Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence. Since its origins in the mid-1950s, computer models have been an indispensable part of theorizing about how the mind works. Cognitive modelling is the process of developing and testing computational models of thinking. Philosophy and cognitive science can be concerned not only with how people do think, but also with how they should think .
Computer modelling can help to determine what kinds of reasoning are most feasible and effective.
AI aims to make machines intelligent, regardless of whether the processes they use are like those used in human thinking. In cognitive modeling, the point of computional models is to increase understanding of human thinking. Historically, however, some of the most important ideas in AI have come about because of cognitive modelling, e.g. rule-based systems and artificial neural networks. Theories, models, and programs A cognitive theory proposes that human thinking results from the application of a set of computational procedures to a set of mental representations. A computational model specifies the mental representations as data structures and the computational procedures as algorithms.