A proposal for modeling cognitive ontogeny based on the brain-inspired generic framework for social-emotional intelligent actors

Many approaches were proposed to model socially emotional behavior in virtual actors, such as intelligent tutors, creative assistants or team partners. They still lack the ‘magic’ of human-level cognition and emotionality: systems built for one paradigm appear uncanny outside of its boundary. Natural cognitive systems, on the other hand, can adapt to unexpected environments and paradigms. To capture the robustness of natural cognitive development, a new approach is proposed here that enables the formation of higher cognitive abilities in a model cognitive system, embedded in an unexpected environment. This is achieved on the basis of a naturally developing binding of innate constructs to channels of the interface and features of the environment. The eBICA cognitive architecture used as a basis for this study combines rational, cognitive and somatic factors. Its building blocks are moral schemas and semantic maps. Building our previous study of the eBICA cognitive architecture, the present work takes it to the new level. It is argued that the proposed approach is capable of explaining, based on a unified standpoint, a number of facts and mysteries associated with the human cognitive ontogeny and can provide a basis for the strong Artificial Intelligence.