Mental Scripts Research Articles

Communicating During COVID-19 and Other Acute-Event Scenarios: A Practical Approach.

Successfully adapting to organizational changes during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis necessitated the effective deployment of technical communication texts delineating the expectations and structures for guiding behavior and interactions. A dearth of system-wide familiarity with changes in modalities has disrupted expectations and impacted engagement. During acute events, business and technical communicators will probably not be the initial source of transition messaging. Instead, this task will fall on managers, faculty, and other front-line communicators. The authors present pragmatic recommendations for adapting familiar discourses, semiotics, and mental scripts so that communicators can more effectively intervene during crises to ease organizational transitions and decrease uncertainty.

Development of a mental script for the mental practice of micro suturing: a methodological approach.

Motor imagery and mental practice are important for the acquisition and mastery of surgical skills. The success of this technique relies on the use of a well-developed mental script. In this study, we shared how we developed a mental script for basic micro suturing training by using a low-fidelity rubber glove model. This study applied the design and development research framework. Five expert surgeons developed a mental script by performing a cognitive walkthrough to repair a vertical opening in a rubber glove model, followed by hierarchical task analysis. A draft script was created, and its face and content validity assessed with a checking-back process. Twenty-eight surgeons used the Mental Imagery Questionnaire (MIQ) to assess the validity of the final script. The process of developing the mental script is detailed. The assessment by the expert panel showed the mental script had good face and content validity. The mean overall MIQ score was 5.2±1.1 (standard deviation), demonstrating the validity of generating mental imagery from the mental script developed in this study for micro suturing in the rubber glove model. The methodological approach described in this study is based on a design and development research framework to teach surgical skills. This model is inexpensive and easily accessible, addressing the challenges of reduced opportunities to practise surgical skills. However, although motor skills are important, the surgeon's other non-technical expertise is not addressed with this model. Thus, this model should act as one surgical training approach, but not replace it.

Mental practice in surgical training

Introduction The traditional methods of surgical training through apprenticeship are evolving owing to time constraints and new models of surgical training. Surgical programmes have begun to encompass technological advances such as simulation technology and online courses to improve surgical skills in a safe environment. Simulation training is not universally available because of financial constraints. Mental practice (MP) and motor imagery (MI) is a form of mental rehearsal and simulation without the need for external inputs. It has been successful in sports and music, and is a time and cost effective strategy to improve skills. MP can be translated into surgical skill acquisition and the aim of this review was to provide a systematic narrative synthesis of the current literature to support the use of MP in surgical training. Methods A systematic search was conducted on PubMed and Google Scholar™ to identify studies published up to March 2020 on MP in surgical skill acquisition. Results Nineteen studies were included in the review. Thirteen demonstrated a significant improvement in the knowledge and performance of the participants in learning surgical skills after MP. There was improved confidence in surgical trainees after MP in three studies. Conclusions MP appears to be effective in aiding surgical skill acquisition and retention. There is lack of methodological rigour in the design and development of the mental script, which is an important component in MP. MP augments physical practice and is a viable strategy to enhance surgical training. However, further studies are required to demonstrate that these skills are transferable to clinical practice.

The role of schemas and scripts in pictorial narration

Abstract The theoretical debate on the nature of narrative has been mainly concerned with literary narratives, whereas forms of non-literary and especially pictorial narrativity have been somewhat neglected. In this paper, however, I shall discuss narrativity specifically with regard to pictorial objects in order to clarify how pictorial storytelling may be based on the activation of mentally stored action and scene schemas. Approaches from cognitive psychology, such as the work of Schank, Roger C. & Robert P. Abelson. 1977. Scripts, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Mandler, Jean Matter. 1984. Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. London/Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Schank, Roger C. 1995. Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, suggest that cognition crucially depends on the storage and retrieval of action scripts or schemata, that is, narrative structures, which may occur at various levels of abstraction. These schemas incorporate generalized knowledge about event sequences, such as the order in which specific events will take place; causal, enabling, or conventionalized relations between these events, and what kind of events occur in certain action sequences. There also are scene schemas that are characterized by spatial rather than temporal relations. Further kinds of schemas seem also to play a decisive role. Drawing upon considerations from schema and script theory, I will focus on some concrete examples of pictorial narration, more specifically depictions of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, where narrative schema structures become involved and, indeed, the comprehensibility of the pictures as such presuppose mental script representations.

Autonomic reactivity during reading of a somatic distress script in patients with somatic symptom disorder

ObjectiveThe relationship between resting-state heart rate variability (HRV) and somatic symptom disorder (SSD) has been explored in several studies. We planned to examine HRV during the performance of psychological tasks, and assumed that it could be applied for the diagnosis of SSD. MethodsFifty-three patients with SSD and 52 healthy controls were recruited. Demographic and psychological data were collected. Subjects' HRV was measured over five 5-minute blocks during which they viewed different scripts (resting state; health anxiety; somatic distress; depression; neutral topic). After each block they completed a self-assessment manikin. Generalized estimated equation analysis was used to analyze the impact of mental scripts, SSD and sex on physiological and psychological indicators. ResultsIn men there was a script*SSD interaction concerning high-frequency power (HF) involving the neutral script; SSD men showed significantly higher HF than healthy men when viewing neutral script. In women there were script*SSD interactions with respect to low-frequency power (LF) and HF involving the somatic distress script and a script*SSD interaction with respect to LF and emotional valence involving the neutral script; SSD women revealed significantly lower LF and HF than healthy women when viewing somatic distress script, they also showed significantly lower LF and higher valence than healthy ones during neutral script. The somatic distress script*SSD interaction still influenced LF and HF in women after adjusting for potential confounders. ConclusionIn women cue-specific HRV is a better method of differentiating people with SSD from healthy individuals than resting-state HRV. Trial registration informationThe Research Ethics Committee of National Taiwan University Hospital approved this study (approval number: 201410050RINB).

Psycholinguistic Characteristics of Secondary Predication in Determining the Construction of a Peculiar Picture of the World of a Reader

The article deals with the analysis of psycholinguistic characteristics of explication of secondary predication, which are considered as dominant determinants of constructing a peculiar picture of the world of the reader. It is noted that in the scientific literature predication is categorized as a category that facilitates the constitution of a sentence in the form of a minimal communicative unit, which helps to establish the identity of the content of the sentence and the content of the reality which is surrounding us. It was determined that predication is: a) a category that contains signs of time, modality and personalization; b) a category that is essentially quasi-communicative, that is one that manifests itself in the attitudes of the opposition to themes and rams; c) a category that contains signs of time and modality.
 In this article the novel of Frederick Forsyth “The Odessa file” was analyzed (according to the structures of secondary predication). This analysis suggests that the largest number of secondary predication structures are components of predication structures: 2137 cases, representing 51.38% of the total (4159 of all structures of secondary predication). This group includes the structures of secondary predication of all five types, but the most frequent are the structures of secondary predication, where the secondary predication is expressed by the adjective: in 35.47%. In addition, it should be noted that the structures of secondary predication with the infinitive are the most frequent of all types of structures of secondary predication and make up 34.82% of the total sample size, that is, almost the third part from all amount of cases. The structures of secondary predication, that are Participle II and the structures of it modification, make up 30.89% of the total. However, in the novel of Frederick Forsyth “The Odessa file” also there are the structures of the secondary predication of all five types. Cases when the structures of secondary predication act as components of the modification structures are the least frequent (only 39.07% of the total), however, this group also includes the structures of secondary predication of all types.
 It was clarified the concept of secondary predication. We believe that secondary predication is the amplification of features of the sentence, which amplifies the meaning of the sentence to the reality that is surrounding us, thus these structures are facilitating, building the image of the world or a peculiar picture of the world of a reader, the picture which, in turn, will determine the mental scripts, frames and images of this man in the future.

Sparks Will Fly: engineering creative script conflicts

ABSTRACTScripts are often dismissed as the stuff of good movies and bad politics. They codify cultural experience so rigidly that they remove our freedom of choice and become the very antithesis of creativity. Yet, mental scripts have an important role to play in our understanding of creative behaviour, since a deliberate departure from an established script can produce results that are simultaneously novel and familiar, especially when others stick to the conventional script. Indeed, creative opportunities often arise at the overlapping boundaries of two scripts that antagonistically compete to mentally organise the same situation. This work explores the computational integration of competing scripts to generate creative friction in short texts that are surprising but meaningful. Our exploration considers conventional macro-scripts – ordered sequences of actions – and the less obvious micro-scripts that operate at even the lowest levels of language. For the former, we generate plots that squeeze two scripts into a single mini-narrative; for the latter, we generate ironic descriptions that use conflicting scripts to highlight the speaker's pragmatic insincerity. We show experimentally that verbal irony requires both kinds of scripts – macro and micro – to work together to reliably generate creative sparks from a speaker's subversive intent.

Addressing the development of both knowledge and clinical reasoning in nursing through the perspective of script concordance: An integrative literature review

Background: In clinical practice settings, where situations of uncertainty exist, clinical reasoning is situated or contextualized. It calls upon honed knowledge, wherein nurses rely on highly-developed and organized knowledge networks known as “mental scripts”.Methods: The aim of this integrative literature review was to address ways to develop knowledge and clinical reasoning in nursing through the use of mental scripts, and to tackle these pedagogical considerations. The literature search was performed using the following data sources: CINHAL, MEDLINE Google Scholar, PubMed, ProQuest, PsycINFO, Scopus and Web of Science.Results: Script concordance, which optimises situated clinical reasoning, ties in with the socio-cognitive perspective of cognitive apprenticeship, using role models to guide the development of knowledge and clinical reasoning in nursing. Moreover, this perspective proposes implementing new teaching strategies, which focus on situational awareness, reflective acuity, and cognitive dialogue.Conclusions: The perspective of script concordance allows a foreseeable innovative formulation of practices favourable to the development of clinical reasoning in nursing.

Habitual Initiation of Media Use and a Response-Frequency Measure for Its Examination

When measuring media habits, most scholars rely on retrospective self-reports about behavioral frequency, context stability, or automaticity of the performance. This article develops a new implicit measurement for media research to complement existing approaches, which focuses on measuring the initiation of general, goal-related habits. In the response-frequency measure of media habit (RFMMH), participants are presented with several media use goals and are asked to choose quickly and without deliberation which media device (television set, radio set, newspaper, computer, mobile device) they would use. The more often a media device is chosen, the stronger the mental script to choose this device should be and the stronger the habit is assumed to be. The results of a validation study confirm that the RFMMH correlates positively with other habit measures. This suggests that the RFMMH may add a valuable instrument to habit research.

Scripting radio language amidst language shift in Indonesia

There is a shift underway in many areas of Indonesia from local, ethnic languages like Javanese, to the national language, Indonesian. Few studies have explored the complexities faced by radio stations targeting the audiences undergoing this shift. This article explores the attitudes influencing the design of radio language at three local radio stations in East Java. Semi-structured interviews, based on extracts of radio language, are conducted with program directors and announcers at these stations. These data are used to outline how radio stations approach the design of radio talk amidst language shift. This paper explains this shift using two overlapping frames of media and language: audience design and mental scripts. Analysis shows both frames to be useful for understanding the design of radio language in East Java. A concluding discussion shows how a multi-dimensional understanding of radio language can provide important information on speech communities in-flux.

Socialization as sensemaking: a semiotic analysis of international graduate students' narratives in the USA

Drawing on the data from interviews with 32 international students, this qualitative study applies Weick's framework of organizational sensemaking to the analysis of international graduate students' socialization in the academic and student communities in a large US university. Methodologically, the analysis relies on a semiotic chain technique to uncover direct and connotative meanings of academic departments and student communities in the respondents' home and host universities, which in the interviews are presented as oppositions between ‘we’ and ‘they’. Examining the ‘we’ versus ‘they’ dichotomies as conflicts between the students' old and new mental scripts, the author finds that international students are more accepting of the academic ethos of their host departments than of the American peer culture. International students' attitude toward diversity is especially ambivalent, because diversity may clash with their home-grown scripts about hierarchies of nationalities, ethnicities, religions and norms of heterosexuality.

The ‘Right’ Knowledge and Spin-off Processes: an Empirical Analysis on Knowledge Transfer

Recent advances on cognitive theory shift from a trade-off between individual and collective knowledge to attempt a closer look at the re-conceptualization of knowledge production and exploitation activities. Findings from the study of human cognition indicate that people have limited information-processing capacities and consequently adopt organizational rules in overcoming individual cognitive limitations. Researchers therefore rely on mental scripts and heuristics to make sense of the knowledge use in organizations. This study extends the previous line of research by seeking to uncover the specific ways in which individuals process information and share knowledge to link organizational learning and entrepreneurial action. Specifically, our focus has been maintained on the most problematic issue about knowledge transfer dynamics: spin-off is viewed as exploiting knowledge their founders learned in prior employment and moved outward to new business initiatives. The spirit that motivated this research was twofold: firstly, previous literature recognition provided critical insights for the development of the model. Secondly, on-field verification sought to confirm the hypotheses on the suitability of spin-offs to serve as a vector for the transfer of the cognitive map developed in parent firms.

Use Student Affairs Strategies to Retain Women in STEM

Use Student Affairs Strategies to Retain Women in STEM

Foreword

Foreword

Matching users’ diverse social scripts with resonating humanized features to create a polite interface

The mental scripts that prescribe the way people interact with other people or with computers are experientially characterized and context sensitive. For this reason, CASA research should be more sensitive to the divergent nature of social scripts, through which people respond to human features on interfaces and through which they treat computers as social actors. Using politeness as an example, this study first investigated people's politeness orientations, and then their perceptions of websites containing error pages with messages featuring three different politeness strategies. Two hundred thirty-four senior high school students participated in this three (politeness orientations) by three (error messages) by two (frustration levels)-factorial experiment. Three-way ANOVAs and simple main effects analyses showed that people with different politeness orientations do respond differently to messages with different politeness strategies and different levels of associated frustration. This study shows that more research effort should be focused on whether and how the CASA phenomenon manifests itself in different computer-use situations and/or with different people.

HOW CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURS THINK: COGNITION, CONTEXT, AND ENTREPRENEURIAL SCRIPTS.

Research in the entrepreneurial cognition domain has demonstrated that, regardless of nationality and culture, entrepreneurs tend to draw from similar sets of mental scripts when considering whether to start a new venture. A parallel line of research suggests that corporate entrepreneurs, those individuals charged with creating new ventures within established corporations, think and act differently than entrepreneurs who are involved in independent startup operations. This article integrates these two perspectives by constructing a theoretical framework for explaining why differences in context lead to the development and use of different mental scripts for developing, an internal, corporate venture as compared to those needed for launching and growing an independent startup. Important implications regarding the relationship between context and entrepreneurial cognition are outlined for researchers, entrepreneurs and practicing managers; and perhaps most importantly, for educators teaching entrepreneurship within the corporate environment.

Mental Genesis of Scripts in Adolescents With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Twenty nine ADHD adolescents and 29 age, IQ and gender matched normal comparison subjects completed 6 paper pencil tasks of mental script generation. Each task required the subject to generate 10 chronologically ordered and necessary actions toward a goal. There were 3 levels of structure of the tasks (highly structured, moderately structured, unstructured) and each of these levels comprised a familiar and an unfamiliar script. The ADHD group made more sequencing errors on all the scripts, significantly so on the highly structured unfamiliar and on the moderately structured unfamiliar script tasks. The two groups were similar however with regard to the semantic structure (content) of the scripts and the total number of actions generated. Errors of omission, commission and perseveration were similar for the two groups. The results are interpreted as supportive of Barkley's (1997) frontal lobe dysfunction model of ADHD.

By Force of Fantasy: How We Make Our Lives

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book Forum: PSYCHOANALYSISFull AccessBy Force of Fantasy: How We Make Our LivesWAYNE S. FENTON, M.D., WAYNE S. FENTONSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., Rockville, Md.Published Online:1 Oct 1998https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.155.10.1449AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail This elegantly crafted and scholarly survey will remind readers of experiences that are familiar but rarely examined or studied systematically. Although fantasy is nearly universal as a mode of human thinking, the significance of the daydreams, scenarios, and mental scripts that populate our private reveries is obscure. Ethel Person, a training and supervising analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and professor of clinical psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, draws on clinical psychoanalytic experience, history, literature, and biography to explore the meaning of fantasy for the individual, those closest to him or her, and the culture at large. Her rich and evocative account succeeds at deepening our understanding of a relatively neglected aspect of mental life.Fantasy is described as a self-generated fiction that can range from flash images to fully scripted scenarios. It may arise spontaneously or be willfully evoked for purposes as diverse as sexual arousal, mastering trauma, or the restoration of self-esteem. Fleeting fantasy is transient and arises in response to a particular stress, problem, or situation. In contrast, repeating fantasy is durable and, like a cherished and familiar friend, may be evoked repeatedly from adolescence throughout adult life. These erotic or self-soothing fantasies (highly individual but finite in thematic range) can be described as organizing in the sense of representing the fantasizer’s basic conflicts and paradigms for relating to others. A third group of more realistic fantasies are described as generative; these are future oriented and may range from wish-fulfilling substitutes to rehearsals for future intentionality. In contrast to classical traditions, which focus on the pathological aspects of fantasy, Person’s major emphasis is on the many adaptive purposes they may serve. Foremost among these is the creation of an ambience of hope for the future.Shared fantasies may be congruent, as when two or more people share the same aim (comrades in arms, suicide pact), or complementary, as when individuals adopt or enact reciprocal roles (student and mentor, rescuer and rescued). Seen in childhood as play, shared fantasies such as these are described as present in all our important relationships and as a force in constructing our interpersonal worlds.Although grounded in differences in bodily experience, the major determinant of sex-related fantasy is culture. Girls have traditionally scripted dreams about romantic love, and boys have fantasies about quests and conquests. At the same time, cultural changes, particularly those related to the women’s movement, are described as facilitating a shift in women’s fantasies to include more seducing than being seduced and more forcing than being forced. On the other hand, a constricted cultural view of masculinity, along with a diminution in men’s influence, may nourish the apparent proliferation of male vigilante and paramilitary fantasies.Individuals often select and modify fantasies from the bank of available cultural icons, scripts, and myths. The exceptional artist, poet, or leader, however, may catalyze a shift in the “collective imagining” of a culture or people: shifts brought forward by the artist’s or leader’s articulation of many people’s not-yet-formed fantasy.Although interesting, is any of this pertinent for psychiatry? It depends on how broadly or narrowly we define the knowledge base relevant to our profession. Just as we must learn biochemistry to understand molecular biology, familiarity with psychoanalytic concepts enriches our understanding of subjective experience.by Ethel S. Person, M.D. New York, Basic Books, 1995, 266 pp., $24.00; $12.95 (paperback published by Viking Penguin) FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 155Issue 10 October 1998Pages 1449-1449 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 October 1998 Published in print 1 October 1998

Multicultural Literacy: Mental Scripts for Elementary, Secondary, and College Teachers

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsToni S. WaltersToni S. Walters is an Associate Professor in the Department of Reading and Language Arts at the School of Education and Human Services, Oakland University, Rochester, MI.