Cognitive Flexibility as a Latent Structural Operator for Bayesian State Estimation

Abstract

Deep stochastic state-space models enable Bayesian filtering in nonlinear, partially observed systems but typically assume a fixed latent structure. When this assumption is violated, parameter adaptation alone may result in persistent belief inconsistency. We introduce \emph{Cognitive Flexibility} (CF) as a representation-level operator that selects latent structures online via an innovation-based predictive score, while preserving the Bayesian filtering recursion. Structural mismatch is formalized as irreducible predictive inconsistency under fixed structure. The resulting belief--structure recursion is shown to be well posed, to exhibit a structural descent property, and to admit finite switching, with reduction to standard Bayesian filtering under correct specification. Experiments on latent-dynamics mismatch, observation-structure shifts, and well-specified regimes confirm that CF improves predictive accuracy under a mismatch while remaining non-intrusive when the model is correctly specified.