Understanding the Role of Visual Mental Imagery in Intelligence: The Retinotopic Reasoning (R2) Cognitive Architecture

This paper presents a new Retinotopic Reasoning (R2) cognitive architecture that is inspired by studies of visual mental imagery in people. R2 is a hybrid symbolic-connectionist architecture, with certain components of the system represented in propositional, symbolic form, but with a primary working memory store that contains visual ``mental'' images that can be created and manipulated by the system. R2 is not intended to serve as a full-fledged, stand-alone cognitive architecture, but rather is a specialized system focusing on how visual mental imagery can be represented, learned, and used in support of intelligent behavior. Examples illustrate how R2 can be used to model human visuospatial cognition on several different standardized cognitive tests, including the Raven's Progressive Matrices test, the Block Design test, the Embedded Figures test, and the Paper Folding test.