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A. Newell & H.A. Simon, The Theory of Human Problem Solving. Reprinted in Readings in Cognitive Science, Collins & Smith (eds.), section 1.3, pp. 33.

Author of the summary: J. William Murdock, 1997, murdock@cc.gatech.edu

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Keywords: Symbol, Search, Production System, Goal

Systems: None

Summary: Presents human cognition as an "Information Processing
System" (IPS).  Discusses characteristics such as speed, decay rate,
etc. of human information processing capabilities such as short term
memory, long term memory, "external memory" (notes, etc.), perception,
"elementary information processes", etc. Proposes an architecture for
human cognition; suggests that humans are essentially symbol
manipulators that perform operations serially and represent knowledge
as production rules and do problem solving as search through a problem
space with explicit representation of goals.

Point: The proposed architecture is a reasonable approximation of
human cognition for the purpose of studying problem solving.

Summary author's notes:


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