Smooth coping—skillful, habituated action like walking, driving, or cooking—is characterized by rapidity and reduced cognitive load. The authors develop a conceptual model of smooth coping within the LIDA cognitive architecture, which implements global workspace theory. They argue that smooth coping consists of sequences of automatized actions intermittently interspersed with consciously mediated action selection, supplemented by never-conscious dorsal stream processes for online adjustments. To implement this, they introduce an Automatized Action Selection sub-module. The model integrates embodied intelligence from enactivism with representations and conscious control mechanisms, addressing how smooth coping can be modeled in autonomous agents and implemented in artificial agents.
A global workspace (GW) is a functional hub for binding and propagating signals among loosely coupled signaling elements, and in the brain it may underlie conscious experiences. The cortico-thalamic core is thought to support conscious perception, thinking, learning, feelings of knowing, emotions, visual imagery, working memory, and executive control. Conscious contents are unitary and consistent at any moment but form a large, open set over time, suggesting the GW capacity is not localized to a single anatomical hub but is a dynamic functional capacity—a kind of neuronal cloud computing. Conscious contents may arise when multiple input streams settle on a winner-take-all equilibrium, igniting an any-to-many broadcast lasting about 100–200 ms. Conscious moments hold only 1–4 unrelated items, a small focal capacity that may be the biological price for global access.
The active components of classical working memory are conscious, a fact that traditional theory does not account for. Global Workspace theory proposes that consciousness recruits unconscious specialized networks to perform detailed working memory functions. The IDA model offers a detailed analysis of this process, focusing on two classical working-memory tasks: verbal rehearsal and the use of a visual image. This analysis clarifies the interactions between conscious and unconscious aspects of working memory.