Frank.Ritter@ist.psu.edu

Tutorial booklets from the CogSci99 conference available.

Tutorial programme to be held at CogSci 99 ( free posters)

Research Interests

I am interested in using cognitive modeling within a unified theory of cognition such as Soar or ACTR to test theories of learning and to improve human-computer interaction. I have built several tools to make model building, protocol analysis, and statistical analysis easier. I am also interested in developing stochastic learning and optimization algorithms to model behavior and to improve other analyses.

What I've been up to, an incomplete narrative.

Projects include:

• SOAR, and the Tcl/Tk Soar Interface
• Special issue on cognitive modelling in IJHCS
• International Conference on Cognitive Modelling
• Able, III, a model of means-ends analysis that learns
• routine model testing with protocol data,
• Dismal, a spreadsheet for psychology and HCI
• The Psychological Soar Tutorial for Soar (with Richard Young and Gary Jones).
  
• The Soar FAQ and The Soar Less FAQ (with Gordon Baxter)
• Macros for generating aliases, for Excel 5 (mac format)
• The U. of Nottingham Soar Web Page.
• Cognitive Modelling, The Second European Conference on, 1 - 4 of April, 1998; Nottingham, England. It should also be of interest for researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology and computer linguistics.
• How to order the ECCM proceedings.

Teaching (in the last few years)

• People and Computers in the Workplace
• Programming Cognitive Models
• Issues in Ergonomics
• first and second year tutorials

Background

Degrees:

PhD, Dept. of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University, December, 1992 (AI & Psychology program).
Thesis: TBPA: A methodology and software environment for testing process models' sequential predictions with protocols.
Advisors: Allen Newell and Jill Larkin.

MS, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1989 (psychology).
Thesis: The effect of feature frequency on feeling-of-knowing and strategy selection for arithmetic problems.
Advisors: Lynne Reder and Allen Newell.

BSEE (cum laude), University of Illinois/Urbana, 1983 (electrical engineering).

Current Position

• Lecturer (equivalent to US asst./assoc. professor) in the AI group in the Psychology department.
• Associated with the ESRC Centre for Research in Development, Instruction and Training (ECREDIT).
• Associate lecturer in Computer Science
• International and Occasional admission tutor and exams officer.
• Member, ESF Learning in Humans and machines, Task Force 3: Learning strategies to cope with sequencing effects, And its book.
• Invited speaker, Symposium on cognitive modeling 25 june 1999, U. of Groningen.
• External examiner, Cognitive Science degree, U. of Hertfordshire.
• AI and Simulation of Behavior Society committee member.
• Guest lecturer, Autumn School on Cognitive Science '97 run by the Graduiertenkolleg (graduate college) in Intelligence in Humans and Machines at the University of Freiburg (Germany).
• Reader, The British Library.
• Reviewer for (partial list): EPSRC Chi99
• Program committee, Human learning meets machine learning, One-day workshop held in conjunction with the 10th European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML'98) Chemnitz, Germany, April 24, 1998
• Member, IEEE, IEEE SMC Society, ACM, Cognitive Science Society, APS, AAAI Eta Kappa Nu, Sigma Xi, AISB.
• Frank Ritter Memorial Ice Arena, named, perhaps for my future contributions to society.

• Public Files I maintain on the local ftp server (the University computing centre's machine).
• Public Files I maintain on vpsyc (Psychology's FTP machine).
• Public Files I maintain in my filespace.
• Alta vista

  Please note, that strictly speaking, providing Alta Vista is against the web policy of the U. of Nottingham in that it supports links to sites containing sexually explicit material. So use at your own risk.

• Crisp collection
• BT phone book

Psychology Department home page. University of Nottingham home page.