Hypotheses from the IDA Model
& Analysis of Psychological
Phenomena using the Cognitive
Cycle
Stan Franklin & Bernard Baars
Workshop on the Role of Consciousness in Memory
May 1,2004—FedEx Institute of Technology
Cognitive Cycle Hypothesis
• Human cognition functions
by iterated interactions between
– conscious content
– the various memory systems
– decision-making
• Cycles
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Cascade (overlap)
Sample the environment 5 to 10 times a second
Preserve the seriality of consciousness
Give the illusion (?) of continuity
Evidence for a Cognitive
Cycle
• Perception-action cycles (posterior-frontal
cycles) - J. Fuster, A.H. Bond.
• Walter Freeman’s global EEG microstates
corresponding to multimodal Gestalts.
• Convergent evidence for a 100-ms (+/-)
conscious integration time for sensory
inputs.
Freeman’s global microstates in
cortical EEG
Both intracranial and
scalp EEG shows global phase
jumps in cortex. (see peaks on
graph)
Between global jumps there are
stable plateaus lasting about 100200 ms. These may correspond to
momentary perceptual “Gestalts” reportable as conscious in humans.
Independent evidence correlates
EEG microstates with subjective
reports in humans (Lehmann et al,
1999).
In GW/IDA terms, the plateaus
may involve two-way global
distribution of activation evoked by
sensory or frontal events, settling
into a global equilibrium.
From W.J. Freeman, 2004,
Intl Jnl Bifurcation & Chaos.
Transient Episodic Memory
Hypothesis
• Transient episodic memory (Conway 2001)
– Associative
– Content-addressable
– Decays in hours
• Conscious contents are encoded (consolidated)
in declarative memory via transient episodic
memory
Earlier claims of a
Transient Episodic Memory
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Panksepp (1998)—transient memory store
Conway (2001)—episodic memory
Donald (2001)—intermediate term memory
Baars & Franklin (2003)—transient episodic
memory
Perceptual Memory
Hypothesis
• Perceptual memory (Taylor 1999) assigns
initial meanings to incoming stimuli
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Recognition (identification)
Categorization (classification)
Relations
Feelings
• Distinct mechanism from semantic memory,
but storing some of the same contents
Evidence for a separate
perceptual memory
• Evolutionary—PM in almost all animals,
TEM lacking in invertebrates
• Developmental—children have PM before TEM
• Amnesiacs—HM and others have intact PM
but impaired TEM
• Rats in a maze—TEM impaired rats exhibit
PM
Eight-arm Radial Maze
no food
food
food
no food
no food
food
no food
food
Procedural Memory
Hypothesis
• Procedural skills
– Shaped by reinforcement learning
– Operating through consciousness
– Over multiple cognitive cycles
Consciousness Hypothesis
• Consciousness (Baars 2002) is realized
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by a global broadcast
of conscious contents
from a functional global workspace,
which receives input
from the senses and from memory
Conscious Learning
Hypothesis
• The effect size of subliminal learning
is quite small
• Implicit learning (e.g. of rules)
requires conscious input
• All significant learning
takes place through consciousness
Voluntary and Automatic Attention
Hypothesis
• Attention brings contents to consciousness
• Automatic attention
– Unconscious
– Without effort
– During a single cycle
• Voluntary attention
– Conscious
– Effortful
– Requires multiple cycles
Voluntary and Automatic Memory
Retrieval Hypothesis
• Associations from transient episodic and
declarative memory are retrieved
– Automatically
– Unconsciously
– During each cognitive cycle
• Voluntary retrieval occurs
– Over multiple cycles
– Using conscious goals
Availability Heuristic Demo
Availability Heuristic
• In problem solving, people tend to select
the first solution that becomes conscious.
• Since the men on the list tended to be
more famous than the women, and hence
more easily recalled, most think there were
more men than women.
Fine-grained analysis
sequence
• Understand the initial instructions
• Click through the names recognizing some
– Recognizing using perceptual memory
– Recognizing using voluntary memory retrieval
– Not recognizing
• Understand second instructions
• Voluntary memory retrieval of names
• Deciding which gender appeared more often
– Recall and mental tally
– Using fringe codelets
Initial Instructions
• Text of 37 words to read and understand
• Likely requires a few seconds and a few tens
of cognitive cycles.
• Gist accumulates in working memory buffers
• Conscious broadcast of gist results in instantiating
a goal context hierarchy for clicking through
and noting recognition.
• Actions selected during next cycles are
mostly mouse clicks together with sacades
for reading.
Fine-grained analysis
sequence
• Understand the initial instructions
• Click through the name recognizing some
– Recognizing using perceptual memory
– Recognizing using voluntary memory retrieval
– Not recognizing
• Understand second instructions
• Voluntary memory retrieval of names
• Deciding which gender appeared more often
– Recall and mental talley
– Using fringe codelets
Voluntary memory retrieval of
names
• Gist of second instructions becomes conscious
• Goal context hierarchy instantiated to query TEM
for names seen on the list
• Goal written to preconscious wm buffers
• Cues local associations from TEM and DM
• Coalitions built from some of these come to
consciousness
• This process continues for many cycles
• Each name the central content of a coalition
• Thus only one name at a time should appear in
consciousness
Fine-grained analysis
sequence
• Understand the initial instructions
• Click through the name recognizing some
– Recognizing using perceptual memory
– Recognizing using voluntary memory retrieval
– Not recognizing
• Understand second instructions
• Voluntary memory retrieval of names
• Deciding which gender appeared more often
– Recall and mental tally
– Using fringe codelets
Deciding using fringe codelets
• Goal of deciding, gives rise to a fringe attention
codelet for each gender, wanting to speak up
• As a name is recalled, the fringe codelet
of the appropriate gender adds activation
• These fringe codelets enter each competition
for consciousness
• When no more names are recalled,
the one with highest activation wins.
Psychological Phenomena
Subject to Analysis
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Process dissociation
Recall vs. recognition
Working memory tasks
Automaticity
Subliminal learning
Web and Email Addresses
• Stan Franklin
– [email protected]
– www.cs.memphis.edu/~franklin/
• ‘Conscious’ Software Research Group
– csrg.cs.memphis.edu/