||PROFILE — John Anderson
Area: Cognitive Psychology & Cognitive Neuroscience
Psychology office: 345D Baker Hall
Psychology phone: 412-268-2788
Lab link: http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu
The goal of my research is to understand the structure of higher-level
cognition with a particular focus on mathematical problem solving. This has
led us to focus on what are called "unified theories of cognition." A unified
theory is a cognitive architecture that can perform in detail a full range of
cognitive tasks. Our theory is called ACT-R and takes the form of a computer
simulation which is capable of performing and learning from the same tasks
that subjects in our laboratories work at. ?We develop cognitive models for
various tasks of interest constrained by the overall architecture
Our current work has focused on analyzing brain imaging data to test
cognitive models and to guide their development. In particular, we have
been interested in parsing the time course of brain imaging data to get
information about what is happening "under the hood" as people perform a
complex task. This information is being used to help design instruction that
will enable students extend their knowledge beyond the procedures that are
*A Complete list of publications can be found here.
Walsh, M. M. & Anderson, J. R. (2009). The strategic nature of changing your mind. Cognitive Psychology, 58, 416-440.
Anderson, J. R., Anderson, J. F., Ferris, J. L., Fincham, J. M., & Jung, K-J. (2009). Lateral inferior prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex are engaged at different stages in the solution of insight problems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA, 106, 10799-10804.
Brunstein, A., Betts, S., & Anderson, J. R. (2009). Practice enables successful learning under minimal guidance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 790-802.
Taatgen, N. A. & Anderson, J. R. (2009). The Past, Present, and Future of Cognitive Architectures. topiCS in Cognitive Science.
Anderson, J. R. (2010). Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications: Seventh Edition. New York: Worth Publishing.
Rosenberg-Lee, M., Lovett, M., & Anderson, J. R. (2009) Neural Correlates of Arithmetic Calculation Strategies. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, 270-285.
Danker, J. F. & Anderson, J. R. (2010). The ghosts of brain states past: Remembering reactivates the brain regions engaged during encoding. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 87-102.
Stocco, A., Lebiere, C., & Anderson, J. R. (2010). Conditional routing of information to the neocortex: A network model of basal ganglia function. Psychological Review, 117, 540-574.
Anderson, J. R., Betts, S., Ferris, J. L., Fincham, J. M. (2010). Neural Imaging to Track Mental States while Using an Intelligent Tutoring System. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA, 107, 7018-7023.
Anderson, J. R. (2007). How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe? New
York: Oxford University Press.
Stocco, A., Lebiere, C., & Anderson, J. R. (2010). Conditional routing of information to
the neocortex: A network model of basal ganglia function. Psychological Review, 117,
Anderson, J. R., Betts, S., Ferris, J. L., Fincham, J. M. (2011) Cognitive and
Metacognitive Activity in Mathematical Problem Solving: Prefrontal and Parietal
Patterns. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience,11,52-67.
Anderson, J. R., Betts, S. A., Ferris, J. L., & Fincham, J. M., Yang, J. (2011). Using Brain
Imaging to Interpret Student Problem solving. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 26 (5), 22-29.
Schneider, D. W., & Anderson, J. R. (2012). Modeling Fan Effects on the Time Course of
Associative Recognition. Cognitive Psychology, 62, 193-222.
Anderson, J. R., Fincham, J. M., Yang, J. & Schneider, D. W. (2012). Using Brain
Imaging to Track Problem Solving in a Complex State Space. NeuroImage, 60, 633-643.
Associates and Assistants to Dr. Anderson:
Shawn Betts Research Programmer
Jelmer Borst: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Daniel Bothell: Senior Research Programmer
Jennifer Ferris: Research Associate
Jon Fincham: Research Psychologist
Hee Seung Lee: Postdoctoral Researcher
Jungaa Moon, Graduate Student
Aryn Pyke: Postdoctoral Researcher
Darryl Schneider: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Caitlin Tennison: Graduate Student
Curriculum Vitae (pdf file)