Humans are capable of performing many novel tasks with little or no instruction, contrary to machines. A possible solution – modelling a set of cognitive skills that can be recombined to carry out tasks – is the topic of "The Skill-based Method of Modeling Human Intelligent Behavior", a talk by Niels Taatgen of the University of Groningen. The talk is part of OFAI's 2023 Winter/Spring Lecture Series.
Members of the public are cordially invited to attend the talk via Zoom on Wednesday, 15 March at 18:30 CET (UTC+1):
URL: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84282442460?pwd=NHVhQnJXOVdZTWtNcWNRQllaQWFnQT09
Meeting ID: 842 8244 2460
Passcode: 678868
Talk abstract: Humans are capable of performing many novel tasks with little or no instruction, contrary to machines. Unfortunately, research in cognitive science and psychology pays very little attention to this. Because of this, many cognitive models focus on exhaustively explaining data from single experiments, but ignore the question where that knowledge originates from, and how it can be reused in other contexts. A possible solution is to assume people have a set of cognitive skills that they can recombine to carry out tasks. The idea is analogous to the idea that words in a language can be combined in many different ways to create new meaning. I will demonstrate this idea using the PRIMs cognitive architecture, which is derived from the ACT-R architecture, for example with the Attentional Blink task. The model of that task only consists of skills taken from models of other tasks.
Speaker biography: Niels A. Taatgen is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Groningen. He holds degrees in computer science and psychology, and has published in the areas of psychology and cognitive science. Until recently, he worked as a research psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, collaborating with John Anderson and others on the ACT-R cognitive architecture project.
