A framework for constructing cognition ontologies using WordNet, FrameNet, and SUMO

Psychoinformatics is an emerging discipline that uses tools from the information sciences to organize psychological data. This article supports that objective by proposing a framework for constructing cognition ontologies by using WordNet, FrameNet, and the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO). The first section describes the major characteristics of each of these tools. WordNet is a large lexical data base that was begun in the 1980s by George Miller. FrameNet is a database of event schemas based on a theory of frame semantics developed by the linguist Charles Fillmore. SUMO is a formal ontology of concepts expressed in mathematical logic that supports deductive reasoning. The next section discusses the objectives of science ontologies and includes examples for psychoses and for emotion. The article then describes potential applications of cognition ontologies for (1) studying how people organize knowledge, (2) analyzing major theoretical concepts such as abstraction, and (3) formulating premises that can serve as a link between informal taxonomies and formal ontologies. The final section discusses extending cognition ontologies to related domains such as artificial intelligence and cognitive neuroscience.