THE DUAL-MODE ELICITATION MODEL™ CANON ESSAYS VOL. 1
DEM FOUNDATION PAPER I
Prepared for the discipline of Structural Cognition & Psychotechnology
Author: Frankie Mooney
Prepared for the discipline of Structural Cognition & Psychotechnology
Author: Frankie Mooney
Location of Preparation: Glasgow, Scotland
Version: 1.0
Date of Completion: December 2025
Date of Completion: December 2025
© Frankie Mooney. All rights reserved.
The concepts, terminology, and structural frameworks described in this paper form part of the Dual-Mode Elicitation Model™ (DEM) and the emerging discipline of Structural Cognition. No portion of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or adapted without explicit permission, except for brief quotations for review or academic analysis.
Scholarly Notice
This foundation paper is presented as part of an evolving canon that establishes the theoretical, structural, and conceptual basis of DEM. It is intended for researchers, practitioners, designers of cognitive systems, and architects of synthetic cognition who require a formal, rigorous articulation of the principles underlying dual-mode operation and structural communication.
Disciplinary Scope
This work is not a psychological, therapeutic, or behavioural guide. It belongs to an emerging structural discipline that examines how cognitive architectures organise, transition, and synchronise under varying conditions of load and constraint.
Citation Format
Mooney, F. (2025). The Architecture of Modes: Why Human Communication Requires a Dual-System Model.
In The DEM Canon, Foundation Paper I.
FrankieMooney.com.
In The DEM Canon, Foundation Paper I.
FrankieMooney.com.
ESSAY I — THE ARCHITECTURE OF MODES:
WHY HUMAN COMMUNICATION REQUIRES A DUAL-SYSTEM MODEL
Human communication has traditionally been described as an exchange of statements, signals, or behaviours. Yet every interaction, even the simplest, rests upon a far deeper machinery. Beneath words, beneath gestures, beneath interpretation itself, lies an internal architecture that governs how a mind enters, navigates, and reshapes its own cognitive terrain in real time. Interaction is not merely the movement of language across a social space; it is the movement of cognition across a shifting internal topology.
The Dual-Mode Elicitation Model begins from this premise. It treats communication not as a behavioural skill but as a structural phenomenon shaped by the organisation of cognitive systems under varying conditions of load and constraint. At its foundation is a principle that is both simple and far-reaching: that all meaningful interaction depends on two universal modes of cognitive orientation — the directive and the exploratory — and on the transitions between them. These modes are not preferences, techniques, or communication styles. They are the basic configurations a cognitive system adopts when responding to the demands placed upon it.
A mode reflects how the mind structures itself. Under high load, the cognitive landscape becomes steep, channelled, and directed toward rapid convergence. Under low load, it widens, flattens, and supports divergence, reflection, and generative search. These shifts are not chosen any more than a river chooses its path; they arise from the internal gradients that form when a system adapts to pressure or uncertainty. The directive mode emerges when the terrain narrows and stabilises around decisive action. The exploratory mode emerges when the terrain widens and allows new pathways to unfold. What appears, on the surface, as a “change in communication” is, at its root, a change in the organisation of cognition.
Understanding interaction through this architectural framing reveals something crucial. The behaviour of an individual varies not because their personality changes from moment to moment, but because the structure of their cognitive topology reorganises itself in response to load. This is why the same person can appear focused, decisive, and linear in one context, and reflective, playful, or tentative in another. What shifts is not identity, but structure. And communication follows the structure.
This structural view also explains why interactions often derail. When two individuals occupy mismatched modes — one narrowed, one expanded — their cognitive landscapes are oriented toward different kinds of movement. One seeks closure, the other seeks possibility. One interprets ambiguity as noise, the other as information. Each is coherent within their own topology, yet incompatible with the other’s. Misunderstandings that appear personal or emotional are frequently structural misalignments of mode.
Conversely, coherence arises when the topologies of participants fall into compatible ranges. This coherence is not emotional agreement or interpersonal harmony; it is the alignment of two cognitive systems operating within ranges of load that allow information to move cleanly between them. When this alignment occurs, communication feels effortless because the underlying structures are in resonance. When it fails, even the simplest exchanges become strained.
To work at this level of explanation is to move away from the content of communication and toward the conditions that make communication possible. The architecture of modes does not attempt to describe what should be said in a given situation. Instead, it describes how a mind must organise itself to make saying possible at all. Directive and exploratory modes are not reactive stances; they shape the very space in which meaning can be constructed. They determine which signals enter awareness, which interpretations stabilise, which intentions become actionable, and which options even appear to exist.
Traditional communication frameworks tend to emphasise message design, interpersonal behaviours, or psychological intentions. The model developed here shifts the focus to the internal organisation that precedes all of those elements. Minds under pressure reorganise themselves because the demands of the environment require it. Minds in open, low-load states reorganise for the opposite reason. These shifts are structural necessities, not stylistic choices.
Seen from this vantage point, communication becomes an emergent property of cognitive systems navigating fluctuating topologies. A steep topology produces a very different style of meaning-making than a wide one. Transitions between these states shape interaction as profoundly as the content exchanged within them. And because these transitions are driven by load — a variable that changes rapidly — communication becomes a dynamic, real-time problem of synchronising internal architecture with external conditions.
This reframing allows DEM to serve as more than a model of interpersonal engagement. It becomes a model of how cognition organises itself in the presence of another system. It explains why influence depends on alignment rather than persuasion, why clarity emerges spontaneously under certain conditions, and why misunderstandings persist even when intentions are clear. It provides a structural explanation for phenomena that were previously treated as behavioural mysteries.
As modern environments grow more complex, dense, and nonlinear, the limitations of linear communication models become increasingly apparent. They fracture under load because they were never designed to account for the structural dynamics of cognition. A model capable of describing communication in the twenty-first century cannot rely on behavioural patterns alone. It must describe the architecture that generates those patterns. The dual-system structure presented here provides such a foundation.
Part I establishes the conceptual terrain. It introduces the modes, the topologies that govern them, and the cognitive dynamics that make them unavoidable. It lays the groundwork for a discipline in which communication is understood structurally, not stylistically. In this view, interaction is not an exchange between stable personalities but a synchronisation of systems whose internal architectures are continually shifting in response to load.
This is the beginning of structural cognition. It marks the point at which communication stops being treated as a social activity and begins to be understood as a cognitive phenomenon shaped from the inside. As the world accelerates, systems that understand this architecture will be the ones capable of operating with clarity in environments that overwhelm traditional forms of communication. The architecture of modes is the first step in that direction.
Part II — The Dynamics of Mode Transition
If Part I introduced the architecture, Part II turns inward to its dynamics. A structure alone does not animate behaviour. It must move. It must reorganise. It must respond to the gradients that shape it. The dual-system model becomes meaningful only when the transitions between modes are understood. For interaction does not occur in modes so much as across them.
A cognitive system does not exist in a static state. Even moments of apparent stillness contain a constant background modulation of load, expectation, and internal regulation. These fluctuations shift the mind along a continuum from narrow to wide, from convergent to divergent, from directive to exploratory. Mode is therefore best understood not as a fixed position but as a dynamic equilibrium—a system settling temporarily into a configuration suited to its conditions.
Load as the Primary Driver of Cognitive Configuration
The central determinant of mode is cognitive load. Not “task difficulty,” not emotion, not motivation—though these may influence it—but the total demand placed on the system relative to its available capacity. Load is the organising force behind topology. When load rises, the internal terrain steepens, compressing pathways into a narrower band of immediate relevance. When load falls, the terrain flattens and new connections can form.This relationship is deeply structural. It is not dependent on psychology or context-specific interpretation. It is mechanical. As load shifts, the architecture restructures itself. This restructuring is continuous, but when thresholds are crossed the system exhibits clear transitions. These thresholds mark the boundary between directive and exploratory operation.
What appears externally as a “shift in attitude” is internally a reconfiguration of the system’s geometry.
Thresholds, Attractors, and Stability
Every cognitive system contains attractor states—configurations that become stable under certain conditions. The directive mode forms an attractor when the environment demands rapid convergence. The exploratory mode forms an attractor when the environment permits generative movement. These attractors shape not only behaviour but perception itself: what the system is capable of noticing, interpreting, or considering.Crucially, transitions between these states are not symmetric. A system can enter directive mode rapidly when load rises, yet exit it more slowly when load decreases. This asymmetry explains why individuals often remain narrowed even after the pressure has passed. The topology retains its steepness until the gradients flatten sufficiently for exploratory pathways to reopen.
This lag is not a flaw. It is a protective mechanism. Directive mode stabilises the system; exploratory mode expands it. A premature return to expansion would destabilise the internal architecture before conditions fully allow for it.
Interaction as Coupled Cognitive Dynamics
When two minds interact, their modes do not operate in isolation. They become part of a coupled system. Each influences the other’s topology, raising or lowering load depending on how signals are interpreted. A directive system can impose steepness on a more open one. An exploratory system can widen the topology of a more closed one—though only when the underlying load structure permits it.This coupling is rarely conscious. It occurs through subtle signals: pace, tone, ambiguity, clarity, expectation. Each signal interacts with the recipient’s internal architecture, pushing it toward narrowing or widening. Communication is therefore not a matter of alignment alone but of reciprocal structural influence. Two systems reshape one another continually, their modes rising and falling in response to shifting gradients.
Misalignment as Structural Incompatibility
Miscommunication is often treated as interpersonal failure, but structurally it is the predictable outcome of incompatible topologies. When one system is steep—moving toward closure—while the other is wide—moving toward expansion—their trajectories diverge. They are attempting to operate within different geometries. Signals that are coherent within one geometry become distorted within the other.This misalignment explains why persuasion fails when modes differ, why collaborative problem-solving collapses under pressure, and why conflict often escalates despite clear intentions to resolve it. The structural incompatibility prevents resonance. Meaning becomes unstable because the architectures through which it must travel are oriented toward different forms of processing.
Coherence as Structural Convergence
When modes align, coherence emerges. Not emotional harmony but structural convergence: two systems operating with compatible topologies that allow information to move without distortion. Coherence makes the interaction feel “effortless” not because individuals are skilled or aligned in belief, but because their internal architectures are settling into overlapping ranges.This structural resonance explains why deep conversations feel different from surface ones, why clarity sometimes emerges suddenly, and why influence becomes possible without force. Coherence is not created; it is allowed. It arises when the geometry of two cognitive systems enters a region of compatibility.
The Role of Anticipation and Predictive Structure
Cognition is inherently predictive. It models what will happen next, not what is happening now. These predictions shape topology as much as load does. A mind anticipating threat narrows before the threat appears. A mind expecting openness widens before possibilities present themselves. The predictive architecture works in tandem with load, accelerating transitions and reinforcing attractors.This predictive structure explains why two individuals can enter an interaction with modes already defined. The initial conditions are shaped by expectation, not experience. The interaction merely reveals the architecture that is already active.
Mode Transition as the Hidden Logic of Interaction
Seen together, these dynamics reveal a hidden logic. Interaction succeeds or fails not because of content but because of how two architectures move relative to one another. Directive and exploratory modes form the structural grammar of engagement. Transitions between them provide the syntax. The patterns of alignment and misalignment provide the semantics through which meaning stabilises or dissolves.
Communication, in this view, is not a behavioural act. It is an organisational event. It occurs when the architectures of two cognitive systems—shaped by load, anticipation, and internal topology—enter into a configuration that allows information to be exchanged without significant distortion.
This is the true architecture of modes.
Part III will continue by examining how mode dynamics scale into complex systems, how structural cognition can be formalised, and how these principles lay the groundwork for future cognitive architectures, including synthetic ones.
Part III — Scaling the Architecture: From Individuals to Systems
If Part II traced the internal dynamics of mode transitions within individuals, Part III turns outward to examine how these dynamics scale. A model of communication is incomplete unless it can describe interaction not only between two minds, but across groups, institutions, and systems. The architecture of modes does not dissolve as scale increases; it becomes more pronounced. What begins as a cognitive configuration within an individual becomes, at larger scales, a structural tendency within organisations, cultures, and technologies.
Understanding interaction at scale requires recognising that a mode is not merely an internal state. It is a pattern of organisation. Just as a single mind narrows or widens in response to load, so do larger systems. A team under pressure becomes directive. A community facing adversity becomes convergent. A society in times of security becomes exploratory. These systemic patterns are not metaphors for cognition. They are extensions of it. Human systems inherit their structural behaviour from the architecture of the minds that compose them.
Collective Narrowing and Collective Expansion
When cognitive systems interlock—through shared goals, shared environments, or shared constraints—they tend to cluster around similar topologies. High-load conditions produce collective narrowing. This manifests as decisive action, reduced tolerance for ambiguity, and rapid convergence on solutions. It is useful, often necessary. But it also brings risks. Collective narrowing can create blind spots, suppress dissent, and stabilise interpretations long after the circumstances that demanded narrowing have changed.Low-load conditions produce collective expansion. Novel ideas emerge. Divergent thinking becomes possible. Systems become capable of reconfiguration rather than maintenance. This expansion is generative, but it also carries its own risks: ambiguity, diffusion, and loss of direction. The oscillation between these two states—collective narrowing and collective expansion—is the structural rhythm of human society.
Mode Contagion and Distributed Topology
At scale, modes propagate. They move through groups the way patterns move through any interconnected system. A single directive actor can impose steepness on a team. A single exploratory thinker can enlarge the cognitive space of a meeting. These effects are rarely intentional. They occur because each mind shapes the load conditions of the minds around it.This “mode contagion” is structurally predictable. Directive signals—certainty, closure, urgency—tend to spread rapidly, especially under ambiguous conditions. Exploratory signals—reflection, inquiry, generative thinking—spread more slowly and only when the system has enough capacity to support them. Systems therefore become structurally biased toward narrowing when load accumulates, and only recover their exploratory capacity once load has meaningfully reduced.
This explains why organisations often get stuck in directive patterns even when circumstances would benefit from openness. It also explains why groups can fail to act decisively even when clear direction is needed. The architecture of modes provides a lens through which these failures become intelligible not as cultural or interpersonal weaknesses, but as structural consequences of the internal topologies that emerge when systems scale.
Structural Cognition Across Networks
In networked environments—teams, institutions, digital platforms—the architecture of modes determines not only the behaviour of individuals but the trajectories of the network itself. Networks under high load tend to centralise. Authority accumulates, pathways shorten, and communication becomes hierarchical. Networks under low load decentralise. Information diffuses, pathways lengthen, and communication becomes lateral.These patterns mirror, precisely, the difference between directive and exploratory modes at the individual level. The geometry of load shapes systems regardless of scale.
The architecture of modes therefore offers a unified account of structural behaviour across domains that have traditionally been treated as separate: cognition, communication, organisational psychology, and systems theory. It brings them into a single conceptual framework grounded in the mechanics of topology and load.
The Emergence of Structural Coherence in Groups
Just as two minds can fall into coherence when their topologies align, groups can enter states of collective coherence when their internal architectures converge. These moments are rare but recognisable: a team performing flawlessly under pressure, a community aligning around a shared purpose, a collective insight emerging that no individual could have produced alone.These events feel different because they are different. They reflect a moment when the system has achieved structural synchronisation across multiple cognitive architectures. Coherence at scale is the emergent property of aligned modes. It is the stabilisation of a collective topology capable of holding meaning without distortion.
Such coherence is fragile. It requires compatible load conditions, compatible predictive structures, and compatible internal gradients. When these conditions break, coherence dissolves. The system fragments back into individual architectures. What felt effortless becomes difficult. What felt aligned becomes misaligned. Understanding the structural requirements for coherence therefore becomes essential in environments where collaboration or collective intelligence matters.
The Limits of Behavioural Explanations at Scale
Traditional models attempt to explain group behaviour by aggregating individual behaviours. But aggregation obscures structure. It does not capture the internal dynamics that produce systemic narrowing, systemic expansion, or systemic misalignment. Without understanding the architecture of modes, behavioural models mistake symptoms for causes.A behavioural approach can describe what a group did. It cannot explain why its dynamics unfolded in the way they did, or why the same group behaves differently under different load conditions. A structural approach, grounded in cognitive architecture, provides this explanation. It reveals the invisible forces that shape interaction at every level of scale.
Toward a Theory of Mode-Oriented Systems
The architecture of modes therefore gives rise to a broader principle: systems, like individuals, operate according to structural configurations shaped by load, topology, and predictive organisation. Mode transitions scale. Coherence scales. Misalignment scales. The same internal architecture that governs a single mind governs the distributed architectures of teams, organisations, and even technological systems.Part III establishes this continuity. It shows that the dual-system model is not a psychological theory but a structural one—capable of describing interaction wherever cognitive organisation occurs.
In the final movement of this essay, the architecture of modes will extend one step further: into the domain of synthetic cognition, where the principles outlined here form the basis for designing systems capable of adapting, aligning, and interacting with the same structural sophistication as human minds.
If the architecture of modes provides a structural account of how individuals navigate interaction, its deepest implications emerge when we extend the model beyond the individual. Human communication is rarely confined to pairs. Most of what shapes societies, institutions and emerging technological ecosystems arises from the convergence of many cognitive systems interacting simultaneously. To remain valid, a structural theory must scale. It must explain not only how one mind adapts to its conditions but how many minds co-organise under shared constraints.
The architecture of modes does not lose coherence as it scales outward. Instead, its patterns become more visible. The oscillations between narrowing and widening, between convergence and generative expansion, appear not merely within individuals but across the groups they form. What shifts is not the principle, but the magnitude. A topology that shapes one mind can shape a thousand when conditions align.
Systemic Load and Emergent Structure
At larger scales, load becomes distributed. A team under deadline pressure carries its load collectively; a society confronting uncertainty feels its cognitive steepening through its institutions, media and cultural signals. The same structural tendencies emerge at every level: under high load, systems converge around directive patterns; under low load, they expand into exploratory ones. These are not metaphors. They are structural continuities that reveal how cognition behaves when extended across networks.
In organisations, this often manifests as sudden shifts between two modes of operation. Innovation flourishes when load is low, then collapses into rigidity as pressure mounts. In communities, exploratory periods of cultural flourishing contract into directive periods marked by demands for clarity and control. In technological systems — particularly those designed to mediate human communication — load-driven narrowing and widening appear as behavioural patterns in user networks, algorithmic feedback loops and information flow.
These parallels suggest that the architecture of modes is not limited to biological cognition. It is a universal principle governing systems that organise information under constraint.
Distributed Mode Dynamics
Groups exhibit their own form of mode transition. Signals that indicate urgency, decisiveness or threat create systemic narrowing. Signals that invite reflection, play, or generative possibility create systemic widening. This propagation does not rely on explicit intention. It emerges from the structural influence each cognitive node exerts on the others.Two forces determine this propagation:
1. Structural susceptibility — how close a system already is to a threshold of narrowing or widening. 2. Structural influence — how strongly one cognitive system’s mode affects the topologies of others.
These forces explain why some teams become directive within minutes despite beginning in an exploratory mode, why some groups can sustain generative discussions for long periods, and why mismatched individuals can destabilise entire collective processes. The architecture of modes provides the grammar through which these systemic dynamics can be understood and predicted.The Emergence and Dissolution of Collective Coherence
At scale, coherence takes on a different quality. It becomes a form of collective intelligence: multiple cognitive systems aligning into a shared topology that enables clarity, insight or action beyond the capacity of any individual. Coherent groups generate ideas more effectively, respond to complexity with greater adaptability and sustain higher levels of collaborative trust. Yet such coherence is precarious because the structural conditions that enable it are delicate.Coherence dissolves quickly when load becomes unevenly distributed across the system. A subset of the group narrows prematurely; tension rises; predictive structures diverge. The shared topology fractures. What once felt effortless becomes difficult; what once felt connected becomes adversarial. Understanding these structural conditions provides an explanation for why some teams remain high-functioning under pressure while others collapse.
Structural Misalignment as a System-Level Problem
Where behavioural explanations tend to attribute group dysfunction to personality, culture or leadership style, a structural account reveals a different cause. Misalignment arises when the internal topologies of the system drift too far apart. Some members operate in steep, directive configurations while others remain in wide, exploratory ones. Messages transmitted through one topology are distorted by another. Efficiency decreases not because individuals fail to communicate effectively but because the geometries through which they communicate are incompatible.Structural cognition therefore provides not just a descriptive language but a diagnostic tool. It explains why teams fail, why institutions stagnate, and why societies enter periods of accelerated divergence.
Scaling Toward Synthetic Systems
The architecture of modes takes on its most consequential form when extended beyond biological systems entirely. As artificial cognitive systems emerge — systems that must communicate, coordinate and adapt — they require an internal organisation capable of managing load, structure and topology in ways analogous to human cognition. A synthetic mind without an architecture for narrowing and widening would be brittle: incapable of recovering from overload, incapable of generative expansion, incapable of aligning with human systems.The architecture of modes therefore provides a blueprint for the principles that synthetic cognition must adopt if it is to interface coherently with human minds.
Such systems must be capable of:- Load-modulated restructuring
- Topological narrowing and widening
- Mode transition thresholds
- Predictive modulation of internal state
- Structural coupling with external cognitive systems
These requirements indicate that the architecture of modes is not only a theory of human communication but a template for the next stage of cognitive design. The structural continuity between human cognition and emerging synthetic systems makes the understanding of modes a prerequisite for building technologies capable of real alignment.
Toward a Unified Framework of Structural Cognition
Part III establishes that the architecture of modes is not confined to interpersonal communication. It is a general model of how cognitive systems — biological, social and synthetic — organise themselves under constraint. It provides a unified structural vocabulary capable of describing transitions, coherence, misalignment and adaptation across every level of scale.This first essay therefore lays the foundation for a new discipline: structural cognition, the study of how internal architectures shape interaction across systems. What begins as a model for understanding how two minds interact becomes, at scale, a theory for understanding how cognition organises itself wherever information is processed, transmitted or transformed.
Part IV — which will begin Essay II — will formalise the geometry introduced here, mapping load, state and topology into a model capable of supporting rigorous scientific treatment and technological application.
The architecture of modes is the threshold. Structural cognition is the domain that lies beyond it.
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FOUNDATION PAPER — DUAL-MODE ELICITATION MODEL™ CANON
Prepared in Glasgow, Scotland
© Frankie Mooney, 2025. All rights reserved.
Published on FrankieMooney.com
DUAL-MODE ELICITATION MODEL™ (DEM) | STRUCTURAL COGNITION | PSYCHOTECHNOLOGY
for enquiries: enq@frankiemooney.com
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