Cognitive Modeling of Knowledge-Guided Information Acquisition in Games
Grimbergen, R. (2008).
In: Van den Herik, H.J., Xu, X., Ma, Z. and Winands, M.H.M. (Eds.),
Computers and Games, 6th International Conference, CG2008, Beijing, China, September/October 2008, LNCS 5131,
pp. 169--179.
Abstract
Since Chase and Simon presented their influential paper on
perception in chess in 1973, the use of chunks has become the subject of
a number of studies into the cognitive behavior of human game players.
However, the nature of chunks has remained elusive, and the reason for
this lies in the lack of using a general cognitive theory to explain the
nature of chunks. In this paper it will be argued that Marvin Minskyfs
Society of Mind theory is a good candidate for a cognitive theory to
define chunks and to explain the relation between chunks and problemsolving
tasks. To use Minskyfs Society of Mind theory to model human
cognitive behavior in games, we first need to understand more about the
primitive agents dealing with the relation between perception and knowledge
in memory. To investigate this relation, a reproduction experiment
is performed in shogi showing that perception is guided by knowledge in
long-term memory. From the results we may conclude that the primitive
agents in a cognitive model for game-playing should represent abstract
concepts such as board, piece, and king rather than the perceptual features
of board and pieces.