Memory

Eliza's memory structure is strongly influenced by my decision to use hypergraphs. The main components of memory are:

• Concepts
• Schemata

Both of the names are borrowed from related terms of the same name in cognitive science and psychology. Concepts are hypergraph nodes that represent the fundamental functions that construct Eliza's processes and interpretations. A set of concepts and their inter-relationships form a schema, or in hyperarc terms, a hyperarc. The plural form of a schema is schemata.

The set of schemata that a concept is linked to is said to be a concept's incidence set. The set of concepts and/or schemata that a schema is connected to is called the hyperarc's target set. HyperGraphDB uses the same terms in their API so it is easier to keep their naming scheme. It is important to note that a schema can contain another schema in its target set, essentially forming a meta schema. This can go an arbitrary amount of layers deep.