Map of the Analysis of Cognitive Architectures


This documentation can be approached from either the dictionary of terminology as shown by the lines on the right of the diagram or the Table of Contents as shown by the lines on the left of the diagram. The table of contents consists of a list of theories and references, characteristics of architecture analysis, and some examples architectures. The introductory section highlights topics that are applicable to architectures in general. The characteristics of architecture analysis introduce methodological assumptions, architectural features, agent properties, architecture capabilities, agent behaviors, and environmental forces considered independent of any particular architecture. Many of the associated descriptions will, however, point out specific architectural discussions of the topic. Each architecture is analyzed in a consistent format that corresponds to the characterizations mentioned above. In addition, each architecture includes a discussion of issues raised or not addressed by the specific architecture.

The dictionary of terminology, the second major division of the overall document, reflects a different organization of the information contained in the the individual characteristics mentioned above. It consists of a nested list of categories and topics within each category. The dictionary of terminology will be most helpful when direct access to a specific topic is desired (avoiding the hierarchical organization of the table of contents) or to consider all the covered documents in the document simultaneously.

To determine what architectures have some particular property, the best approach would be to look up the property in the dictionary of terminology and the follow the hypertext links to the particular architectures identified with that property.

Combinations of these approaches are facilitated by the hypertext links in several ways. First, each architecture has links that map back to the general categories whenever a term is introduced or a comparison to similar or contrary architectures is made. This allows one to learn about particular architectures and begin to follow cross-architecture links after initial knowledge of the architecture is gained.

Other types of hypertext links are included as well.