9th Herbstakademie
SELF-ORGANIZATION OF COGNITION AND APPLICATIONS TO PSYCHOLOGY
Ascona / Monte Verità, October 25th - 28th, 2000
Attention effects on bimanual coordination dynamics
«We were interested in how the focalization of attention modifies the stability of preferred bimanual coordination patterns and how much it costs for the CNS to maintain and to stabilize in-phase and anti-phase patterns». (from the abstract)
Perceptual coding in bimanual circling
«There is a tendency to go from anti-phase into symmetry».
The role of synchronization in perception-action
«Results suggest that synchronization obtained with MVAR modeling indicates the co-activation of brain areas». (from the abstract)
Non-linear event related potential correlates of cognitive perceptual processes
«Among the non-linear algorithms the time-dependent dimensional ones appear to be the most sensitive discriminators». (from the abstract)
SIRN (Synergetic Inter-Representation Networks), or what can cognitive mapping reveal about the mind
«These doubts concern a central assumption implicit in cognitive science: that the process of cognition is confined to the brain (skull), with the implication that all forms of external representations, be they mimetic, lexical, or the production of stand-alone material tools, are artifacts and as such not part of the very process of cognition.” (from the abstract)
Perceiving changes and the ‘emergence of events’: Self-organizational aspects during self-monitoring of well-being indicators and stress in the natural setting
«Data suggest also that there are individual thresholds and non-linear characteristics of perceived state variables linked with perception and recording of events as ‘emergent’ units of experience, which could be interpreted as self-organizational terms». (from the abstract)
Self-organization and the agenda of psychology
«Then we are impressed by examples of complex systems in which, say, convection rolls rise out of the blue».
Socio-cultural memory and self-organization
«We asked: well, if cultural memory cannot be derived from natural memory, where does it come from?»
Emotion and cognition in therapy-induced order transition
«I think there are lots of therapy methods and techniques that we learn in different therapy schools and approaches which could be functionally equivalent to the essentials of a few, perhaps 8, general principles derived from a synergetic theory of human change processes».
Dynamic systems theory: applications to pedagogy
«Dynamic Systems Theory offers a unifying theoretical framework to explain the wider context in which learning takes place and the processes involved in individual learning». (from the abstract)
An affordance field for guiding movement and cognition
«The coke bottle was not an optimal fit».
The relationship between cognition and valences
«I like the term valence because it was used by Lewin who initially called this ‘Aufforderungscharakter’, later translated into ‘valence’. I also like the term affordance».
The dynamics of imagined action
«Don't use representations in explanation and modeling unless you really have to».
Constructivist models of cognitive development
«Recently there has been mounting evidence that the cortex develops in an activity-dependent, constructivist way by constructing connections between neurons based on experience.» (from the abstract)
A synergetic approach to describe the stability and variability of motor behavior
«The problem of stability and variability of movement cannot be satisfactorily solved by means of a linear method. We therefore used a synergetic approach to describe human movement coordination. On this base we developed a complex model of movement coordination». (from the abstract)