Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

There has been a lack of progress in the field of action selection due to an incomplete understanding of the problem being faced. The differing nature of constituent parts of the action selection/'timeallocation* problem has not been properly appreciated. Some common sub-problems, such as obtaining food and avoiding predators, are described in terms of the demands they make on an animal's time. The significant differences between these sub>- problems are highlighted and a classificatory scheme is proposed, with which sub-problems can be categorized. The need to take into account the full range of different sul)-problems is demonstrated with a few examples. A particular shortcoming shared by all of the more well-known action selection mechanisms, from both robotics and animal behaviour, is described.