ACT-R: a theory of higher level cognition and its relation to visual attention

  • Authors:

  • John R. Anderson;Michael Matessa;Christian Lebiere

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

The ACT-R system is a general system for modeling a wide range of higher level cognitive processes. Recently, it has been embellished with a theory of how its higher level processes interact with a visual interface. This includes a theory of how visual attention can move across the screen, encoding information into a form that can be processed by ACT-R. This system is applied to modeling several classic phenomena in the literature that depend on the speed and selectivity with which visual attention can move across a visual display. ACT-R is capable of interacting with the same computer screens that subjects do and, as such, is well suited to provide a model for tasks involving human-computer interaction. In this article, we discuss a demonstration of ACT-R's application to menu selection and show that the ACT-R theory makes unique predictions, without estimating any parameters, about the time to search a menu. These predictions are confirmed.