A Dual Process Architecture for Ontology-based Systems

In this work we present an ontology-based system equipped with a hybrid, cognitively inspired architecture for the representation of conceptual information. The proposed system aims at extending the representational and reasoning capabilities of classical ontological-based systems towards more realistic and cognitively grounded scenarios, such as those envisioned by the prototype theory. It is based on a hybrid knowledge base, composed of a classical symbolic component (grounded on a formal ontology) with a typicality-based one (grounded on the conceptual spaces framework). The resulting system attempts to reconcile the heterogeneous approach to the concepts in Cognitive Science and the dual process theories of reasoning and rationality. The system has been experimentally assessed in a conceptual categorization task where common sense linguistic descriptions were given in input, and the corresponding target concepts had to be identified. The results show that the proposed solution substantially improves on the representational and reasoning "conceptual" capabilities of standard ontology-based systems.