ACT-R Tutorial

ACT-R (Anderson, Bothell, Byrne, Douglass, Lebiere & Qin, 2004) is a cognitive theory and simulation system for developing cognitive models. It assumes cognition emerges through the interaction of a procedural memory of productions with a declarative memory of chunks and independent modules for external perception and actions. Since its release in 1993, ACT-R has supported the development of over 100 cognitive models, published in the literature by many different researchers. These models cover topics as diverse as driving behavior, implicit memory, learning backgammon, metaphor processing, and emotion. This tutorial will discuss the latest version of ACT-R, ACT-R 6.0, which is more interruptible, achieves greater across-task parameter consistency, has better mechanisms of production learning, and is more in correspondence with our knowledge of brain functioning. The tutorial has no prerequisite knowledge, and is intended to on the one hand give an overview of the theory, and on the other hand offer some direct demonstration of ACT-R models. Although half a day is not sufficient to cover all material, it can whet the appetite for and serve as a kick-start to the full ACT-R tutorial that is available online at http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/. This website also provides the necessary software, and overview of researchers using ACT-R, and it has a list of ACT-R publications (many of them downloadable). During the tutorial, following Taatgen, Lebiere and Anderson (2006) four popular research paradigms within ACT-R will be used as a vehicle both to explain the architecture and to explain how ACT-R accounts for these phenomena.