Relevance in Cognitive Science

Cognitive science examines how humans determine relevance during tasks like reading and problem-solving. The ACT-R cognitive architecture, developed by John R. Anderson in 1976, models declarative memory retrieval based on activation, which depends on frequency and recency of use.

Studies show that relevant information is processed faster; for instance, a 2010 experiment found that participants responded to relevant words in 600 ms versus 800 ms for irrelevant words.