
## 1. Introduction

Humans usually categorize incoming information into stable concepts which can be upgraded, related and nested one into another. The characteristics of information are analyzed and classified into (i.e. they activate)
existing concepts but, whenever they would represent a novelty, they will induce the formation of a new concept or the upgrade of the existing ones.

This adaptive modality of knowledge organization makes cognitive system able to classify, store and employ at best incoming information, in order to solve the eventual cognitive demand during next steps of processing. Subsequently, human cognitive or behavioral responses to a given set of inputs are built following several and different decisional strategies. The role of context, the kind of information and past experiences are central for the choice of what kind of decision making will be made. In general, we can take into consideration at least five strategies of output production:
1) Reflexive responses**: direct associations of inputs with an output pattern. They require no attentional resources and are out of possible**
controls. Typical examples are reflexive genetically implemented motor responses (e.g. the evade reflex) and associative behaviors (e.g. the Pavlov's dog salivation reflex).

2) Automatic processes**: standardized quick responses associated to**
a frequent activation of simple concepts while the behavioral relevance of the input/event is under an "alert red-line" (i.e. it requires a behavioral response but not a direct attentional monitoring, for instance during the vehicle driving).

3) Routine processes**: processes triggered by several related concepts**
or complex events sufficiently frequent to constitute a stereotypical routine.

Routines can be solved by a script [1, 2] and need the emergence of **mental** schemes **[2, 3, 4], namely representations of complex concepts or events**
easily connectable to a fast cognitive or behavioral response. Note that even if the strategy requires an attentive control, it doesn't involve the same set of cognitive ability needed during a problem solving task, like the resolution of a syllogism or the Wason selection task [5].

4) Reasoning**: higher cognitive strategy of understanding and production, mainly used during the problem solving. Given a set of premises,**
humans seem to employ rules like those involved in formal logic [6], which establish the correct formal solution. The propositional reasoning makes no distinctions about the contents of a statement, but deals only with its syntactical structure. Unfortunately, human judgements are sometimes very far from correct formal solutions. For these reasons, a theory of **mental**
models **[7, 8] has been proposed, which claims that hypothetical-deductive**
reasoning have three stages of thought: an understanding of the premises