Use of ACT-R in cognitive modelling

• Main Author: Rishabh Talwalkar.
• Other Authors: Martin Erik Gustav Helander
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Industrial engineering::Human factors engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/45900
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This Final Year Project concerns itself with ACT-R (Adaptive Character of Thought – Rational), which is a cognitive architecture created by John R. Anderson of Carnegie Mellon University. The ACT theory and software, like any cognitive architecture, aims to define the basic and irreducible cognitive and perceptual operations that enable the human mind. In theory, each task that humans can perform should consist of a series of these discrete operations. ACT-R can be seen and described as a way of specifying how the brain itself is organized in a way that enables individual processing modules to produce cognition. The role of this project is to give the reader an in-depth understanding of ACT-R, and more importantly, its various applications in the real world. The report initiates the reader with ACT-R as a software - its various components and their functionalities. The author then explains the various applications of ACT-R, with a detailed analysis of three important applications. The first application is problem solving using the Tower of Hanoi and mathematics problems as an illustration. The next chapter describes the use of ACT-R in navigation modelling. This is followed by its most important application, the intelligent tutoring system. The scope of this report is restricted mainly to the analysis of the various applications, in order to show the importance of the software and its future potential.