the percept. Pertinent feeling/emotions are
identified (recognized) along with objects
and their relations by the perceptual
memory system. This could entail simple
reactive feelings based on a single input or
more complex feelings requiring the
convergence of several different percepts.
Mostly visual perception activates the Bully node,
representing an individual in the slipnet, along with the
Paul node and the Fear node, resulting in their
becoming part of the percept.
2. Percept to Preconscious Buffer. The percept,
including some of the data plus the meaning, is
stored in preconscious buffers of LIDA’s
working memory. These buffers may involve
visuospatial, phonological, and other kinds of
information. Again, note that this stage is
unconscious.
Feelings/emotions are part of the preconscious
percept written during each cognitive cycle into
the preconscious working memory buffers.
The Bully node, the Paul node and the Fear node are
each part of the percept.
3. Local Associations. Using the incoming
percept and the residual contents of the
preconscious buffers as cues, including
emotional content, local associations are
automatically retrieved from transient episodic
memory and from declarative memory. The
contents of the preconscious buffers together
with the retrieved local associations from
transient episodic memory and declarative
memory, roughly correspond to Ericsson and
Kintsch’s long-term working memory (LTWM)
(1995) and Baddeley’s episodic buffer (2000).
Again, note that this stage is unconscious.
Feelings/emotions are part of the cue that
results in local associations from transient
episodic and declarative memory. These local
associations contain records of the agent’s past
feelings/emotions in associated situations.
The Bully and Paul nodes cue local associations
(episodic memory) of the last encounter with this Bully
including Fear and Pain.
4. Competition for Consciousness. Attention
codelets, whose job it is to bring relevant,
urgent, or insistent events to consciousness,
view long-term working memory. Some of
them gather information, form coalitions and
actively compete for access to consciousness.
The competition may also include attention
codelets and their coalitions from a recent
previous cycle. Again, note that this stage is
unconscious. Present and past
feelings/emotions influence the competition for
consciousness in each cognitive cycle. Strong
affective content strengthens a coalition’s
chances of coming to consciousness.
Some attention codelet notes the Bully, Paul, Fear and
Pain nodes, among others in LTWM, gathers them, and
others, into a coalition, and competes for
consciousness.
5. Conscious Broadcast. A coalition of
codelets, typically an attention codelet and its
covey of related information codelets carrying
content, gains access to the global workspace
and has its contents broadcast. This broadcast is
hypothesized to correspond to phenomenal
consciousness. The conscious broadcast
contains the entire content of consciousness
including the affective portions. The contents of
perceptual memory are updated in light of the
current contents of consciousness, including
feelings/emotions, as well as objects, and
relations. Affect modulate the encoding
following an inverted U curve.
The Paul, Bully, Fear and Pain nodes in perceptual
memory receive additional base-level activations.
Transient episodic memory is updated with the
current contents of consciousness, including
feelings/emotions, as events. Affect modulate
the encoding following an inverted U curve.
The event of stepping into the hall, seeing Paul,
remembering pain and experiencing fear is recorded in
transient episodic memory.
(At recurring times not part of a cognitive
cycle, the contents of transient episodic
memory are consolidated into long-term
declarative memory.) Procedural memory
(recent actions) is updated (reinforced) with the
strength of the reinforcement influenced by the
strength of the affect.
The action scheme for stepping into the hall has its
base-level activation increases (reinforced).
6. Recruitment of Resources. Relevant behavior
codelets respond to the conscious broadcast.
These are typically codelets whose variables
can be bound from information in the conscious
broadcast. If the successful attention codelet
was an expectation codelet calling attention to
an unexpected result from a previous action, the
responding codelets may be those that can help
to rectify the unexpected situation. Thus
consciousness solves the relevancy problem in
recruiting resources. The affective content
(feelings/emotions) together with the cognitive
content help to attract relevant resources
(processors, neural assemblies) with which to
deal with the current situation.
Action schemes whose contexts contain “seeing a
Bully” and “experiencing Fear” activate themselves.