Criteria for the Design and Evaluation of Cognitive Architectures

Varma, Sashank

doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01190.x

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 84 publications

(113 reference statements)

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“…The subjective meaning of a cognitive architecture is the understanding it brings cognitive scientists of cognition (Varma, 2011). At the lowest level, the computational mechanisms of an architecture are cognitive primitives that specify a metaphysics for cognition.…”

Section: The Lowest Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We briefly analyze its objective and subjective meanings here, and direct the interested reader to Varma (2011) for a fuller explication.…”

Section: The Middle Level Brieflymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper offers a complementary analysis of the subjective meaning of each level – how it helps cognitive scientists understand cognition (Varma, 2011). The first half articulates the objective and subjective meanings of each level.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The subjective meaning of cognitive architecture: a Marrian analysis

Varma¹

2014

Front. Psychol.

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Marr famously decomposed cognitive theories into three levels. Newell, Pylyshyn, and Anderson offered parallel decompositions of cognitive architectures, which are psychologically plausible computational formalisms for expressing computational models of cognition. These analyses focused on the objective meaning of each level – how it supports computational models that correspond to cognitive phenomena. This paper develops a complementary analysis of the subjective meaning of each level – how it helps cognitive scientists understand cognition. It then argues against calls to eliminatively reduce higher levels to lower levels, for example, in the name of parsimony. Finally, it argues that the failure to attend to the multiple meanings and levels of cognitive architecture contributes to the current, disunified state of theoretical cognitive science.

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Section: The Lowest Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We briefly analyze its objective and subjective meanings here, and direct the interested reader to Varma (2011) for a fuller explication.…”

Section: The Middle Level Brieflymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The subjective meaning of cognitive architecture: a Marrian analysis

Varma¹

2014

Front. Psychol.

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“…Tanto en los modelos normativos como en los descriptivos se plantea que las personas hacen atribuciones de culpa sobre criterios de intención (deseo de alcanzar ciertas consecuencias de sus actos), causación (probabilidad que el acto por si solo puede causar la consecuencia) y previsibilidad (anticipar las consecuencias de sus actos) (Varma, 2011). Sin embargo, las atribuciones de culpa y los juicios de control personal son influenciados por evaluaciones espontáneas que se realizan de forma inmediata acerca de los elementos mentales, comportamentales y de consecuencias.…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Atribuciones de culpa a partir del estatus del testigo y la intencionalidad

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Urueña

2014

SumaPsi

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“…My recollection is that I just sort of drew GPS right out of Subject 4 on Problem D1-all the mechanisms that show up in the book, the means-ends analysis, and so on" (McCurdock, 1979, p. 212). We thank Sashank Varma for pointing us to this quote (see also Varma, 2011). 2.…”

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introspection in Problem Solving

Jäkel

Schreiber

2013

The Journal of Problem Solving

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Problem solving research has encountered an impasse. Since the seminal work of Newell und Simon (1972) researchers do not seem to have made much theoretical progress (Batchelder and Alexander, 2012;Ohlsson, 2012). In this paper we argue that one factor that is holding back the field is the widespread rejection of introspection among cognitive scientists. We review evidence that introspection improves problem solving performance, sometimes dramatically. Several studies suggest that self-observation, self-monitoring, and self-reflection play a key role in developing problem solving strategies. We argue that studying these introspective processes will require researchers to systematically ask subjects to introspect. However, we document that cognitive science textbooks dismiss introspection and as a consequence introspective methods are not used in problem solving research, even when it would be appropriate. We conclude that research on problem solving would benefit from embracing introspection rather than dismissing it. In contemporary cognitive science introspection is widely regarded as a mysterious and problematic method for uncovering the operations of the mind. Most researchers will typically avoid the conceptual and methodological minefield of introspection. Johnson-Laird (2008, p. 17), in the context of reasoning, expresses an attitude towards introspection that many cognitive scientists share: "To reason is to carry out a mental process. Introspection doesn't reveal to us how that process works. (If it did, then psychologists would have understood how it worked long ago.) Hence the process is unconscious. " There are good reasons to be skeptical about the usefulness of introspection as a method in many areas of perception and cognition. Many processes are unconscious and hence, by definition, unaccessible for introspection. From this, however, it does not follow that introspection has no role to play in psychological research or that introspection is not an interesting process worthy of study in itself.In the context of problem solving it is important to stress that introspection is, at least sometimes, an essential part of problem solving processes. When dealing with new or hard problems that cannot be solved by standard methods, good problem solvers introspect while they engage with their task: they examine their strategies and representations, they evaluate their progress, and they realize that they are stuck or that they have had an insight. Understanding often seems to depend on some form of conscious and deliberate reflection on one's own thoughts. These are salient phenomena that we should not ignore. In the literature, the dubious term introspection is often avoided and is replaced with notions such as self-observation, self-monitoring, self-reflection, or metacognition, but also these terms remain mysterious (Brown, 1987).We, thus, believe that research on problem solving, at some point, will have to face squarely the conceptual muddle surrounding introspection, metacognition, and consciousness.Pr...

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Criteria for the Design and Evaluation of Cognitive Architectures

Cited by 11 publications

References 84 publications

The subjective meaning of cognitive architecture: a Marrian analysis

The subjective meaning of cognitive architecture: a Marrian analysis

Atribuciones de culpa a partir del estatus del testigo y la intencionalidad

Introspection in Problem Solving

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