Hypotheses from the IDA Model & Analysis of Psychological Phenomena using the Cognitive Cycle

1. 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

2. Cognitive Cycle Hypothesis • Human cognition functions by iterated interactions between • conscious content • the various memory systems • decision-making • Cycles • Cascade (overlap) • Sample the environment 5 to 10 times a second • Preserve the seriality of consciousness • Give the illusion (?) of continuity

3. 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.

5. 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 100-200 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.

6. 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

7. Earlier claims of a Transient Episodic Memory • Panksepp (1998)—transient memory store • Conway (2001)—episodic memory • Donald (2001)—intermediate term memory • Baars & Franklin (2003)—transient episodic memory

8. Perceptual Memory Hypothesis • Perceptual memory (Taylor 1999) assigns initial meanings to incoming stimuli • Recognition (identification) • Categorization (classification) • Relations • Feelings • Distinct mechanism from semantic memory, but storing some of the same contents

9. 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

10. Eight-arm Radial Maze no food food food no food no food food no food food

11. Procedural Memory Hypothesis • Procedural skills • Shaped by reinforcement learning • Operating through consciousness • Over multiple cognitive cycles

12. Consciousness Hypothesis • Consciousness (Baars 2002)is realized • by a global broadcast • of conscious contents • from a functional global workspace, • which receives input • from the senses and from memory

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. Availability Heuristic Demo

17. 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.

18. 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

19. 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.

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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.

24. Psychological Phenomena Subject to Analysis • Process dissociation • Recall vs. recognition • Working memory tasks • Automaticity • Subliminal learning

25. Web and Email Addresses • Stan Franklin • franklin@memphis.edu • www.cs.memphis.edu/~franklin/ • ‘Conscious’ Software Research Group • csrg.cs.memphis.edu/