The Knowledge Network

The map of the mind introduced earlier showed a fixed network of specialised systems arranged around two rings. This analogy should not be taken too far. For example, railway lines are for transferring passengers between stations. The specialised knowledge in each store stays put. Instead, there is a fixed network of ‘pathways’ through which representations in different stores become associated with one another. Using these connecting pathways, associative networks involving multiple stores can be created, stored and subsequently activated. These networks are called ‘schemas’. Schemas can be seen as the mind's way of using its specialised systems flexibly to collaborate and solve complex problems, recruiting representations from multiple sources according to its interpretation of the current circumstances. Whenever representations become associated, when one is activated, the other is always co-activated. Online processing allows associations both to be formed from experience and also modified. Only a small percentage of the mind's activities involves conscious processing. Subconsciously, many things are going on simultaneously. There is a continual competition. Many more representations and schemas get activated than are ultimately used to execute tasks. Potential chaos is constrained, firstly by the demands of the context and secondly by an inner drive to maintain coherence.