The International Technology Alliancein

Network and Information Sciences

ITA Annual Fall MeetingSeptember 2014

Socially-Distributed Cognition and Cognitive

Architectures: Towards an ACT-R-Based Cognitive

Social Simulation Capability

TA6/Project 4

Paul Smart, Yuqing Tang, Paul Stone, Katia Sycara, Stefano Bennati,

Christian Lebiere, David Mott, Dave Braines and Gavin Powell

Overview

support the use of ACT-R in cognitive social simulation experiments ACT-R CSSC

natural language processing

ACT-R UI Framework

perform experiments with human subjects to gather data for cognitive modelling

develop and experimentally validate cognitive models with respect to human performance data

ACT-R

Modular Architecture

Neurocognitive Grounding

Simulations make predictions about what brain regions will be activated during a task.

ACT-R modules provide support for perceptuo-motor control, mnenomic retrieval, goal representation and working memory.

Goal Module Declarative Module

Imaginal Module Vocal Module

Self Module Messaging Module

Language Module Web Module

Procedural Module

Matching Selection Execution

Messaging WebsiteTriplestore

Monitor Human Client

Results Viewer

Language Processor

ACT-

RAC

T-R/

CSSC

Apps

&Se

rvic

es

ELICIT Task (1)

ELICIT Experimental Laboratory for Investigating Collaboration,

Information Sharing and Trust.

Sponsored by the U.S. DoD Command and Control Research Program (CCRP).

Previously used to study the effect of organizational environments on performance using human teams and synthetic (non-cognitive) agents: used to explore the effect of different C2 approaches in the

context of the NATO NEC C2 Maturity Model (N2C2M2) – NATO SAS-065

ELICIT Task (2)

Language Processing (1)

ELICIT Factoids (NL) ACT-R Chunks

statement

object: OBJECTattribute: OBJECTvalue: OBJECTsource: INFO-SOURCE = SELFconfidence: NUMBER(0,100)

“There will be a suicide bomber attack at a school”

(isa statement object attack attribute is-suicide-bombing value yes)

(isa statement object school attribute is-involved value yes)

(isa statement object attack attribute is-attack-against-school value yes)

Language Processing (2)

ITA CE Store

CE Models

CE W

eb S

ervi

ce

ACT-R CSSC

Conversational Agent

(Task 4.3)

NLPAgent

(Task 4.2)

Extracted CE Extracted CE

ACT-R Chunks

Extracted CE

Syntactically constrained variants of natural language are particularly useful in situations where we want to support human participation in cognitive social

simulation experiments.

ACT-R UI Framework

ACT-R

JNI (JSON Network Interface)

Motor Speech Vision Audio Custom

ACT-R UI Framework

Environment

JSO

N M

essa

ges JSO

N M

essages Perc

eptu

al In

form

ation M

otor Information

Human Experimentation Platform

Intended to support the acquisition of behavioural data from human subjects.

Records actions that provide insight into cognitive function (e.g., attentional processing).

Resulting data can be used to inform the development of cognitive models.

Cognitive models are validated in terms of their correspondence to human performance data.

Summary

Aim: support the use of ACT-R in cognitive social simulation experiments run experiments based on human performance data

ACT-R CSSC: framework to support the use of ACT-R in cognitive social simulation

experiments applications and services – monitor application, results viewer, language

processing service ACT-R UI Framework:

supports the integration of ACT-R with external environments Human Experimentation:

human experimentation platform acquisition of human behavioural data for modelling and testing

Modelling and Experimentation: remainder of the work effort is focused on cognitive modelling and

experimental evaluation effect of information sharing on cognitive biases and collective performance