Modular Representations of Cognitive Phenomena in AI, Psychology and Neuroscience

Many architectures of mind assume some form of modularity, but what is meant by the term ‘module’? This chapter creates a framework for understanding current modularity research in three subdisciplines of cognitive science — psychology, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. This framework starts from the distinction between horizontal modules which support all expressed behaviors vs. vertical modules which support individual domain-specific capacities. The framework is used to discuss innateness, automaticity, compositionality, representations, massive modularity, behavior-based and multi-agent AI systems, and correspondence to physiological neurosystems. There is also a brief discussion of the relevance of modularity to conscious experience.