Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

From Homeland Earth; A New Manifesto For The New Millennium, Morin, Edgar

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Now that the fantastic adventure begun in the 15th century has come to an end, the shout of Columbus’ lookout man takes on at last a planetary meaning: Land! Land!¹ Even up to 1950-1960, we were living on a misapprehended Earth, on an abstract Earth. We were living on the Earth as object. By the end of this century, we discovered Earth as system, as Gaia, as biosphere, a cosmic speck—Homeland Earth. Each one of us has a pedigree, a terrestrial identity card. We are from, in, and on the Earth. We belong to the Earth which belongs to …

The Evolution Of The Culture Of Enterprise, Laszlo, Ervin

Journal of Conscious Evolution

At the top echelons of contemporary business, managers are becoming concerned with the unsustainability of the way companies now operate. A transformation of basic business strategies appears more and more indicated. For such transformation to be effective, the culture of the enterprise--the goals it pursues and the vision of these goals entertained by managers and collaborators--needs to change. Consequently there is a growing questioning of the viability of the typical culture of today's enterprise, and a search for more functional and timely concepts for creating anew and more timely cultural pattern.

Transpersonal Psychology And The Paradigm Of Complexity, Kelly, Sean M.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Death And Resurrection: Enlightenment And The Body Of Light, White, John

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Enlightenment or God-realization is not purely a psychological event. Bodily changes also occur, most dramatically in the higher phases of enlightenment. In the final phase, according to esoteric teachings in various sacred traditions and hermetic schools, the body is alchemically changed from flesh into light, becoming immortal. This transubstantiated body is called different names, such as resurrection body, light body, solar body and diamond body. This presentation looks at the phenomenon from a cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective. It then focuses on Christianity as a sacred tradition whose purpose is to enable people to develop through the resurrection of the body …

Chi Kung Facilitates Integral Growth: An Empirical Investigation, Arnold, C., Bruggerman, E., Kim, H., Combs, A.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Chi Kung Facilitates Integral Growth: An Empirical Investigation C. Arnold, E. Bruggerman, H. Kim, & A. Combs[1]

Swiss cultural philosopher Jean Gebser (1949/1986) proposed a theory of the evolutionary development of structures of consciousness that describes the common ways people living in different periods of history interpreted reality and constructed their worldviews. These included four major structures corresponding to four historical epochs, an archaic, magic, mythic, and mental structure which remains dominant today. Citing changes in art, literature, and scientific during the 20th century, Gebser also proposed the emergence of a forthcoming fifth structure, that he termed integral consciousness.

The …

Internal Alchemy, With Michael Winn, Published In "The Empty Vessel"

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Alchemical Transformation: Consciousness And Matter, Form And Information, Peat, F. David

Journal of Conscious Evolution

There has grown up, relatively recently, a nucleus of interests called ìconsciousness studiesî in which physicists and mathematicians, as well as neuroscientists and psychologists, attempt to discover the origins of ìconsciousnessî within the brain. A variety of approaches are employed, some based upon neural networks, others that argue that consciousness must have a quantum mechanical basis, or involve self-organization arising out of non-linearity. A common thread is a certain sense of optimism that ìthe question of consciousnessî will yield its secrets in the same way as, for example, the genetic code or sub-atomic matter. I must confess that I find …

Transition To Transcendence: Franklin Merrell-Wolff's Mathematical Yoga, Baruss, Imants

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Mathematicians--those who develop new mathematics--spend much of their time proposing the existence of mathematical constructions whose existence they then proceed to try to prove from the mathematics that has already been developed. Following that, they often try to prove that those mathematical constructions are unique, that there are no other constructions with the same characteristics. In practice, it is often easier to prove the uniqueness of a mathematical construction than its existence, so a mathematician may proceed by first proving uniqueness, as though the mathematical construction existed, and then using clues from the uniqueness proof to prove existence. I want …

The End Of Death? Conscious Life In Global Cyberspace, Purdy, Michael

Journal of Conscious Evolution

In The Ever-Present Origin, Jean Gebser, in talking about the magical structure of consciousness[1], states: "All directing implies a consciousness process" (EPO 49). And so to die is to become not consciousness, to lose the power to direct, ultimately to lose control over our own destiny. Being only human, and realizing that death is often more real than an afterlife that we cannot experience while alive[2], we actively fight any loss of control-we fight the passage to death. In that directedness, the glimmerings of which began with magical consciousness, and that came to full awareness …

Cultivating The Mindset For Creative Output, Alison Akell

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Changing habits is a common pursuit whether it is in support of one’s creative work or another personal goal. I wanted to take myself more seriously as an artist and to change my procrastination habit towards that work. While solutions can seem simple, the ongoing difficulty of making this change led me seek further understanding of why knowledge of a solution is not always enough. Throughout my study in the Critical and Creative Thinking program at The University of Massachusetts Boston, I started to develop knowledge of the underlying ways of thinking that were affecting my actions. Learning about principles …

Childhood Development: How The Fine And Performing Arts Enhance Neurological, Social, And Academic Traits, Katherine Rowe

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

Childhood development has always been a major topic when studying psychology and biology. This makes sense because the brain develops from the time a child is conceived to the time that child has reached around the age of twenty-seven. Doctors, psychologists, and sociologists look at numerous things when studying childhood development. However, how common is it for researchers to study how the fine and performing arts affect childhood development? Sociologists tend to be extremely open and mindful of all aspects of things such as culture, sexuality, religion, and even age. By taking a sociological standpoint when studying the arts …

Pearce's "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy For Christians With Depression: A Practical Tool-Based Primer" (Book Review), Kenneth D. Litwak

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

It's Just A Toy, Lauren Strauss

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

Each and every one of us experiences gender stereotyping, whether we realize it or not. It is such a simple concept and something people don't tend to think about. Although, from a young age, we are exposed to our parents' and societies' views on gender and the toys we should play with, which then stick around for generations. The color pink and dolls are for girls and trucks and the color blue are for boys, right? Well, not necessarily. Toys are also expressed through the idea that women have to be the stay at home mom and take care of …

Temporal Context-Specificity In Predictive Learning Produced With Visual, But Not Musical, Primes, Catherine Woosley Luna

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this study we investigated whether a musical prime would produce a contextspecificity effect in predictive learning. Participants were divided into six conditions of a spy-radio predictive learning task. The six conditions were comprised of a combination of three primes (i.e. visual, music, or both) and two learning phase groups (i.e. retrieve, default). The primes indicated the type of stimulus used to prime the temporal context for the test cue-outcome association. The learning phase groups indicated which temporal context would be primed. In the retrieve group, learning Phase 1 was primed; in the default group learning Phase 2 was primed. …

The Common Thread In Kuyper, Kuhn And Cognitive Psychology: Interpretive Frameworks, Daniel F. A. Hitchcock

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Findings Of An Effect Of Gender, But Not Handedness, On Self-Reported Motion Sickness Propensity, Ruth E. Propper, Frederick Bonato, Leanna Ward, Kenneth Sumner

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Discrepant input from vestibular and visual systems may be involved in motion sickness; individual differences in the organization of these systems may, therefore, give rise to individual differences in propensity to motion sickness. Non-right-handedness has been associated with altered cortical lateralization of vestibular function, such that non-right-handedness is associated with left hemisphere, and right-handedness with right hemisphere, lateralized, vestibular system. Interestingly, magnocellular visual processing, responsible for motion detection and ostensibly involved in motion sickness, has been shown to be decreased in non-right-handers. It is not known if the anomalous organization of the vestibular or magnocellular systems in non-right-handers might alter …

The Psychology Of Marathon Television Viewing: Antecedents And Viewer Involvement, Riva Tukachinsky, Keren Eyal

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

This study focuses on the expanding trend of marathon (“binge”) television viewing. It examines the personality antecedents of such media consumption (attachment style, depression, and self-regulation deficiency) as well as the psychological experiences of marathon viewers relative to the narrative (transportation, enjoyment) and its characters (parasocial relationship, identification). In a two-study design, theoretical models of media use and involvement, on one hand, and models of media addiction, on the other hand, are applied to predict the extent of marathon viewing and to compare it with “traditional” viewing. Results advance understanding of enjoyment and involvement theory and support cognitive theories of …

Tasseography From Jung's Perspective, Avetisian, Elizabeth

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Approaching from Jung’s perspective this paper aims to understand how the unconscious communicates through symbolism that may be the basis for synchronicity arising from mantic procedures. A particular ritual of divination called tasseography will be studied whereby the seer interprets patterns in coffee grounds intuitively and by following a standard system of symbolism to foretell the seeker’s future life events or provide answers to seeker’s pressing life questions. The paper will examine various processes involved in the experience of tasseography and its ritual that enable the reader to predict the seeker’s future or bring light to the present or past …

Chickens Play To The Crowd, Cinzia Chiandetti

Animal Sentience

The time was ripe for Marino’s review of chickens’ cognitive capacities. The research community, apart from expressing gratitude for Marino’s work, should now use it to increase public awareness of chickens’ abilities. People’s views on many animals are ill-informed. Scientists need to communicate and engage with the public about the relevance and societal implications of their findings.

Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation To Imaginal Symbolics, Schwartz, Michael

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Critical theorists and social commentators agree that modernity and postmodernity suffer from historical pathologies of world disenchantment. What might be done? Drawing on John Sallis’ phenomenology of the elemental and Tibetan Buddhist teachings on elemental practices, this paper investigates the imagination in its doubling as imaginal in generating a symbolics of the self, world, and other that is always already enchanted; an aesthetics of existence where the world itself shows forth like a work of art replete with exorbitant logics.

Who's That Knocking At My Door? Neural Bases Of Sound Source Identification, Guillaume Lemaitre, John A. Pyles, Andrea R. Halpern, Nicole Navolio, Matthew Lehet, Laurie M. Heller

Faculty Journal Articles

When hearing knocking on a door, a listener typically identifies both the action (forceful and repeated impacts) and the object (a thick wooden board) causing the sound. The current work studied the neural bases of sound source identification by switching listeners' attention toward these different aspects of a set of simple sounds during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning: participants either discriminated the action or the material that caused the sounds, or they simply discriminated meaningless scrambled versions of them. Overall, discriminating action and material elicited neural activity in a left-lateralized frontoparietal network found in other studies of sound identification, wherein …

Score One For Jazz: Working Memory In Jazz And Classical Musicians, Bryan E. Nichols, Clemens Wöllner, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

Jazz musicians rely on different skills than do classical musicians for successful performances. We investigated the working memory span of classical and jazz student musicians on musical and nonmusical working memory tasks. College-aged musicians completed the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale, followed by verbal working memory tests and musical working memory tests that included visual and auditory presentation modes and written or played recall. Participants were asked to recall the last word (or pitch) from each task after a distraction task, by writing, speaking, or playing the pitch on the piano. Jazz musicians recalled more pitches that were presented in auditory …

Working Memory And Auditory Imagery Predict Sensorimotor Synchronisation With Expressively Timed Music, Ian D. Colley, Peter E. Keller, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

Sensorimotor synchronisation (SMS) is prevalent and readily studied in musical settings, as most people are able to perceive and synchronise with a beat (e.g., by finger tapping). We took an individual differences approach to understanding SMS to real music characterised by expressive timing (i.e., fluctuating beat regularity). Given the dynamic nature of SMS, we hypothesised that individual differences in working memory and auditory imagery—both fluid cognitive processes—would predict SMS at two levels: (1) mean absolute asynchrony (a measure of synchronisation error) and (2) anticipatory timing (i.e., predicting, rather than reacting to beat intervals). In Experiment 1, participants completed two working …

Attraction To Sad Music: The Role Of Imagery, Absorption, And Rumination, Emery Schubert, Andrea R. Halpern, Gunter Kreutz, Sandra Garrido

Faculty Journal Articles

Previous studies have identified links between attraction to negative emotion in music with the traits of absorption and rumination. However, no studies have examined the possible interdependencies and influences of these traits. We sought to determine whether a cognitive processing path that leads to attraction to sad music could be identified. We argued that auditory imagery might be an interesting competency to add to the investigation because of the links between imagery and absorption. Participants completed validated surveys measuring the three target cognitive measures, as well as a Like Sad Music Scale. Mediation analysis revealed that absorption mediated imagery in …

Determining Criteria For Distinguishing States Of Consciousness, Barry Matthew Klein

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Even though there are many views on consciousness theory in the pertinent literature, there remains a need for a unifying framework for specifying the features of specific states of consciousness. In order to know what kinds of experiences conscious states have in common, researchers need to elicit testimony that is more direct and finer-grained than has been previously available. This dissertation endeavors to fill a gap in current research by addressing concepts and methods for making requisite distinctions. This research illuminates the question of whether specific states of consciousness can be reliably and validly distinguished from each other. In order …

Psychological Ways Of Expressing Appreciations, Experiences, Thanks And Blessings In The Society, Iwasan D. Kejawa Ed.D

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

ABSTRACT: Research has shown that one of the avenues to make aware of once experiences, appreciations and blessings is through writing a gratitude journal or memoir. By journalizing our thought by hands or electronically, it may help us focus them, according to psychologist Robert Emmons, who says that he does this routinely to remind himself; it makes apple of time to understand the meaning and importance of people and events. It has been found that one should go for a depth in writing rather than breadth, because this will help one to enjoy what one appreciates, and what to keep …

The Inevitability Of Decay: Disability In Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea, Dominic Robin

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

To many, Ernest Hemingway embodies a certain image of "masculinity," one centered around ability and physical performance. Such a narrative ignores the truly complicated and dynamic shape his understanding of the body took. Through an analysis of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, I examine the form this ideology took in his later life, focusing particularly on Hemingway's evolved understanding of the body. Through this research, a more nuanced picture of Hemingway emerges, one that recognizes the complicated and dynamic nature his view of the "able" body took.

Is Viewing A Painting Really Like Reading? An Investigation Of Trans-Symbolic Comprehension Processes, Christian C. Steciuch

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Humans form mental models of the world around them. A large body of research has outlined these mental processes for comprehending texts, yet less work has been conducted in the world of comprehending artworks. The recent Trans-Symbolic Comprehension (TSC) Framework has posited that there are shared comprehension processes between the domains of text and artwork. The current study tested this claim by having individuals think-aloud while viewing paintings and reading texts. Think-aloud protocols were then parsed and coded for six distinct mental processes that the TSC framework claims are required for comprehension across symbol systems. It was hypothesized that individuals …

Insulting Words: "They Are Animals!", Carolyn A. Ristau

Animal Sentience

As Chapman & Huffman state, creating divisive human categories has rationalized atrocities committed against the “other.” Labeling neighboring warring villagers as “animals” is considered a despicable insult. Yet contemporary scientific views of many animals grant them thinking and conscious faculties, and the capacity for impressive achievements, many unattainable by humans. Robots, too, can accomplish many similar feats. But the essential reason we must protect animals is not because of their admirable abilities, but their capacity for consciousness, for suffering. Robots are not conscious. Participants in the human-animal debate should not complain about changing criteria for determining human uniqueness. New and …

Exploring Illusions Of Height In Suit Design, Michael P. Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Objective: The goal of this research was to explore how the design of clothing, specifically the design of the suit, can create height illusions.

Background: Taller people enjoy many advantages, such as increased income and perceived attractiveness. These advantages motivate people to try to appear taller than they actually are, and clothing experts provide advice on how to accomplish this. However, there is little empirical evidence to validate the illusory effects clothing might have on overall height perception. The few studies that have explored illusions of body size created by clothing design have been limited in two important ways – …