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Exchanging Conflict Resolution in an Adaptable Implementation of ACT-R

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2014

DANIEL GALL  and
THOM FRÜHWIRTH
DANIEL GALL
Affiliation:
Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Ulm University, Germany (e-mail: daniel.gall@uni-ulm.de, thom.fruehwirth@uni-ulm.de)
THOM FRÜHWIRTH
Affiliation:
Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Ulm University, Germany (e-mail: daniel.gall@uni-ulm.de, thom.fruehwirth@uni-ulm.de)
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Abstract

In computational cognitive science, the cognitive architecture ACT-R is very popular. It describes a model of cognition that is amenable to computer implementation, paving the way for computational psychology. Its underlying psychological theory has been investigated in many psychological experiments, but ACT-R lacks a formal definition of its underlying concepts from a mathematical-computational point of view. Although the canonical implementation of ACT-R is now modularized, this production rule system is still hard to adapt and extend in central components like the conflict resolution mechanism (which decides which of the applicable rules to apply next).

In this work, we present a concise implementation of ACT-R based on Constraint Handling Rules which has been derived from a formalization in prior work. To show the adaptability of our approach, we implement several different conflict resolution mechanisms discussed in the ACT-R literature. This results in the first implementation of one such mechanism. For the other mechanisms, we empirically evaluate if our implementation matches the results of reference implementations of ACT-R.

Keywords

computational cognitive modelingcomputational psychologyACT-RConstraint Handling Rulesproduction rule systemsconflict resolution
Type
Regular Papers
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 14 , Special Issue 4-5: 30th International Conference on Logic Programming , July 2014 , pp. 525 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Exchanging Conflict Resolution in an Adaptable Implementation of ACT-R

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