INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN THEORY
ACT - R
Adaptive Control of Thought—Rational
John Anderson
ACT-R is a general theory of cognition developed by John Anderson and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy that focuses on memory processes . It is an elaboration of the original ACT theory (Anderson, 1976) and builds upon HAM, a model of semantic memory proposed by Anderson & Bower (1973). Anderson (1983) provides a complete description of ACT-R. In addition, Anderson (1990) provides his own critique of ACT-R and Anderson (1993) provides the outline for a broader development of the theory. See the CMU ACT site for the most up-to-date information on the theory.
ACT-R distinguishes among three types of memory structures: declarative, procedural and working memory. Declarative memory takes the form of a semantic net linking propositions, images, and sequences by associations. Procedural memory (also long-term) represents information in the form of productions; each production has a set of conditions and actions based in declarative memory. The nodes of long-term memory all have some degree of activation and working memory is that part of long-term memory that is most highly activated.
According to ACT-R, all knowledge begins as declarative information; procedural knowledge is learned by making inferences from already existing factual knowledge. ACT-R supports three fundamental types of learning: generalization, in which productions become broader in their range of application, discrimination, in which productions become narrow in their range of application, and strengthening, in which some productions are applied more often. New productions are formed by the conjunction or disjunction of existing productions.
Principals
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Identify the goal structure of the problem space.
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Provide instruction in the context of problem-solving.
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Provide immediate feedback on errors.
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Minimize working memory load.
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Adjust the "grain size" of instruction with learning to account for the knowledge compilation process.
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Enable the student to approach the target skill by successive approximation.
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"The goal of my research is to understand how people organize knowledge that they acquire from their diverse experiences to produce intelligent behavior."
