How Metacognitive Architectures Remember Their Own Thoughts: A Systematic Review

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nolte, Robin, Pomarlan, Mihai, Janssen, Ayden, Beßler, Daniel, Javanmardi, Kamyar, Jongebloed, Sascha, Porzel, Robert, Bateman, John, Beetz, Michael, Malaka, Rainer
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Nolte, Robin
Pomarlan, Mihai
Janssen, Ayden
Beßler, Daniel
Javanmardi, Kamyar
Jongebloed, Sascha
Porzel, Robert
Bateman, John
Beetz, Michael
Malaka, Rainer
author_facet Nolte, Robin
Pomarlan, Mihai
Janssen, Ayden
Beßler, Daniel
Javanmardi, Kamyar
Jongebloed, Sascha
Porzel, Robert
Bateman, John
Beetz, Michael
Malaka, Rainer
contents Background: Metacognition has gained significant attention for its potential to enhance autonomy and adaptability of artificial agents but remains a fragmented field: diverse theories, terminologies, and design choices have led to disjointed developments and limited comparability across systems. Existing overviews remain at a conceptual level that is undiscerning to the underlying algorithms, representations, and their respective success. Methods: We address this gap by performing an explorative systematic review. Reports were included if they described techniques enabling Computational Metacognitive Architectures (CMAs) to model, store, remember, and process their episodic metacognitive experiences, one of Flavell's (1979a) three foundational components of metacognition. Searches were conducted in 16 databases, consulted between December 2023 and June 2024. Data were extracted using a 20-item framework considering pertinent aspects. Results: A total of 101 reports on 35 distinct CMAs were included. Our findings show that metacognitive experiences may boost system performance and explainability, e.g., via self-repair. However, lack of standardization and limited evaluations may hinder progress: only 17% of CMAs were quantitatively evaluated regarding this review's focus, and significant terminological inconsistency limits cross-architecture synthesis. Systems also varied widely in memory content, data types, and employed algorithms. Discussion: Limitations include the non-iterative nature of the search query, heterogeneous data availability, and an under-representation of emergent, sub-symbolic CMAs. Future research should focus on standardization and evaluation, e.g., via community-driven challenges, and on transferring promising principles to emergent architectures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_13467
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle How Metacognitive Architectures Remember Their Own Thoughts: A Systematic Review
Nolte, Robin
Pomarlan, Mihai
Janssen, Ayden
Beßler, Daniel
Javanmardi, Kamyar
Jongebloed, Sascha
Porzel, Robert
Bateman, John
Beetz, Michael
Malaka, Rainer
Neurons and Cognition
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.0; I.2.4; I.2.6; I.2.8; J.4
Background: Metacognition has gained significant attention for its potential to enhance autonomy and adaptability of artificial agents but remains a fragmented field: diverse theories, terminologies, and design choices have led to disjointed developments and limited comparability across systems. Existing overviews remain at a conceptual level that is undiscerning to the underlying algorithms, representations, and their respective success. Methods: We address this gap by performing an explorative systematic review. Reports were included if they described techniques enabling Computational Metacognitive Architectures (CMAs) to model, store, remember, and process their episodic metacognitive experiences, one of Flavell's (1979a) three foundational components of metacognition. Searches were conducted in 16 databases, consulted between December 2023 and June 2024. Data were extracted using a 20-item framework considering pertinent aspects. Results: A total of 101 reports on 35 distinct CMAs were included. Our findings show that metacognitive experiences may boost system performance and explainability, e.g., via self-repair. However, lack of standardization and limited evaluations may hinder progress: only 17% of CMAs were quantitatively evaluated regarding this review's focus, and significant terminological inconsistency limits cross-architecture synthesis. Systems also varied widely in memory content, data types, and employed algorithms. Discussion: Limitations include the non-iterative nature of the search query, heterogeneous data availability, and an under-representation of emergent, sub-symbolic CMAs. Future research should focus on standardization and evaluation, e.g., via community-driven challenges, and on transferring promising principles to emergent architectures.
title How Metacognitive Architectures Remember Their Own Thoughts: A Systematic Review
topic Neurons and Cognition
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.0; I.2.4; I.2.6; I.2.8; J.4
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.13467