Rendering Information Processing Models of Cognition and Affect Computationally Explicit: Distributed Executive Control and the Deployment of Attention

In this paper we illustrate the potential of process algebra to implement modular mental architectures of wide scope in which control is distributed rather than centralised. Drawing on the Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS) mental architecture, we present an implemented model of the attentional blink effect. The model relies on process exchanges between propositional meaning and a more abstract, implicational level of meaning, at which affect is represented and experienced. We also discuss how the proposed mechanism of buffer movement can, in the context of the ICS architecture, be extended to account for effects of emotional stimuli and brain damage.