Dynamic coupling is the ongoing interaction between an intelligent system and its local environment, where the system repeatedly observes the world and performs simple “live” adjustments. The goal of intelligent systems is therefore to maintain an “adaptive equilibrium” between internal and external worlds.
The dynamic coupling model of cognition contrasts with the representation-hungry model, where systems prioritize making rich representations of the outside world and complete tasks in a linear processing cycle. Dynamic coupling computations are necessarily less expensive than forming representations.
Highlights
- “Such co-ordination dynamics constitute something of a challenge to traditional ideas about perception and action: they replace the notion of rich internal representations and computations, with the notion of less expensive strategies whose task is not first to represent the world and then reason on the basis of the representation, but instead to maintain a kind of adaptively potent equilibrium that couples the agent and the world together.” @1999clark