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H A Simon

Publications and source records attributed to H A Simon.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

Cue recognition and cue elaboration in learning from examples.

This paper describes the processes used by students to learn from worked-out examples and by working through problems. Evidence is derived from protocols of students learning secondary school mathematics and physics. The students acquired knowledge from the examples in the form of productions (condition-->action): first discovering conditions under which the actions are appropriate and then elaborating the conditions to enhance efficiency. Students devoted most of their attention to the condition side of the productions. Subsequently, they generalized the productions for broader application and acquired specialized productions for special problem classes.

Cognition↗
PubMed1995

Simulation of expert memory using EPAM IV.

EPAM is a theory of the processes of human perception and memory, first programmed for a computer by E. A. Feigenbaum in 1959, that has shown an excellent fit to experimental data from a wide variety of psychological tasks. Over the years, it has been progressively extended to new domains without essential change in its central mechanisms. This article examines EPAM IV, a version extended to account for expert memory, especially the work in recent years by Chase and Ericsson (1981, 1982) and Staszewski (1988a, 1988b, 1990). EPAM IV has also been adapted to deal with numerous other short-term and long-term memory tasks, which will be reported elsewhere. The main modifications of EPAM that are relevant to the serial recall task examined in this article are a schema in long-term memory (called a retrieval structure) created by the expert's learning and the addition of an associative search process in long-term memory. These new components operate in close interaction with the other EPAM structures to match the observed behavior. EPAM IV reproduces all of the phenomena explained previously by EPAM III and in addition gives an accurate detailed account of the performance (studied by Staszewski) of an expert recalling long sequences of digits. The theory substantially revises, improves, and extends Chase and Simon's earlier "chunking" explanation of expert memory.

Artificial Intelligence↗
PubMed1990

A mechanism for social selection and successful altruism.

Within the framework of neo-Darwinism, with its focus on fitness, it has been hard to account for altruism behavior that reduces the fitness of the altruist but increases average fitness in society. Many population biologists argue that, except for altruism to close relatives, human behavior that appears to be altruistic amounts to reciprocal altruism, behavior undertaken with an expectation of reciprocation, hence incurring no net cost to fitness. Herein is proposed a simple and robust mechanism, based on human docility and bounded rationality that can account for the evolutionary success of genuinely altruistic behavior. Because docility-receptivity to social influence-contributes greatly to fitness in the human species, it will be positively selected. As a consequence, society can impose a "tax" on the gross benefits gained by individuals from docility by inducing docile individuals to engage in altruistic behaviors. Limits on rationality in the face of environmental complexity prevent the individual from avoiding this "tax." An upper bound is imposed on altruism by the condition that there must remain a net fitness advantage for docile behavior after the cost to the individual of altruism has been deducted.

Altruism↗
PubMed1980

The behavioral and social sciences.

In the social sciences, as in other sciences, progress is often placed by advances in observational techniques and instruments. This article reviews some of the recent technical progress in the social sciences ans then discusses three substantive frontier areas that are particularly exciting at present: evolutionary theory, especially in relation to sociobiology, the theory of human rational choice, and the newly christened discipline of cognitive science. All three claim to provide explanations for broad areas of human behavior.

Behavior↗
PubMed1967

Computer science.

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Computers↗