Mental models, text interpretation, and knowledge acquisition

That which is commonly known as "human intelligence" is surely the result of the interaction of a great number of cognitive abilities such as motor control, vision, learning, problem solving, and language use, just to name a few. Yet most AI researchers study these component skills in isolation, without regard to how the individual components may use the knowledge or processes commonly associated with other different components. For example, much of the AI research on problem solving has focused on knowledge-based methods for solving complex problems without regard to the perceptual or linguistic processes involved. Similarly, work on natural language understanding typically views the language understander as an entity unto itself and ignores how language is used. We believe that the artificial separation between these cognitive components that pervades AI research has led to the development of underconstrained theories of intelligence.