A Study in Activation: Towards a Common Lexicon and Functional Taxonomy in Cognitive Architectures

Activation has become a pervasive concept in many scientific disciplines, including cognitive and neural modeling, and AI. Unfortunately, its applications and functions are so broad and varied that it is difficult for practitioners to discuss the topic in precise and meaningful ways. This is particularly apparent in cognitive architectures, where a wider breadth of activation’s utilities and forms have been explored. To help combat these terminological difficulties, and hopefully facilitate productive discourse and the development of future applications, we introduce (1) a lexicon of activation-related concepts, and (2) a functional taxonomy that enumerates many activation-related “design patterns” that have appeared in cognitive architectures. We demonstrate our taxonomy by applying it to the LIDA cognitive architecture, which includes one of the most varied and comprehensive adoptions of activation-related functionality.