CHREST cognitive architecture

In my previous discussion on reasoning and perception I came to the conclusion that cognitive architectures should not be characterized by the distinction between perception and action as in ACT-R. One of the cognitive architectures that properly recognizes the central role of perception is CHREST.

CHREST perception facilities are organized into short term memory (STM) and long term memory (LTM). Recognition is used to relate elements in the STM to elements in the LTM. It is my contention that empirical knowledge should form a special category of the LTM which is far more dependent upon the changing interpretations of sensory perceptions then logical statements.

A fundamental aspect of CHREST is the idea of a chunk which is a maximal familiar substructure of a given sensory stimulus. CHREST uses an advanced system of attention management to determine what elements of the environment should be perceived. Many of the elements of CHREST were defined by the earlier cognitive architecture EPAM.