include formal models of the task, artifact, or environment. Models or modeling frameworks that jointly consider the human element, the task, and the artifacts/environment should be of special interest to the human factors community. DEADLINE: 1 October 2001 SEND FIVE (5) COPIES OF YOUR MANUSCRIPT TO: Editor, Human Factors Attention: Special Issue Models of Human Performance Human Factors and Ergonomics Society P. O. Box 1369, Santa Monica, CA 90406-1369 USA FOR QUESTIONS OR QUERIES PLEASE CONTACT THE SPECIAL ISSUE CO-EDITORS AT: byrne at acm.org (Mike Byrne) gray at gmu.edu (Wayne Gray) -------------------------------------------------- =========================================================== 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 From db30+ at andrew.cmu.edu Thu Aug 2 12:39:02 2001 From: db30+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Daniel J Bothell) Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 12:39:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: ACT-R 5.0b0 available Message-ID: our web site at: http://act.psy.cmu.edu/ACT-R_5.0/ The current version of ACT-R 5.0 is substantially complete and stable. However, further changes might occur in the coming months to reflect the feedback that we received at the post-graduate summer school (PGSS) and our experience with the system. The slides from the presentations at the PGSS will be made available on our site soon for additional reference material. Since this is the first public distribution we are very interested in any comments, suggestions, questions, or problems you have with any part of it (unit texts, models, environments, etc.). From hahaha at sexyfun.net Sun Aug 5 13:14:36 2001 From: hahaha at sexyfun.net (Hahaha) Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 13:14:36 -0400 Subject: Snowhite and the Seven Dwarfs - The REAL story! Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Today, Snowhite was turning 18. The 7 Dwarfs always where very educated and polite with Snowhite. When they go out work at mornign, they promissed a *huge* surprise. Snowhite was anxious. Suddlently, the door open, and the Seven Dwarfs enter... ----VEJGHYR8TYBSHUFG5EFSXMFWT2B Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="dwarf4you.exe.txt" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="dwarf4you.exe.txt" There was a virus here, but it has been removed. Help at cs.cmu.edu 19-Aug-2013 ----VEJGHYR8TYBSHUFG5EFSXMFWT2B-- From aharris8 at gmu.edu Tue Aug 7 09:51:32 2001 From: aharris8 at gmu.edu (Anthony Harrison) Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 09:51:32 -0400 Subject: jACT-R, Alpha Release Message-ID: Well, folks, now that John and Christian have had a chance to see the fruits of my labor, I'm pleased to announce the alpha/beta-ish release of jACT-R, an open source, Java (1.2) implementation of ACT-R (5.0). This is a work in progress and I am looking for people to assist in the development. I have published the code under GPL, and it is downloadable via the web or CVS (coming shortly). Those who know the theory and have experience with Java are invited to contact me and I will set up commit privileges for the CVS repository. What exists: - The core ACT-R 5.0 system is in place (sorry, no 4.0) - RPM-visual skeleton is in place, but needs to be seriously fleshed out. - flexible GUI/IDE is mostly complete and usable - Raluca's automatic similarity functions - asynchronous logging - Extension API to allow plugins and mods to be created with minimal familarity with the code What doesn't exist, yet: - 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 (and probably never will) - Production compilation - RPM-Manual, aural, speech Road to Beta: - Test, test, test. It will be fully compatible* with 5.0 before the 1.0 release - Production Compilation - RPM must be completed (given 5.0's reliance upon it) - EMMA - Finalize extension API - Lisp-based ACT-R model import/export - Documentation - More tools for the GUI (CPM-GOMS trace, etc) Road to 1.0: - Scripting support - Finalize external interface API - standalone GUI so that it can be used by all ACT-R users Value added? I've been asked many times now, why? The easiest answer is this: options; strength through diversity. Engineers reluctant to use Lisp? Need to interface web browsers? Need to be able to handle arbitrary GUIs? A few things that the Java version can do quite easily: - All Java GUIs (using Swing, partially true for AWT) are fully inspectable. This allows models to be aware of interfaces without modifying any code in the model or (more importantly) the application. ACT-R models will be able to interact with commercial Java software without ever touching the code - A similar setup exists for the standardized Java3D environment. - Object oriented design allows for smaller implementations that are easier to modify and maintain. - Multithreaded support throughout. - Single code base : no platform specific code. - Easier integration with existing and developing technologies. - No reliance on commercial development tools Guesstimated release dates: Beta : Mid Oct 1.0 : Shortly after Lisp reference implementation is finalized or Mid-Jan which ever comes last. Where to get it: Web Page: http://jactr.sf.net/ Source : http://sourceforge.net/projects/jactr/ CVS : cvs.jactr.sourceforge.net How to help: If you know ACT-R (as a theory, or even better, the Lisp code), and are familiar with the basics of Java you can help. The website has a list of things that need to be done still, take a pick, bounce me a line, and I'll set you up to extract from & commit to the CVS repository. -Anthony Harrison (soon to be at U.Pitt) * 'fully compatible' is actually not possible as Lisp and Java rely on two different math library implementations and I use double precision floats for all computations. So, by 'fully' I mean that activations of 1.039 and 1.041 will be considered equivalent. The equations will be the same, there will just be minor differences in the values. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Anthony Harrison, Graduate Research Assistant | Human Factors & Applied Cognition | Department of Psychology | | George Mason University | ARCH Lab/HFAC Program Voice: +1 (703) 993-4667 | MSN 3f5 Fax: +1 (703) 993-1330 | Fairfax, VA 22030-4444 Email: aharris8 at gmu.edu | http://hfac.gmu.edu/~harrison +--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From db30+ at andrew.cmu.edu Wed Aug 15 11:12:50 2001 From: db30+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Daniel J Bothell) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 11:12:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: post-graduate summer school presentations Message-ID: The slides from the presentations at the post-graduate summer school are now available from our web site. They are linked from the news section on the main page and the ACT-R 5.0 page, or you can get them directly at: http://act.psy.cmu.edu/ftp/workshop/Workshop-2001/schedule.html Dan From Kevin.Gluck at williams.af.mil Mon Aug 20 21:01:08 2001 From: Kevin.Gluck at williams.af.mil (Kevin.Gluck at williams.af.mil) Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 18:01:08 -0700 Subject: architecture comparison references Message-ID: suggestions for papers that compare computational cognitive modeling architectures. I received several very helpful responses, and a few people have suggested that I share the references. Good idea. Sorry it has taken me such an embarrassingly long time to get around to sending this out. - Kevin ------------------------------- Anderson, J. R., & Lebiere, C. (1998). The atomic components of thought. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Johnson, T. R. (1997). Control in ACT-R and Soar. In Proceedings of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 343-348). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Jones G. (1996). The architectures of Soar and ACT-R, and how they model human behaviour. Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour Quarterly, 96, 41-44. Kieras, D. E., & Meyer, D. E. (2000). The role of cognitive task analysis in the application of predictive models of human performance. In J. M. C. Schraagen, S. E. Chipman, & V. L. Shalin (Eds.), Cognitive task analysis. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Klahr, D., & MacWhinney, B. (1998) Information Processing. In D. Kuhn & R. S. Siegler (Eds.), W. Damon (Series Ed.). Handbook of child psychology (5th ed.): Vol. 2: Cognition, perception, and language. New York: Wiley. Lallement, Y., & John, B. E. (1998) Cognitive architecture and modeling idiom: An examination of three models of the Wicken's task. In Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Lin, H., Koubek, R., Haas, M., Phillips, C., & Brannon, N. (2001). Using cognitive models for adaptive control and display. Automedica, 19, 211-239. Neches, R., Langley, P., & Klahr, D. (1987). Learning, development and production systems. In D. Klahr, P. Langley, & R. Neches (Eds.), Production system models of learning and development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pew, R. W., & Mavor, A. S. (1998). Modeling Human and Organizational Behavior: Application to Military Simulations. Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press. Richman, H. B. & Simon, H. A. (1989). Context effects in letter perception: A comparison of two theories. Psychological Review, 96 (3), 417-432. Ritter, F. E., Shadbolt, N. R., Elliman, D., Young, R., Gobet, F., & Baxter, G. D. (2001). Techniques for modeling human performance in synthetic environments: A supplementary review. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH: Human Systems Information Analysis Center. Sun, R., Merrill, E., and Peterson, T. (2001). From implicit skills to explicit knowledge: a bottom-up model of skill learning. Cognitive Science, 25(2), 203-244. Taatgen, N. A. (1999). Learning without limits: From problem solving towards a unified theory of learning. Doctoral dissertation, University of Groningen. VanLehn, K. (Ed.) (1991). Architectures for Intelligence: The 22nd Carnegie Mellon Symposium on Cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. (especially the chapters by Clancey and Pylyshyn) Young, R. M. (1999). ACT-R and Soar still have much to learn from each other. In Proceedings of the 6th ACT-R Workshop, George Mason University. (also, Kokinov and Petrov have a bunch of papers about the DUAL architecture available at ... some of which include explicit comparisons to other architectures. ---------------------------------------------------- Kevin A. Gluck, PhD Research Psychologist Air Force Research Laboratory 6030 S. Kent St. Mesa, AZ 85212-6061 Ph: 480-988-6561 x-234 / DSN 474-6234 Fax: 480-988-6285 From tkelley at arl.army.mil Wed Aug 29 17:05:13 2001 From: tkelley at arl.army.mil (Troy Kelley) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 17:05:13 -0400 Subject: Paper invalidating EPIC Message-ID: to be a response from the EPIC community, especially since it criticizes EPIC so well. Ruthruff, Pashler, Klaassen (2001) Processing bottlenecks in dual-task performance: Structural limitation or strategic posponement? Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 8 (1), 73-80. Troy Kelley Army Research Lab From reder at andrew.cmu.edu Wed Aug 29 20:21:26 2001 From: reder at andrew.cmu.edu (Lynne Reder) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 20:21:26 -0400 Subject: seeking lab manager/Research Assistant Message-ID: several of you (and came from GMU) decided at the last minute to go to grad school this fall (after one year) instead of waiting another year (she got admitted at the last moment and this way she and her spouse will finish grad school at the same time). So I'm stuck with no one to run my lab. I need someone who is bright, motivated, interested in memory and cognitive science generally, knows experimental design, can use statistical packages, learns software packages quickly, and is good at managing undergrads in the lab (delegating tasks, as well as assuming some clerical stuff him/herself). This position is for someone who wants to go to grad school but wants to get more research experience (my RAs get authorship on papers) before applying. If you know someone who fits the bill and is willing to come soon to Pittsburgh, please have him/her contact me very soon. Pay is negotiable and competitive. Thanks! --Lynne -- ========================================================== 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