Paper Detail

Cognitive Extensions for Dual-Process Language Agents: Memory and Self-Reflection in Interactive Environments

João Meneses dos Santos, Arlindo L. Oliveira

arxiv Score 15.8

Published 2026-09-16 · First seen 2026-09-17

General AI

Abstract

Language agents remain brittle in interactive environments, where success requires long-horizon state tracking, valid action execution, and recovery from failed steps. We extend SwiftSage, a dual-process agent that combines a fast action proposer with a slower planner, using two modular cognitive extensions: an Adaptive Memory Module (AMM) for salience-gated episodic storage and trigger-driven retrieval, and a Self-Reflection Module (SRM) for bounded execution-time validation and corrective intervention. Both modules are implemented as feature-flagged extensions over the same execution substrate, enabling controlled ablations on ScienceWorld. Across four configurations---baseline, baseline+AMM, baseline+SRM, and the full system---the full system achieves the best mean final score (64.62), success rate (43.17%), and successful-step efficiency (19.33 steps), while SRM is the strongest standalone contributor. The results suggest that execution-time control is the dominant bottleneck in this setting, while episodic memory becomes most useful once the runtime loop is stabilized.

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BibTeX

@article{santos2026cognitive,
  title = {Cognitive Extensions for Dual-Process Language Agents: Memory and Self-Reflection in Interactive Environments},
  author = {João Meneses dos Santos and Arlindo L. Oliveira},
  year = {2026},
  abstract = {Language agents remain brittle in interactive environments, where success requires long-horizon state tracking, valid action execution, and recovery from failed steps. We extend SwiftSage, a dual-process agent that combines a fast action proposer with a slower planner, using two modular cognitive extensions: an Adaptive Memory Module (AMM) for salience-gated episodic storage and trigger-driven retrieval, and a Self-Reflection Module (SRM) for bounded execution-time validation and corrective inte},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19128},
  keywords = {cs.AI, cs.LG, cs.MA},
  eprint = {2609.19128},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
}

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