Human attention is a complex phenomenon (or a set of related phenomena) that occurs at different levels of cognition (from low-level perceptual processes to higher perceptual and cognitive processes). Since the dawn of modern psychology through cognitive sciences to fields like Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), attention has been one of the most controversial research topics. Attempts to model attentional processes often show their authors' implicit construal of related cognitive phenomena and even their overall meta-theoretical stands about what cognition is. Moreover, the modelling of attention cannot be done in isolation from related cognitive phenomena like curiosity, motivation, anticipation and awareness, to mention but a few. For these reasons we believe that attention models are best presented within a complete cognitive architecture where most authors' assumptions will be made explicit.

In this chapter we first present several attempts to model attention within a complete cognitive architecture. Several known cognitive architectures (ACT-R, Fluid Concepts, LIDA, DUAL, Novamente AGI and MAMID) are reviewed from the point of view of their treatment of attentional processes. Before presenting our own take on attention modelling, we briefly present the meta-theoretical approach of interactivism as advocated by Mark Bickhard.

We then give a description of a cognitive architecture that we have been developing in the last ten years. We present some of the cognitive phenomena that we have modelled (expectations, routine behaviour, planning, curiosity and motivation) and what parts of the architecture can be seen as involved in the attentional processes.