Cognitive Cybernetics Technical Monograph — Series 1 - 13: Cognitive Thresholds and Regime Shifts - Within a regime, behavior is predictable. Between regimes, behavior changes abruptly.

This monograph is the thirteenth in the Cognitive Cybernetics Technical Monograph Series, building on Resolution Is Not Guaranteed by Processing and When Evaluation Stops Updating. It introduces cognitive thresholds and regime shifts—the structural boundaries at which control regulation reorganizes and cognition changes abruptly rather than continuously. The work systematically defines a cognitive threshold as a structural boundary where crossing alters dominant control layers, reorders evaluation priorities, changes termination behavior, and redefines stability conditions. Thresholds are not gradual preferences but regime transition points. They exist because control systems accumulate pressure over time, resist reconfiguration, and reorganize only when tolerance limits are exceeded. Small changes accumulate invisibly until a boundary condition is met, at which point the system shifts. Regime shifts often occur without explicit error, visible breakdown, or conscious recognition—the system remains functional while operating under a new control configuration, which is why shifts are often misinterpreted as decisions or choices. Prior to crossing a threshold, flexibility decreases, evaluation narrows, recursion shortens, and feedback reinforces existing paths. These changes are subtle and rarely noticed; the system appears stable. Once the threshold is crossed, previous flexibility does not return automatically, new defaults dominate, control pressure increases, and alternative pathways become inaccessible—the system stabilizes in a new regime. Many regime shifts are effectively irreversible without structural intervention; at the public observation level, the system does not drift back, increased effort does not restore prior behavior, and new inputs are absorbed by the new regime. This irreversibility is structural, not intentional. Observers often interpret regime shifts as loss of interest, stubbornness, fatigue, or disengagement, but structurally the system has reorganized its control topology. This pattern appears symmetrically in human cognition, machine learning systems, and control architectures under load—the invariant is control saturation, not substrate limitation. The monograph closes with a boundary statement: cognitive change is not continuous; it proceeds through thresholds that reorganize control and stabilize new regimes. Understanding cognition requires recognizing not only how systems operate, but when they cross boundaries from which they do not naturally return.