The Contextual Memory System: An architecture for declarative learning

Declarative learning, the ability to learn facts and concepts by experience and to adapt the declarative memory structures appropriately, forms the basis of human competencies. We argue that a viable architecture for declarative learning must be able to cope with novel information, and to demonstrate four core competencies knowledge comprehension, assimilation, utilisation and accommodation. The Contextual Memory System (CMS) is put forward as a model of declarative learning which satsifes these criteria, and illustrated in the domain of pure mathematics. No other cognitive architecture satisfies these criteria. A declarative learning capability provides an important constraint upon cognitive science modelling.