Much effort has been made to understand the role of attention in perception; much less effort has been placed on the role attention plays in the control of action Our goal in this chapter is to account for the role of attention in action, both when performance is automatic and when it is under deliberate conscious control We propose a theoretical framework structured around the notion of a set of active schemas, organized according to the particular action sequences of which they are a part, awaiting the appropriate set of conditions so that they can become selected to control action The analysis is therefore centered around actions, primarily external actions, but the same principles apply to internal actions—actions that involve only the cognitive processing mechanisms One major emphasis in the study of attentional processes is the distinction between controlled and automatic processing of perceptual inputs (eg, Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977) Our work here can be seen as complementary to the distinction between controlled and automatic processes: we examine action rather than perception; we emphasize the situations in which deliberate, conscious control of activity is desired rather than those that are automatic

Attention to action: willed and automatic control of behavior

An information-processing model is outlined that predicts that performance on non-routine tasks can be impaired independently of performance on routine tasks. The model is related to views on frontal lobe functions, particularly those of Luria. Two methods of obtaining more rigorous tests of the model are discussed. One makes use of ideas from artificial intelligence to derive a task heavily loaded on planning abilities. A group of patients with left anterior lesions has a specific deficit on the task. Subsidiary investigations support the inference that this is a planning impairment.

Specific impairments of planning

The ultimate goal of work in cognitive architecture is to provide the foundation for a system capable of general intelligent behavior. That is, the goal is to provide the underlying structure that would enable a system to perform the full range of cognitive tasks, employ the full range of problem solving methods and representations appropriate for the tasks, and learn about all aspects of the tasks and its performance on them. In this article we present SOAR, an implemented proposal for such an architecture. We describe its organizational principles, the system as currently implemented, and demonstrations of its capabilities.

Soar: an architecture for general intelligence

Learning, remembering, and understanding

A new theoretical framework, executive-process interactive control (EPIC), is introduced for characterizing human performance of concurrent perceptual-motor and cognitive tasks. On the basis of EPIC, computational models may be formulated to simulate multiple-task performance under a variety of circumstances. These models account well for reaction-time data from representative situations such as the psychological refractory-period procedure. EPIC's goodness of fit supports several key conclusions: (a) At a cognitive level, people can apply distinct sets of production rules simultaneously for executing the procedures of multiple tasks; (b) people's capacity to process information at "peripheral" perceptual-motor levels is limited; (c) to cope with such limits and to satisfy task priorities, flexible scheduling strategies are used; and (d) these strategies are mediated by executive cognitive processes that coordinate concurrent tasks adaptively.

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A computational theory of executive cognitive processes and multiple-task performance : Part 1. Basic mechanisms

Production systems designed to function and grow in environments that make large numbers of different, sometimes competing, and sometimes unexpected demands require support from their interpreters that is qualitatively different from the support required by systems that can be carefully hand crafted to function in constrained environments. In this paper we explore the role of conflict resolution in providing such support. Using criteria developed in the paper, we evaluate both individual conflict resolution rules and strategies that make use of several rules.

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J. McDermott

Papers

Production system conflict resolution strategies