Counterintuitive Demons: Pazuzu and Lamaštu in Iconography, Text, and Cognition

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-110
Author(s):  
Brett Maiden
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Mental Images ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Technical Sense ◽  
High Degree

Abstract This paper examines the demons Pazuzu and Lamaštu from a cognitive science perspective. As hybrid creatures, the iconography of these demons combines an array of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic properties, and is therefore marked by a high degree of conceptual complexity. In a technical sense, they are what cognitive researchers refer to as radically “counterintuitive” representations. However, highly complex religious concepts are difficult in terms of cognitive processing, memory, and transmission, and, as a result, are prone to being spontaneously simplified in structure. Accordingly, there is reason to expect that the material images of Pazuzu and Lamaštu differed from the corresponding mental images of these demons. Specifically, it is argued here that in ancient cognition and memory, the demons would have been represented in a more cognitively optimal manner. This hypothesis is further supported by a detailed consideration of the full repertoire of iconographic and textual sources.

Keys to Effective Communication in All Circumstances

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
Kirsten J. Broadfoot ◽  
Todd A. Guth
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Clinical Decision Making ◽  
Situational Awareness ◽  
Clinical Decision ◽  
Patient Needs ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Communication Practices ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Patient Stories ◽  
Over Time

Emergency departments (EDs), with their high degree of interruption, evolving and often incoherent patient stories, and multiple patient needs, strain practitioner cognitive processing over time, forcing a reliance on default communication approaches and pattern recognition. This shift to scripted, routinized, and default approaches to interaction in the ED reduces situational awareness, impacting providers’ ability to respond appropriately to the person and story in front of them and their clinical decision making. However, being able to rapidly and effectively adapt to circumstances is essential for high-functioning providers in emergency department settings. Although solid, learned fundamental communication checklists can suffice in straightforward, low-stakes, or routine individual and team encounters, complicated, high-stakes, or unusual circumstances or situations require effective communicators to move beyond habituated communication practices to those that enable providers to appropriately interpret and adapt to circumstances while respecting self, others, and context.

scholarly journals Electronic Health Record's Effects on the Outpatient Office Visit and Clinical Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie B Sandoval ◽  
Mary Val Palumbo ◽  
Vicki Hart
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Clinical Education ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Office Visit ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Prior Literature ◽  
Electronic Health ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Positive Effect

Background: During an office visit, the provider has the important cognitive task of attending to the patient while actively using the electronic health record (EHR).  Prior literature suggests that EHR may have a positive effect on simple tasks, but a negative effect on tasks that require complex cognitive processes.  No study has examined the provider’s perception of EHR on multiple distinct aspects of the office visit.Methods: We surveyed providers/preceptors regarding their perception of EHR on multiple aspects of the office visit.  We summarized their EHR utilization history and their perceptions of the EHR during the visit using descriptive statistics.  We tested for associations between time spent using the EHR and distinct aspects of the visit using Chi-square tests of association.Results: In total, 83 providers/preceptors reported use of EHR (response rate 52%). Provider/preceptors reported an overall negative effect of EHR on the patient-provider connection, but an overall positive effect on the review of medications/medical records, communication between providers, review of results with patients and review of follow-up to testing results with patients. The effect of EHR on history taking and teaching students was neutral.  We observed no correlation between the provider’s time spent using the EHR and their perception of its effectiveness.Conclusions:  Providers reported a positive perception of EHR on aspects of the office visit that involved a single cognitive task.  However, providers reported a negative perception of EHR on patient-provider connection, which involves a high degree of cognitive processing.

scholarly journals Folk psychology, eliminativism, and the present state of connectionism

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-196
Author(s):  
Vanja Subotic
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Distributed Processing ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Connectionist Models ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Long Short Term Memory

Three decades ago, William Ramsey, Steven Stich & Joseph Garon put forward an argument in favor of the following conditional: if connectionist models that implement parallelly distributed processing represent faithfully human cognitive processing, eliminativism about propositional attitudes is true. The corollary of their argument (if it proves to be sound) is that there is no place for folk psychology in contemporary cognitive science. This understanding of connectionism as a hypothesis about cognitive architecture compatible with eliminativism is also endorsed by Paul Churchland, a radical opponent of folk psychology and a prominent supporter of eliminative materialism. I aim to examine whether current connectionist models based on long-short term memory (LSTM) neural networks can back up these arguments in favor of eliminativism. Nonetheless, I will rather put my faith in the eliminativism of the limited domain. This position amount to the following claim: even though that connectionist cognitive science has no need whatsoever for folk psychology qua theory, this does not entail illegitimacy of folk psychology per se in other scientific domains, most notably in humanities, but only if one sees folk psychology as mere heuristics.

Epistemic Intuition and Experimental Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 254-266
Author(s):  
Michael Bergmann
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Radical Skepticism ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
High Degree

This chapter considers the skeptical objection to epistemic intuition that is based on experimental philosophy, which aims to use the methods of cognitive science to conduct experimental investigations of the psychological processes underlying people’s intuitions about central philosophical issues. Section 1 carefully lays out this objection, identifying the crucial premises on which it relies. Section 2 considers how strong this objection needs to be if it is to be successful, arguing that stronger objections are needed if the beliefs the objections are intended to undermine are rationally held with a high degree of confidence (as appears to be the case with the beliefs based on epistemic intuition that are targeted by this objection). Section 3 examines the objection from experimental philosophy in detail, noting that each of its crucial premises faces serious challenges, with the result that it is not strong enough to undermine the intuitionist particularist anti-skeptic’s reliance on epistemic intuitions. Section 4 draws together the various argumentative strands in the book and situates the book’s conclusions in a moderate commonsense tradition that avoids the extremes of both dogmatism and radical skepticism.

scholarly journals Listening Effort Informed Quality of Experience Evaluation

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pheobe Wenyi Sun ◽  
Andrew Hines
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Quality Of Experience ◽  
Perceived Quality ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
General Definition ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
The Impact

Perceived quality of experience for speech listening is influenced by cognitive processing and can affect a listener's comprehension, engagement and responsiveness. Quality of Experience (QoE) is a paradigm used within the media technology community to assess media quality by linking quantifiable media parameters to perceived quality. The established QoE framework provides a general definition of QoE, categories of possible quality influencing factors, and an identified QoE formation pathway. These assist researchers to implement experiments and to evaluate perceived quality for any applications. The QoE formation pathways in the current framework do not attempt to capture cognitive effort effects and the standard experimental assessments of QoE minimize the influence from cognitive processes. The impact of cognitive processes and how they can be captured within the QoE framework have not been systematically studied by the QoE research community. This article reviews research from the fields of audiology and cognitive science regarding how cognitive processes influence the quality of listening experience. The cognitive listening mechanism theories are compared with the QoE formation mechanism in terms of the quality contributing factors, experience formation pathways, and measures for experience. The review prompts a proposal to integrate mechanisms from audiology and cognitive science into the existing QoE framework in order to properly account for cognitive load in speech listening. The article concludes with a discussion regarding how an extended framework could facilitate measurement of QoE in broader and more realistic application scenarios where cognitive effort is a material consideration.

Methodological Consilience of Evolutionary Ethics and Cognitive Science of Religion

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 144-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juraj Franek
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Evolutionary Ethics ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
High Degree

For the larger part of modern western intellectual history, it has been assumed that the study of morality and religion requires special methodology, insulated from, and in some important aspects incongruent with, the scientific method commonly used in the realm of natural sciences. Furthermore, even if it would be granted that moral and religious behavior is amendable to scientific analysis, the prospects of using evolutionary theory in particular to do the heavy lifting in explanation of these phenomena have been bleak, since many scholars doubted that a biological theory could possibly offer any valuable contribution. Recent advances in the fields of Evolutionary Ethics and Cognitive Science of Religion disprove both claims, emphasizing empirically founded explanations, demonstrating extraordinarily high degree of methodological consilience, and revealing utmost importance of the application of evolutionary theory in fields of study once deemed to be exclusive domains of social sciences and philosophy.

Narrative metaphor: Integrating insights in cognitive science into a toolset for intentionally shaping vocational pursuits

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Roth
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Abstract Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
Social And Physical Environment ◽  
Conscious Processes

Divining meaning in the world around us and integrating that into the stories we tell about who we are and what motivates us is essential to both our cognitive processing and overall well-being. At the same time, our conscious processes are dependent on inputs from our social and physical environment for the raw materials needed to develop abstract thought through metaphor. The overlap between these two concepts is the narrative metaphor, and its power to shape the development of both our self-concept and intuition demands pedagogical attention. This article lays out the roots of a theory of the narrative metaphor, and provides examples of possible integrations in the classroom.

The Mirror in-between Picture and Mind

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Sonesson
Keyword(s):  
Positive Result ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Empirical Approach ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Description ◽  
Mental Images ◽  
Research Traditions

AbstractThe claim of cognitive semiotics to offer something new to semiotics rests on the ambition to bring together the research traditions of semiotics and cognitive science. Our focus has been on using the empirical approach of cognitive science in investigating semiotic issues. At the same time, however, phenomenological description plays a major part in preparing the studies and integrating their results, which is what is offered here. Eco has claimed that the mirror is not a sign, but once the notion of sign is specified, the mirror image is seen to be a perfect instance of it. It is no accident that the Gallup test, which is supposed to demonstrate the emergence of the self, starts having a positive result concurrently with the picture understanding. In contrast, mental images are not images and thus not signs. They are presentifications, i.e., a means for making something present, in the sense characterized by Husserl, and by such followers as Marbach and Thompson. We however argue that Husserl’s model of picture consciousness is incomplete, and that Thompson’s study of mental images lacks clarity because of the absence of any real comparison to pictures.

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