Cognitive Social Simulation and Collective Sensemaking: An Approach Using the ACT-R Cognitive Architecture

Cognitive social simulation is a computer simulation technique that aims to improve our understanding of the dynamics of socially-situated and socially-distributed cognition. Cognitive architectures are typically used to support cognitive social simulation; however, the most widely used cognitive architecture – ACT-R – has, to date, been the focus of relatively few cognitive social simulation studies. The current paper reports on the results of an ongoing effort to develop an experimental simulation capability that can be used to undertake studies into sociallydistributed cognition using the ACT-R cognitive architecture. An ACT-R cognitive model is first presented that demonstrates one approach to solving a task previously used to investigate sensemaking performance within teams of human subjects. An approach to the implementation of an ACT-R cognitive social simulation capability is then described. The approach relies on the use of a variety of custom ACT-R modules and memoryresident Lisp databases. The custom modules enable ACT-R agents to exchange information with each other during the course of their sensemaking activities. The Lisp databases, in contrast, are used to store information about communicative transactions, the experimental setup and the structure of the communication network. The proposed solution provides the basic elements required to run cognitive social simulation experiments into collective sensemaking using the ACT-R architecture; however, further work needs to be undertaken in order to address a number of limitations associated with agent communication capabilities and the ability of agents to interact with the task environment. Keywords–collective cognition; sensemaking; distributed cognition; team sensemaking; cognitive architecture.