[ACT-R-users] Spreading Activation and Retrieval Chunks

[Frank E. Ritter]

At 15:24 -0700 27/11/02, Jerry.Ball at williams.af.mil wrote:
>In ACT-R 5.0, only the goal chunk spreads activation to declarative memory.
>This means that before a chunk can spread activation, it must become the
>goal chunk.  Thus, if a model retrieves a chunk from declarative memory and
>wants to retrieve chunks associated with the retrieved chunk, the retrieved
>chunk must first become the goal chunk.  This makes it difficult to create a
>model that follows associative links without putting the goal of following
>the associative links into the declarative chunks themselves.
>
>Given that fact that activation in ACT-R 5.0 only spreads to directly
>related chunks (i.e. there is no propagation beyond directly related
>chunks), allowing activation to spread from the retrieval chunk as well as
>the goal chunk would provide a secondary mechanism for spreading activation
>and would eliminate the serial bottleneck of having to push retrieval chunks
>into the goal buffer (which takes at least 1 production just to shuffle
>chunks around) to follow associative links.

couldn't you make the retrieval chunk part of the goal chunk, and get 
some, albeit, a lighter activation propogation?

Cheers,

Frank