Showing papers by "Colleen M. Seifert published in 1993"

Opportunism and Learning

Abstract: There is a tension in the world between complexity and simplicity. On one hand, we are faced with a richness of environment and experience that is at times overwhelming. On the other, we seem to be able to cope and even thrive within this complexity through the use of simple scripts, stereotypical judgements, and habitual behaviors. In order to function in the world, we have idealized and simplified it in a way that makes reasoning about it more tractable. As a group and as individuals, human agents search for and create islands of simplicity and stability within a sea of complexity and change. In this article, we will discuss an approach based on the case-based reasoning paradigm that attempts to resolve this tension. This agency approach embraces, rather than avoids, this paradox of the apparent complexity of the world and the overall simplicity of our methods for dealing with it. It accomplishes this by treating the behavior of intelligent agents as an ongoing attempt to discover, create, and maintain the stability that is necessary for the production of actions that satisfy our goals.

Predictive Encoding: Planning for Opportunities*

Abstract: Suspended goals are those that are postponed by an agent because they do not fit into the agent's current, ongoing agenda of plans. Recognizing later opportunities to achieve suspended goals is an important cognitive ability because it means that one can defer work on a goal until one is in a better position to achieve the goal. This paper focuses on when and how such opportunities are recognized in everyday planning situations. According to our account of the phenomenon, suspended goals are associated at the time of encoding with features of the environment in which goal achievement would likely be possible. This process is referred to as predictive encoding. Later, when these features are perceived in the environment through normal inferential processes, the agent is reminded of suspended goals * This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under contract N0014-85-K010 to the University of Chicago and contract N0014-91-J-1128 to the University of Michigan. through features previously associated with them, and recognizes the opportunity to achieve the goals. This approach is compared with other recent theories of opportunistic planning, and empirical work is presented which supports predictive encoding as an explanation for opportunistic planning behavior.

A Cognitive Science Approach to Case-Based Planning

Abstract: In this chapter, we will review our current work in case-based approaches to planning. Our research examines the organization and structure of episodic memory as determined by its functional role in guiding reasoning. The theoretical thrust is based upon the intuition that a large part of the reasoning process is guided by the contents and organization of events in memory. The major goal of this work is the development of functional explanations of the representational organization and conceptual vocabularies that support reasoning tasks. Our current work can be characterized in terms of three major tasks: Uncovering vocabularies for describing causal similarities between episodes in memory. Examining the use of features in the access and retrieval of cases from memory. Understanding the role of memory organization in the support of opportunistic planning and problem solving.

Predictive encoding: Recognizing opportunities

Abstract: Suspended goals are those that are postponed by an agent because they do not fit into the agent's current, ongoing agenda of plans. Recognizing later opportunities to achieve suspended goals is an important cognitive ability because it means that one can defer work on a goal until one is in a better position to achieve the goal. This paper focuses on when and how such opportunities are recognized in everyday planning situations. According to our account of the phenomenon, suspended goals are associated at the time of encoding with features of the environment in which goal achievement would likely be possible. This process is referred to as predictive encoding. Later, when these features are perceived in the environment through normal inferential processes, the agent is reminded of suspended goals * This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under contract N0014-85-K010 to the University of Chicago and contract N0014-91-J-1128 to the University of Michigan. through features previously associated with them, and recognizes the opportunity to achieve the goals. This approach is compared with other recent theories of opportunistic planning, and empirical work is presented which supports predictive encoding as an explanation for opportunistic planning behavior.