1.  Title of submission:

        Psychological Soar Tutorial

 2. Name of contact person:

        Dr. Richard Young

 3.  Affiliation:

        Department of Psychology
        U. of Hertfordshire

 4. Address including post code/zip code and country:

  Richard M Young       

  Department of Psychology
  University of Hertfordshire
  Hatfield
  HERTS AL10 9AB
  U.K.


 5. Telephone:  01707 28 5051
    Fax:        01707 285073
    Email:      R.M.Young@herts.ac.uk

 6. Names and affiliations of additional authors:

        Dr. Frank Ritter
        School of Psychology
        U. of Nottingham

 7. Duration of your proposed tutorial:

        1 day

 8. Resource needs:

        1 machine for every two attendees +
        1 OHP + 
        1 projector screen
        possibly vcr and TV

        The machines should be either Macintoshes, or
        all X workstations running SOLARIS or LINUX .

        Each participant will receive a copy of the tutorial notes
            (approximately 24 pages)

 9. Abstract (not to exceed 200 words), for inclusion in conference
    announcements and the program:

This one day tutorial will be of interest to cognitive psychologists,
cognitive scientists, and HCI user modellers.  It will cover the
fundamentals of the Soar architecture. Soar is a cognitive
architecture built around multiple problem spaces for representing
knowledge and implemented as a production system.  It includes a
simple built-in learning mechanism called chunking.  Soar has been
proposed by Allen Newell as a candidate ``unified theory of
cognition''.  It has been used to model behavior in natural language
processing, planning, HCI, abductive reasoning, and various laboratory
tasks.  The emphasis will be on the cognitive implications of Soar
rather than its AI and Knowledge Engineering applications.  There will
be facilities to run and modify Soar programs, and also opportunities
to discuss the psychological implications of Soar and other topics of
interest to the audience.

Some familiarity with rule-based (e.g. production system) modelling
would be an advantage.  The most relevant text for the tutorial is the
book by Allen Newell, Unified Theories of Cognition (Harvard
University Press, 1990).


10. Abstract biography of presenter(s), (not to exceed 200 words total):

Frank Ritter was awarded a doctorate by Carnegie-Mellon University in
AI and psychology.  As his thesis he developed a methodology and
software for testing the sequential predictions of Soar models (and
cognitive models in general) [1].  As part of this work, he built both
graphic and structured editor interfaces to Soar [2].  He has worked
with the Soar architecture since 1987 [e.g. 3, 4].  He was co-chairman
of the 2nd European Conference on Cognitive Modelling in April 1998.
With Richard Young, he has given the Soar tutorial 11 times [e.g. 5].

Richard Young has followed the development of Soar since its emergence
in 1982, and has been actively working with Soar since 1987.  Before
that he worked with production system models of cognition, on which
topic he has occasionally written introductory articles
(e.g. [6,7,8]) and edited special issues of journals [9].  In his
work as one of the leading Soar researchers, he creates Soar models of
human problem solving and human-computer interaction (e.g. [10,11]).
He has been responsible for training in Soar a number of students and
post-doctoral researchers.


[1] Ritter, F. E.  (1992). TBPA: A methodology and software
environment for testing process models' sequential predictions with
protocols.  Doctoral dissertation, Carnegie-Mellon University.  Also
available as a SCStech report CMU-CS-93-101.

[2]  Ritter, F. E., Larkin, J. H. (1994). Using process models to
summarize sequences of human actions. Human-Computer
Interaction. 9. 345-383.

[3] Nerb, J., Krems, J., & Ritter, F. E. (1993).  Using a computer
model to examine learning and the power law.  In Proceedings of the
Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. 765-770.
Hillsdale, New Jersey: LEA.

[4] 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.

[5] Ritter, F. E., & Young, R. M.  (1994). Practical introduction to
the Soar cognitive architecture: Tutorial report.  AISB Quarterly.
88.  p.62.

[6] Young, R.M. (1974) Production systems as models of cognitive
development.  Proceedings of the First Conference on Artificial
Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour, Sussex, 284-295.

[7] Young, R.M. (1979) Production systems for modelling human
cognition.  In D. Michie (Ed.) Expert Systems in the Micro-Electronic
Age.  Edinburgh University Press, 35-45.  [Reprinted in E.Scanlon &
T.O'Shea (Eds.)  Educational Computing, Wiley, 1987.  209-220.]

[8] Young, R.M. (1984) An introduction to production systems.  Alvey
IKBS Lecture No.3, Videotape VC/AL/2, Open University.

[9] Gray, W. D., Young, R. M., Kirschenbaum, S. S. (eds.) (1997).
Cognitive architectures and human-computer interaction.  Special Issue
of Human-Computer Interaction, 12(4).

[10] Young, R.M. & Whittington, J.E. (1990) Using a knowledge analysis
to predict conceptual errors in text-editor usage.  In J.C.Chew &
J.Whiteside (Eds) CHI'90 Conference Proceedings: Human Factors in
Computing Systems, 91-97.  ACM Press.

[11] Howes, A. & Young, R.M. (1991) Predicting the learnability of
task-action mappings.  In S.P.Robertson, G.M.Olson & J.S.Olson (Eds)
Proceedings of CHI'91: Human Factors in Computing Systems, 113-118.
ACM Press.



11. Case for support - Not more than 1500 words arguing the case
    for including this tutorial at Cognitive Science 1999.

This is a mature, well-developed tutorial that has been presented over
ten times before.  It is given in "hands on" style, alternating
between "talk" (lectures and discussion) and exercises carried out on
Macintoshes, which involve running Soar, using some pre-existing
models in Soar, and making small changes to the models.

We expect that attendees will be familiar with the concept of
modelling cognition.  Given sufficient notice of who will attend, we
will post them an introductory article on Soar.

We believe that this should be a full-day tutorial.  We have tried it
as a half-day tutorial, but the interactive nature doesn't come into
its own until it has been done for a few hours.

The hands-on part of the tutorial will require Macintosh PowerBooks or
Unix-based displays at a ratio of around one per two students.  The
machines could be supplied by the organisers, rented, or brought along
by the students.  We have in the past brought our own and borrowed
others, but this has always lead to difficulties.

Given an adequate supply of Machines, we could cope with a fair number
of attendees, say up to around twenty, though we doubt there would be
that many applicants.  Typically we have seen 6-10 tutees at AISB94,
AISB95, two Soar workshops, HCI'94, European conferences on cognitive
modelling.


This one-day tutorial will cover the fundamentals of the Soar architecture.
Soar is a cognitive architecture built around multiple problem spaces for
representing knowledge and implemented as a production system.  It includes
a simple built-in learning mechanism called chunking.  Soar has been
proposed by Allen Newell as a candidate "unified theory of cognition".  It
has been used to model behavior in natural language processing, planning,
HCI, abductive reasoning, and various laboratory tasks.  The tutorial will
be of interest to cognitive psychologists, cognitive scientists, and HCI
user modellers.  The emphasis will be on the cognitive implications of Soar
rather than its AI and Knowledge Engineering applications.  There will be
facilities to run and modify Soar programs, and also opportunities to
discuss the psychological implications of Soar and other topics of interest
to the audience.

There will be three components to the tutorial:

  (a) Lectures covering the basic concepts of Soar as a unified theory of
      cognition, Soar as a problem space architecture (spaces, states,
      operators, impasses, chunks, and so on), and Soar as a programmable
      architecture (production rules, preferences, elaboration and decision
      cycles, attributes, default rules, the chunking mechanism, etc.).

  (b) Practical experience running a number of supplied programs, and
      carrying out a series of graded examples involving running the
      programs in different ways, modifying the programs slightly,
      extending them with new rules, and debugging further examples.

  (c) Question answering and discussion about Soar, its relation to
      cognition, technical aspects of Soar programming, and the
      applicability of Soar to problems of interest to the audience.

However, the tutorial will NOT be organised into three blocks (lectures,
practical, discussion).  Rather, after an initial orientation and
introduction, we will intersperse hands-on practice, discussion, and
further lectures.  We will also relate aspects of Soar theory to the
corresponding aspects of the programming.  A general feel for the material
covered in the tutorial can be gained by browsing the version of the
tutorial available on the World Wide Web at:
  http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ritter/pst/pst-tutorial.html

Attendees should be familiar with the general nature of cognitive
modelling, and it will help if they know about the notion of production
system models.  The most relevant text for the tutorial is the book by
Allen Newell, "Unified Theories of Cognition" (Harvard University Press,
1990).  Further pointers and suggestions for background reading can be
found at the Web site:
  http://phoenix.herts.ac.uk/~rmy/cogarch.seminar/soar.html