The CLARION cognitive architecture project aims to investigate the fundamental structures of the human mind by synthesizing many intellectual ideas into a unified, coherent model of cognition. In particular, our goal is to explore the interaction of implicit and explicit cognition, emphasizing bottom-up learning (i.e., learning that involves first acquiring implicit knowledge and then acquiring explicit knowledge on its basis).

Our research is directed at forming a (generic) cognitive architecture that captures various cognitive processes with the ultimate goal of providing unified explanations for a wide range of cognitive phenomenon. The current objectives of this project are two-fold:

1. Developing artificial agents in certain cognitive task domains
2. Understanding human decision-making, learning, reasoning, motivation, and meta-cognition in other domains.

The CLARION cognitive architecture project is headed by Professor Ron Sun and has been supported by such agencies as ONR, ARI, and others.