Who Am I Really: An Adaptive Network Model Addressing Mental Models for Self-referencing, Self-awareness and Self-interpretation

In this chapter, a multilevel cognitive architecture is introduced that can be used to model mental processes in clients of psychotherapeutic sessions and in particular the mental (self-)models they have about themselves. The architecture does not only cover base level mental processes but also mental processes involving self-referencing, self-awareness and self-interpretation. To this end, the cognitive architecture was designed according to four levels, where (part of) the structure of each level is represented by an explicit self-model of it at the next-higher level of the architecture. At that next-higher level, states represent part of the structure of the level below; these states have a referencing relation to it. In this way the overall architecture includes its own overall self-model. The cognitive architecture was evaluated for a case study of a realistic type of therapeutic session from clinical practice.