Example 1

This example will demonstrate how to create memory chunks, add them to the model, perform a memory retrieval, and compute the retrieval time. Declarative memory will consist of two chunks representing two co-workers and their departments:

\[\mathbf{c}_1 = \{(\mathrm{name,Bob}),(\mathrm{department,accounting}) \} \\ \mathbf{c}_2 = \{(\mathrm{name,Alice}),(\mathrm{department,HR}) \}\]

Load Packages

The first step is to load the required packages. Next, we set a seed for the random number generator.

using ACTRModels
using Random
using Plots
Random.seed!(87545)

Random.TaskLocalRNG()

Create Chunks

we can create a vector of chunks using the Chunk constructor. Constructor accepts a variable number of keyword arguments as slot-value pairs.

# create chunks of declarative knowledge
chunks = [Chunk(;name=:Bob, department=:accounting),
    Chunk(;name=:Alice, department=:HR)]

Chunks
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┬───────┬───────┬──────────────┬──────
│ slots                                   │ N     │ L     │ time_created │ rec ⋯
├─────────────────────────────────────────┼───────┼───────┼──────────────┼──────
│ (name = :Bob, department = :accounting) │  1.00 │  1.00 │  0.00        │ [0. ⋯
│ (name = :Alice, department = :HR)       │  1.00 │  1.00 │  0.00        │ [0. ⋯
└─────────────────────────────────────────┴───────┴───────┴──────────────┴──────
                                                               8 columns omitted

Create a Model

After creating the chunks, the next step is to pass them to the constructor Declarative to create a declarative memory object. In the next line, we specify a NamedTuple of parameters. Finally, the declarative memory object and the parameters are passed to the ACTR constructor to generate an ACT-R model object.

# initialize declarative memory
declarative = Declarative(memory=chunks)

# specify model parameters: partial matching, noise, mismatch penalty, activation noise
Θ = (mmp=true, noise=true, δ=1.0, s=.20)

# create an ACT-R object with activation noise and partial matching
actr = ACTR(;declarative, Θ...)

ACTR{String, Declarative{Chunk{@NamedTuple{name::Symbol, department::Symbol}, Float64}, Tuple{Symbol, Symbol}, BufferState}, Imaginal{Chunk, Float64, BufferState}, Nothing, Nothing, Goal{Chunk, BufferState}, Nothing, Nothing, Dict{String, VisualObject}, Parms{Float64, typeof(ACTRModels.default_dissim_func), typeof(ACTRModels.spreading_activation!), typeof(ACTRModels.utility_match), @NamedTuple{}}, ACTRModels.Scheduler, Random.TaskLocalRNG}("model1", Declarative{Chunk{@NamedTuple{name::Symbol, department::Symbol}, Float64}, Tuple{Symbol, Symbol}, BufferState}(Chunk{@NamedTuple{name::Symbol, department::Symbol}, Float64}[Chunk{@NamedTuple{name::Symbol, department::Symbol}, Float64}(1, 1.0, 0.0, 1, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, (name = :Bob, department = :accounting), 0, [0.0], Float64[], 0.0), Chunk{@NamedTuple{name::Symbol, department::Symbol}, Float64}(1, 1.0, 0.0, 1, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, (name = :Alice, department = :HR), 0, [0.0], Float64[], 0.0)], (:isa, :retrieved), Chunk{@NamedTuple{name::Symbol, department::Symbol}, Float64}[#undef], BufferState(false, false, true)), Imaginal{Chunk, Float64, BufferState}(Chunk[], BufferState(false, false, true), 1.0, Int64[]), nothing, nothing, Goal{Chunk, BufferState}(Chunk[], BufferState(false, false, true)), nothing, nothing, Dict{String, VisualObject}(), Parms{Float64, typeof(ACTRModels.default_dissim_func), typeof(ACTRModels.spreading_activation!), typeof(ACTRModels.utility_match), @NamedTuple{}}(0.5, 0.0, 0.2, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, ACTRModels.default_dissim_func, ACTRModels.spreading_activation!, ACTRModels.utility_match, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.2, 1.0, -100.0, -100.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, false, true, false, true, false, false, 0.28284271247461906, NamedTuple()), ACTRModels.Scheduler(0.0), Random.TaskLocalRNG())

Retrieve Chunk

To retrieve a chunk, pass the ACT-R model objec to the function retrieve along with keyword arguments for the retrieval request. retrieve will return a vector containing a chunk or an empty vector indicating a retrieval failure.

# retrieve a chunk associated with accounting
chunk = retrieve(actr; department=:accounting)

Chunks
┌───────────────────────────────────┬───────┬───────┬──────────────┬────────┬───
│ slots                             │ N     │ L     │ time_created │ recent │  ⋯
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────┼───────┼──────────────┼────────┼───
│ (name = :Alice, department = :HR) │  1.00 │  1.00 │  0.00        │ [0.0]  │  ⋯
└───────────────────────────────────┴───────┴───────┴──────────────┴────────┴───
                                                               7 columns omitted

Compute Retrieval Time

Retrieval time is computed by passing the ACT-R model object and the retried vector to the function compute_RT. If the vector chunk is empty, the retrieval failure time will be based on the retrieval threshold, τ.

rt = compute_RT(actr, chunk)

1.4156841175710067

References

Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D., Douglass, S., Lebiere, C., & Qin, Y. (2004). An integrated theory of the mind. Psychological review, 111(4), 1036.