ACT-R is a cognitive architecture -- a theory of thought and behavior embedded into a computational framework for representing human cognition. ACT-R and related cognitive architectures provide a way of simulating cognition: a user can specify a cognitive model of a particular task that interacts with a task environment and simulates the cognitive, perceptual, and motor processes necessary to perform the task. The architecture and associated models strive to perform tasks as much like humans as possible, and researchers typically compare model behavior to human behavior in order to demonstrate the psychological validity of their models and theories. Originally developed by John R. Anderson at Carnegie Mellon University, ACT-R is now actively being used by an international community of researchers and practitioners to study a variety of tasks.
This simulation and development environment provides an implementation of ACT-R in the Java programming language. The system can be used at three levels:
The current release of the ACT-R system is now available as a downloadable application and as a runnable Java applet.