Imaginative Processes Research Articles

Glucose and the wandering mind: not paying attention or simply out of fuel?

The impact of raising glycaemia by ingestion of a glucose drink has revealed cognitive facilitation, particularly for memory and attention. This study aimed to extend current knowledge by examining, for the first time, whether glucose load also moderates task-related (TRT) and task-unrelated thoughts (TUT) during activities that vary in their requirement for sustained attention. A 2 (25 g glucose vs. placebo) × 2 (fast vs. slow version of the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART)) repeated measures, counterbalanced design was used with 16 healthy adults. Self-report questionnaires probed participants' levels of TRT and TUT during SART performance. Prior to testing, the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory (SIPI) was also administered to help pinpoint the nature of thought processes during the task before and after treatment. Analysis of variance revealed no significant effect of treatment; however, we report a pattern of results that is consistent with glucose facilitation effects on task accuracy for more demanding attention tasks (d = 0.56). Additionally, glucose improved the monitoring and task reflection as measured by TRT (d = 0.33) in the more demanding task but no effect on TUT. Probing the nature of thought processes further, we also report two novel correlations (in the placebo) between fears of failure (indexed by the SIPI) and the number of TUT episodes and perceived poor attention control (indexed by the SIPI) and number of TUT and speculate that glucose may act to buffer against TUT episodes under externally demanding situations. These data extend previous research examining the glucose facilitation effect to the processing of internal thought processes.

Away from home: the brain of the wandering mind as a model for schizophrenia

BackgroundThe notion that schizophrenia patients' (SZ) sense of being detached from external reality is a core feature of the disorder has existed since the early days of its recognition and is still largely emphasized in first person accounts of SZs; however, its etiology, neurophysiological mechanism, and significance for clinical symptoms are unclear. Mind-wandering is a ubiquitous experience of being detached from reality, the underlying neural mechanism of which closely resembles the brain in a resting-state. MethodsThe resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 33 SZs and 33 matched healthy controls (CNT) were acquired. All subjects answered the mind-wandering subscale of the Imaginal Processing Inventory Questionnaire. Functional connectivity maps were constructed using 82 regions of interest comprising default-mode, salience, and frontoparietal networks. ResultsSZs exhibit significantly higher mind-wandering frequency relative to CNT. The elevated mind-wandering frequency in SZs significantly correlated with positive and general symptom severity. The mind-wandering frequency was inversely correlated with connectivity degree in the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the brain region involved in self-experience in SZs. ConclusionsOur results suggest that self-disturbances in SZs can explain SZs' disconnection to the external world, leading to the manifestation of positive psychotic symptoms. This study demonstrates strong preliminary evidence that contributes significantly to resolve the complex relationship between self, world, and the brain of SZs, which may lie at the “core” of psychotic experiences.

Schizotypal, Dissociative, and Imaginative Processes in a Clinical OCD Sample.

Previous research in a nonclinical sample has suggested that schizotypal, dissociative, and imaginative processes may play a role in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms (Aardema & Wu, ). The present study aims to extend these findings in a clinical sample. N = 75 adults (mean age = 37.99; 61.3% female), meeting the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision, diagnostic criteria for OCD completed a battery of self-report questionnaires measuring schizotypal, dissociative, and imaginative processes. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed inferential confusion and dissociation to be the strongest predictors of OCD symptoms, replicating and extending the findings by Aardema and Wu (). Results support the notion that inferential confusion and dissociation are important variables to consider in understanding symptoms of OCD independently from obsessive beliefs and negative mood states.

Building a learning progression for scientific imagination: A measurement approach

This study aimed to build a learning progression (LP) for the development of scientific imagination based on a measurement approach using the BEAR Assessment System (BAS) in an attempt to better understand the core ideas and the developmental path of the scientific imagination process as well as align curriculum, instruction, and assessment through LP. Participants in this study were selected from Taiwan, and classified into two categories. The first category included 741 5th and 6th grade elementary school students, were administered the Scientific Imagination Test-Verbal (SIT-Verbal). The second category included one award-winning teacher who designed and implemented a set of curriculum for scientific imagination. The SIT-Verbal was developed by a panel of experts and covered four key components of scientific imagination process: brainstorming, association, transformation/elaboration, and conceptualization/organization/formation. The multiple validities of the SIT-Verbal were assessed using the Rasch partial credit model. Results showed that the components of brainstorming, association, and transformation/elaboration were hierarchical. Additionally, the SIT-Verbal was suitable for measuring students’ scientific imagination at the elementary school level. Based on the proposed LP, a set of science curricula was developed for science classroom. The teacher's reflections and observations of LP application were recorded to provide insight into scientific imagination development in practice. The conclusion of the study not only enhance teachers’ professions, but also provide more abundant information to verify the LPs for scientific imagination. Implications for the assessments with the LPs and revisions for both the SIT-Verbal and the scientific imagination LP are also proposed.

Semantic memory as the root of imagination.

“Imagination is what makes our sensory experience meaningful, enabling us to interpret and make sense of it, whether from a conventional perspective or from a fresh, original, individual one. It is what makes perception more than the mere physical stimulation of sense organs. It also produces mental imagery, visual and otherwise, which is what makes it possible for us to think outside the confines of our present perceptual reality, to consider memories of the past and possibilities for the future, and to weigh alternatives against one another. Thus, imagination makes possible all our thinking about what is, what has been, and, perhaps most important, what might be.”—Nigel J. T. Thomas (2004, as cited in Manu, 2006, p. 47)1. Investigations of the information processing mechanisms that underlie imaginative thought typically focus on a single branch of imagination, such as prospection, mental imagery or creativity, and are often generalized as being insightful to understanding the workings of imagination in general. In reality, however, there is very little in the way of theoretical or empirical exchange between the scientific communities that conduct research within the different domains of imagination. As a result, the research impetus in each of the sub-domains may be skewed to the pursuit of hypotheses that are not particularly viable in terms of understanding imagination as a whole. An example of this is pegging the roots of imagination to the processes of episodic memory—a reasonable assumption to make based on studies of episodic prospection. However, the associated findings and theoretical conclusions that follow are not entirely consistent with the literature on the mechanisms underlying creativity (Bubic and Abraham, 2014), which is another core realm of imagination. In an effort to promote interchange across the frontiers of imagination, in this Opinion Article we put forward the idea that all aspects of imagination emerge from semantic memory with increasingly higher-order levels of imaginative information processing emanating from and interacting with existing systems, eventually expanding beyond these to form new systems (Figure ​(Figure1).1). We compare the associated neurocognitive findings and assumptions in terms of their fit with current knowledge in other fields of imagination and discuss their implications for reformulating hypotheses regarding imagination as a whole. Figure 1 An informal illustration of how imaginative processes emerge from and expand beyond semantic memory operations.

Thinking our way to a greener future: new horizons for the study of literature and sustainability

The crisis within the humanities, which occupies a similar time span to the environmental crisis, has challenged the worth of literary studies. This paper argues that to sustain creative literary thinking for the future we need to recognise the role of natural imagery in the working mind. Ordinary natural features can stimulate meaningful experiences, which contribute to a deeper sense of belonging and engagement with the spirit of place. Moreover, to recognise the healthy natural world as raw material for thought offers one way for literary criticism to justify and develop its connection with the young science of sustainability. Close readings of literature that considers the role of natural and built environments can illuminate the imaginative processes associated with the understanding and interpretation of literature. By giving meaning to individual experience, and engaging the imagination, literature can convey sustainable values and help us to identify new directions for literary criticism.

Conceptual Blending in Children’s Games as a Model for Double-Scope Creativity and New Learning Opportunities

Fauconnier and Turner (2002, pp. 389-396) provide an overview of how blending affects the course of a human life, and more specifically, how young children are engaged in building complex blends in very early stages of their lives. Their detailed analysis shows that only after the young child is able to master culturally recognized blends will s/he be effectively ‘living in the blend’ and prove capable of further achieving other blends with more flexibility. During early childhood, it appears that learning and mental development are intrinsically linked to our human ability to blend and deblend. Besides engaging in direct cultural blends, the young child can operate on conceptual blends that are not physically (biologically) given. For instance, this may happen when their imaginative processes are at work in a wide variety of games or fun activities, starting with Lego construction sets to fictive interactions with imaginary companions. In such games and activities, children manifest an extraordinary capacity for double-scope blending. Therefore, by playing games or getting involved in free activities, young children will bring to mastery mental integrations that are essential for their lives as adults. In this light, the paper examines a set of children-designed games and activities that can all account for cases of fictive or potential reality. That is, the mental spaces created do not refer directly to entities in the outside world. I argue that an analysis of such fantasy mental spaces (with the tools of the mental space theory) can shed new light on learning and human creativity. While playing and blending mental spaces with their counterfactual counterparts, the young subject has to manipulate his/her ‘split self’ (Lakoff & Johnson 1999) or counterfactual self. With the knowledge of early evolution of conceptual blending in children’s games, I propose that educators may apply the results in diverse areas of instruction and learning in order to better deal with the cognitive side of learning, and eventually come to terms with human creativity. Keywords: blends, early childhood, mental development, children-designed games

Voix et mémoire: lectures de Rousseau par Anne-Marie Mercier-Faivre, Michael O’Dea

Reviews 219 produces an event free from any signifying intent, that his poems are “le lieu d’un événement sans signe”(99), and that they have passed through linguistic intentionality “jusqu’à épuisement des signes” (99). One could argue, however that what recurs throughout du Bouchet’s poetry is actually the poem’s “inexhaustion,” producing a world that remains the unending crossing—“le terme atteint se traverse” writes du Bouchet—of signs.Yet, for Martinez, by exhausting the signifying system of language, the poem can reveal “the power of the world.” While it is significant that Martinez’s goal is “to get around a theory of the poem founded on the sign,” his discussion of “intonation”and of the“deictic dimension”(151) of poetry is insufficiently developed to make his case. Instead, Martinez evokes a poetry in which“ni le monde, ni le poème, ni la présence n’ont de signe déterminé”; a poetry that occupies a place where language is“sans emploi”(135) at an“a-semiotic or de-intentionalized level”(103), and“à l’écart des sémiotiques et des herméneutiques”(136).Here,again,Martinez comes uncomfortably close to Sartre’s reading of poetry (of which du Bouchet was so leary) as thriving only “à l’écart de la grande fête sociale.” In the end, Martinez leaves the reader to grapple with“les signes dépris de leur sens, redevenus matière”(157), whereas, for du Bouchet, this also could be the earth, in its becoming world, endlessly freeing itself from its own materiality. Wellesley College (MA) James Petterson Mercier-Faivre, Anne-Marie, et Michael O’Dea, éd. Voix et mémoire: lectures de Rousseau. Lyon: PU de Lyon, 2012. ISBN 978-2-7297-0855-9. Pp. 377. 24 a. Reflecting the evolution of Rousseau studies over the last two decades, this volume gathers articles by scholars from the CNRS, the universities Lumière Lyon 2, Stendhal Grenoble 3, Jean Monnet-Saint-Étienne, and the École Normale de Lyon. It is a sophisticated work that illuminates nuances of Rousseau’s often-studied autobiographical works and fiction while bringing to the fore unsuspected riches in his less frequently examined correspondence and writings on music. Ten scholars each contribute a voice to the tradition—or memory—of Rousseau scholarship. Their contributions (all of them out-of-print or otherwise hard-to-find) focus on Rousseau’s preoccupation with the intertwined phenomena of the human voice (as sound, word, song) and affective memory (as creative force). Accordingly, this collection has a double structure. Part one,“Mémoire: la matière de la création,” explores Rousseau’s imaginative processes, their substrata, their modalities, and their effects. Part two, “Les voix, l’accent: chant et échanges,”analyzes Rousseau’s usage of language, style, and eloquence to construct meaning, reality, and moral truth. The two parts are given equal weight, each one containing nine articles. Together the parts present an eloquent demonstration of the profound unity of Rousseau’s work. As the studies of part one point out, Rousseau’s fictive creations, autobiographical writings, and personal correspondence converge around the ways in which space and time work together to configure memory. Jean Sgard opens the volume by exploring the interactions between external and subjective worlds that shape happiness as reminiscence in La nouvelle Héloïse and the Confessions. Taking as point of departure Rousseau’s fascination with time distilled into instants or turning points that forever alter the course of events, Claude Labrosse’s six articles on La nouvelle Héloïse show the intricacy of Rousseau’s use of writing to master time, subtly modifying it to produce pleasurable emotional effects for his readers and for his own recollection. Pierre Rétat and Jean-François Perrin extend to the Confessions and Rêveries analyses of Rousseau’s strategic structuring of time and thereby of personal, ethical memory anchored in conscience. Contributors to part two include JeanFran çois Perrin, Michael O’Dea, Pierre Saby, Christophe Cave, Anne-Marie MercierFaivre ,Yves Citton, and Denis Reynaud. Their studies of the Confessions, the Rêveries, Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, Le devin du Village, Émile, the Lettres écrites de la Montagne...

A Cosmopolitan Perspective of Globalization: Cultural and Aesthetic Consumption Among Young People

AbstractAuthor's focuses on understanding in which way people relate with globalization and what kind of imaginative process they engage in to do so in their everyday life. Article deals with the emerging cosmopolitan consciousness and practices that derive from young people's experiences of a globalized world. The paper is based on two different researches of young people, the rationale for such a choice being to understand the impact of emerging transformations on young people - who are often the barometers of societal change from both generational and life cycle perspectives.

From inertia to innovation

As the Information Age has given rise to the Intelligence Age, institutions of all kinds are challenged to adopt a culture of constant innovation. Innovation is the broad term and includes the concepts of invention, ingenuity, and improvisation. Organizations go through a process of inquiry, instigation, insight, initiation, imagination and inspiration, and inlightenment to ultimately achieve innovation. However, the road to full innovation offers many options like creating an incubator or being iterative, instantaneous, incomplete, or infectious in approach to innovating. To begin the innovative process, organizations must be willing to look at all aspects of their operations, make long-term commitments to funding, accept the possibility of some failure, and look seriously at their missions, value systems and value propositions. Organizations that are insular, inflexible, in-bred, insincere about innovating, insecure in their ability to deliver, and operate independently are more likely to disappear or diminish in their influence because their environment and culture will not sustain innovation.

Creativity and the default network: A functional connectivity analysis of the creative brain at rest

The present research used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine whether the ability to generate creative ideas corresponds to differences in the intrinsic organization of functional networks in the brain. We examined the functional connectivity between regions commonly implicated in neuroimaging studies of divergent thinking, including the inferior prefrontal cortex and the core hubs of the default network. Participants were prescreened on a battery of divergent thinking tests and assigned to high- and low-creative groups based on task performance. Seed-based functional connectivity analysis revealed greater connectivity between the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the entire default mode network in the high-creative group. The right IFG also showed greater functional connectivity with bilateral inferior parietal cortex and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the high-creative group. The results suggest that the ability to generate creative ideas is characterized by increased functional connectivity between the inferior prefrontal cortex and the default network, pointing to a greater cooperation between brain regions associated with cognitive control and low-level imaginative processes.

“My Maid Watches It”: Key Symbols and Ambivalent Sentiments in the Production of Television Programming in India

While now classic scholarship in the anthropology of media and media studies has devoted ethnographic attention to active audiences’ resistance, subversion, and enjoyment of the ideological content of media products, ethnographers have only recently turned to the complexity of the subjective and imaginative processes at play in the making of mass media. In this article, I attend to the particularly complex case of the production of commercial satellite television programming in Mumbai, India in the era following market liberalization. Scholars have identified mass media, especially television, as key drivers and signs of the cultural and ideological shift precipitated by liberalization. Here, I explore how this transformation is negotiated by a prominent group of female producers of entertainment programming. Exploring how they assess their work, their audiences, and their social roles and responsibilities as media makers, I identify a striking degree of inconsistency, ambivalence, and regret that revolves around the figure of “the maid,” who serves as a key symbol commonly invoked to stand for the “mass” audience. I argue that the complex nature of sentiments expressed around the audience-as-maid reflects conflicts between the developmental models of Indian society in which these female producers were reared and trained and the neoliberal terrain on which they now operate. Analyzing the self-reflexive, imaginative work through which they are actively mediating India’s neoliberal transition, I argue here that the transition is more indeterminate than a simplistic periodization of Indian history into developmental and neoliberal eras would imply. This case illustrates the capacity of an ethnography of media production to complicate our notions of the “culture industries” as sites of monolithic ideological dissemination, particularly in times of cultural change.

Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Full

Contemporary design practices, such as participatory design (PD), human-centered design (HCD), and codesign, have inherent ethical qualities, which often remain implicit and unexamined. Three design projects in the high-tech industry were studied using three ethical traditions as lenses. Virtue ethics helped to understand cooperation, curiosity, creativity, and empowerment as virtues that people in PD need to cultivate, so that they can engage, for example, in mutual learning and collaborative prototyping. Ethics of alterity (Levinas and Derrida) helped to understand human-centered design as a fragile encounter between project team members and prospective users, and foregrounds the ethics in these encounters: our tendencies to “grasp the other” and to “program invention.” And pragmatist ethics (Dewey) helped to understand codesign as a process of joint inquiry and imagination, involving the organization of iterative processes of problem setting and solution finding, with moral qualities. When we open the “black boxes” of design practices, we find them filled with ethics. Moreover, it is proposed that design practitioners need to make explicit their practices’ inherent ethical qualities and that they can do that by embracing reflexivity.

Morality for skeptics? Morality for Humans Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science Mark Johnson University of Chicago Press, 2014. 273 pp.

Morality for skeptics? <b>Morality for Humans</b> Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science <i>Mark Johnson</i> University of Chicago Press, 2014. 273 pp.

A Discourse-Analysis Based Critical Approach to Contextual Interpretation of Heteroglossic Situation in the Novel

According to the theory of dialogism propounded by Mikhail Bakhtin, all discourse in the novel is a product of a process of dialogic imagination. Yet heteroglossic situation in the novel differs from general narration, as it involves interaction among two or more characters speaking in their respective voices to represent different aspects of reality in a form of dramatisation. Authors depict certain situations in the reported speech as they can be portrayed in terms of straightforward accounts and certain situations in dialogue as they need dramatization in order to enable readers to realize the actual conflicts or interactions they wish to simulate. Dialogue engendered through the participation of two or several characters is considered heteroglossic situation because of the heterogeneity of the language shades and voices in which they express themselves. While reading a novel for both language development and literary perception, the heteroglossic situations sometimes create problems for the readers as they need more pragmatic knowledge to understand the actual conversations and the messages conveyed through them. There a discourse analysis-based critical approach becomes crucial as it is required to deal with the identities and asymmetrical power relations the characters maintain throughout their conversations, other than the speech acts they carry out, the social atmospheres they help to engender, the messages they help to communicate, and the concepts they help to foreground in relation to their contexts. In regard to this, this paper attempts to develop a discourse analysis-based critical approach to the contextual interpretation of heteroglossic situation in the novel.

A longitudinal study of alexithymia in relation to physical activity in adolescent females with scoliosis subjected to cheneau brace treatment: preliminary report.

A longitudinal pilot study of changes in levels of alexithymia among females with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) under brace treatment. To investigate the prevalence of alexithymia and to evaluate changes in alexithymia levels among female patients with AIS treated with a Cheneau brace, in comparison with healthy female adolescents. Alexithymia is a personality trait incorporating the following core characteristics: difficulty in identifying and describing feelings, difficulty in distinguishing between feelings and the physical sensation of emotional arousal, limited imaginal processes, and an externally oriented cognitive style. Alexithymia can be common among adolescents and young adults with severe idiopathic scoliosis. Thirty-six female patients with AIS, aged 13.4 years (standard deviation [SD], 1.7) at the beginning of the study, completed the Polish version of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-26 (TAS-26). The second and third evaluations took place at 6 and 12 months, respectively, after the beginning of the study. Thirty-six healthy female controls were also included. The mean TAS-26 total score was 63.4 (SD, 9.3), 59.5 (SD, 12.1), and 59.6 (SD, 12.5) during the first, second, and last patient evaluation, whereas in healthy females 60.0 (SD, 10.9). With regard to the TAS-26 total score, results differed significantly between the first and the second (P = 0.007) and between the first and the third patient evaluation (P = 0.007). Regression analysis revealed that during the second and third patient evaluation, duration of recreational sports activity had a statistically significant (P = 0.029 and P = 0.005, respectively) influence on the probability of females reporting no alexithymia. The prevalence of alexithymia in healthy female controls is the same as in patients with scoliosis subjected to underarm brace treatment. Statistically significant changes with regard to TAS-26 total score and externally oriented thinking domain were found in patient sample. Physical activity in females with AIS treated nonoperatively coexists with lower scores in the TAS-26. 2.

A tough line to work through’: Ethical ambiguities in a South African SME

The unique contexts and experiences of SMEs have recently been taken up as a gap within business ethics scholarship. In this exploratory paper, I aim to contribute to the knowledge of ethics within SMEs through an in-depth case study comprising interviews, site visits and document analysis of a South African SME. The paper examines the SMEs’ three owners’ perceptions of ethics and corporate social responsibility, as well as the ethical challenges arising from their employee relations. The case illuminates the deep uncertainties and contradictions that permeate the owners’ values and practices and points to ethical decision-making as a process of reflection and moral imagination.

Sade, le tournant fantastique

In Sade’s Histoire de Juliette, the heroine’s crossing of the Alps coincides with a shift from the realistic world characteristic of the erotic novel to the realm of the fantastic. Two episodes mark this turn: Juliette’s visit to Durand, and her encounter with the giant Minski. Durand’s magical skills cause desire and accomplishment to merge, while her fortune-telling accurately predicts and determines the subsequent direction of the plot. The superhuman capacities of the giant-man Minski transgress the libertines’ rational views in a similarly flagrant way. Playing on mythological imagery and integrating elements from the Gothic novel, Histoire de Juliette marks a turn towards the literary genre of the fantastic in keeping with the novel status the eighteenth century attributes to the imagination. Sadean writing is an infinitely imaginative process that cannot be confined to the real.

The time-course of EEG alpha power changes in creative ideation.

Increases in EEG alpha power during creative ideation are among the most consistent findings in the neuroscientific study of creativity, but existing studies did not focus on time-related changes of EEG alpha activity patterns during the process of creative ideation so far. Since several cognitive processes are involved in the generation of creative ideas, different EEG correlates may result as a function of time. In this study we addressed this crucial point. Forty-five participants worked on the “Alternative Uses Task” while the EEG was recorded and changes in task-related power (relative to rest) in the upper-frequency band (10–12 Hz) for three isochronous time intervals of the idea generation period were determined. Alpha power changes during idea generation followed a characteristic time course: we found a general increase of alpha power at the beginning of idea generation that was followed by a decrease and finally by a re-increase of alpha prior to responding that was most pronounced at parietal and temporal sites of the right hemisphere. Additionally, the production of more original ideas was accompanied by increasing hemispheric asymmetry (more alpha in the right than left hemisphere) with increasing duration of the idea generation period. The observed time course of brain activity may reflect the progression of different but well-known stages in the idea generation process: that is the initial retrieval of common and old ideas followed by the actual generation of novel and more creative ideas by overcoming typical responses through processes of mental simulation and imagination.

Hopes of hospitality: Media, refugee crisis and the politics of a place

The article investigates the relevance of geographical imagination in refugee politics in the Mediterranean coast. It is based on empirical research conducted in Calabria, southern Italy, in a small village that in 1997 decided to host over 300 refugees that shipwrecked on its coast. By welcoming refugees the village, Badolato, appropriated politics of hospitality to gain new cultural and economic value for the village that was suffering from high unemployment rates and an ageing population. The story, exceptional as it was, soon attracted international media to cover the story of Badolato. The article depicts developments in the village over the course of 14 years and shows the force and changes over time of media publicity in the process. It points out the relevance of media for the process of geographical imagination and the contradictory and complex implications of the process.