The role of attention in creating a cognitive system

Abstract

The thesis presented here is that attention is the control system of the brain, and is used heavily to produce its cognitive powers. As such the design of a cognitive system can usefully be guided by the mechanisms used in the brain. We give short discussions of the nature of cognition and of attention, as well as some aspects of the early stages of attention in development. How certain basic components of the cognitive process can be created by using attention control is then considered based on a control model of attention. The paper finishes with the much more difficult problem of how consciousness might be produced through a more subtle approach to the attention control architecture. This allows the essential consciousness component assumed present in cognition to begin to be included, in a control efficient manner, in any general cognitive system architecture. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.