The science underneath
Predictive processing
In shortSeeing, moving, paying attention and imagining can all be understood as ways of managing predictions.
The idea
Andy Clark and Jakob Hohwy brought these ideas into a general framework: perception, action, attention and even imagination are ways of managing predictions. What we see and feel is the brain’s best hypothesis about the causes of what reaches the senses. Anil Seth calls it a ‘controlled hallucination’: controlled by the world, but built from the inside. This helps explain why two people live the same situation so differently.
What to try
- Before arguing about who is right, describe what each person saw and what they expected.
- To change an expectation, the experience has to be repeated and reliable, not only explained.
- Notice that the body is predicted too: tiredness, hunger or sleep change how a situation is lived.
The common mistake
Concluding that if perception is constructed, ‘it is all in the head’. The construction is constrained by the world and the body, and has concrete consequences.
Want to know more?
Start here
Short, plain pieces by the researchers and good writers.
Books
How the predictive brain shapes what we see, feel and do, with many everyday examples.
See on Amazon ›Experience as a ‘controlled hallucination’: the body and world perceived from predictions.
See on Amazon ›Amazon links are affiliate links: if you buy, Bounded Uncertainty receives a small commission at no cost to you.
The science behind itHow strong the evidence is, the model, videos and references.
How strong the evidence is
Promising Good studies, but little tested with children at home or school, or the step to daily life is our interpretation.
Predictive processing integrates generative hierarchies, precision weighting and active inference in a situated (Clark) or more internalist (Hohwy) account of cognition. Attention corresponds to optimising the expected precision of prediction errors (Feldman and Friston, 2010), which lets attention be treated as a set of operations (detection, weighting, integration, updating) rather than a resource. Critics point to the framework’s explanatory flexibility; the practical answer is to ask for specific, testable predictions for each case.
More technical books
The fullest account of predictive processing, with body and action at the centre.
See on Amazon ›How the mind works if the brain is a machine for reducing prediction error.
See on Amazon ›Amazon links are affiliate links: if you buy, Bounded Uncertainty receives a small commission at no cost to you.
Videos
External videos, chosen because they agree with these ideas. Bounded Uncertainty has no link to the channels.
References
- Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(3), 181–204.
- Clark, A. (2016). Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford University Press.
- Hohwy, J. (2013). The Predictive Mind. Oxford University Press.
- Feldman, H., & Friston, K. J. (2010). Attention, uncertainty, and free-energy. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 4, 215.
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