Motivational Representations within a Computational Cognitive Architecture

This paper discusses essential motivational representations necessary for a comprehensive computational cognitive architecture. It hypothesizes the need for implicit drive representations, as well as explicit goal representations. Drive representations consist of primary drives—both low-level primary drives (concerned mostly with basic physiological needs) and high-level primary drives (concerned more with social needs), as well as derived (secondary) drives. On the basis of drives, explicit goals may be generated on the fly during an agent’s interaction with various situations. These motivational representations help to make cognitive architectural models more comprehensive and provide deeper explanations of psychological processes. This work represents a step forward in making computational cognitive architectures better reflections of the human mind and all its motivational complexity and intricacy.