Papers by F. Steffenhagen
Identifying inter-individual planning strategies
Automatic Identification of Human Strategies by Cognitive Agents
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
Cognitive Systems Research, 2011
A well-known problem in complex cognition is the so-called dynamic stocks and flows task (DSF). T... more A well-known problem in complex cognition is the so-called dynamic stocks and flows task (DSF). The challenge in this task is to control different flows, e.g. the inflows and outflows of water to a tank, towards a specified goal configuration, i.e. a certain amount of water in the tank. The problem is that some flows are exogenously controlled with a hidden dynamic. These flows need to be counterbalanced by setting endogenous flows. Since the dynamic underlying the hidden flows can be any computable function, this task can be classified as computationally complex. Psychological findings show that humans have difficulties in dealing with such dynamic systems. In this article, we present a formal generalization of this task and present a computational approach for solving such tasks as a first step towards an assistance system for complex system control.
Predicting Changes: A Cognitive Model for Dynamic Stocks and Flows
An implementation of the srm-model
In recent years a lot of psychological research efforts have been made in analyzing human spatial... more In recent years a lot of psychological research efforts have been made in analyzing human spatial reasoning. Psychologists have implicitly used few spatial cognitive models, i.e. models of how humans conceptualize spatial information and reason about it. But only little effort has been put into the task of identifying from an algorithmic point of view the control mechanism and complexity involved in spatial relational reasoning. In this paper we extend the SRM model by new specifications and formalization of Baddeleys Working memory model. By the resulting model CR OS we are able to explain a number of new psychological effects of spatial representation and reasoning by the number of mental operations involved in solving these tasks. The discussion includes consequences of the formalization for the role of the central executive in spatial relational reasoning.
Solving proportional analogies: A computational model
In recent years a lot of psychological research efforts have been made in analyzing human spatial... more In recent years a lot of psychological research efforts have been made in analyzing human spatial reasoning. Psychologists have used implicitly many spatial cognitive models, i.e. a model of how humans conceptualize spatial information and reason about it, based on the mental model theory to model their experimental findings. But only little effort has been put into identifying from an algorithmic point of view the control mechanism in cognitive models for reasoning with spatial relations. Without having such a specification the task of testing and improving cognitive models seems to be rather difficult, whereas the transfer of such cognitive models with attention to AI systems seems to be even more important. Only a precise computational model defining parameters and operations make testable predictions. In this paper we extend the SRM model, by embedding it into Baddeleys Working Memory Model. By this embedding we can define the role of the central executive and show that this subsystem plays an important role in precising the cognitive attention.
Räumliches Schließen über n-stelligen Relationen: Kognitive Modellierung und formale Aspekte
Humans have an impressive ability to solve even computationally complex problems. Limited cogniti... more Humans have an impressive ability to solve even computationally complex problems. Limited cognitive processing capabilities, however, impede an exhaustive search of the problem space. Thus, planning problems of the same size may require a different cognitive effort. Formal complexity aspects are inherent to a problem and set computational limits that a solver must deal with. For a measure of cognitive complexity, operational aspects of human cognition must be taken into account. We present a structural complexity measure for predicting human planning performance. This measure is based on the number and connectedness of subgoals necessary to solve a problem. This measure is evaluated on the PSPACE-complete puzzle game Rush Hour and is able to capture empirically measured difficulty for this game.
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Papers by F. Steffenhagen