Cognitive Confrontation Research Articles

"BATTLE OF NARRATIVES" AS A MARKER OF HYBRID WARFARE (CONTENT ANALYSIS OF THE INFORMATION SPACE OF THE KHARKIV REGION)

Since the Russian Federation’s full-scale incursion into our country, there has been a notable shift in the narrative landscape at the systemic, national and local levels. By analyzing the content of narratives, it may be possible to make predictions about what will happen in the real world. These could include things like the military situation, the possibility of shelling, and the topics and directions of communication at the international level. The aim of this article is to study the Ukrainian and pro-Russian narratives that have emerged in response to certain events of the hybrid war, with a view to gaining insights into how these narratives are shaping the information space of the Kharkiv region. The object of this study is to examine the battle of narratives as a potential marker of hybrid warfare. The subject is the cognitive confrontation between pro-Russian and Ukrainian narratives in the information space of the Kharkiv region. The study is based on the findings of a content analysis of the information space of the Kharkiv region carried out between January and March 2024, which involved the analysis of over 500,000 items. It is a significant contribution to the field of study that this is the first time the battle of narratives in a specific region of Ukraine has been analyzed in order to predict events (military and socio-political) in the real world. The study offers a theoretical contribution to the field by demonstrating the practical significance of scientific linguistic research in the context of Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine. The practical significance of scientific research may be seen in the development of an algorithm for analyzing the battle of narratives" in order to predict events in reality. The research methodology involved a content analysis conducted on the basis of Big Data technology and a set of analytical algorithms from the Attack Index information and analytical service. This approach allowed us to determine the degree of information resonance or danger of information flows on selected topics/personalities. It has been proven that Russian propaganda tries to transport a number of destructive narratives from the Russian media space into the Ukrainian one: "The Russian Federation is occupying Kharkiv, repeated attacks on Kharkiv and Kyiv are possible"; "A large-scale mobilization will take place in Ukraine to replenish the “catastrophic” gates"; "Russia seized the initiative on all fronts" and others. Kharkiv media during the mentioned period won the battle of narratives, using the following strategies: ignoring Russian narratives aimed at causing citizens a sense of hopelessness and a desire to surrender the city to the enemy; promotion of positive regional therapeutic narratives "Kharkiv is my city", "Kharkiv will stand, it is necessary to unite to oppose the enemy" and national — "Shocking of Kharkiv and other cities of Ukraine is a war crime". It seems that further study of the systemic organization and use of narrative discourse in hybrid confrontation could prove beneficial.

The phenomenon of network-centrism in conditions of modern cognitive opposition: on the example of the analysis of the Kherson case

The presented article discusses a new social phenomenon of network-centrism and its manifestations in the conditions of modern cognitive confrontation on the example of the analysis of the Kherson information space. This research topic is currently of particular relevance due to the introduction of new tools of network warfare in the physical, informational, cognitive and social spheres of life of individuals through the functioning of information impact centкes in post-conflict societies.
 Network-centrism in terms of cognitive confrontation is understood as a completely new social and civilisational phenomenon. Network-centric operations are understood by the authors as a kind of postmodern analogue of colonisation and subjugation, carried out in new conditions, in new formats and using new communication technologies. The main feature of the strategy of network wars using network-centric mechanisms is to achieve a damaging effect in all spheres of society, including its civilisational foundations. At the same time, not the power mechanisms of influence are used, but a wide range of factors - from civilisational and informational to social and cognitive ones.
 The analysis of network-centric operations is carried out through the prism of the classical concepts of network societies, the theory of "controlled chaos", as well as taking into account applied domestic ones - the doctrine of he USSR Marshal N.V. Ogarkov and foreign developments - the concept of network-centric wars by Vice Admiral of the US Navy A. Cebrowski, Pentagon researcher J. Garstka and Admiral J. Johnson.
 The idea of the study was to analyse the network structures of the content units of the information field of the Kherson region, that form military, crisis and post-crisis discourses.
 The results obtained by the authors indicate the presence of two information impact centres that use network-centric mechanisms of work in the cognitive field. In addition, the analysis of the work of network information centres showed that today the social media segment, primarily the Telegram segment, is a space for active network-centric influence on the mass consciousness of a conflict society, that creates an experimental platform for testing new tools of cognitive confrontation and forms an Internet audience, that is exposed to direct information impact and manifestations of network centrism in society.

Variations on the Musical Sublime

It can sometimes seem as if musicology is perpetually running late. At least, that is the impression that emerges from two new histories of music and the discourse of the sublime in European culture and aesthetics. Both books stress an imbalance between music and other scholarly fields as a premise for revisiting the long history of the sublime, charting its rise to prominence in the late-seventeenth century with the reception of Peri Hupsous (On Sublimity, attributed to the Greek critic Longinus), to its dominant place in British, German, and French aesthetics and criticism in the late-eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. During this period, the sublime was debated by critics, literary writers, theologians, philosophers and musicians, and used to evoke multiple meanings and applications. Put simply: the sublime was more than a set of intrinsic qualities – such as elevation, grandeur, excess, power, persuasion, innovation and so on – to be located in an external object, style, or mode of expression. It was also an experience and state of mind identified with the (usually male) perceiving subject, an emotional and cognitive confrontation with that which is overwhelming, unknowable, or indescribable.1

Epistemic logic: All knowledge is based on our experience, and epistemic logic is the cognitive representation of our experiential confrontation in reality

Abstract Epistemic Logic is our basic universal science, the method of our cognitive confrontation in reality to prove the truth of our basic cognitions and theories. Hence, by proving their true representation of reality we can self-control ourselves in it, and thus refuting the Berkeleyian solipsism and Kantian a priorism. The conception of epistemic logic is that only by proving our true representation of reality we achieve our knowledge of it, and thus we can prove our cognitions to be either true or rather false, and otherwise they are doubtful. Therefore, truth cannot be separated from being proved and we cannot hold anymore the principle of excluded middle, as it is with formal semantics of metaphysical realism. In distinction, the intuitionistic logic is based on subjective intellectual feeling of correctness in constructing proofs, and thus it is epistemologically encapsulated in the metaphysical subject. However, epistemic logic is our basic science which enable us to prove the truth of our cognitions, including the epistemic logic itself.

O ensino de conceitos na universidade: o Facebook como instrumento de mediação didática colaborativa

This study aims to analyze the possibilities of using the social network Facebook as an instrument of collaborative didactic mediation in teaching concepts. The investigated experience is the result of a didactic intervention based on mediation as the partnership of the formative process with university students of a licentiate course of a public university. The qualitative approach, in the exploratory-explanatory modality, guided the investigation. The theory of distributed cognition and its categories of mediation, interaction, collaborative participation and intellectual partnership were taken as basis for data analysis. The results show that Facebook has great potential as an instrument of intercession from the interactions evidenced through dialogue, cognitive confrontation and the cooperative construction of meanings from the collaborative participation that expressed the contributions of the students to reach the goals through intellectual partnership in search of conceptual understanding.

Role of Anxiety as a Trait and State in Youth With Mild Intellectual Disability: Coping With Difficult Situations

AbstractAlthough social integration of youths with intellectual disabilities improves their psychological adaptation, it nevertheless exposes them to a higher risk of stress. The author's goal was to verify the regulatory role of anxiety, respectively, as a trait and as a state in youth with mild intellectual disability who are coping with difficult situations. The study, involving a group of 120 students at the Education and Rearing Center in Kielce (Poland), used two psychological methods pertaining to a cognitive paradigm. The first was the State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory (ISCL—Polish version of STAI) and the other was the self‐description technique of the authorship “That's Life,” devised with the aim of revealing either task strategies or emotional and avoidant strategies adopted by the respondents. The tools are matched to specific cognitive abilities and social experiences typical of youth with mild intellectual disability. Correlative research model was applied. The results of linear regression and variance analyses showed the regulatory role of the state anxiety for youth with mild intellectual disability with reference to coping strategies. A higher intensity of anxiety stimulated their defensive activity, especially in the context of ambivalent conflicts, whereas a decrease in state anxiety led to their employing task‐focused strategies. The results should encourage the development and application of anxiety‐reducing techniques based on cognitive confrontation to activate task‐oriented coping.

How Does Cognitive Conflict in Design Teams Support the Development of Creative Ideas?

Is cognitive conflict detrimental to the development of innovative ideas in design teams, or is it a precondition for innovative performance? Assuming that there is a relationship between cognitive conflict and innovation, what kind of strategies do teams use in situations of cognitive conflict and what are the consequences for creativity? This paper reports on a study analysing how design teams cope with cognitive conflict during idea generation in an experiment. The design process was captured in protocols that were generated from video recordings. We report the results of the analysis of verbal protocols according to the five styles of (cognitive) conflict behaviour: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating. Out of six teams, the results of the two highest and two lowest scoring teams are compared as regards innovation and functionality, which we see as the two components of creative outcomes. We show that design teams, even in a laboratory environment, encounter a considerable amount of cognitive conflict. A statistical comparison between the groups with the highest and the lowest innovative/functional design concept scores reveals significant differences in their conflict behaviour styles. The high innovation and high functionality groups used a more competing and a more compromising style, whereas groups rated low on the same parameters used a more collaborating style. The high rating groups on both creativity components used a more associating and rejecting behaviour style; the high innovation groups also generated more new ideas than the low innovation groups. The low rating groups on both innovation and functionality tended to repeat ideas more frequently. The main finding is that, in contrast with reports in previous research, the groups with higher innovation and functionality scores collaborated less than their peers in the low rating groups on these parameters. We interpret these results as signifying that creative performance in teams is not achieved mainly by agreement but needs cognitive confrontation.

Coping with medical threat: An evaluation of the Threatening Medical Situations Inventory (TMSI)

The Dutch Threatening Medical Situations Inventory (TMSI) has been developed to measure cognitive confrontation (‘monitoring’) and cognitive avoidance (‘blunting’) within the domain of medical threat. It consists of four scenarios of threatening medical situations, followed by monitoring and blunting alternatives. Its psychometric properties are investigated in students ( N = 123), dental ( N = 80), HIV-( N = 42) and surgery patients ( N = 123). For both scales, internal consistencies proved to be satisfactory. Slight sex and age effects are found. Furthermore, there is a strong situation effect: the scenario highest in controllability shows relatively high monitoring and low blunting scores. Factor structure is stable across samples and shows a good fit with the predicted factor solution. Both scales are found to converge and diverge in a theoretically meaningful manner with a variety of coping style and anxiety measures. In two samples, a sample specific stress scenario was added, but the psychometric qualities of such an extension should not be taken for granted. In an additional sample of working people ( N = 48) test-retest reliability proved to be good. It is concluded that the TMSI is a useful instrument for assessing cognitive confrontation and avoidance in medical patients. An English as well as a German translation are available.

Cognitive confrontation and avoidance during a naturalistic medical stressor

This study was undertaken to shed some light on problems that have arisen in measuring cognitive confrontation (monitoring) and cognitive avoidance (blunting) with a self‐report questionnaire, the Miller Behavioral Style Scale (MBSS; Miller, 1987). For this purpose, variants of both coping styles were studied in a naturalistic setting: 37 women who underwent prenatal diagnosis were interviewed at home about their ways of coping with different stages of the procedure, a few days before they expected the diagnostic results. Interview fragments pertaining to cognitive confrontation and avoidance were selected and analysed by two investigators in order to generate categories of avoidance and confrontation coping strategies. For some of the fragments, inter judge reliability was assessed using new judges. A comparison between the categories found and the kinds of items used in the MBSS shows that in real life more coping variants occur than those represented in the MBSS, in particular variants that involve a combination of cognitive confrontation and avoidance. Implications for the dimensionality of both concepts and for their measurement are discussed.

Enhancement of Death Acceptance by a Grief Counseling Course

The impact of a grief counseling course was investigated in terms of Klug and Sinha's two-component formulation of death acceptance [1]. Compared to a control group, participants in the course showed a significant and sustained increase in cognitive confrontation of death, and in the assimilation of these attitudes at an emotional level. Identified predictors of the extent of the effect include the individual's initial level of death acceptance and performance in two of three aspects of course assessment.

Toward indirect cognitive confrontation with alcohol abusers.

This discussion includes a review of ideas on the establishment and maintenance of certain cognitive “sets” within the normal personality. A relationship is then established between these sets and the production of anxiety that results when there is an incongruency between what is expected and what actually transpires. Finally, these findings are related to the treatment of alcohol abusers via indirect cognitive confrontation.

Emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal confrontation among children with birth defects

It was hypothesized that for the child with a birth defect, the accomplishment of certain specific tasks of confrontation of the defect is associated with the child's selfesteem and overall adjustment. These tasks include: (a) emotional confrontation, involving the awareness and free expression of negative feelings associated with the defect; (b) cognitive confrontation, involving the active seeking for an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the causes and manifestations of the defect; and (c) interpersonal confrontation, involving open communication with peers on the subject of the defect. Moreover, it was hypothesized that maternal confrontation of the reality of the child's defect is a factor in facilitating the child's accomplishment of his tasks of confrontation. To test these hypotheses, 35 pre and early adolescent children with birth defects and their mothers were each independently assessed by means of questionnaires and quantitative ratings of semistructured interviews. The results consistently support the hypotheses for cognitive and interpersonal confrontation, but not for emotional confrontation.

Maternal correlates of self-esteem and overall adjustment in children with birth defects.

The present study was designed to test hypotheses relating eight maternal attitudes and behaviors to the self-esteem and overall adjustment of children with birth defects. To test these hypotheses, 35 pre- and early adolescent children with birth defects and their mothers were each independently assessed, by means of questionnaires and systematic, quantitative ratings of semistructured interviews. The results generally support the hypotheses for five of the maternal variables: (a) active “cognitive confrontation” of the child's defect at the time of its discovery; (b) open communication with the child about his defect and related issues; (c) liking and respect for the child; (d) a positive accepting outlook towards the child's future; and (e) encouragement of the child's independence and achievement.