Metacognition — Self-Monitoring & Consciousness Level
The creature monitors its own cognitive performance: prediction accuracy, body understanding, learning progress, and module integration. This enables adaptive responses to stagnation and self-assessment.
Consciousness Level (0–12)
An emergent metric based on which modules are active and performing well:
Level 0: Off Level 1: Reactive (SNN + reflexes) Level 2: Attentive (World Model active) Level 3: Emotional (emotions modulate behavior) Level 4: Goal-directed (drives active) Level 5: Self-aware (body schema + metacog) Level 6: Anticipating (predictive coding working) Level 7: Integrated (all modules interacting) Level 8: Behavioral flexibility (3+ behaviors) Level 9: Skilled (frozen skills) Level 10: Dreaming (dream consolidation) Level 11: Social (Theory of Mind) Level 12: Linguistic (LLM bridge)
Learning Progress
Fitness trend: compare recent vs old fitness. Stagnation (progress < 0.01 for 5000+ steps) triggers NE boost for exploration.
References
- Flavell (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring. American Psychologist
- Cleeremans (2011). The radical plasticity thesis. Frontiers in Psychology
API Reference
EmbodiedMetacognition
assess_situation(prediction_error, body_anomaly, body_confidence, fitness, n_episodes, modules_active, …) → dict
Returns confidence, completeness, learning_progress, consciousness_level, world_model_accuracy.
should_explore() → bool
True when high confidence + low learning progress (boredom).