Reflexive Learning in Soar
Chunking in Soar does not occur
deliberately
but instead occurs automatically, on the resolution of any
impasse. This allows
the following four questions -- which must be answered by any system
which learns -- to be directly answered by the architecture itself,
requiring no extra deliberation.
-
What should be learned?
Soar's answer: The knowledge needed to avoid the impasse which caused the
generation of a subgoal. A
dependency analysis
is performed to
determine what knowledge at the creation of the impasse led
to its resolution. This, and the result knowledge, are what is learned.
-
When should learning occur
Learning occurs in Soar
whenever an impasse is resolved.
Since impasses
arise whenever there is a lack of knowledge about how to procede toward
a decision, the Soar architecture can be said to learn whenever a
lack of knowledge is architecturally detected.
-
What resources should be learned from?
The dependency analysis procedure answers this question as described
above: whatever led to the resolution of the impasse.
-
When can learned knowledge be applied?
Because chunking stores new knowledge as
productions, in the
same form as the other productions of
long-term memory, learned knowledge is
considered and
applied in the same
way as other long-term memory productions. Thus, learned information
may be applied any time it is appropriate and this appropriateness is
made inherent in the representation.
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