Cognitive Science of Tourism Experiences

While other disciplinary approaches such as sociology and anthropology are important, this chapter introduces a cognitivist psychology approach to experience research. Such theoretical discussion may seem of little practical use, but the chapter argues that it is fundamental to understanding how and why experiences are created. The chapter applies theory and concepts from cognitive science (cognitive psychology and neuroscience) in the study of tourism experiences. This provides a different psychological paradigm to the behavioural approach currently in use in much research. The chapter describes the scope of cognitive psychology and neuroscience, its main concepts of cognitive psychology (perception, attention, emotion, memory, consciousness, learning), and their neuronal basis (neuroscience). These concepts are then applied in three topic areas related to tourism experiences: decision making, emotion, and attention. Several applications to tourism experience research are noted. Finally, the chapter discusses the way cognitive psychology concepts can be used in tourism research.

A Review on Emotion-Enhanced Recognition Memory: Response Bias and Context Caused by Emotional Stimuli

The current study aims to present the main lines of the topic by compiling the literature on the effect of emotion on recognition memory and address some considerations for future studies by highlighting the attention-grabbing points related to emotion-memory interaction. A growing body of literature has demonstrated that emotional stimuli are better remembered than their neutral equivalents. Based on these common findings, research in the relevant literature is reviewed in detail regarding various approaches that define and explain emotion; and the effect of emotional dimensions, which are defined within the framework of different approaches, on recognition memory is mentioned. Empirical studies are also reviewed by including the findings on the response biases that emotion might cause. On the other hand, the factor affecting memory performance is not solely due to emotional stimuli' dimensions. Instead, memory performance might be positively affected by the context of emotional stimuli. Additionally, how emotional memory is studied in a controlled laboratory setting is discussed. Within this context, emotional databases developed to investigate emotion-memory interaction and databases designed for research to be carried out in Turkey are discussed. To sum up, within the scope of the current review, it is concluded that future studies on emotion and recognition memory interaction should take response bias caused by emotion, emotional context, and type of emotional stimuli into account to reach more consistent results. Keywords: Emotion, recognition memory, response bias, context, databases

Glutamate as a Stressoric Factor for the Ex Vivo Release of Catecholamines from the Rabbit Medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC)

One of the major roles of glutamic acid (Glu) is to serve as an excitatory neurotransmitter within the central nervous system (CNS). This amino acid influences the activity of several brain areas, including the thalamus, brainstem, spinal cord, basal ganglia, and pons. Catecholamines (CAs) are synthesized in the brain and adrenal medulla and by some sympathetic nerve fibers. CAs, including dopamine (DA), norepinephrine (NE), and epinephrine (E), are the principal neurotransmitters that mediate a variety of CNS functions, such as motor control, cognition, emotion, memory processing, pain, stress, and endocrine modulation. This study aims to investigate the effects of the application of various Glu concentrates (5, 50, and 200 µM) on CAs release from rabbit medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) slices and compare any resulting correlations with CAs released from the hypothalamus during 90 min of incubation. Medial prefrontal cortex samples were dissected from decapitated, twelve-week-old female rabbits. The results demonstrated that Glu differentially influences the direct release of CAs from the mPFC and the indirect release of CAs from the hypothalamus. When under stress, the hypothalamus, a central brain structure of the HPA axis, induces and adapts such processes. Generally, there was an inhibitory effect of Glu on CAs release from mPFC slices. Our findings show that the effect arises from Glu’s action on higher-order motivational structures, which may indicate its contribution to the stress response by modulating the amount of CAs released.

Athlete of Emotion - Examining the Perdekamp Emotional Method

<p>The Perdekamp Emotional Method (PEM) is an emerging psychophysiological acting system that claims to allow actors ‘safe, reliable and repeatable access’ to emotion, with no recourse to their own psychology, imagination or personal experience. Developed in Germany over the last thirty years, the process regards the emotions as innate, biological movement patterns, hard-coded in human beings, that can be invoked consciously through a specific combination of physiological triggers. In light of recent international studies that point to significant psychological unwellness throughout the acting profession, there is an ethical imperative for drama schools to investigate such techniques, and evaluate their legitimacy against more commonly utilised approaches to achieving believable emotion, such as the Emotion Memory techniques of Konstantin Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg, which have courted criticism for being both inefficient and, at worst, harmful. While Austrian research has been carried out to establish the scientific legitimacy of PEM, nothing has been written about it in English, and it is only just beginning to be introduced to performance training institutions around the world. This thesis investigates PEM's claims in order to contribute critically to the depth and understanding of this system, and to evaluate the potential value of introducing PEM into the conservatoire model of a tertiary Drama School, using practical experiments and teaching observations at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School as a case study. Its research results are evaluated through a combination of a historical review of acting approaches to producing emotion, interviews with PEM creator Stephen Perdekamp and Master Instructor Sarah Victoria about the pedagogy of PEM and its theoretical underpinnings (and evaluating this against current neuroscience theories concerning emotion), observations of and interviews with students learning PEM through workshop instruction, and practical experiments of applying PEM to screen work with student performers through a period from March 2017 to November 2018.</p>

Athlete of Emotion - Examining the Perdekamp Emotional Method

<p>The Perdekamp Emotional Method (PEM) is an emerging psychophysiological acting system that claims to allow actors ‘safe, reliable and repeatable access’ to emotion, with no recourse to their own psychology, imagination or personal experience. Developed in Germany over the last thirty years, the process regards the emotions as innate, biological movement patterns, hard-coded in human beings, that can be invoked consciously through a specific combination of physiological triggers. In light of recent international studies that point to significant psychological unwellness throughout the acting profession, there is an ethical imperative for drama schools to investigate such techniques, and evaluate their legitimacy against more commonly utilised approaches to achieving believable emotion, such as the Emotion Memory techniques of Konstantin Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg, which have courted criticism for being both inefficient and, at worst, harmful. While Austrian research has been carried out to establish the scientific legitimacy of PEM, nothing has been written about it in English, and it is only just beginning to be introduced to performance training institutions around the world. This thesis investigates PEM's claims in order to contribute critically to the depth and understanding of this system, and to evaluate the potential value of introducing PEM into the conservatoire model of a tertiary Drama School, using practical experiments and teaching observations at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School as a case study. Its research results are evaluated through a combination of a historical review of acting approaches to producing emotion, interviews with PEM creator Stephen Perdekamp and Master Instructor Sarah Victoria about the pedagogy of PEM and its theoretical underpinnings (and evaluating this against current neuroscience theories concerning emotion), observations of and interviews with students learning PEM through workshop instruction, and practical experiments of applying PEM to screen work with student performers through a period from March 2017 to November 2018.</p>

Elderly Psychological Conditions in the Nursing Home Tresna Werdha (Pstw): A Study Descriptive Riau and West Sumatra Indonesia

The aspects of emotion, memory, motivation and independence are psychological conditions that are often experienced by the elderly who live in nursing homes. experienced by the elderly who are in the nursing home environment. This study aims to describe the psychological condition of the elderly in the Husnul Khotimah Pekanbaru social home for 35 elderly and 45 elderly Sabai Nan Aluih Pariaman nursing home. This research is a descriptive survey. The research subjects were 80 elderly who were taken with the total sampling technique. Data were collected using questionnaire sheets and descriptive analysis, this study shows that the psychological condition of the elderly which includes emotional aspects of the nursing home in the second category of the Husnul Khotimah nursing home is (69%) and the Sabai Nan Aluih nursing home is 73%.(80%) in the Husnul Khotimah nursing home and 69% in the good category in the Sabai Nan Aluih nursing home. Motivational aspectat both nursing homes is in the moderate category (51%) The independence aspect is in the good category (80%) in the Husnul Khotimah nursing home while the sufficient category is 67% in the Sabai Nan Aluih nursing home. Broadly speaking, the aspects of emotion, memory, motivation are good categories, category motivation is sufficient and the category independence is good at the Husnul Khotimah nursing home and sufficient at the Sabai Nan Aluih nursing home.

Emotion, Memory, Meaning, Directions: A Response to Kirsten Marie Hartvigsen and Thomas J. Kraus

This response article reviews the contributions of Kirsten Marie Hartvigsen and Thomas Kraus to this special issue, and uses them as the basis for a discussion of some theoretical and methodological issues relevant to cognitive narratology and cognitive literary studies more broadly. Without offering substantial answers itself, the response poses questions concerning (i) the compatibility of different scientific frameworks used in cognitive models of characterization, particularly in the light of currently dominant ‘4ea’ models of cognition (there is a particular focus on the relationship between affective and (other) cognitive aspects of reader response, and on the role of memory); and (ii) the adaptability of cognitive models to dealing with “synthetic” and “thematic” (as opposed to “mimetic”) aspects of literary character. A brief conclusion argues for two-way traffic between the cognitive sciences and literary criticism.

Modulation of the renin-angiotensin system inhibits memory advantage for negative emotional material via decreasing hippocampus activation and its coupling with the amygdala

Exaggerated arousal and dysregulated emotion-memory interactions are key pathological dysregulations that accompany the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Current treatments for PTSD are of moderate efficacy and preventing the dysregulations already during exposure to threatening events may attenuate the development of PTSD-symptomatology. The present proof-of-concept study examined the potential of a single dose of the angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT1R) antagonist losartan (LT) to attenuate the mnemonic advantage of threatening stimuli and the underlying neural mechanism. In a preregistered double-blind, between-subject, placebo-controlled pharmaco-fMRI study we combined an emotional subsequent memory paradigm with LT (n=29) or placebo treatment (n=30) and a surprise memory test after 24h washout. LT generally improved memory performance and abolished emotional memory enhancement for negative yet not positive material while emotional experience during encoding remained intact. LT further suppressed the hippocampus activity during encoding of subsequently remembered negative stimuli and abolished the positive association between higher activity in this region and subsequent better memory for negative material observed under placebo. On the network level LT reduced coupling between the hippocampus and the basolateral amygdala during successful encoding of negative stimuli. Overall, our findings suggest that LT has the potential to selectively attenuate memory formation for negative yet not positive information by decreasing hippocampus activity and its functional coupling strength with the left amygdala. These findings suggest a promising potential of LT to prevent preferential encoding and remembering of negative events, a mechanism that could prevent the emotion-memory dysregulations underlying the development of PTSD-symptomatology.