225,081 research outputs found
Cognitive social simulation and collective sensemaking: An approach using the ACT-R cognitive architecture
No full textCognitive social simulation is a computer simulation technique that aims to improve our understanding of the dynamics of socially-situated and socially-distributed cognition. Cognitive architectures are typically used to support cognitive social simulation; however, the most widely used cognitive architecture - ACT-R - has, to date, been the focus of relatively few cognitive social simulation studies. The current paper reports on the results of an ongoing effort to develop an experimental simulation capability that can be used to undertake studies into socially-distributed cognition using the ACT-R cognitive architecture. An ACT-R cognitive model is first presented that demonstrates one approach to solving a task previously used to investigate sensemaking performance within teams of human subjects. An approach to the implementation of an ACT-R cognitive social simulation capability is then described. The approach relies on the use of a variety of custom ACT-R modules and memory-resident Lisp databases. The custom modules enable ACT-R agents to exchange information with each other during the course of their sensemaking activities. The Lisp databases, in contrast, are used to store information about communicative transactions, the experimental setup and the structure of the communication network. The proposed solution provides the basic elements required to run cognitive social simulation experiments into collective sensemaking using the ACT-R architecture; however, further work needs to be undertaken in order to address a number of limitations associated with agent communication capabilities and the ability of agents to interact with the task environment
Towards a cognitively realistic computational model of team problem solving using ACT-R agents and the ELICIT experimentation framework
No full textThe aim of cognitive social simulation is to improve our understanding of the complex inter-play between factors that are spread across the cognitive, social and technological domains. This makes cognitive social simulation techniques particularly appealing as a means to undertake experiments into socially-distributed cognition. The current paper reports on the results of an ongoing effort to develop a cognitive social simulation capability that can be used to undertake studies into team cognition using the ACT-R cognitive architecture. The focus of the cognitive modeling effort associated with the development of the simulation capability is a particular team-based problem solving task that forms part of the Experimental Laboratory for Investigating Collaboration, Information-sharing, and Trust (ELICIT) experimentation framework. This task has been used with human subjects to investigate the effect of different command and control organizational structures on collective problem solving performance. The results of the cognitive modeling effort are presented and future work to extend both the simulation capability and the cognitive model are outlined. By comparing the results obtained with the ACT-R simulation capability with those obtained from previous experiments using the ELICIT experimentation framework, it should be possible to evaluate the extent to which ACT-R agents exhibit performance profiles similar to those of their human counterparts. This will support the effort to evaluate the extent to which cognitive social simulation experiments with ACT-R can be used to generate findings of predictive and explanatory relevance to future studies using the ELICIT experimentation framework
Papers of R l Smart
No full textThis record was harvested from a previous catalogue system and will be withdrawn in 2025. Information in this record may be superseded or incomplete. Visit this record in UMA's new catalogue at: https://archives.library.unimelb.edu.au/nodes/view/65791Order book 1920-1922; miscellaneous accounts; catalogues; printed material of socialist and union bodies.114034
Acquisition: [1979.0186] "Papers of R l Smart
The Web-extended mind
No full textThe rapid growth and penetration of the Web raises important questions about its effects, not just on our social activities, but also on the nature of our cognitive and epistemic profiles. The extended mind hypothesis may be particularly well-suited to addressing these questions because it encourages us to think about the way in which much of our cognitive success is grounded in processing loops that factor in the contributions of our extra-neural social and technological environments. When applied to the specific socio-technical context of the Web, the extended mind hypothesis gives us the notion of the ‘Web-extended mind’, or the idea that the technological and informational elements of the Web can (at least sometimes) serve as part of the mechanistic substrate that realizes human mental states and processes. This paper attempts to explore the notion of the Web-extended mind. It first provides an overview of cognitive extension and the extended mind hypothesis, and it then goes on to discuss the possibility of Web-based forms of cognitive extension involving current or near-future technologies. It is argued that while current forms of the Web may not be particularly suited to the realization of Web-extended minds, new forms of user interaction technology as well as new approaches to information representation on the Web do provide promising new opportunities for Web-based forms of cognitive extension. Extended minds, however, are not solely the product of technological innovation. Cognitively-empowering forms of bio-technological union sometimes rely on the emergence of social practices and conventions that shape how a technology is used, as well as the specific (bio-)cognitive mechanisms that are available to support its effective exploitation. In particular, it is suggested that Web-extended minds may depend on forms of socio-technical co-evolution in which social forces and factors play just as an important role as do the processes of technology design and development
Optimising multi-disciplinary contributions for the smart clothing development process
No full textThis research aims to introduce a strategic approach to overcome the creative boundaries and optimize multidisciplinary contributions in Smart Clothing development, since the former research results revealed that these issues are key to achieving fully integrated Smart Clothes. Therefore, this paper examines collaborative projects that are shown to break through the creative boundary and integrate multidisciplinary contributions, and identifies how individual designers overcome their creative constraints and collaborate with others, in order to identify a practical method. The research result indicates that a clear description of Smart Clothing’s context will provide a new framework for the developers to work on
Rule-Based Intelligence on the Semantic Web: Implications for Military Capabilities
No full textRules are a key element of the Semantic Web vision, promising to provide a foundation for reasoning capabilities that underpin the intelligent manipulation and exploitation of information content. Although ontologies provide the basis for some forms of reasoning, it is unlikely that ontologies, by themselves, will support the range of knowledge-based services that are likely to be required on the Semantic Web. As such, it is important to consider the contribution that rule-based systems can make to the realization of advanced machine intelligence on the Semantic Web. This report aims to review the current state-of-the-art with respect to semantic rule-based technologies. It provides an overview of the rules, rule languages and rule engines that are currently available to support ontology-based reasoning, and it discusses some of the limitations of these technologies in terms of their inability to cope with uncertain or imprecise data and their poor performance in some reasoning contexts. This report also describes the contribution of reasoning systems to military capabilities, and suggests that current technological shortcomings pose a significant barrier to the widespread adoption of reasoning systems within the defence community. Some solutions to these shortcomings are presented and a timescale for technology adoption within the military domain is proposed. It is suggested that application areas such as semantic integration, semantic interoperability, data fusion and situation awareness provide the best opportunities for technology adoption within the 2015 timeframe. Other capabilities, such as decision support and the emulation of human-style reasoning capabilities are seen to depend on the resolution of significant challenges that may hinder attempts at technology adoption and exploitation within the 2020 timeframe
Socially-distributed cognition and cognitive architectures: towards an ACT-R-based cognitive social simulation capability
No full textACT-R is one of the most widely used cognitive architectures, and it has been used to model hundreds of phenomena described in the cognitive psychology literature. In spite of this, there are relatively few studies that have attempted to apply ACT-R to situations involving social interaction. This is an important omission since the social aspects of cognition have been a growing area of interest in the cognitive science community, and an understanding of the dynamics of collective cognition is of particular importance in many organizational settings. In order to support the computational modeling and simulation of socially-distributed cognitive processes, a simulation capability based on the ACT-R architecture is described. This capability features a number of extensions to the core ACT-R architecture that are intended to support social interaction and collaborative problem solving. The core features of a number of supporting applications and services are also described. These applications/services support the execution, monitoring and analysis of simulation experiments. Finally, a system designed to record human behavioral data in a collective problem-solving task is described. This system is being used to undertake a range of experiments with teams of human subjects, and it will ultimately support the development of high fidelity ACT-R cognitive models. Such models can be used in conjunction with the ACT-R simulation capability to test hypotheses concerning the interaction between cognitive, social and technological factors in tasks involving socially-distributed information processing
Holistan Revisited: Development of a Demonstration Scenario for Future Military Coalition Operations
No full textAs a fundamental research program, the International Technology Alliance (ITA) endeavours to research and develop solutions to some of the problems confronting US/UK military coalition forces. Fundamental research programs can, however, deliver scientific and technical outcomes whose immediate practical relevance and exploitation potential is sometimes not immediately obvious to members of the end-user community. To address this problem we have often found it useful to demonstrate capabilities using a combination of domain scenarios and technology demonstrators. The current report describes our efforts to develop a domain scenario and technology demonstrators within a specific component of the ITA initiative, namely Project 12 Task 1 (P12T1). P12T1 is concerned with the development and evaluation of solutions that support the large-scale integration of information from multiple sources within a distributed network environment. It also focuses on the development of knowledge accessibility solutions that support both the retrieval of task-relevant information and the monitoring of battlefield information. To provide practical demonstrations of these capabilities we have developed a pseudo-realistic domain scenario that features US and UK coalition forces jointly involved in humanitarian relief and conventional warfighting operations. The scenario provides the narrative backdrop for a number of technology demonstrations. These include the identification, integration, and retrieval of information relevant to the planning of humanitarian relief efforts; the alignment and integration of nation-specific data repositories for the purposes of improved coalition interoperability; the acoustic detection and classification of military vehicles using data fusion algorithms; and the detection of mission-critical information from battlefield event streams. All these technology demonstrations are described in the report and presented alongside the aforementioned domain scenario. The report also identifies and describes a number of collaborative linkages between P12T1 and other ITA projects. These linkages reflect the fundamental inter-dependency of research efforts within the ITA program, and they are an essential ingredient of our technology demonstration goals
Studying the impact of minority views in a computational model of collective sensemaking: The role of network structure
No full textA series of experiments were performed in order to explore the effect of communication network structure on collective sensemaking under a variety of informational conditions. A multi-agent computational model of collective sensemaking was used in which each agent was implemented as a constraint satisfaction network. Within the simulations, agents were tasked with the interpretation of information indicating the presence of a particular object, and they were allowed to share information with other agents while performing this task subject to the constraints imposed by the structure of a communication network. In all simulations, a minority of agents (5) received evidence in favor of one interpretation, while a majority of agents (15) received evidence in favor of a conflicting interpretation. Communication networks with four types of topological structure (i.e., disconnected, random, small-world and fully-connected) were used in the experiments. The results suggest that network topology influences the extent to which minority views are able to influence collective cognitive outcomes. In particular, fully-connected networks deliver a performance profile in which minority influence is minimized in situations where both minority and majority groups are exposed to weak evidence. However, the same networks serve to maximize minority influence when minority group members are selectively exposed to strong evidence. These results suggest that fully-connected networks differentially regulate minority influence based on the kinds of evidence presented to both minority and majority group members
An investigation into the depiction of smart grid technology
No full textIncreasing climate change concerns and depletion of fossil fuels demand greater efficiency in electricity production and consumption. Smart Grid is a vision of an enhanced electricity grid that integrates the electric grid with communication and sensing technologies to improve energy delivery. A number of initiatives have been embarked upon to reach this vision. Databases of Smart Grid projects are being kept to hallmark the state of development and advise future project design. However, to date, there is no method of comparing projects‟ results. This means that it is difficult to identify the most successful projects. In addition, details of projects tend to be descriptive and there is no standard method of representing Smart Grid systems. The first Smart Grid technologies are about to be deployed in homes, and yet, there are little research examining how domestic consumers would react to a full set of Smart Grid technology. This is important because the opinions and participation of domestic consumers could lead to the success or failure of the Smart Grid system. This research aims to device a representation system that enables the comparison of smart grid technology available for the residential consumers in the UK. The objectives are to: (i) review and identify existing representations of home Smart Grid technology; (ii) review and identify the general system representation methods; (iii) develop a representation method that maps and enables the comparison of Smart Grid technology in homes; (iv) validate the design of the representation method with relevant stakeholders. Through a four step methodology these objectives were achieved.
Thirty Smart Grid diagrams taken from journals and conference papers were analysed and categorised into five groups based of the type of communication features they contained. The results from this analysis guided the development of a Smart Grid representation method. Two Smart Grid systems that are available on the market were depicted using the representation method and were used to validate the design through interviewing 10 residential electricity consumers. As an outcome, this research had delivered a validated representation method that could be used to depict electricity management systems. It could be adopted by energy companies to convey the functions and benefits of Smart Grid technologies to potential customers
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