2,668 research outputs found

    Imagining stories: attitudes and operators

    Get PDF
    This essay argues that there are theoretical benefits to keeping distinct—more pervasively than the literature has done so far—the psychological states of imagining that p versus believing that in-the-story p, when it comes to cognition of fiction and other forms of narrative. Positing both in the minds of a story’s audience helps explain the full range of reactions characteristic of story consumption. This distinction also has interesting conceptual and explanatory dimensions that haven’t been carefully observed, and the two mental state types make distinct contributions to generating emotional responses to stories. Finally, the differences between the mental states illuminate how a given story can be both shared with others and at the same time experienced as personal

    Social daydreaming and adjustment: an experience-sampling study of socio-emotional adaptation during a life transition

    Get PDF
    Estimates suggest that up to half of waking life is spent daydreaming; that is, engaged in thought that is independent of, and unrelated to, one’s current task. Emerging research indicates that daydreams are predominately social suggesting that daydreams may serve socio-emotional functions. Here we explore the functional role of social daydreaming for socio-emotional adjustment during an important and stressful life transition (the transition to university) using experience-sampling with 103 participants over 28 days. Over time, social daydreams increased in their positive characteristics and positive emotional outcomes; specifically, participants reported that their daydreams made them feel more socially connected and less lonely, and that the content of their daydreams became less fanciful and involved higher quality relationships. These characteristics then predicted less loneliness at the end of the study, which, in turn was associated with greater social adaptation to university. Feelings of connection resulting from social daydreams were also associated with less emotional inertia in participants who reported being less socially adapted to university. Findings indicate that social daydreaming is functional for promoting socio-emotional adjustment to an important life event. We highlight the need to consider the social content of stimulus-independent cognitions, their characteristics, and patterns of change, to specify how social thoughts enable socio-emotional adaptation

    Analysis of the multidimensionality of hallucination-like experiences in clinical and nonclinical Spanish samples and their relation to clinical symptoms: Implications for the model of continuity

    Get PDF
    Numerous studies have found that hallucinatory experiences occur in the general population. But to date, few studies have been conducted to compare clinical and nonclinical groups across a broad array of clinical symptoms that may co-occur with hallucinations. Likewise, hallucination-like experiences are measured as a multidimensional construct, with clinical and subclinical components related to vivid daydreams, intrusive thoughts, perceptual disturbance, and clinical hallucinatory experiences. Nevertheless, these individual subcomponents have not been examined across a broad spectrum of clinically disordered and nonclinical groups. The goal of the present study was to analyze the differences and similarities in the distribution of responses to hallucination-like experience in clinical and nonclinical populations and to determine the relation of these hallucination-like experiences with various clinical symptoms. These groups included patients with schizophrenia, non-psychotic clinically disordered patients, and a group of individuals with no psychiatric diagnoses. The results revealed that hallucination-like experiences are related to various clinical symptoms across diverse groups of individuals. Regression analysis found that the Psychoticism dimension of the Symptom Check List (SCL-90-R) was the most important predictor of hallucination-like experiences. Additionally, increased auditory and visual hallucination was the only subcomponent that differentiated schizophrenic patients from other groups. This distribution of responses in the dimensions of hallucination-like experiences suggests that not all the dimensions are characteristic of people hearing voices. Vivid daydreams, intrusive thoughts, and auditory distortions and visual perceptual distortions may represent a state of general vulnerability that does not denote a specific risk for clinical hallucinations. Overall, these results support the notion that hallucination-like experiences are closer to a quasi-continuum approach and that total scores on these scales explain a state of vulnerability to general perceptual disturbance

    Where do our lonely minds wander? : Social mind-wandering in isolation

    Get PDF
    We experience ebbs and flows in our social environment, sometimes willingly and sometimes grudgingly. An interesting dimension of our social experience is our tendency to include other people in our spontaneous thoughts. Mind-wandering has been linked to well-being, but how changes in social environment affect social self-generated thoughts, and the role of individual well-being factors is still poorly understood. This study aimed to explore this. 136 MW reports from 18 participants were scored and analyzed in Study 1 during an isolation retreat before COVID-19 and another 177 from 43 self-isolated participants in Study 2 during COVID-19. Social content of the reports was scored by two independent raters. Need to belong, depression, and social loneliness were used as well-being predictors and the number of overall social interactions and the occurrence of familiar characters as independent variables in multiple regression models. Results from Study 1 suggested that participants reported accounting fewer familiar characters during isolation, but the overall social simulation rate wasn’t affected by it. People feeling lonelier reported both fewer familiar characters and overall social simulations than less lonely participants. Interestingly, more depressed participants reported more familiar characters in reports. Regression models in Study 2 showed that higher depression scores predicted more social simulation and more familiar characters in mind-wandering during COVID-19 self-isolation. These results indicate that inner loneliness might predict social thoughts more than objective seclusion and that depression might have an interesting effect on our inner social experience

    Imagining Others: Social daydreaming and the regulation of socio-emotional well-being

    Get PDF

    Tibetan Songs For solo piano Ian Percy (2004/16)

    Get PDF
    This collection of four short movements (songs without words) for solo piano was inspired by Tibetan Buddhist teachings, prayers and daily offerings. The first two movements were edited and rescored in March 2016. The second movement was recomposed (again) during April – June 2016, when the third and fourth movements (songs) were added. Each of the movements is approximately three minutes in length. I. If only we had more time … This movement was originally composed in 2008 as a sketch for a passage of harmony within the orchestral score for An Acoustic Mandala for the Fourteenth. The music was revised slightly and part re-notated in 2010 (and again in 2016). It is a melancholy reflection upon ‘the passing of time’ in a contemporary campanella style, but with occasional (subdued) rays of optimism, regret and aggression. II. Should we just accept things the way they are? First sketches for this movement date back to 2004. The piece went through a variety of forms and instrumentation until it was finally reduced to a piano arrangement, revised and recomposed in reference to its new title and place within this collection in 2010. Revisions kept as much of the original material as possible, but rhythms, notation, pacing and tempo were all radically adjusted to fit the narrative implied by the new title. The movement was further recomposed (twice) during 2016. III. Recollections and Reminiscences (faces and places from home) Composed around fragments and sketches salvaged from Melancholy Daydreams (2004), which has since been withdrawn. The original material for this movement was radically rearranged, reconceived and expanded during 2016, but the music still retains influential elements of the raw dissonant harmony and more emotionally energetic style of earlier compositions from the composer. IV. Regardless of the Past, We Must Look to the Present … This reflective and poignant final movement was also composed around fragments salvaged from Melancholy Daydreams (2004). The rhythmic textures make reference to the ticking of chronometric time and the cycle of daily life. The persistent continuity of linear time and its relationship to the non-linear way we store and recall personal memories of that ‘passing time’ is a consistent theme within the narrative of this collection, influencing the form and character of the music throughout. Concert pianist Lauryna Sableviciute premiered the first and third movements of Tibetan Songs at a public recital in The Grace Room, Liverpool Hope University in May 2017
    corecore