Let's walk through an example to develop a little understanding of how the model works. Again, like Scan Focus Act, this is a naturally occurring model; we all use it every day. Our purpose in studying it is not so much to learn to incorporate it into our inventory of processes but to raise its activity to a level of conscious awareness.

A common example used in describing Scan Focus Act will also serve here--the story of the lioness hunting wildebeest on the plains of the Serengeti. The lioness Scans the herd for a potential meal, Focuses on likely candidates and then Acts explosively to chase one down. That's a simple description of the process from the vantage point of creativity. But what's going on from a signal processing standpoint?

New information about the herd and perhaps other animals lurking about, is constantly streaming into the lioness' senses. This new information, according to James Miller's Living Systems model is processed by a function called the Associator. The Associator compares the input to patterns and models in Memory, searching for overlaps that trigger the Decider function to initiate some physiological activity in response. New information that enters the system as a result of this response is fed back into Memory to update the pattern. This trio of functions--Associator, Memory and Decider--represents the learning process. Thus, the lioness learns how to spot potential meals among the animals in the herd. It also learns different strategies for approaching and chasing its meal.

The activity of the Associator is one representation of playing S'poze. The Associator is trying to build little vignettes (or scenarios) of future predictions based on a comparison of new information and old memories. It's a little like thinking ahead in chess.

(source)