Cognitive Psychology in Service of the Machine: Towards the Study of the Human Cognition

Abstract

The cognitive space plays an important role in structuring an action and the possible actions to be executed; therefore, actions are not only governed by a dynamic perception of knowledge but also by previously acquired knowledge. The neurophysiologist Alain Berthoz sees the brain as “a simulator of action and an emulator of reality.” He believes that it is through action—and not language—that we construct our perception of the world. The goal here is to integrate knowledge about actions/events from memory or past experiences and combine it with infor mation perceived from the environment. The complexity of the problem increases when we take into account the unpredictable nature of human behavior. Today, technological breakthroughs are attempting to enable direct communication between machines and the human brain, with the aim of performing actions through thought. The question now is whether it is possible to understand the physical or mental state that led a person to: 1) undertake actions they should have avoided, or conversely, 2) be encouraged to carry out actions they had previously abandoned. We are interested in these theories in order to reproduce a person’s psychological state, with the aim of understanding and explaining the reasons behind the two points above. This is done by relying on semantic interdependencies and the properties of actions carried out in the past or present.