Season Greetings

Fri Dec 21 12:52:42 EST 2001

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Again we hope you all have had a profitable year modeling.  From my 
perspective at CMU, there are four major trends in my contact with 
the ACT-R world:

First, there seems to have been a happy diaspora of ACT-R modelers 
from CMU -- , Mike Byrne at Rice, Kevin Gluck at Williams Air Force 
Base, Frank Lee at RPI,  Mike Matessa at Nasa Ames, and Dario 
Salvucci at  Drexel.  Moreover, as the postings on the ACT-R mailing 
list indicate, we have numerous active ACT-R cells around the world 
of people who have passed through our summer school. There is much 
going on that is novel and insightful, which I only learn about at 
conferences or when I get asked to review papers.  It makes me feel 
quite grandfatherly and proud of you all.  However, we are acquiring 
a few new faces here at CMU whom you will meet if you come for the 
next ACT-R summer workshop - soon to be announced by Christian. 

Second, we continue to be working on the LAB (Learning, Application, 
and Brain) agenda.  Numerous of us (Dan Bothell, Monchu Chen, Scott 
Douglass, Craig Haimson, Myeong-Ho Sohn) are now working on GT-ASP 
(soon to become CMU-ASP) that marries the learning and application 
agenda.  In it and the Algebra Tutor Project (Steve Blessing, Scott 
Douglass, Steve Ritter, and Eli Silk) we are looking to bridge the 
full distance from eye movements to learning of significant 
competences.  Marsha Lovett and Christian Lebiere are each carrying 
forward more projects than I can possibly keep track of.  Our fMRI 
work (Cam Carter, Adam Goode, Jon Fincham,  Yulin Qin, Myeong-Ho 
Sohn) is also progressing well.  My proudest accomplishment there is 
our work predicting the BOLD response from ACT-R.

Third, Lynne Reder has begun to move CMU towards having a true 
Cognitive Modeling Center.  This has many aspects with different 
degrees of connection to ACT-R.  One of the emerging ideas has been 
to offer courses on agents and video games.  This has raised the 
importance of modeling in ACT-R spatial reasoning as it would apply 
in such situations - the topic questions at the center of each of 
Glenn Gunzelmann's and Phil Pavlik's new research.  I understand that 
much is happening on this topic within ACT-R but outside of CMU.

Finally, there is the continued evolution of my perception of ACT-R 
5.0.  As the poll revealed (and I will collate and distribute the 
final results), there has been remarkable acceptance and use of it 
already.  The one thing that I have constant second thoughts about is 
the reformulations of activation computations surrounding the 
competitive latency equation and the equation itself.  We hope to 
have this resolved in the next few months.  ACT-R 5.0 will be the 
topic of this summer school and, again, Christian will soon have an 
announcement out about that.

Best Wishes for the New Year.

-- 

==========================================================

John R. Anderson
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Phone: 412-268-2788
Fax:     412-268-2844
email: ja at cmu.edu
URL:  http://act.psy.cmu.edu/
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<div><font face="New York" color="#000000">Again we hope you all have
had a profitable year modeling.  From my perspective at CMU,
there are four major trends in my contact with the ACT-R world:<br>
<br>
First, there seems to have been a happy diaspora of ACT-R modelers
from CMU -- , Mike Byrne at Rice, Kevin Gluck at Williams Air Force
Base, Frank Lee at RPI,  Mike Matessa at Nasa Ames, and Dario
Salvucci at  Drexel.  Moreover, as the postings on the ACT-R
mailing list indicate, we have numerous active ACT-R cells around the
world of people who have passed through our summer school. There is
much going on that is novel and insightful, which I only learn about
at conferences or when I get asked to review papers.  It makes me
feel quite grandfatherly and proud of you all.  However, we are
acquiring a few new faces here at CMU whom you will meet if you come
for the next ACT-R summer workshop - soon to be announced by
Christian. <br>
<br>
Second, we continue to be working on the LAB (Learning, Application,
and Brain) agenda.  Numerous of us (Dan Bothell, Monchu Chen,
Scott Douglass, Craig Haimson, Myeong-Ho Sohn) are now working on
GT-ASP (soon to become CMU-ASP) that marries the learning and
application agenda.  In it and the Algebra Tutor Project (Steve
Blessing, Scott Douglass, Steve Ritter, and Eli Silk) we are looking
to bridge the full distance from eye movements to learning of
significant competences.  Marsha Lovett and Christian Lebiere are
each carrying forward more projects than I can possibly keep track
of.  Our fMRI work (Cam Carter, Adam Goode, Jon Fincham, 
Yulin Qin, Myeong-Ho Sohn) is also progressing well.  My proudest
accomplishment there is our work predicting the BOLD response from
ACT-R.<br>
<br>
Third, Lynne Reder has begun to move CMU towards having a true
Cognitive Modeling Center.  This has many aspects with different
degrees of connection to ACT-R.  One of the emerging ideas has
been to offer courses on agents and video games.  This has raised
the importance of modeling in ACT-R spatial reasoning as it would
apply in such situations - the topic questions at the center of each
of Glenn Gunzelmann's and Phil Pavlik's new research.  I
understand that much is happening on this topic within ACT-R but
outside of CMU.<br>
<br>
Finally, there is the continued evolution of my perception of ACT-R
5.0.  As the poll revealed (and I will collate and distribute the
final results), there has been remarkable acceptance and use of it
already.  The one thing that I have constant second thoughts
about is the reformulations of activation computations surrounding the
competitive latency equation and the equation itself.  We hope to
have this resolved in the next few months.  ACT-R 5.0 will be the
topic of this summer school and, again, Christian will soon have an
announcement out about that.<br>
<br>
Best Wishes for the New Year.</font><br>
<font face="New York" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><br></div>

<div><font color="#000000">-- <br>
</font></div>
<div><font
color="#000000"
>==========================================================</font></div
>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">John R. Anderson<br>
Carnegie Mellon University<br>
Pittsburgh, PA 15213<br>
<br>
Phone: 412-268-2788<br>
Fax:     412-268-2844<br>
email: ja at cmu.edu<br>
URL:  http://act.psy.cmu.edu/</font></div>
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