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Glossary of Terms
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[action] The then-part of a production that is executed when the production
successfully matches working memory. The normal action is to create a
preference for a working memory element.
[attribute] The second symbol in an augmentation. It represents a relation
of property of an object. Each augmentation has a single attribute. An
object can have more than one values for an attribute. For example: ...
^attr val1 val2 ....
[augmentation] A working-memory element consisting of three fields:
identifier, attribute, and value. A group of augmentations that share a
common identifier are called an object.
[backtracing] A dependency analysis that determines the conditions of a
chunk.
[chunk] A production learned by Soar.
[conditions] The collection of statements in the if-side of a production
that are to be matched against the contents of working memory.
[condition] A single condition within a production's condition side.
[conflict impasse] An impasse where two or more objects are better
than each other.
[conjunctive test] A collection of tests in the condition of a production
that must all be satisfied for the production to fire. They are
delimited by { }.
[conjunctive negation] A negated condition, comprised of a conjunction of two
or more condition elements.
[constraint-failure] An impasse where there are conflicting
necessity preferences on which object to choose.
[context object] The value of a context slot, which is an
goal, problem-space, state, or operator.
[context stack] A stack of goal contexts.
[default knowledge] The set of productions that are always loaded
with a task and provide default responses to impasses.
[expensive chunk] A chunk whose conditions are combinatorially
expensive to match against working memory. This can slow down rather
than speed up Soar's execution after learning.
[goal context] A goal and its current problem space, state, and
operator.
[identifier] A symbol that identifies an object. Also, the first
symbol in an augmentation. For example: (identifier ^attr val)
[impasse] A situation where problem solving is unable to make progress.
This is detected automatically by the decison procedure. There are four
types of impasses: tie, conflict, no-change, constraint-failure.
[instantiation] The set of working-memory elements that satisfy the
production.
[justification] A structure built to provide support for the result of a
subgoal. It is essentially the instantiation of the chunk that would be
built for the result.
[linked] The contents of working memory and preference memory, and the
conditions of productions must be linked to a goal context through the
identifiers and values of the tested augmentations and preferences. The
value of an augmentation provides a link if the identifier is already
linked to a goal identifier. The actions of a production must be linked
to the conditions.
[multi-valued attribute] An augmentation with multiple values. For
example, {^cells c1 c2 c3 ... c9}.
[negated condition] Single condition elements that are preceded with a
dash "-" or groups of condition elements surrounded by curly braces {{}}
and a single dash. Signifies a test for the *absence* of those patterns
in working memory.
[no-change impasse] An impasse where the elaboration phase
runs to quiescence, and the decision procedure does not find a change to
make to the context stack.
[object] One or more working-memory elements with the same
identifier. Generally written as a list beginning with the identifier,
and followed by augmentations.
[overgeneral chunk] A chunk whose conditions do not sufficiently
constrain the match, and which therefore fire in situations where they
should not.
[predicates] Tests that can be included in the conditions of
productions, including <> (not equal), <=> (not same type), > (greater
than), >= (greater than or equal), <= (less than or equal), < (less than
or equal).
[preference] A data structure created by the action of a
production that asserts the relative or absolute worth of a value for an
augmentation.
[problem space] The entire collection of states and operators
used to find a solution to the problem or complete the task at hand.
[production] Conditional statements that form the entire
production system. If the conditions of a production are matched, or
are true, then the actions of a production will be performed.
[refinement] A preference created by a production that is not an
operator creation, operator modification, or operator application
production. A refinement will be retracted when the production that
created it no longer matches working memory.
[support] Determines the persistence of preferences in preference
memory. There are two types of support: I-support and O-support.
[time-tag] A unique number assigned to a working-memory element. These are
generated in sequential order as working-memory elements are created.
Watch level 1 prints out the time-tags of the working-memory elements
matched, created and removed. The print function will print out
working-memory elements given a time-tag.
[value] The third field of an augmentation. It is associated with the
attribute of the augmentation. A value can be a constant or the
identifier of another augmentation.
[working memory] The repository for all working-memory elements.
[working memory element] A single unit of data within working memory,
either an augmentation or an acceptable preference for a context slot.