Fear in the theater of the mind: Mental imagery of conditioned stimuli undergo the acquisition and generalization of differential fear conditioning

Many symptoms of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder are elicited by mental imagery of a conditioned stimulus (CS). Yet, little is known about how visual imagery of CSs interacts with the acquisition of differential fear conditioning. Across three experiments (n1=33, n2=27, n3=26), we observed that healthy human participants acquired differential fear conditioning to both viewed and imagined percepts serving as the conditioned stimuli as measured via self-reported fear and the skin conductance response (SCR). Additionally, this differential conditioning generalized across CS percept modalities, such that differential conditioning acquired to visual percepts generalized to the corresponding imagined percepts and vice versa. This is novel evidence that perceived and imagined stimuli engage learning processes in very similar ways and is consistent with theory that mental imagery is depictive and recruits neural resources shared with visual perception. Our findings also provide new insight into the mechanisms of anxiety and related disorders.

“The Theater of the Mind”: The Effect of Radio Exposure on TV Advertising

Contemporary society requires communication strategies that integrate different media channels in order to improve advertising performance. Currently, there are not many scientific research studies of the various mass media, comparing the results of audiovisual advertising to purely audio or visual messages aimed at detecting the best combination of media, especially from a neurophysiological perspective. This study aims to investigate the effects of previous exposure to an advertisement via radio on the consumers’ response to the same advertisement shown on television (TV) or as a banner on a website. A total of seventy participants in a between-subjects experiment watched several television commercials during the advertising break of a documentary or saw some banners during a web surfing task. Half were first exposed to the same advertisements via radio. The results have shown that participants who previously listened to the radio advertisements spent a longer time looking at the brand and had a higher engagement when watching the same advertisements on television. Moreover, they had a different kind of visual attention to the website banners. This pattern of results indicates the effect of mere exposure—that is, the exposure to a radio advertisement enhances the effectiveness of the same advertisement via television or web, offering useful insights for media planning campaigns. Even if mere exposure has been extensively studied, cross-media research is scarcely explored, whereas this study detected the effects of mere exposure in a cross-media communication strategy, showing that it can be measured through psychophysiological methods.

Travels with Jack

Nonprofit arts organization the ZBS Foundation began as a “media commune” in the early 1970s and continues to the present day: a period that spans dramatic changes in American radio culture and audio technology. The key creative figure at ZBS is the writer and producer Thomas Lopez, whose work serves as a case study in a “post-network” style of radio drama, one shaped by multitrack editing, field recording, and the ethos of the 1960s counterculture. The ZBS aesthetic comes into sharpest focus in the Jack Flanders adventure series, which demonstrates how ZBS adapted a “theater of the mind” approach to radio drama to create a “theater of the mind-body” that re-accentuated earlier conventions of the radio adventure serial for a countercultural audience. Lopez’s increasing use of field recordings to structure his narratives established a formal tension between the inner exploration of the hero’s psyche and an encounter with different cultures. I chart the development of this formal tension in ZBS’s theater of the mind-body and argue that Lopez’s work with ZBS is a bridge across multiple eras of radio, an archive of enduring characters and distinctive styles of storytelling, and a sonic laboratory for the fostering of cultural dialogue through sound.

The mind beyond the head: Two arguments in favour of embedded cognition

In this paper I defend situated approaches of cognition, and the idea that mind, body and external world are inseparable. In the first section, I present some anti-Cartesian approaches of cognition and discuss the intuition they share that there is a constitutive interaction between mind, body and external environment. In the second section, I present the fallacy of the Cartesian theater of the mind and explain its theoretical premises. In the third section, I present a spatial argument against it, and argue that some case studies could give support to the idea of the mind stretching over the boundaries of the skull. In the fourth section, I present a temporal argument, and argue that even in this case the idea of an interaction between our cognitive life and the external world has at least a very strong intuitive palatability.

Detour

This chapter argues that rear-screen projection in Edgar Ulmer's Detour (1945) is just as critical to the film's audiovisual economy as voiceover and flashback. Not unlike the radiophonic “theater of the mind” projected by the 1940s noir sound track, rear-screen projection acts as a secondary screen for the protagonist's psyche. In Detour, this oneiric screen, in addition to mobilizing two of the dominant affective modalities of classic noir—claustrophobia and phantasmagoria—operates as a temporal signpost. The result is that even as Al Roberts (Tom Neal), driven by the romance of the open road, strikes out for California, the back-screen projection is a constant reminder that the past can rear up at any moment and dash his dreams.