[ACT-R-users] act-r production rules development

[Robert West]

I would say that one of the most important issues is whether the task 
is being driven by procedural or declarative memory. If it is 
procedural memory then you wouldn't expect the experts to have direct 
access to the rules they are following (i.e., because we do not have 
conscious access to procedural memory). Instead their self reports 
would be based on observing themselves and/or mentally simulating the 
task and attempting to guess or reason out what the rules must be 
(although people often mistake this for direct access to the rules). In 
these cases it is a really good idea to observe them carefully yourself 
as you will find there are often a lot of things they leave out. If it 
is driven by declarative memory then they can often report the 
knowledge they are using while doing the task and you can infer the 
production rules they used to extract it. Generally speaking, 
especially in experts, behavior directed just by production rules will 
be very fast and automatic. So, I would say both observation studies 
and verbal protocols are important

Robert

Robert L. West
Dept of Psychology
Dept of Cognitive Science
Carelton University

On Friday, August 29, 2003, at 01:41 PM, Myriam Abramson wrote:

>
> hi!
>
> Do you have any tips or pointers to extract act-r production rules
> from an expert. What should I look for? How should I phrase my
> questions so that they can articulate the rules themselves?
> How is it different from knowledge engineering?
>
> Thanks for your insights.
>
>                                               myriam
>
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