APA Dictionary of Psychology

representation of knowledge

Updated on 03/06/2026

the mental encoding, organization, and storage of information about the world, oneself, or experiences, enabling reasoning, memory, problem-solving, attention, and decision making. Representations may take the form of concepts, schemas, mental images, propositions, semantic networks, or procedural knowledge. Also called knowledge representation.
in computer science and artificial intelligence, a formal method of encoding information about the world, concepts, and relationships in a manner that a computer system can process for reasoning, learning, and decision-making. Representations may be symbolic (e.g., logic, rules, semantic networks), probabilistic (e.g., Bayesian networks), or connectionist (e.g., neural network patterns), balancing expressiveness, computational efficiency, and adaptability.

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