Dr. Frank E. Ritter 441 Psychology 95-15292
frank.ritter@nottingham.ac.uk
http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ritter/pcm/pcm.html210 2-3 pm Monday Discussion (C8DEAI)
210 3-4 pm Monday Lecture (C8CDPC / C8DEAI)
329a 4-5 pm Monday Lab (C8CDPC / C8DEAI)16 January 1999
In this course you will learn about programming cognitive models. This course assumes that you have some sympathy and understanding of psychology, some prior programming experience, such as Pop-11 or CLIPS, and understand some programming issues such as syntax and recursion. To the limit of the class's abilities, the focus of the course will be on creating and evaluating cognitive models. This has to be grounded in some particular modeling language, which will be Soar.
At the end of this course, you should be familiar with many of the advanced issues in cognitive modelling, and should have created a small model or modified a medium sized model. You will be familiar with some of the special statistical and computer based tools in this area. Most importantly, you will have had a glimpse of how cognitive modeling can serve as a summary of psychological knowledge, that is, theories, and as an approach to developing AI programs.
Evaluation will be based on practical work (50%) and one programming project with report (50%). Ideally, reading is done before class for each week and the exercises are optional. Practically, reading seems to get done after class, and the project is hopelessly impossible without the exercises. Please try to be Ideal rather than Practical -- you will get more out of this class. The readings are resources for C8CDPC and are required readings for C8DEAI.
Introduction (8/2/99) Overview of course, cognitive
modelling, Soar, Web, and programming environment (Soar7 and
Tcl/Tk).
Practical: Playing with Psychological Soar Tutorial (PST)
using Netscape and Soar. Getting Soar running; PST 1 [knowledge].
Architectures & Soar (15/2)
Readings: Waldrop; Sun & Ling, 1998; UTC1, Newell BBS
précis, Lehman et al. 1996, or equivalent.
Practical: PST 2 [simple run] & PST 3 (Small modification) &
PST4 (tracing).
Homework: Use PST tutorial to revise (quiz to follow), answer
questions in PST.
PG Homework: Start Tcl tutorial: Lessons 1-3.
Learning and programming (22/2)
Readings: Newell92 (from Michon & Akyürek);
An
introduction to Soar programming by Rieman. S7M Ch.2.
Practical: 5 (add op) & PST 6 (watch impasse) & 7 (watch
chunk).
PG Homework: Tcl tutorial: Lessons 4-6.
Finishing first model: hungry-thirsty (1/3)
Readings: von Someran.
Practical: PST 8 (create PS), PST 9 (OI-support).
Homework: Finish any HT exercises.
Creating models (8/3)
Readings: Newell 68; Bainbridge & Sanderson. Surprise quiz on
hungry-thirsty.
Practical: Analogy-Soar
PG Homework: Tcl tutorial: Lessons 7-9.
Example models (15/3)
Readings: S7M Ch. 3., paper on the model.
Practical: Subtraction or SCA model.
** Due: 1 paragraph description of project. Worth 2 points**
Homework: work on project.
PG Homework: Tk tutorial, 1-2. Start project.
More on Soar (19/4)
Readings: MoTII4.6;
Practical: Able-Soar, Jr.
Homework: work on project.
Evaluating models (26/4)
Readings: Grant62; Ritter93, Ch. 2 (skip 2.3)
Practical: Working on project in lab, during lab time.
Homework: Homework 5 due.
1 page update of project Due at start of class. Worth 6 points.
Using models (10/5)
Readings: Carley, Park & Prietula93, *or* Gray, John &
Atwood92 *or* TSP 61 *or* TSP 68 (Nova) *or* a paper you find on
using a cognitive model.
Practical: Working on project in lab, during lab time.
Review of projects and course (18/5)
5 minute verbal description in class.
Project write-up due last possible time for papers in Semester 2
(probably Tuesday, 25 May, 5pm).
There has been only one person who has written cogently about cognitive modeling without having done any (Boden, although some disagree and say none). So, as previously mentioned, your grade will be based on the write-up of a project. Ideally, you can use this project as an opportunity to do something you have always wanted to do, but did not have the excuse. If you cannot come up with a project, one can be assigned to you. With weekly feedback it should not be hard to make it be the right size and for you to learn something. Example projects:
I have arranged with the bookstore to stock Unified theories of cognition (UTC) by Newell, and it is on short loan in the Science Library. Unless otherwise noted, papers referenced are in my box or on short loan in the library. Simon, Models of Though II (MOTII) is also a useful book, as are The Soar Papers (TSP) and van Someren, The think aloud method.
Bainbridge, L., & Sanderson, P. (1995). Verbal protocol analysis. In J. Wilson & C. Corlett (Eds.), Evaluation of human work (2nd ed.). 411-436. London: Taylor & Francis.
Carley, K., Park, D., & Prietula, M. (1993). Agent honesty, cooperation and benevolence in an artificial organization. In Proceedings of workshop on AI and theories of groups & organizations. . Washington, DC:
Congdon, C. B., & Laird, J. E. (1995). The Soar user's manual, version 7. Ann Arbor, MI: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, U. of Michigan.
Grant, D. A. (1962). Testing the null hypothesis and the strategy and tactics of investigating theoretical models. Psychological Review, 69(1), 54-61.
Gray, W. D., John, B. E., & Atwood, M. E. (1992). The precis of Project Ernestine or An overview of a validation of GOMS. In CHI'92 Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems. New York, NY: ACM Press.
Gray, W. D., John, B. E., & Atwood, M. E. (1993). Project Ernestine: Validating a GOMS analysis for predicting and explaining real-world task performance. Human-Computer Interaction, 8(3), 237-309.
Lehman, J. F., Laird, J. E., & Rosenbloom, P. S. (1996). A gentle introduction to Soar, an architecture for human cognition. In S. Sternberg & D. Scarborough (Eds.), Invitation to cognitive science, vol. 4. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Newell, A. (1968). On the analysis of human problem solving protocols. In J. C. Gardin & B. Jaulin (Eds.), Calcul et formalisation dans les sciences de l'homme. 145-185. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Newell, A. (1990). Unified theories of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Newell, A. (1992). Unified theories of cognition and the role of Soar. In J. A. Michon & A. Akyurek (Eds.), Soar: A cognitive architecture in perspective. Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Newell, A. (1992). Précis of Unified theories of cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 15, 425-492.
Rieman, J. An introduction to Soar programming
Ritter, F. E. (1993). TBPA: A methodology and software environment for testing process models' sequential predictions with protocols (Technical Report No. CMU-CS-93-101). School of Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University.
Ritter, F. E., Jones, R. M., & Baxter, G. D. (in press). Reusable models and graphical interfaces: Realising the potential of a unified theory of cognition. In U. Schmid, J. Krems, & F. Wysotzki (Eds.), Mind modeling - A cognitive science approach to reasoning, learning and discovery. Lengerich: Pabst Scientific Publishing.
Ritter, F. E. & Young, R. M. (1994, last revision 3/98). Psychological Soar Tutorial. Computer programs and overheads. Available at http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ritter/pst-ftp.html.
Simon, H. A. (1979). Models of thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Sun, R., & Ling, C. X. (1998). Computational cognitive modeling, the source of power, and other related issues. AI Magazine, 19(2), 113-120.
vanSomeren, M. W., Barnard, Y. F., & Sandberg, J. A. C. (1994). The Think Aloud Method: A practical guide to modelling cognitive processes. London/San Diego: Academic Press.
Waldrop, M. M. (1988). Soar: A unified theory of cognition? Science, 241, 296-298.
Waldrop, M. M. (1988). Toward a unified theory of cognition. Science, 241, 27-29.
Young, R. M., & Lewis, R. L. (in press). The Soar cognitive architecture and human working memory. In A. Miyake & P. Shah (Eds.), Models of working memory: Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control. New York: Cambridge University Press.