Topics — What a work is about. Nucleation holds whatever reading the owner files here, whether or not an Anthology of the SOTA topic could also hold it; instruction for ML practice belongs to the anthology (ADR-048). The words are seeded from the clusters the reading-time triage of 2026-09-25 found, and grow by decision.
Behavioral integration — how an organism’s many control systems come to act as one — action selection and competition between systems (habitual and goal-directed, automatic and willed), hierarchical and feedback control, intertemporal conflict and self-control, and evidence accumulation to a decision. One of four unities kept apart (ADR-024).
54 of 2004 LIT documents. Back to the full index.
| # | Title | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| LIT-426 v2 | Macrocognition: A Theory of Distributed Minds and Collective Intentionality | Huebner (2014), DOI-10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199926275.001.0001. Per its publisher, the book argues that genuine cognition requires flexible goal-directed behaviour, which requires specialised representational systems integrated so as to cope fluidly with the environment, and so that collective mentality “should be posited where and only where specialized subroutines are integrated to yield goal-directed behavior that is sensitive to the concerns that are relevant to a group as such”. On this view there are many kinds of collective minds, some more like honeybees or cats than people, and groups are unlikely to be full “believers”. Unread: filed from the description and contents only. | Unavailable — filed 2026-10-02 from the publisher’s description and table of contents; no lawful full text was reachable (Oxford Academic is paywalled, the Internet Archive copy is lending-only, and no author-posted draft was found), so it is not read and no NOTE is filed. Of the four works filed for the Minsky–Schwitzgebel bridge it is the one whose criterion for a collective mind is itself a decomposition criterion: mentality wherever specialised subroutines are integrated into goal-directed behaviour sensitive to the group’s concerns. A close reading is the most likely of the four to change the bridge. |
| LIT-429 v2 | The Society of Mind | Minsky (1986), Simon & Schuster. The book-length statement of the Society of Mind programme, begun with Seymour Papert in the early 1970s. A mind is a society of many small agents, each mindless by itself, and intelligence comes from their diversity and organisation, not from one principle. The publisher presents it as a puzzle of self-contained one-page pieces that assemble into a theory. Unread: no lawful full text was reachable, so it is registered from the publisher’s description and the contents list. | Unavailable — seeded 2026-10-01 from the publisher’s description, the Library of Congress catalogue record and the Google Books contents list, not read: no lawful full text could be reached. The Internet Archive copies are lending-only, HathiTrust is search-only, and Minsky’s web page did not post the book. It stays Unavailable until a copy is supplied. Its programme is read here at second hand through Singh’s exposition (LIT-444) and at first hand through the draft of its sequel (LIT-432). |
| LIT-432 | The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind | Minsky (2006), Simon & Schuster, read in the author’s 2005 draft. Emotions are Ways to Think, not a separate faculty. Each emotional state turns some mental resources on and others off, by Selectors that Critics trigger when they recognise a type of problem. The same machinery serves ordinary thinking. The book adds six levels of mental activity, from instinctive reaction to self-conscious reflection. It treats “consciousness”, “emotion” and “pain” as suitcase words for many processes, and the Self as a network of partial self-models. It is a design argued from examples. Against Damasio, it treats the body as one more resource the brain uses, not the stuff of emotion. | Active — read in full 2026-10-01 in the author’s posted draft of 2005 (NOTE-348), not in the published book; worth reading as the late, fullest statement of the Society of Mind programme. It is the one where emotion is put inside thinking: an emotional state is a selection of mental resources switched on and off, made by Selectors that Critics trigger, and so it is a Way to Think. Read it as a design proposal argued by examples, not as evidence. It reports no experiment, Minsky labels several of its central ideas his own conjectures, and it sets the body to the side of emotion, against the bodily account of Damasio (LIT-384, LIT-388) that this record holds. |
| LIT-436 | Intelligence without representation | Brooks (1991), Artificial Intelligence 47:139–159, written in 1987. Argues that AI should be built incrementally from complete autonomous “Creatures” tested in the real world, and that the system should be decomposed by activity into parallel layers, each connecting sensing to action, not by function into perception, a central reasoner and action. His robots have no central representation and no central control: each layer is a fixed network of simple finite-state machines, and a higher layer subsumes a lower one by suppressing or inhibiting its wires. Coherent behaviour emerges, “in the eye of an observer”, from competing behaviours. Hypothesis: representation is the wrong unit of abstraction for the bulk of intelligence. | Active — read in full 2026-10-02 (NOTE-351) from the copy Brooks posts; worth reading as the decomposition side built and run: a robot whose purposive behaviour comes from parallel layers of simple finite-state machines with no central representation and no central control, which Brooks likens to Minsky’s account of human behaviour. The coherence of the whole, he says, exists “in the eye of an observer”. The evidence is three layers on one physical robot, described rather than measured. It makes no claim about minds or experience and disclaims interest in the philosophy. |
| LIT-439 | The Computational Boundary of a “Self”: Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition | Levin (2019), Frontiers in Psychology 10:2688. Proposes “Scale-Free Cognition”: an Individual or Self is the set of parts that pursue a goal together, bounded by the farthest events in space and time it can measure and try to change (its “cognitive light cone”). Selves scale up from homeostatic loops through memory and anticipation, and cells merge into larger Selves by sharing bioelectric state through gap junctions; cancer is the boundary shrinking back to one cell. Because every level that pursues its own goal is a Self, most living systems hold many nested, coexisting Selves, “not one, as implied by Integrated Information Theory”. Levin’s “Self” is a goal-pursuing collective, an agent and an individual in this record’s terms; the essay gives no account of a self as subject. A hypothesis essay: no model and no new data. | Active — read in full 2026-10-02 (NOTE-341); worth reading as the composition-side statement that agency is nested by default: a Self is whatever set of parts pursues a goal together, so cells, organs, organisms and swarms are Selves at once, each bounded by its “cognitive light cone”. It is a hypothesis-and-theory essay with no model, no measurement procedure for the light cone and no data of its own. Its one sentence against IIT’s single-Self picture is asserted in a bracket, not argued, and its consciousness claims are confined to a closing speculation. |
| LIT-444 | Examining the Society of Mind | Singh (2003), Computing and Informatics 22(6):521–543. A sympathetic exposition of Minsky’s Society of Mind by his student. It traces the theory’s history: Minsky and Papert’s 1970s copy-demo robot, the procedure-bearing frames of 1974, the abandoned 1976 book drafts, and the 1977 and 1980 papers. It catalogues the mechanisms and how agents communicate without shared symbols. It finds resemblances in Bayes nets, case-based reasoning, blackboards, Cyc, Soar and multiagent systems, none of which it calls a Society of Mind. Its verdict is that the theory has never been implemented. | Active — read in full 2026-10-01 (NOTE-339); worth reading as the shortest reliable map of The Society of Mind (LIT-429), written by the student who worked with Minsky on its sequel. It gives the theory’s history from the 1970s memos, a catalogue of its mechanisms (agents and agencies, K-lines, nemes and nomes, frames and transframes, difference-engines, censors, A- and B-brains, ways agents communicate and grow), and a survey of later AI it resembles. It is an exposition, not a test: it reports no implementation and quotes the theory more than it argues for it. Its history leans on unpublished 1976 drafts that only the author saw. |
| LIT-540 | Impulsive action: emotional impulses and their control | Frijda, Ridderinkhof & Rietveld (2014), Frontiers in Psychology 5:518. Impulsive action is non-deliberate but purposive. Automatic appraisal of an event’s pertinence to the agent’s concerns elicits a state of action readiness, a motive to establish, modify or end a relation to the object, with “control precedence” (urgency, persistence, attentional capture). Modes of action readiness are what distinguish one emotion from another. Events usually draw several appraisals and so several states of readiness, and their interaction regulates action: much emotion regulation is itself emotional, not reason overriding passion. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-433); filed in place of Frijda’s The Emotions (LIT-546), which could not be read, as the shortest lawfully readable statement of his action-readiness theory in his own words. Appraisal of an event’s pertinence to one’s concerns elicits a state of action readiness, a motive to change one’s relation to the object, which has “control precedence”. Modes of action readiness correspond to emotions (hostility to anger, avoidance to fear). Much emotion regulation is itself one state of action readiness checking another, so “there is no clear distinction between processes of emotion and processes of emotion regulation”. It is a theoretical paper with no data, written for impulsive action, so it states the theory’s core and not its full range. |
| LIT-554 | The Emerging Field of Emotion Regulation: An Integrative Review | Gross (1998), Review of General Psychology 2(3):271–299. Emotions are response tendencies (behavioural, experiential, physiological) called forth by evaluated situations and open to modulation. Emotion regulation is how people influence which emotions they have, when, and how they are experienced and expressed, and it is distinct from coping, mood regulation and defense. A process model places regulation at five points in emotion generation: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change (reappraisal), and response modulation (suppression). The first four are antecedent-focused, the last response-focused. Dysregulation is said to figure in over half of the DSM-IV Axis I disorders and all of Axis II. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-429); worth reading as the founding statement of the process model of emotion regulation, the five-family scheme (situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, response modulation) that later regulation research and many therapies are organised around. It defines emotion regulation as “the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions” (p. 275) and separates it from coping, mood regulation and defense. It is a conceptual review: no data of its own, and it says the scheme is “a set of working distinctions” (p. 282). |
| LIT-563 | HDDM: Hierarchical Bayesian Estimation of the Drift-Diffusion Model in Python | Wiecki, Sofer & Frank (2013), Frontiers in Neuroinformatics 7:14. HDDM is an open-source Python package that estimates the drift diffusion model (and the linear ballistic accumulator) by hierarchical Bayesian MCMC: subject parameters drawn from group distributions with informative priors, full posteriors, outlier handling, and regression of parameters on trial-by-trial covariates. A tutorial reproduces a theta-power effect on decision threshold that reverses under subthalamic deep brain stimulation. In simulations hierarchical Bayes recovers parameters and detects effects better than χ²-quantile and maximum-likelihood fitting, most with few trials. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-466); worth reading as the methods paper for HDDM, the Python package that fits the drift diffusion model by hierarchical Bayesian estimation (PyMC, MCMC), with subject parameters drawn from group distributions and trial-by-trial regressions of parameters on covariates such as EEG power. Its simulations show hierarchical Bayes recovering parameters with less error than per-subject χ²-quantile, maximum-likelihood or non-hierarchical Bayesian fits, most of all with few trials, and detecting drift-rate differences and covariate effects more often. The comparisons are the authors’ own, on data simulated from the model being fitted, and its hypothesis tests on the group posterior differ from the t-tests used for the other methods. |
| LIT-565 | The Time Course of Perceptual Choice: The Leaky, Competing Accumulator Model | Usher & McClelland (2001), Psychological Review 108(3):550–592. Perceptual choice as gradual, stochastic accumulation in one unit per alternative, with leakage and lateral inhibition between units and a threshold at zero. For two choices the linearised difference is an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process with net leak K = k − β; K = 0 recovers the classical diffusion model, and K ≠ 0 bounds asymptotic accuracy. The model fits time–accuracy curves slightly better than diffusion with drift variance, fits Vickers’s latency–discriminability data, predicts individual primacy or recency biases confirmed in a new experiment, and yields Hick’s law under a constant-accuracy criterion. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-449); worth reading as the source of the leaky, competing accumulator (LCA): one leaky accumulator per alternative, lateral inhibition between them, a threshold-linear floor at zero, and an absolute response criterion. In the linear two-choice case the difference between accumulators is an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process with net leak K = k − β, so the classical diffusion model is the special case K = 0 and accuracy given unlimited time is bounded whenever K ≠ 0. Its evidence for leakage over drift variance is a modest likelihood advantage on 3 participants (combined ratio about 62 to 1, 7 of 9 curves), and the authors concede that a diffusion model with drift variance, starting-point variance and decision boundaries is hard to tell apart from it. |
| LIT-567 | A Planning Agent’s Self-Governance over Time | Bratman (2018), essay 11 of Planning, Time, and Self-Governance (OUP). A planning agent’s self-governance over time is self-governance at each time along a planned activity, plus cross-temporal links of intention that parallel the interlocking intentions of shared agency: in diachronic self-governance one acts “together” with oneself. Standpoints are “diachronicalized” by a conditional, reflexive end of one’s own diachronic self-governance. That end can make willpower and resistance to “shuffling” self-governed, while anticipated regret at “plan’s end” excludes drinking Kavka’s toxin. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-464), in the author’s pre-publication draft of 10 July 2017, not the typeset chapter. Worth reading as the read substitute for Planning, Time, and Self-Governance (2018) and, through its summary of the planning theory, for Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (1987, LIT-593). A planning agent governs herself over time when she is self-governing at each time along a planned activity and her intentions at those times interlock like the intentions of people acting together, so that she acts “together” with herself. Her standpoints are “diachronicalized”: they include a conditional, reflexive end of her own diachronic self-governance. That end explains how willpower and resisting “shuffling” between incomparable options can be self-governed, and anticipated regret at plan’s end rules out drinking Kavka’s toxin. A philosophical model argued by cases; nothing in it is tested. |
| LIT-569 | The Physics of Optimal Decision Making: A Formal Analysis of Models of Performance in Two-Alternative Forced-Choice Tasks | Bogacz, Brown, Moehlis, Holmes & Cohen (2006), Psychological Review 113(4):700–765. The pure drift diffusion model implements the SPRT and Neyman–Pearson test, so it is the optimal two-choice decision process. The O-U, mutual inhibition (Usher–McClelland), feedforward inhibition and pooled inhibition (Wang) models reduce to it for balanced parameters; the race model does not. For reward rate, Bayes risk and two accuracy-weighted criteria there is a unique optimal threshold, giving parameter-free optimal performance curves. With biased priors the optimal starting point is proportional to the log prior odds. | Active — read 2026-10-03 (NOTE-461), main text and Appendix B in full, Appendix A (the derivations) by section only; worth reading as the paper that puts the two-choice decision models in one frame and ties them to the sequential probability ratio test. The pure drift diffusion model is the continuum limit of the SPRT, so it is the fastest for a given accuracy and the most accurate for a given time. Of six models, all but the race model reduce to it in some parameter range: the Usher–McClelland mutual inhibition model when leak equals inhibition and both are large, the feedforward inhibition model when its inhibitory and excitatory weights are equal. Each reward criterion has a unique optimal threshold, which gives testable optimal performance curves. The optimality results hold for the pure model with stationary evidence and two alternatives. |
| LIT-573 v2 | Self-Command in Practice, in Policy, and in a Theory of Rational Choice | Schelling (1984), American Economic Review 74(2):1-11, the Richard T. Ely Lecture, on self-command and what it means for the theory of rational choice. Unread: no lawful free copy. Schelling’s 1980 essay “The Intimate Contest for Self-Command”, LIT-602, is read in its place. | Unavailable — registered 2026-10-03 from bibliographic records, not read. No lawful free copy was found. The article is on JSTOR (AER 74(2), the May 1984 Papers and Proceedings issue), which returned a bot challenge and was not pursued. RePEc lists no downloadable version. It is reprinted in Schelling’s Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays (Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 63-81), which is not open access. The only copies found online were on a personal website that is not the author’s and on course pages, which this record does not use. Schelling’s earlier, freely published essay on the same subject was read instead and filed as LIT-602 (NOTE-452). A human with JSTOR access could read this lecture and move it to Active. |
| LIT-576 | The Diffusion Decision Model: Theory and Data for Two-Choice Decision Tasks | Ratcliff & McKoon (2008), Neural Computation 20(4):873–922. A review of the diffusion decision model for fast two-choice tasks, with three new motion-discrimination experiments. Noisy evidence accumulates from a starting point z to one of two boundaries (0, a) at drift v, plus non-decision time and across-trial variability in v, z and Ter. The model fits accuracy and full correct and error RT distributions, and maps difficulty to drift, speed–accuracy instructions to boundary separation and stimulus proportion mainly to starting point. Applications cover aging, aphasia and links to neural firing. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-445), from the author manuscript in PubMed Central; worth reading as the canonical statement of the diffusion decision model and of what it is for. Two-choice RT and accuracy are decomposed into drift rate (quality of evidence), boundary separation (caution), starting point (bias) and non-decision time, plus across-trial variability in drift, starting point and non-decision time. Three new motion-discrimination experiments show each manipulation landing on its own parameter: difficulty on drift, speed–accuracy instructions on boundaries, stimulus proportion mainly on starting point. Its closing claim, that diffusion models have come “as near to provid[ing] a solution to simple decision making as is possible in behavioral science”, is the authors’ assessment, not a result. |
| LIT-577 | Sophisticated Inference | Friston, Da Costa, Hafner, Hesp & Parr (2021; arXiv 2020), Neural Computation 33(3):713–763. Ordinary active inference scores a fixed set of policies by expected free energy (risk plus ambiguity). Sophisticated inference instead evaluates the expected free energy of the next action recursively, averaging over the beliefs the agent would hold after each plausible outcome and action, which amounts to a tree search over belief states pruned below a probability of 1/16. In simulations it plans past short-term costs: a rat visits a mildly aversive cue, and a horizon of four escapes a local minimum in a maze. It recovers Bayes-adaptive RL in the zero-temperature limit. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-454), from the arXiv preprint, whose displayed equations did not survive text extraction. Worth reading as the active-inference planning scheme the record’s free-energy holdings otherwise lack: expected free energy evaluated recursively over future belief states, a deep tree search pruned by probability, with the Bellman equation as its formal analogue. The evidence is small simulations (a T-maze rat and an 8 × 8 grid). Flagged anthology-candidate: it is a planning algorithm, compared with reinforcement learning, and the anthology’s agents-and-environments topic may hold it. |
| LIT-578 v2 | Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior | Kelso (1995), Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior, MIT Press, xvii + 334 pp. The book-length statement of coordination dynamics. Unread: registered from catalogue records. What the record knows of its content comes from the works that cite it: the coordination potential of the HKB model (reproduced in Kelso 2021, Box 1), absolute versus relative coordination (De Jaegher & Di Paolo 2007, citing p. 98), a chapter on how HKB arose (ch. 3) and one on brain rhythms (ch. 8), per Kelso 2021. | Unavailable — registered 2026-10-03 as a seed, not read. No lawful full text was found: the book has no DOI, is not listed as open access, and MIT Press’s page refused an automated request. Under the owner’s rule for books it is supplanted by a shorter work by the same author, Kelso’s 2021 retrospective on the HKB model (LIT-601), which was read. It is filed because it is the citation others reach for when they mean coordination dynamics, relative coordination or metastability; De Jaegher & Di Paolo (LIT-571) and Raja et al. (LIT-598) both cite it. |
| LIT-579 | Evolution of the Internal Family Systems Model | Schwartz (undated, c. 2000s; IFS Institute). IFS views a person as “an ecology of relatively discrete minds”, each wanting a valuable role but forced into extreme ones by experience: managers keep control, exiles carry pain, and firefighters douse exiles’ feelings by bingeing or numbing. Everyone has a Self that appears when parts “step back”, and is not a passive witness but an active leader and healer. Its qualities are the “eight Cs”. The goal is to differentiate the Self from the parts. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-453); worth reading as Richard Schwartz’s own short statement of the IFS model, freely published by the IFS Institute, and the read substitute (with chapter 1 of the book, NOTE-457) for Internal Family Systems Therapy (LIT-591). IFS is “a new synthesis of two already-existing paradigms: systems thinking and the multiplicity of the mind”. A person contains “an ecology of relatively discrete minds”, forced into extreme roles (managers, firefighters, exiles) by experience. Everyone has a Self with “crucial leadership qualities”, summed up as eight Cs: calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage and connectedness. A practitioner’s essay: the evidence is clinical experience and one case. |
| LIT-580 | Uncertainty-based competition between prefrontal and dorsolateral striatal systems for behavioral control | Daw, Niv & Dayan (2005), Nature Neuroscience 8(12):1704-1711. Habitual and goal-directed control are model-free (“caching”) and model-based (“tree-search”) reinforcement learners in dorsolateral striatum and prefrontal cortex. Behaviour follows whichever controller’s value estimate is less uncertain under approximate Bayesian versions of each. Simulations reproduce the devaluation data: over-training yields devaluation-insensitive habit, except for actions near reward or in tasks with more actions and outcomes. Both controllers serve the same ends; neither is the “irrational” one. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-459), supplementary methods not read. Worth reading as the founding statement of model-based versus model-free control as two brain systems, and of arbitration between them by relative uncertainty. Goal-directed (devaluation-sensitive) behaviour is a prefrontal “tree-search” controller, statistically efficient but noisy to compute. Habit is a dorsolateral-striatal “caching” controller, cheap but data-hungry and blind to revaluation. Each controls behaviour when its value estimate is the more certain, which reproduces why over-training produces habits unless the task is complex or the action near the reward. Both controllers pursue “identical rational ends”: a rejection of the impulsive-limbic-versus-rational-prefrontal picture. |
| LIT-581 | Hierarchically organized behavior and its neural foundations: A reinforcement learning perspective | Botvinick, Niv & Barto (2009), Cognition 113(3):262-280. Hierarchical RL groups actions into reusable “options” with their own policies, subgoals and pseudo-reward. That eases the scaling problem by cutting the number of decisions to explore and learn. The paper builds an actor-critic version and maps option identifiers to DLPFC, option-specific policies to dorsolateral striatum, and option-specific values and option-length prediction errors to OFC. Unsuitable options produce negative transfer, so how useful options are discovered is the central open problem. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-451), from the PubMed Central author manuscript; the online appendix with the equations was not read. Worth reading as the bridge between hierarchical reinforcement learning (temporally abstract “options”) and the psychology and neuroscience of hierarchically organized behaviour. Options ease the scaling problem of RL by shrinking search and learning to a few decision points. An actor-critic version maps option identifiers to dorsolateral PFC, option-specific policies to dorsolateral striatum, and option-specific values and extended prediction errors to orbitofrontal cortex. The problem it puts first is option discovery: the wrong options cause negative transfer, as in human problem solving. |
| LIT-583 v2 | Breakdown of Will | Ainslie (2001), Cambridge University Press. The book-length statement of picoeconomics: hyperbolic discounting makes a person a population of bargaining interests, and will is the recursive bundling of choices into precedents. Unread: registered from the publisher’s description and the précis, LIT-586, which stands in for it. | Unavailable — registered 2026-10-03 from the publisher’s description and from the outline of the book given in its précis, not read. Not open access: Unpaywall reports no open copy, and no author deposit of the book was found (the author’s site, picoeconomics.org, carries the précis and articles, not the book). The owner suggested the précis instead, and it is read and filed as LIT-586 (NOTE-443), which follows the book’s three sections and twelve chapters. The book is kept as the citation others reach for. A human with library access could read chapters 5-8 (the bargaining model and its evidence) against the précis. |
| LIT-584 | Model-based and model-free Pavlovian reward learning: Revaluation, revision, and revelation | Dayan & Berridge (2014), Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 14(2):473-492. Pavlovian prediction is not only model-free. A cue that had predicted disgusting salt became instantly “wanted” when a never-experienced salt appetite was induced, before the salt was retasted, which needs a prediction of the outcome’s identity revalued against the current bodily state. Over-training may “defocus” outcome representations rather than hand control to a model-free system. Dopamine may carry model-based evaluations. No algorithm for the revaluation is given. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-463), from the PubMed Central author manuscript. Worth reading as the argument that Pavlovian prediction, usually modelled as purely model-free, is also model-based. In the “Dead Sea salt” experiment a lever that had predicted a disgusting salt solution became, on first presentation after a novel sodium appetite was induced and before any salt was retasted, nearly as attractive as a sucrose lever, with mesolimbic activation. A cached value cannot do that. The CS must predict the outcome’s identity, and its value must be recomputed against the current bodily state. The paper adds “defocusing” of outcome representations as a model-based route to apparent habit, and argues that dopamine can carry model-based evaluations. |
| LIT-585 | The Expected Value of Control: An Integrative Theory of Anterior Cingulate Cortex Function | Shenhav, Botvinick & Cohen (2013), Neuron 79(2):217-240. Control is allocated by a cost-benefit decision. The expected value of control (EVC) of a candidate control signal is its probability-weighted payoff, with future value discounted, minus an intrinsic cost rising with its intensity. dACC monitors state and outcome information and specifies the identity and intensity of the EVC-maximizing signal. Lateral PFC and subcortical structures implement it. The account integrates conflict monitoring, effort costs and the override of defaults (exploration, foraging, patience). | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-446), from the PubMed Central author manuscript. Worth reading as the standard statement that cognitive control is allocated by a cost-benefit decision. The “expected value of control” (EVC) of a control signal, which has an identity (which task) and an intensity (how much), is its expected payoff minus an intrinsic cost that rises with intensity. Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is proposed to monitor and to specify the EVC-maximizing signal, which lateral PFC and subcortical structures then implement. It is a review and synthesis: the model is stated, not fitted, and the authors say the ingredients are not new. |
| LIT-586 | Précis of Breakdown of Will | Ainslie (2005), Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28(5), the précis of Breakdown of Will (2001). People and other animals discount delayed rewards hyperbolically, so preferences reverse as a smaller, sooner reward comes near, and a person becomes a population of reward-seeking “interests” that must forestall one another. Willpower is the bundling of future choices by treating the present one as a precedent: an intertemporal repeated prisoner’s dilemma, not an organ or a top-down ego. The same recursion predicts the will’s costs: legalism, circumscribed “lapse districts”, motivated blindness to lapses, and rules that favour countable goals over subtle ones. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-443), as the substitute for the 2001 book (LIT-583), which the owner suggested and which the précis follows chapter by chapter. Worth reading as the shortest complete statement of picoeconomics in Ainslie’s own words. Hyperbolic discounting makes preference reverse as a smaller, sooner reward draws near, so a person behaves like a population of “interests” that bargain across time. Will is not a faculty above them but a recursive self-prediction: treating each choice as a precedent “bundles” future rewards, an intertemporal repeated prisoner’s dilemma in which “credibility is power”. The same mechanism predicts the will’s side effects: legalism, “lapse districts”, motivated misperception and compulsive over-control. |
| LIT-588 v3 | A theoretical model of phase transitions in human hand movements | Haken, Kelso & Bunz (1985), Biological Cybernetics 51(5):347–356. Models the involuntary switch from anti-phase to in-phase finger or hand movement as movement frequency rises: relative phase φ is the order parameter, φ̇ = −∂V/∂φ with V = −a cos φ − b cos 2φ, both patterns are stable while |b| > |a|/4 and only in-phase below it, and hysteresis follows. The φ equation is derived from two self-sustained oscillators whose coupling must be nonlinear, with amplitude falling as frequency rises acting as the control. A theory paper: its data are Kelso’s earlier experiments, summarized. | Active — read 2026-10-30 (NOTE-1424) in full, from the publisher’s scan posted on Kelso’s lab page at Florida Atlantic University (https://ccs.fau.edu/hbblab/pdfs/1985_Haken_Kelso_Bunz_Biol_Cyb.pdf); worth reading as the paper that states the HKB model: relative phase as order parameter, the potential V = −a cos φ − b cos 2φ with anti-phase lost when b/a falls below 1/4, and its derivation from two nonlinearly coupled limit-cycle oscillators. Read it knowing that it is a theory paper with one numerical simulation and no new data: the switch and the hysteresis it models are summarized from Kelso’s earlier experiments, and critical fluctuations and critical slowing are named as future work, not reported. |
| LIT-591 v2 | Internal Family Systems Therapy | Schwartz & Sweezy (2019/2020), Guilford, 2nd ed., the authoritative text of Internal Family Systems therapy. IFS synthesises “the plural mind, or the idea that we all contain many different parts, and systems thinking”. Extreme parts are protectors or burdened exiles, not pathology, and everyone has a Self that can lead the inner system once parts “step back”. Therapy restores trust in the Self’s leadership and unburdens exiles. Chapter 1 read; the rest unread. | Unavailable — chapter 1 read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-457, Skimmed), from the sample chapter Guilford posts; the other nineteen chapters unread. No lawful full text could be reached: the book is sold by Guilford, the Internet Archive’s scans are of the 1995 first edition and access-restricted, and Schwartz’s 2013 Journal of Clinical Psychology article and the 2023 Family Process article (Brenner, Schwartz & Becker) are closed, the latter’s author share-link behind a Cloudflare challenge. Chapter 1 gives the model’s origin and its eight “essentials”, and the IFS Institute’s “Evolution of the Internal Family Systems Model” (LIT-579, read in full) gives Schwartz’s short statement of parts, roles and the Self. Filed because it is the canonical text of IFS. A reading of chapters 2–4 (systems, the Self, burdens) and 19 (research) would place it. |
| LIT-600 v2 | Attention to Action: Willed and Automatic Control of Behavior | Norman & Shallice (1986), in Davidson, Schwartz & Shapiro (eds.), Consciousness and Self-Regulation vol. 4 (Plenum), pp. 1-18; first issued as CHIP Report 99 (UCSD, December 1980). Per the report’s ERIC abstract: routine action runs off by “contention scheduling” among competing schemas, and a “supervisory attentional mechanism” biases that selection for novel, ill-learned, dangerous or planned action; “will becomes the application of attentional resources to the control of action”. Unread. | Unavailable — registered 2026-10-03 from bibliographic records and from the ERIC abstract of the 1980 technical report, not read. The 1986 chapter is not open access: Unpaywall reports no open copy, and SpringerLink returned a JavaScript bot challenge, which was not pursued. The 1980 version (CHIP Report 99, University of California San Diego, catalogued by ERIC as ED205562, “Technical Report No. 8006”, 43 pages) was the brief’s lead. ERIC has a catalogue record and abstract but no full text: its fulltext URL returns 404. The copies on Academia.edu sit behind a bot challenge, and those on ResearchGate and Scribd are uploads this record does not use. No DTIC copy was found. A human could ask UCSD’s library or the authors’ institutions for the CHIP report, or read the chapter through a library, and move this to Active. |
| LIT-601 | The Haken–Kelso–Bunz (HKB) model: from matter to movement to mind | Kelso (2021), Biological Cybernetics 115(4):305–322, a 60th-anniversary retrospective. HKB models bimanual coordination by the relative phase φ, with dφ/dt = −a sin φ − 2b sin 2φ and potential V = −a cos φ − b cos 2φ: both in-phase and anti-phase are stable for b/a > 1/4, and anti-phase loses stability below it, as observed when movement frequency rises. Noise, symmetry breaking (Δω) and metastability extend it; with Kuramoto’s model it becomes a generalized HKB for many agents. The same dynamics is reported within a body, between people and with machines, and in brain activity. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-467), from the free-to-read publisher PDF. Filed in place of Kelso’s book Dynamic Patterns (LIT-578) and as the read account of the paywalled Haken–Kelso–Bunz paper (LIT-588), both Deferred. Worth reading as Kelso’s own short statement of coordination dynamics: the HKB order-parameter equation for relative phase, its stochastic and symmetry-breaking extensions, metastability as relative coordination, the generalized HKB–Kuramoto model, and the claim that one coordination dynamics holds within and between people. It is a retrospective by an author of the model, not a review, and it says so. |
| LIT-602 | The Intimate Contest for Self-Command | Schelling (1980), The Public Interest, Summer 1980, pp. 94-118. People behave sometimes “as if they had two selves” in “continual contest for control”, and the tactics of self-management (removing the option, bright lines, monitoring, delays, raising the stakes) are the tactics of managing someone else. A single-dimension model of impatience fits poorly. Which self is authentic is left open. Failures of consumer self-management may be worth “on the order of a trillion dollars”. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-452), in place of the 1984 Ely Lecture (LIT-573), which has no lawful free copy. Worth reading as Schelling’s own first statement of “egonomics”: a person sometimes behaves “as if they had two selves” that alternate in command, and the tactics people use on themselves (mittens, alarm clocks across the room, bright lines, Christmas savings, deadlines, delays) are the tactics they use to manage another person. It refuses to say which self is authentic in general, and it gives an order-of-magnitude estimate that failures of consumer self-management cost as much as all other consumer-ignorance problems together. |
| LIT-604 v2 | Control theory: A useful conceptual framework for personality–social, clinical, and health psychology | Carver & Scheier (1982), Psychological Bulletin 92(1):111-135. A review arguing, by its title, that control theory is a useful framework for personality-social, clinical and health psychology. Unread: no lawful open copy and no published abstract could be reached. | Unavailable — registered 2026-10-03 from bibliographic records, not read. No lawful free copy was found. Unpaywall reports no open copy. Semantic Scholar marks it closed and says the publisher has withheld the abstract. The APA landing page refused the request (HTTP 403). The authors’ University of Miami pages offer their self-report scales, not their papers. No shorter work by Carver and Scheier stating the control-theory model was found in a lawful open copy. The only open copies seen were on ResearchGate and similar sharing sites, which this record does not use. A human with APA PsycNet access could read it and move it to Active. |
| LIT-605 | An Accumulator Model for Spontaneous Neural Activity Prior to Self-Initiated Movement | Schurger, Sitt & Dehaene (2012), PNAS 109(42). In Libet’s spontaneous movement task, a leaky stochastic accumulator, δx = (I − kx)Δt + cξ√Δt, with weak constant urgency I and a threshold, fitted only to waiting times, reproduces the averaged readiness potential (r² = 0.96): time-locking to threshold crossings averages up the autocorrelated noise that produced them. Fast responses to random interruptions were preceded by a slow negativity, as predicted. The “neural decision to move now” is the late threshold crossing, about 150 ms before movement, so Libet’s inference of an unconscious decision a half-second earlier is unfounded. | Active — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-462); worth reading as the model that reinterprets the readiness potential. A leaky stochastic accumulator with a weak constant input (“urgency”), fitted with three parameters to 14 participants’ waiting times in Libet’s task, reproduces the shape of the averaged readiness potential (r² = 0.96) because averaging epochs time-locked to threshold crossings recovers the noise that happened to carry the accumulator there. Its prediction, that fast responses to unpredictable clicks are preceded by a slow negativity, was confirmed (13 participants). On this account the “neural decision to move now” is the threshold crossing about 150 ms before movement, not the onset of the readiness potential, and Libet’s inference that the brain decides before awareness is “unfounded”. The authors say plainly that this shows the readiness potential could reflect spontaneous fluctuation, not that it does. |
| LIT-787 v2 | Design for a Brain: The Origin of Adaptive Behaviour | Ashby (1952; 2nd ed. 1960), DOI-10.1007/978-94-015-1320-3. Adaptation is stability of organism and environment within the region where the essential variables stay in limits. An ultrastable system finds it by a second, slower feedback that changes the parameters of the first, by step-functions at random, whenever an essential variable leaves its limits, shown in the Homeostat; Ashby argues such a feedback is necessary for any adaptation by trial and error. A large one would take impossibly long unless partial adaptations are kept, which needs a system not fully joined, its parts separated by constancies, with separate stores for separate situations. | Active — read 2026-10-14 (NOTE-851) in full, in the 1960 second edition the owner’s essay cites; worth reading for ultrastability, argued to be necessary for any system that adapts by trial and error, and for the less-cited second half: a large ultrastable system adapts in practicable time only if partial adaptations are retained, which needs parts separated by constancies, and new learning destroys old where it uses the same parts. Read it knowing that the parameter changes are blind, that the fit to real brains is qualitative, and that the account of where step-mechanisms are in the nervous system is admittedly empty. |
| LIT-902 v2 | Functionally specific articulatory cooperation following jaw perturbations during speech: Evidence for coordinative structures | Kelso, Tuller, Vatikiotis-Bateson & Fowler (1984), JEP: Human Perception and Performance 10(6): 812–832. Unexpected loading of the jaw during speech is compensated quickly by remote articulators, and which articulator compensates depends on the sound being produced (the lips for a bilabial, the tongue for a fricative). Compensation follows the task, not the wiring. Unread. | Unavailable — unread, registered 2026-10-11 from Crossref metadata. APA’s copy is closed; a search for a Haskins Laboratories status-report version found none (the DTIC-hosted Haskins reports returned HTML, not PDFs). Filed as the classic demonstration of reciprocal compensation, the signature of a coordinative structure. A reading would confirm what is reported here from general knowledge and from a USC course page’s summary. |
| LIT-904 v2 | Preliminaries to a theory of action with reference to vision | Turvey (1977), in Shaw & Bransford (eds.), Perceiving, Acting and Knowing, Erlbaum; preprint in Haskins SR-41 (1975). An essay in Bernstein’s line: the executive cannot command muscles, so acts are built from relatively autonomous coordinative structures, reflexes and their functional combinations (a term taken from Easton 1972 and widened), controlled by tuning their parameters. Reflex-probe studies show the spinal cord retuned before voluntary movement; that vision sets the tuning directly is argued, not shown. | Active — read 2026-10-14 (NOTE-826) in full, in its 1975 Haskins report form; worth reading as the essay that made the coordinative structure the unit of action control and tuning its means of control: the executive cannot command muscles, so it specifies a ballpark and sets the parameters of relatively autonomous units, as one sets the stiffness and rest length of a spring. Read it knowing that Turvey borrows the term from Easton (1972), that its evidence is reviewed reflex-probe studies of simple single-joint movements, and that its account of vision setting the tuning is speculation. |
| LIT-907 v2 | The Co-ordination and Regulation of Movements | Bernstein (1967), Pergamon. The English collection of Bernstein’s work on movement: the body has more degrees of freedom than any task needs, and coordination is the mastering of redundant degrees of freedom, by organizing components into synergies rather than controlling each one. Unread. | Unavailable — unread, registered 2026-10-11. Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1967; no DOI. The Internet Archive holds a copy in its controlled-lending collection (access-restricted), and another upload there of unclear provenance was not used. Filed as the origin of the degrees-of-freedom problem and of the synergy, which the coordinative structure answers. |
| LIT-912 v2 | Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the experience of flow | Dietrich (2004), Consciousness and Cognition 13: 746–761. Proposes that flow requires transient hypofrontality, a temporary suppression of the explicit system’s analytic and meta-conscious capacities, so a practised skill held by the implicit system runs without interference. Unread. | Unavailable — unread, registered 2026-10-11 from Crossref metadata and secondary descriptions. Elsevier’s copy is closed; no author copy was looked for beyond one search. Filed because its hypothesis, that flow requires the explicit system to stand down, is the one neurocognitive account of flow that bears on the record’s claim. Reading it would place it. |
| LIT-913 v2 | On the Concept of Coordinative Structures as Dissipative Structures: I. Theoretical Lines of Convergence | Kugler, Kelso & Turvey (1980), in Stelmach & Requin (eds.), Tutorials in Motor Behavior, pp. 3–47. Coordinative structures, the functional units that solve Bernstein’s degrees-of-freedom problem, are proposed to be dissipative structures, self-organizing under energy flow, rather than units assembled by a controller. Unread. | Unavailable — looked for a lawful full text on 2026-10-14 and found none, so it is not read and no NOTE is filed. Unpaywall: closed. OpenAlex: closed, one location (doi.org), no repository full text. Semantic Scholar: closed. Europe PMC: no record. ScienceDirect: the chapter page returned 403 to this client, and OpenAlex and Unpaywall record the chapter as closed, so no free publisher copy is known to exist. Kelso’s Human Brain and Behavior Laboratory publication list at Florida Atlantic University (ccs.fau.edu/hbblab/publications.php) lists this chapter and Part II with no PDF. The old Haskins Laboratories publication pages (haskinslabs.org/publications) now redirect to a new site with no listing, and a Wayback Machine search for a Haskins-hosted copy failed on access, not availability (connection reset), so an archived lab copy is not ruled out. Web searches on the title in quotes, with and without Haskins, found no author-posted copy. It stays Unavailable until a copy is supplied. |
| LIT-992 v2 | How the conception of control influences our understanding of actions | Floegel et al. (2023). The Perspective contrasts two ways of modelling human motor control. Plant control treats neural computation as generating commands that move the musculoskeletal plant into a desired state. Perceptual control treats movement as emerging in a coupled agent–environment system from the pursuit of perceptual goals. The paper argues that the choice of perspective shapes how empirical data are modelled and so how actions are understood. Not read. | Unavailable — filed 2026-10-12 from the owner’s papers-feed, not read. A lawful full text was sought on 2026-10-14 and not reached. OpenAlex reports it closed and lists a HAL record (hal-04076959), but the HAL API shows it is a notice with no file deposited. Unpaywall reports no open copy. The Nature Reviews Neuroscience page offers only paid access. Europe PMC holds the PubMed record (PMID 36997716) with no full text. Searches for a preprint, an accepted manuscript or a copy on the authors’ pages found none, and Goethe University Frankfurt’s repository search found no deposit. It stays Unavailable until a copy is supplied. The claim in the body, that it sets plant control against coupled-dynamics control at the motor scale for QUESTION-054, is from the abstract. |
| LIT-1179 v2 | Behavior: The Control of Perception | Powers (1973). The book-length statement of perceptual control theory: behaviour as a hierarchy of negative-feedback systems, each controlling a perception against a reference set by the level above. | Unavailable — filed 2026-10-16; on 2026-10-16 a search for a lawful full text reached none, so it is not read and no NOTE is filed. The book is in copyright (1973 Aldine; 2005 second edition, Benchmark Publications) and no open copy was found. livingcontrolsystems.com, which publishes and hosts Powers’s papers, hosts only the original book jacket (intro_papers/bcp_jacket.pdf) and links the 2005 edition for sale; its intro_papers index has no chapter. The IAPCT page for the book (iapct.org/publications/books/behavior-the-control-of-perception/) gives the Preface only. pctresources.com holds reviews of both editions (Other/Reviews/BCP_book.pdf, BCP_web.pdf, BCP_Science.pdf), not the text. The Internet Archive has the 1981 printing only as a controlled-lending item (behaviorcontrolo0000powe), which this client cannot read, and the jacket. Web searches for a free chapter of either edition, and for the book’s treatment of memory and imagination, found none. The Preface alone is not a reading. It stays Unavailable until a copy is supplied. |
| LIT-1180 v2 | Feedback: Beyond Behaviorism | Powers (1973). A control system produces whatever output keeps a sensed result constant despite disturbances, so behaviour is the control of input, not output (reprint p. 77); in a hierarchy, the output of a higher-order system is not a muscle force but a reference level for lower systems (p. 77). Every loop the paper describes closes through the environment, and its top level is inherited intrinsic reference levels whose error drives reorganization (p. 73). | Active — read 2026-10-16 (NOTE-963) in full, from the authorized reprint in Living Control Systems (1989), pp. 61–78; worth reading as the shortest statement of perceptual control: a control system produces whatever output keeps a sensed result at its reference, so behaviour is the control of input, and above the lowest level a system’s output is a reference for the level below. Read it knowing that every loop it describes closes through the environment, down to muscle effort sensed kinesthetically; that it says nothing about imagination or memory, which Powers treated elsewhere; that its higher systems still sense quantities in the world and change only lower references, never the sensors; and that reorganization, driven by error in inherited intrinsic quantities, is one paragraph. It is a rival to CLAIM-341 and gives CLAIM-342 a scoring channel the learned hierarchy does not set. |
| LIT-1188 v2 | A General Feedback Theory of Human Behavior: Part I | Powers, Clark & McFarland (1960). The first statement of the hierarchical feedback theory: each order perceives only the feedback signals of the order below and acts only by setting their references, which are replayed recordings of past perceptions. An imagination connection returns those references to the higher system’s perception, so that every goal set for lower systems can appear “immediately satisfied-in imagination” (p. 20), letting the system remember, plan an action “mentally” without performing it, hallucinate and dream, under a “mixing control” the authors leave open. An inherited N-system reorganizes the network, perceptual input functions included, at a rate proportional to error in intrinsic physiological variables. | Active — read 2026-10-16 (NOTE-954) in full, from the authorized reprint in Living Control Systems (1989), pp. 1–24, with Part II (LIT-1197, NOTE-959); worth reading as the first statement of perceptual control and the only one the record holds with its memory and imagination: references are replayed recordings of past perceptions, an imagination connection lets a higher system perceive the references it sends instead of their outcome, and a “mixing control” the authors cannot specify sets how much of perception is imagination. Read it knowing that the imagination loop changes nothing in the perceiver; that what does change perception is the N-system, which forms new input functions (“tentative definitions of new variables”, p. 14) at random under intrinsic, bodily error and keeps those whose behaviour lessens that error; that the hierarchy is “of the external-loop type” (p. 21); and that the sensory-deprivation remark is one uncited sentence. A rival to CLAIM-341 that contains its ingredients, and a scoring channel for QUESTION-121. |
| LIT-1197 | A General Feedback Theory of Human Behavior: Part II | Powers, Clark & McFarland (1960), Part II. Names six orders of perceptual control (spinal loops; elementary sensations; configurations; sequences; relationships; system concepts), demonstrated by reaction times that lengthen with order (third order about 0.3 s, fourth 0.4–0.45 s). The inherited N-system “merely alters the properties of a system, thus changing the transformations applied to existing information”, which the authors take to be insight; consciousness is defined as the state of a feedback function the N-system is acting on. Conflict between higher systems freezes a lower one at a virtual reference level, and one escape is switching a system “entirely to the imagination-connection”. | Active — read 2026-10-16 (NOTE-959) in full, from the authorized reprint in Living Control Systems (1989), pp. 25–45; worth reading as the second half of the first statement of perceptual control: six named orders of perception with tabletop demonstrations of their reaction times, the N-system (reorganization) worked out as the source of insight and of consciousness, and a theory of conflict in which switching a system “entirely to the imagination-connection” is one of the ego’s defences. Read it knowing that the orders are offered as the authors’ working definitions, the demonstrations are informal and the one experiment is “still in process”; that the N-system reshapes perception (“changing the transformations applied to existing information”) but is driven by intrinsic error, not by judgement; and that its intrinsic variables may include “mean error signal in the hierarchy”, an internal scoring channel. It bears on CLAIM-341, CLAIM-339 and QUESTION-121. |
| LIT-1218 v3 | Propagation, not aggregation: linking individual psychological flexibility to organizational functioning | Guida, Minutola & Presti (2026). A conceptual paper with no data. Organizational flexibility is not the aggregate of flexible individuals but a pattern of coordinated, values-consistent action that is retained and spread or absorbed and extinguished; whether a rise in a member’s flexibility reaches the organization depends jointly on that member’s leverage over the consequences colleagues meet and on whether the culture reinforces or penalizes such action. Bond’s (2018) leader-based route is the high-leverage special case. Five propositions and a factorial design are set out; the two measures a test needs do not yet exist. | Active — read 2026-10-29 (NOTE-1353) in full, from the publisher’s open-access PDF (Frontiers, CC BY); worth reading as the prior transfer of ACT’s psychological flexibility to the organization, which puts the problem as propagation, not aggregation, and makes it depend jointly on a member’s leverage over the consequences colleagues meet and on whether the culture reinforces values-consistent action, with Bond’s (2018) leader route as the high-leverage case. Read it knowing that it is a conceptual paper with no data, that the two measures its tests need do not exist, that its motivating evidence (Fleming 2024) is cross-sectional and bears on individual benefit more than on organizational transfer, and that two empirical sentences in §2.1 carry no citation. |
| LIT-1406 v3 | Stop Signals Provide Cross Inhibition in Collective Decision-Making by Honeybee Swarms | Seeley et al. (2012). Nest-site scouts deliver stop signals, brief vibrations given mostly by head-butting, to scouts dancing for sites other than their own while the swarm is choosing between two nest boxes, and to all dancers once it has chosen; accumulated signals end dances. A mean-field model shows that this cross inhibition, like that between neural populations, above a critical rate breaks the deadlock between two equal sites, the swarm choosing one at random, and takes it to the better site when the two differ enough. | Active — read 2026-10-29 (NOTE-1411) in full, from the Science Express PDF of 8 December 2011 posted on rangevoting.org (https://rangevoting.org/SeeleyVSHFMinhibit.pdf); worth reading as the field evidence that honeybee scouts aim inhibitory stop signals at scouts dancing for rival nest sites while the swarm is choosing, and as a model in which that cross inhibition, above a critical rate, breaks deadlock between equal options. Read it knowing that the targeting result rests on two swarms, that inhibition becomes general once the choice is made, that the model’s equations and thresholds are in the supporting material, which was not read, and that this copy is the online-first version, not the print layout of 6 January 2012. |
| LIT-1441 | Origins and functions of positive and negative affect: A control-process view | Carver & Scheier (1990), Psychological Review 97(1):19–35. The paper usually cited for the control-process account of affect: a second feedback loop monitors the rate at which the action loop reduces its discrepancy, and affect is that loop’s error signal, positive when progress beats a reference rate and negative when it falls short. Unread: the account is read in Carver’s 2018 restatement (LIT-1449). | Unavailable — registered 2026-10-23 from Crossref, not read: no lawful full text could be reached. Looked for on 2026-10-23. Unpaywall reports no open copy. The journal (APA, Psychological Review) is closed. A web search found the APA record, DeepDyve (paid), ERIC (EJ494079, record only), a Widener University file that is a reference list citing it, and Carnegie Mellon’s KiltHub record of a later Carver and Scheier chapter (2012, no file attached). The only full text seen was an author upload on ResearchGate, which this record does not use. Europe PMC has no open copy of it or of any other Carver statement of the model before 2018. The model is read first-hand, briefly, in Carver’s 2018 author manuscript in PubMed Central (LIT-1449), which restates that affect tracks the velocity of goal attainment against a reference value. Filed for the record’s account of valence as an ordering serving as the negotiation’s potential (CLAIM-440), whose sign clause this paper anticipates. It stays Unavailable until a copy is supplied, not on merit. |
| LIT-1449 | Control Theory, Goal Attainment, and Psychopathology | Carver (2018), Psychological Inquiry 29(3):139–144, a commentary on DeYoung and Krueger. Problems arise wherever a feedback loop’s input, reference value, comparison or output is extreme or biased. The five factors are read as sensitivities to classes of goals, not as loop parameters. Valence tracks the velocity of goal attainment against a reference value, so approach and avoidance can each yield either sign. Doubt and disengagement sit outside the loop itself. | Active — read 2026-10-23 (NOTE-1102): in full, from the NIH author manuscript in PubMed Central (PMC6707771, NIHMS1512534). A short commentary on DeYoung and Krueger’s cybernetic theory of psychopathology, and the nearest lawful first-hand statement found of Carver and Scheier’s control-process account of affect. Valence is read off the velocity of goal attainment against a reference value. An approach system and an avoidance system can each produce either sign. Many goals are in play at once, and their priorities are juggled. It stands in for the unread 1990 paper (LIT-1441). |
| LIT-1467 | Pleasure: the common currency | Cabanac (1992), Journal of Theoretical Biology 155(2):173–200. On the PubMed abstract: physiologists have no common currency for comparing the strength of the drives behind different regulatory needs, yet an organism must rank its priorities when they conflict. Pleasure is proposed as that currency, measured by choice in animals and by rated pleasantness in humans, and trade-offs are made by maximizing it. Unread. | Unavailable — registered 2026-10-23 from Crossref and PubMed, not read: no lawful full text could be reached. Looked for on 2026-10-23. OpenAlex records it as closed, with no repository copy. The publisher (Elsevier, Journal of Theoretical Biology) returned a 403 to this client, and no open-archive copy is offered. PubMed (PMID 12240693) carries the abstract only, and there is no PubMed Central record. A web search found no author-posted or institutional copy, only the later Ramírez and Cabanac abstract (2003). Unpaywall was not queried, because it requires an email address. The thesis is known here from the PubMed abstract and from citations in Berridge and Kringelbach 2015 (LIT-1459) and Kahneman, Wakker and Sarin 1997 (LIT-1448), which cite other Cabanac papers on alliesthesia. Filed because it is the standard source for pleasure as the common currency of motivational trade-offs, which CLAIM-440 recasts as an ordering. It stays Unavailable until a copy is supplied, not on merit. |
| LIT-1468 | Deeply Felt Affect: The Emergence of Valence in Deep Active Inference | Hesp, Smith, Parr, Allen, Friston & Ramstead (2021), Neural Computation 33(2):398–446. Valence is a state of self, inferred at a hierarchically deeper level from changes in the expected precision γ of one’s action model, which weights preference-driven expected free energy against a habitual prior in policy selection. The update to γ, affective charge, is positive when outcomes raise confidence in the action model and negative when they lower it. The valence level sends priors on γ back down. A simulated rat in a T-maze with context reversal infers negative and then positive valence, and adapts better than an agent without that level. | Active — read 2026-10-23 (NOTE-1111): in full, from the publisher’s CC BY PDF as deposited in Aarhus University’s repository (pure.au.dk), checked against the University of Amsterdam deposit. A deep active-inference model of valence. A precision term γ sets how far the agent’s preference-driven action model, rather than a habitual prior, governs policy selection. Its update, “affective charge”, is positive when outcomes raise confidence in the action model and negative when they lower it. A second, slower level infers a binary valence state from affective charge and sends priors on γ back down. Simulated in a T-maze with reversal, the agent with the valence level adapts faster than one without it. “Felt” means explicitly represented, which the authors take as necessary for self-reportable experience of valence. Filed for the record’s candidate that a valence regime is felt when the system models its own potential (CLAIM-440). |
| LIT-1488 v3 | The when and how of planning: Meta-analysis of the scope and components of implementation intentions in 642 tests | Sheeran, Listrom & Gollwitzer (2024). Across 642 independent tests, forming implementation intentions was effective for cognitive, affective and behavioural outcomes (.27 ≤ d ≤ .66). Effects were larger when plans had a contingent if-then format, participants were highly motivated to reach the goal, and plans were rehearsed. A new taxonomy of the cues and responses that plans specify is developed and its categories tested. Publication bias was substantial: the pooled d = .36 falls to d = .15 under robust Bayesian meta-analysis, a small and highly heterogeneous effect. | Active — read in full 2026-10-24 (NOTE-1131) from the version of record deposited in the University of Konstanz repository (KOPS, in copyright, terms of use); worth reading as the largest synthesis of if-then planning (642 experimental tests to September 2019) and the one that corrects its size. The effect is reliable (BF10 = 319) but small once publication bias is modelled (d = .15, against an uncorrected .36 and 2006’s .65), and highly heterogeneous. Between tests, the conditional link beats a schedule of the same behaviour, rehearsal helps, keeping a copy to revisit hurts, and plans work only when the goal is wanted. Its taxonomy finds nearly every cue and response effective, ignoring and waiting before responding among them. No mechanism is tested. |
| LIT-1497 v3 | Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta‐analysis of Effects and Processes | Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006). A meta-analysis of 94 independent tests: forming an implementation intention, an if-then plan saying when, where and how a goal will be pursued, had a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment (d = .65). The plans helped people start goal striving, shield it from unwanted influences, disengage from failing courses of action and conserve capacity, and the postulated processes were supported: the specified opportunity became more accessible and the response more automatic. | Active — read in full 2026-10-24 (NOTE-1124) from the University of Konstanz repository’s scan of the published chapter (KOPS, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), through OCR; worth reading as the first large meta-analysis of if-then planning and the fullest statement of its mechanism: a plan hands initiation of a response decided in advance to the cue it names, so nothing is deliberated in the situation, and the plan fires only while the goal behind it is active. 94 tests, d = .65 against a goal intention alone, with large effects on cue accessibility and on the immediacy, efficiency and non-conscious running of planned responses from small sets of tests. The size is not corrected for publication bias; the 2024 review of 642 tests (LIT-1488) finds the bias substantial and a corrected effect near d = .15. What happens when a plan’s response proves wrong is named and left untested. |
| LIT-1830 | Organizational Flexibility: Creating a Mindful and Purpose-Driven Organization | Bond (2018), chapter 11 (pp. 185–199) of Wilson & Hayes (eds.), Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science, Context Press. The statement of Bond’s organizational flexibility model, the ACT-derived account that Guida, Minutola and Presti (LIT-1218) recast, with the leader as the high-leverage route. Not read; the record knows it only through Guida et al. | Unavailable — registered 2026-10-29, not read. A lawful full text was sought on 2026-10-29 and not reached. It is a chapter of an in-copyright book (Context Press, an imprint of New Harbinger, 2018) with no DOI; Crossref and OpenAlex hold no record of it. The publisher’s page sells the book and offers no chapter. Goldsmiths Research Online, Bond’s institutional repository, lists 42 of his items and not this chapter (checked 2026-10-29). Searches for an author’s upload (ResearchGate, academia.edu, the ACBS site) found only the related thesis of Gascoyne (2019) and the ACBS slides on the organisational flexibility measure, which are not this work. A whole-book copy would not count (ADR-064). The book’s table of contents, from the Czech national library service obalkyknih.cz, confirms the chapter and its pages. It stays Unavailable until a copy is supplied. |
| LIT-1846 | Experimental reductions of delay discounting and impulsive choice: A systematic review and meta-analysis | Rung & Madden (2018). A systematic review and category-wise meta-analysis of 92 papers that tried to reduce delay discounting or impulsive choice by non-pharmacological means, in humans and animals. Most kinds of manipulation reduced discounting (Q(9) = 224.68, I² = 64%). Learning-based procedures such as bundling and delay fading gave the largest and longest-lasting effects. Framing and priming moved one-off choices. Clinical interventions moved discounting little: mindfulness and ACT (two studies) only at trend level, g = 0.32, p = .06. Formal mediation analyses were rare, so how any of these manipulations works is largely unknown. | Active — read in part 2026-10-30 (NOTE-1440, Skimmed) from the NIH author manuscript in PubMed Central (PMC6112163, NIHMS963171), fetched as PMC XML through NCBI’s E-utilities after the PMC web page put up a reCAPTCHA; worth reading as the systematic review and meta-analysis of 92 papers on reducing delay discounting by non-drug manipulations, and for its finding that mindfulness and ACT moved discounting only at trend level. Read it knowing that effect sizes are pooled only within categories, that publication bias was not assessed, and that its search ended on 1 March 2016. |
| LIT-1851 | Nonequilibrium phase transitions in coordinated biological motion: critical fluctuations | Kelso, Scholz & Schöner (1986), Physics Letters A 118(6):279–284. In bimanual wrist and finger movement paced to rising frequency, the standard deviation of relative phase grows as the anti-phase pattern nears its switch to in-phase and peaks in the transition, while the in-phase pattern shows neither growth nor a switch: the critical fluctuations HKB’s stochastic extension predicts. Critical slowing is predicted, backed only by “very preliminary” spectral evidence, and left to later experiments. | Active — read 2026-10-30 (NOTE-1433) in full, from an offprint scan posted on Kelso’s lab page at Florida Atlantic University (https://ccs.fau.edu/hbblab/pdfs/Kelso_1986_PhysLettersA.pdf), read from the page images; worth reading as the first quantified report of critical fluctuations in human coordination: the standard deviation of relative phase rises before the anti-phase to in-phase switch and peaks in it, in wrist and finger experiments, with no such rise when the same movement starts in-phase. Read it knowing that its figures average a few subjects or show one representative subject, that it gives no statistical test, and that critical slowing and hysteresis are not measured in it. |
| LIT-1870 | Altering Impulsive Decision Making With an Acceptance-Based Procedure | Morrison, Madden, Odum, Friedel & Twohig (2014). Thirty undergraduates selected for steep discounting were randomized to one 60–90 minute acceptance-and-values session or a one-week waitlist. Discounting of hypothetical money fell more in the trained group (AUC 0.26 to 0.44, against 0.22 to 0.25; interaction p = .04). The AAQ-II and distress tolerance did not change relative to control. Pooling both groups’ pre- and post-training scores, discounting (d = .57) and distress tolerance improved and the AAQ-II only approached significance. The waitlist group’s own change in discounting after training was not significant. | Active — read in full 2026-10-30 (NOTE-1425) from the NIH author manuscript in PubMed Central (PMC5661961, NIHMS906394), fetched as PMC XML through NCBI’s E-utilities after the PMC web page put up a reCAPTCHA; worth reading as the first test of an acceptance-based intervention on delay discounting, in which discounting moved while the AAQ-II, the ACT process measure, did not. Read it knowing that it is a pilot of 30 students against a waitlist, that the waitlist group’s own pre–post change in discounting was not significant, and that a Hawthorne effect is the authors’ first limitation. |
| LIT-1873 | Dynamics governs switching among patterns of coordination in biological movement | Kelso, Scholz & Schöner (1988), Physics Letters A 134(1):8–12. When people switch on cue between in-phase and anti-phase finger movement, the switch from in-phase to anti-phase takes about twice as long as the reverse (four subjects, each p < 0.0001), with a longer-tailed distribution. Adding to the stochastic HKB equation a term that pulls relative phase toward the intended pattern reproduces the asymmetry and the distributions’ shapes: intention acts within the pattern dynamics, not over them. | Active — read 2026-10-30 (NOTE-1449) in full, from the publisher’s PDF posted on Kelso’s lab page at Florida Atlantic University (https://ccs.fau.edu/hbblab/pdfs/1988_Kelso_Scholz_Schoner_Dynamics_governs_switching_among_pattern.pdf); worth reading as the experiment showing that an intended switch between bimanual patterns is shaped by their stability: switching from in-phase to anti-phase takes about twice as long as the reverse, with a longer tail, as the HKB dynamics with an added intentional term predicts. Read it knowing that it has four subjects, that the model’s one new parameter was set to match the order of magnitude of the switching times, and that the critical slowing it mentions is cited from an earlier paper, not shown. |