A Survey of Cognition and Cognitive Architectures: Implications for the Autonomous Development of Mental Capabilities in Computational Systems

This survey presents an overview of the autonomous development of mental capabilities in computational agents. It does so based on a characterization of cognitive systems as systems which exhibit adaptive, anticipatory, and purposive goaldirected behaviour. We present a broad survey of the various paradigms of cognition, addressing cognitivist (physical symbol systems) approaches, emergent systems approaches, encompassing connectionist, dynamical, and enactive systems, and also efforts to combine the two in hybrid systems. We then review several cognitive architectures drawn from these paradigms. In each of these areas, we highlight the implications and attendant problems of adopting a developmental approach, both from phylogenetic and ontogenetic points of view. We conclude with a summary of the key architectural features that systems capable of autonomous development of mental capabilities should exhibit.