The Cognitive Process and Formal Models of Human Attentions

Abstract

Attention is a complex mental function of humans in order to capture and serve the basic senses of vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, as well as internal motivations and perceptions. This paper presents a formal model and a cognitive process for rigorously explaining human attentions. Cognitive foundations of attentions and their relationships with consciousness and other perception processes are explored. The closed loop of attentions is identified that encompasses event capture and behavior reaction. Events for attention are classified into the categories of external stimuli and internal motivations. Behaviors as corresponding responses of attentions encompass recurrent, temporary, and reflex actions. Mathematical models of attentions are created as a foundation for rigorously describing the cognitive process of attentions in denotational mathematics. A wide range of applications of the unified attention model are identified in cognitive informatics, cognitive computing, and computational intelligence toward the mimic and simulation of human attention and perception in cognitive computers, cognitive robotics, and cognitive systems.