Distribution and Association : Modeling Two Fundamental Principles in Cognitive Control

Cognitive control is pervasive in human behavior. No matter what task one is performing, control of the sequence of one’s actions seems indispensable to accomplish the task. Therefore, control is one of the key issues in understanding human behavior. Moreover, knowledge about how control is exerted in humans may potentially help in designing improved artificial systems, since the control performance humans exhibit is currently unrivaled by artificial systems. Both understanding human control behavior and building improved artificial systems could be achieved by a sufficiently precise computational model of control which, however, currently does not exist. This paper devises a new computational model. In doing so, two fundamental principles of cognitive control in humans are identified. Based on these insights a new model of control which implements those principles is developed.

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