Answer to Question 1
A theory-based view of meaning holds that people understand and categorize concepts in terms of implicit theories, or general ideas they have regarding those concepts. For example, what makes someone a good sport?
In the feature-based view, you would try to isolate features of a good sport.
In the prototype view, you would try to find characteristic features of a good sport.
In the exemplar view, you might try to find some good examples you have known in your life.
In the theory-based view, you would use your experience to construct an explanation for what makes someone a good sport.
The theory-based view suggests that people can distinguish between essential and incidental, or accidental, features of concepts because they have complex mental representations of these concepts.
Answer to Question 2
Anderson intended his model to be so broad in scope that it would offer an over- arching theory regarding the entire architecture of cognition. In Anderson's view, individual cognitive processes such as memory, language comprehension, problem solving, and reasoning are merely variations on a central theme. They all reflect an underlying system of cognition. The most recent version of ACT, the ACT-R (where the R stands for rational), is a model of information processing that integrates a network representation for declarative knowledge and a production system representation for procedural knowledge. The most recent version of ACT-R includes declarative knowledge (declarative memory), procedural knowledge (procedural memory), and working memory (the activated knowledge available for cognitive processing, which has a limited capacity).