Tutorial on the Icarus Cognitive Architecture

This tutorial will introduce attendees to Icarus, a computational theory of the human cognitive architecture. The framework makes claims about the nature of cognition that distinguish it from more established architectures like ACT-R and Soar, and that we believe many conference participants will find intriguing. The presentation will cover the motivations behind Icarus, the theoretical assumptions it shares with other architectures and those on which it differs, and the types of cognitive phenomena it aims to cover. The tutorial will also introduce attendees to a programming formalism that embodies Icarus ’ theoretical commitments, present some example cognitive models, and illustrate their use in synthetic environments. Plans for Tutorial Delivery The tutorial presentation will involve a combination of PowerPoint slides, recorded videos, and live runs of Icarus models. We will encourage questions from the audience to clarify ambiguities and uncover assumptions not shared by all participants. The tutorial will begin with a review of symbolic modeling to ensure communication with attendees from different backgrounds. We will provide attendees with hard copies of slides from the presentation to aid in note taking. We will also provide them with a URL at which they can access papers on Icarus during the tutorial and download software for running the example models we cover