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Toward a situation model in a cognitive architecture

  • SI: BRIMS 2011
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Abstract

The ability to coherently represent information that is situationally relevant is vitally important to perform any complex task, especially when that task involves coordinating with team members. This paper introduces an approach to dynamically represent situation information within the ACT-R cognitive architecture in the context of a synthetic teammate project. The situation model represents the synthetic teammate’s mental model of the objects, events, actions, and relationships encountered in a complex task simulation. The situation model grounds textual information from the language analysis component into knowledge usable by the agent-environment interaction component. The situation model is a key component of the synthetic teammate as it provides the primary interface between arguably distinct cognitive processes modeled within the synthetic teammate (e.g., language processing and interactions with the task environment). This work has provided some evidence that reasoning about complex situations requires more than simple mental representations and requires mental processes involving multiple steps. Additionally, the work has revealed an initial method for reasoning across the various dimensions of situations. One purpose of the research is to demonstrate that this approach to implementing a situation model provides a robust capability to handle tasks in which an agent must construct a mental model from textual information, reason about complex relationships between objects, events, and actions in its environment, and appropriately communicate with task participants using natural language. In this paper we describe an approach for modeling situationally relevant information, provide a detailed example, discuss challenges faced, and present research plans for the situation model.

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Notes

  1. For some proposed extensions to ACT-R emanating from the language analysis research which are largely functionally motivated, see Ball (2011a, 2012).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. AGS Analytics LLC, Dayton, OH, 45475, USA

    Stuart M. Rodgers

  2. Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH, 45433, USA

    Christopher W. Myers & Jerry Ball

  3. L-3 Communications Corporation, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH, 45433, USA

    Mary D. Freiman

Authors
  1. Stuart M. Rodgers
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  2. Christopher W. Myers
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  3. Jerry Ball
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  4. Mary D. Freiman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stuart M. Rodgers.

Appendix

Appendix

Chunks used in the situation model are subtypes of the following defined top level chunk types. Top level chunk types are based on the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO; Niles and Pease 2001), and represent the situations, objects, actions, events, and relations of the situation model (Table 4).

Table 4 Situation model top level chunk types
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Rodgers, S.M., Myers, C.W., Ball, J. et al. Toward a situation model in a cognitive architecture. Comput Math Organ Theory 19, 313–345 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-012-9134-x

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