Modeling Speed-up and Transfer of Declarative and Procedural Knowledge

Abstract

This paper addresses three hypotheses concerning the procedural/declarative distinction: 1) Procedural and declarative knowledge speed-up as separate, but parallel, power curves; 2) Procedural knowledge operates in one direction only—from condition to action—whereas declarative knowledge can be cued by any of its elements; and 3) Declarative knowledge is active—it can result in behavior independent of procedural knowledge. The paper presents a single Act-R model that closely fits the data of two learning and transfer experiments conducted by Rabinowitz and Goldberg (1995). The model provides a good fit to the data, further validating Act-R as a model of the human cognitive architecture. In addition, the model shows that the two experiments cannot be used to argue that declarative knowledge can be retrieved without any intervening procedural knowledge.