ABSTRACT
This paper describes a production system model of human cognition, called ACT, and an attempt to apply that model to the processing of language. ACT represents an attempt to create a uniform theoretical framework in which to understand the full range of “higher mental processes”: memory, deductive reasoning, language processing, problem solving, and so forth. We will first give a brief account of the main features of this framework and some motivation for them. We will then focus on language comprehension, attempting to show how a model of the comprehension process can be erected within the ACT framework. Along the way we will draw some comparisons between ACT and other models that have been proposed and suggest some advantages of the ACT approach.
