A cognitive model of concept learning with a flexible internal representation system

Abstract

In the human mind, high-order knowledge is categorically organized, yet the nature of its internal representation system is not well understood. While it has been traditionally considered that there is a single innate representation system in our mind, recent studies suggest that the representational system is a dynamic, capable of adjusting a representation scheme to meet situational characteristics. In the present paper, we introduce a new cognitive modeling framework accounting for the flexibility in representing high-order category knowledge. Our modeling framework flexibly learns to adjust its internal knowledge representation scheme using a meta-heuristic optimization method. It also accounts for the multi-objective and the multi-notion natures of human learning, both of which are indicated as very important but often overlooked characteristics of human cognition. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.