Human Consciousness as a Curiosity-Driven Recurrent Process: A Developmental Model of Loop Autonomy and Cross-Domain Architecture

Abstract

This paper proposes a developmental model of human consciousness grounded in recurrent processing theory, sociocultural psychology, and the emerging literature on cross-domain cognition. We argue that consciousness is not a fixed state orproperty but a dynamic, curiosity-driven recurrent process that bootstraps through social interaction, becomes self-sustaining once the recursive loop is established, and expands into qualitatively distinct architectures through sustained cross-domain in-tegration. Complex emotion is not foundational to this process but downstream—an appraisal generated within the self-model that the loop produces. Curiosity is positioned as sui generis: not a response to biological need, not reducible to emotionor reward, but the primal, intrinsic drive that ignites the entire chain of cognitive and social development. We introduce the construct of loop autonomy—the degree to which the recurrent processing loop can sustain and generate its own cognitiveactivity without external input—as the defining variable that distinguishes three modes of consciousness: standard, high-IQ, and cross-domain. The cross-domain mode, characterized by high loop autonomy and inherent cross-domain mapping, is the architecture most capable of lifelong refinement and genuine breakthrough. Predictions for developmental, cross-cultural, educational, and neural research are proposed, and the model is positioned relative to Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, Higher-Order Theories, Predictive Processing, and enactivism. Limitations, including the functional rather than metaphysical scope of the model, are discussed. V2: Restructured as a direct argument against the affect-as-foundational tradition (Damasio, Panksepp, Solms, Seth). Added explicit rebuttals, sharpened predictions, corrected APA formatting, and added missing references.