Towards an Understanding of Hierarchical Architectures

Cognitive systems research aims to understand how cognitive abilities can be created in artificial systems. One key issue is the architecture of the system. It organizes the interplay between the different system elements and thus, determines the principle limits for the performance of the system. In this contribution, we focus on important properties of hierarchical cognitive systems. Therefore, we first present a framework for modeling hierarchical systems. Based on this framework, we formulate and discuss some crucial issues that should be treated explicitly in the design of a system. On this basis, we analyze and compare several well-established cognitive architectures with respect to their internal structure.