Cognitive architecture

A cognitive architecture can refer to a theory about the structure of the human mind. One of the main goals of a cognitive architecture is to summarize the various results of cognitive psychology in a comprehensive computer model. However, the results need to be in a formalized form so far that they can be the basis of a computer program. The formalized models can be used to further refine a comprehensive theory of cognition, and more immediately, as a commercially usable model. Successful cognitive architectures include ACT-R (Adaptive Control of Thought, ACT) and SOAR.

Herbert A. Simon, one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence, stated that the 1960 thesis by his student Ed Feigenbaum, EPAM provided a possible "architecture for cognition" because it included some commitments for how more than one fundamental aspect of the human mind worked (in EPAM's case, human memory and human learning).

John R. Anderson started research on human memory in the early 1970s and his 1973 thesis with Gordon H. Bower provided a theory of human associative memory. He included more aspects of his research on long-term memory and thinking processes into this research and eventually designed a cognitive architecture he eventually called ACT. He and his student used the term "cognitive architecture" in his lab to refer to the ACT theory as embodied in the collection of papers and designs since they didn't yet have any sort of complete implementation at the time.

In 1983 John R. Anderson published the seminal work in this area, entitled The Architecture of Cognition. One can distinguish between the theory of cognition and the implementation of the theory. The theory of cognition outlined the structure of the various parts of the mind and made commitments to the use of rules, associative networks, and other aspects. The cognitive architecture implements the theory on computers. The software used to implement the cognitive architectures were also "cognitive architectures". Thus, a cognitive architecture can also refer to a blueprint for intelligent agents. It proposes (artificial) computational processes that act like certain cognitive systems, most often, like a person, or acts intelligent under some definition. Cognitive architectures form a subset of general agent architectures. The term 'architecture' implies an approach that attempts to model not only behavior, but also structural properties of the modelled system.

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