Higher-Level Cognition and Computation: A Survey

Abstract

Higher-level cognition is one of the constituents of our human mental abilities and subsumes reasoning, planning, language understanding and processing, and problem solving. A deeper understanding can lead to core insights to human cognition and to improve cognitive systems. There is, however, so far no unique characterization of the processes of human cognition. This survey introduces different approaches from cognitive architectures, artificial neural networks, and Bayesian modeling from a modeling perspective to vibrant fields such as connecting neurobiological processes with computational processes of reasoning, frameworks of rationality, and non-monotonic logics and common-sense reasoning. The survey ends with a set of five core challenges and open questions relevant for future research.