[ACT-R-users] notification of success to outside lisp program

[Dan Bothell]

--On Monday, June 21, 2004 3:01 PM -0400 Jim Davies <jimmyd at cc.gatech.edu> 
wrote:

>
> I am trying to get my LISP program to run act-r for one of its functions.
> Basically the LISP program does some processing, then adds things to the
> declarative memory. I want to run act-r to evaluate the processing, and if
> the evaluation comes out negative, run it in a different way.
>
> The act-r "run" function does not return anything usefull, so far as I can
> tell. Has anyone hacked act-r so that if, say, a given production fires,
> the top-level function returns something another lisp function can read?
>
> I have been running the act-r evaluator in  4.0, but could be persuaded to
> upgrade.
>

I don't know exactly what you want, but I don't see any reason why
you'd need to "hack" the code.  There are lots of ways to get at
information about which productions are firing with the system as is.
Since you're using ACT-R 4.0 I recommend looking at the manual which
you can find on the ACT-R site at:

http://act.psy.cmu.edu/ftp/release/ACT-R_4.0/

A few options you could investigate are:

- use !eval! in the productions to record information you need
- set one of the hook functions (*firing-hook-fn* or *cycle-hook-fn*)
  so your code gets called with the productions as they fire
- set the trace parameters to a stream which you can monitor

Hope that helps, and if you have any questions feel free to ask,
Dan