Conceptual design is a creative process. Designers create functions to satisfy customer needs and behaviors and forms to fulfill their functions. Although cognitive processes are at the center in developing new ideas, they are rarely taken into account in research and development of design support methods and systems. It is conceivable that if one understands how cognitive processes are stimula...

This paper describes a naturalistic approach to the development of a large-scale, functional, cognitively plausible model of language comprehension, and contrasts the approach with mainstream cognitive modeling and computational linguistic research. An approach to research is described which accepts the theoretical constraints of a cognitive architecture, while replacing the fine-grained empiri...

Several studies have suggested recently that a more dynamic conflict resolution mechanism in the ACT–R cognitive architecture (Anderson & Lebiere, 1998) could improve the decision–making behaviour of cognitive models. This part of ACT–R theory is revisited and a new solution is proposed. The new algorithm (OPTIMIST) has been implemented as an overlay to the ACT–R architecture, and can be used a...

The variability of human behavior during plan execution poses a difficult challenge for human-robot teams. In this paper, we use the concepts of theory of mind to enable robots to account for two sources of human variability during team operation. When faced with an unexpected action by a human teammate, a robot uses a simulation analysis of different hypothetical cognitive models of the human ...

Previous research on the use of diagrams for argumentation instruction has highlighted, but not conclusively demonstrated, their potential benefits. We examine the relative benefits of using diagrams and diagramming tools to teach causal reasoning about public policy. Sixty-three Carnegie Mellon University students were asked to analyze short policy texts using either: 1) text only, 2) text and...

SimStudent is a machine-learning agent that learns cognitive skills by demonstration. It was originally developed as a building block of the Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools (CTAT), so that the authors do not have to build a cognitive model by hand, but instead simply demonstrate solutions for SimStudent to automatically generate a cognitive model. The SimStudent technology could then be used to...

This paper explores the benefits and challenges of using the ACT-R cognitive architecture in the development of a largescale, functional, cognitively motivated language analysis model. The paper focuses on chunks, inheritance, production matching and memory, proposing extensions to ACT-R to support multiple inheritance and suggesting a mapping from the focus of attention, working memory and lon...

Recent accounts of mechanistic explanation suggest that models are only explanatory insofar as they map neatly onto lower level components (Craver, 2006; Piccinini and Craver, 2011; Kaplan and Craver, 2011). In the case of extensions into the cognitive sciences, this has meant interpreting the ‘integration’ of cognitive psychology and neuroscience to mean treating cognitive models as scaffoldin...

Much of cognitive psychology focuses on effects measured in tens of milliseconds while significant educational outcomes take tens of hours to achieve. The task of bridging this gap is analyzed in terms of Newell’s (1990) bands of cognition—the Biological, Cognitive, Rational, and Social Bands. The 10 millisecond effects reside in his Biological Band while the significant learning outcomes resid...