Exchanging Conflict Resolution in an Adaptable Implementation of ACT-R

TL;DR

This paper introduces a flexible, formalized implementation of ACT-R using Constraint Handling Rules, enabling easy adaptation of conflict resolution mechanisms and validating their performance against existing models.

Contribution

It provides the first implementation of a conflict resolution mechanism in ACT-R based on formal methods, enhancing modularity and adaptability.

Findings

Successful implementation of multiple conflict resolution mechanisms

Empirical validation shows matching results with reference ACT-R models

Demonstrates the flexibility of the formalized ACT-R framework

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.