Menu
Home
People
Places
Arts
History
Plants & Animals
Science
Life & Culture
Technology
Reference.org
ACT-R
open-in-new
<p>ACT-R (pronounced /ˌækt ˈɑr/; short for "Adaptive Control of Thought—Rational") is a <a href="/facts/Cognitive_architecture/6EgYFrx5">cognitive architecture</a> mainly developed by <a href="/facts/John_Robert_Anderson_(psychologist)/NW1GQFxH">John Robert Anderson</a> and Christian Lebiere at <a href="/facts/Carnegie_Mellon_University/XKd7L2KA">Carnegie Mellon University</a>. Like any cognitive architecture, ACT-R aims to define the basic and irreducible cognitive and perceptual operations that enable the human mind. In theory, each task that humans can perform should consist of a series of these discrete operations. </p><p>Most of the ACT-R's basic assumptions are also inspired by the progress of <a href="/facts/Cognitive_neuroscience/VWcV08yY">cognitive neuroscience</a>, and ACT-R can be seen and described as a way of specifying how the brain itself is organized in a way that enables individual processing modules to produce cognition. </p>