CLARION (cognitive architecture)

Connectionist Learning with Adaptive Rule Induction On-line (CLARION) is a cognitive architecture that has been used to simulate several tasks in cognitive psychology and social psychology, as well as implementing intelligent systems in artificial intelligence applications. An important feature of CLARION is the distinction between implicit and explicit processes and focusing on capturing the interaction between these two types of processes. The system was created by the research group led by Ron Sun.

CLARION is an integrative architecture, consisting of a number of distinct subsystems, with a dual representational structure in each subsystem (implicit versus explicit representations). Its subsystems include the action-centered subsystem, the non-action-centered subsystem, the motivational subsystem, and the meta-cognitive subsystem.

The role of the action-centered subsystem is to control both external and internal actions. The implicit layer is made of neural networks called Action Neural Networks, while the explicit layer has is made up of action rules. There can be synergy between the two layers, for example learning a skill can be expedited when the agent has to make explicit rules for the procedure at hand. It has been argued that implicit knowledge alone cannot optimize as well as the combination of both explicit and implicit.

The role of the non-action-centered subsystem is to maintain general knowledge. The implicit layer is made of Associative Neural Networks, while the bottom layer is associative rules. Knowledge is further divided into semantic and episodic, where semantic is generalized knowledge, and episodic is knowledge applicable to more specific situations. It is also important to note since there is an implicit layer, that not all declarative knowledge has to be explicit.

The role of the motivational subsystem is to provide underlying motivations for perception, action, and cognition.The motivational system in CLARION is made up of drives on the bottom level, and each drive can have varying strengths. There are low level drives, and also high level drives aimed at keeping an agent sustained, purposeful, focused, and adaptive. The explicit layer of the motivational system is composed of goals. explicit goals are used because they are more stable than implicit motivational states. the CLARION framework views that human motivational processes are highly complex and can't be represented through just explicit representation.

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