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Abstract
The aim of this article is to show that the framework of the dynamic psychology created by Kurt Lewin-although it is 70 years old-can be-mutatis mutandis - a very good basis for modern holistic theory of cognition and behavior. An essential new feature in that "neo-lewinian" theoretical framework - named here Discrete Process Model (DPM) - is the definition of psychic force: it is treated as the probability of a trial from a cognitive state to another. Thus, the strength of the force has an exact measure: that probability. The cognitive course of events is a stochastic process controlled by those probabilities. - Lewin's brilliant idea to assume certain valence fields which produce psychic forces is made mathematically more exact in DPM. - The model makes possible to derive estimates for the probability distributions of the behavior alternatives - differently from the Lewinian theory which is deterministic.
... Geometric/dynamical ideas related to mental models may be found in many fields. Lewin's ideas inspired decision field theory (Busemeyer & Townsend, 1993) and Discrete Process Model (DPM) theory (Rainio, 2009). In DPM psychic forces are defined as the probability of transition from one cognitive state in valence field to another. ...
... I have formulated definition of mental forces (Duch, 1996; similar to the Discrete Process Model of Rainio (2009), pointing out that such forces should be measured by the probability of transitions between brain states in neurodynamics. We can measure brain activity using many techniques, such as EEG, MEG, NIRS, PET, fMRI and other approaches. ...
Understanding mind-brain-environment relations is one of the key topics in psychology. Kurt Lewin, inspired by theoretical physics, tried to establish topological and vector psychology analyzing patterns of interaction between the individual and her/his environment. The time is ripe to reformulate his ambitious goals, searching for ways to interpret objectively measured brain processes in terms of suitable psychological constructs. Connecting cognitive and social psychology constructs to neurophenomics, as it is done now in psychiatry, should ground them in physical reality.
... Other theorists use terms to describe the space of emotion that are not immediately familiar to participants. These include the terms "valence" to describe the positive and negative aspects of emotional affect, and "arousal" to describe its intensity [3]. ...
Natural emotional experiences happen "in the wild" as people are mobile, living their daily lives. To capture these experiences, emotion researchers often give participants smartphone applications with various graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to record how they are feeling, however, there exist few empirical tests that assess the comparative benefits and drawbacks of different GUI designs. This paper presents two empirical evaluations of three types of GUI designs for capturing emotion using both a 10 participant in-lab trial and a 100 participant AMT trial. We define GUI scoring metrics and report on participants' ability to rate real world scenarios and evocative images, respectively, in ways that are consistent with population norms and with respect their own emotion word choices. We additionally report on users preferences for different designs, their perceived ease of use and the average time taken to complete an assessment for the different designs.
... The application of DQM which is used in this article is called a discrete process model (DPM). There are some publications which describe it in detail (see, for example, Rainio 2008 Rainio , 2009a Rainio , and 2009b). ...
This article is interdisciplinary. It aims to show that we are able, on the basis of discrete quantum mechanics (DQM), to build mathematical models not only for quantum evolution processes but also for processes of mind systems and, particularly, for their interaction. Thus, the solution of the mind/brain problem that Eccles has proposed in his theory of exocytosis is treated by giving it a mathematical form. The key assumption is that quantum systems interact through vector interferences. Eccles' theory is enlarged and made more exact using a discrete quantum mechanical model for the perception. This is also applied to the gestalt structuring process; in particular, the process concerning the gestalt forming of certain reversible (ambiguous) figures is analyzed and the model compared to empirical data.
[English summary:] This book presents the Gestalt psychological approach to psychotherapy, Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy, in its basic concepts of practice and theory. The book brings together 32 contributions by renowned representatives of this approach from Austria, Germany and Italy: by Anna Arfelli Galli, Doris Beneder, Angelika Böhm, Thomas Fuchs, Giuseppe Galli, Rainer Kästl, Bernadette Lindorfer, Brigitte Lustig, Marianne Soff, Gerhard Stemberger, Katharina Sternek, Gerald Tomandl, Giancarlo Trombini, Eva Wagner-Lukesch, Dieter Zabransky, Wolfgang Zöller and Andrzej Zuczkowski. From the contents: praxeology of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy, characteristics of working with the living, understanding the therapeutic relationship, personality theory in action, critical realism - applied epistemology in psychotherapy, starting from the psychological situation of the client, field processes in psychotherapy, doing phenomenology, force field and power field analysis, Gestalt psychology of feelings, thinking and experimenting in psychotherapy, on the 100-year history of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy.
Zusammenfassung:
Das Buch stellt den gestaltpsychologischen Ansatz in der Psychotherapie, die Gestalttheoretische Psychotherapie, in seinen Grundkonzepten von Praxis und Theorie vor. Das Buch versammelt 32 Beiträge namhafter Vertreter dieses Ansatzes aus Österreich, Deutschland und Italien: Von Anna Arfelli Galli, Doris Beneder, Angelika Böhm, Thomas Fuchs, Giuseppe Galli, Rainer Kästl, Bernadette Lindorfer, Brigitte Lustig, Marianne Soff, Gerhard Stemberger, Katharina Sternek, Gerald Tomandl, Giancarlo Trombini, Eva Wagner-Lukesch, Dieter Zabransky, Wolfgang Zöller und Andrzej Zuczkowski.
Aus dem Inhalt: Praxeologie der Gestalttheoretischen Psychotherapie, Kennzeichen der Arbeit mit dem Lebendigen, Verständnis der therapeutischen Beziehung, Persönlichkeitstheorie in Aktion, Kritischer Realismus – angewandte Erkenntnistheorie in der Psychotherapie, Ausgehen von der psychologischen Situation der Klientin, Feldprozesse in der Psychotherapie, Phänomenologie treiben, Kraftfeld- und Machtfeldanalyse, Gestaltpsychologie der Gefühle, Denken und Experimentieren in der Psychotherapie, zur 100–jährigen Geschichte der Gestalttheoretischen Psychotherapie.
Many psychological theories understand that a person’s actions are psychologically mediated—that is, they are caused most proximally by how the person perceives their situation. Here, I discuss how functional field models can be used to represent the perceived situation as a path model detailing the forces a person understands as connecting actions, features of the environment, and their ultimate appraisal of the situation. I illustrate how specific situational factors can be represented as affecting a person’s actions by affecting these perceived forces, and thus their understanding of the action’s expected effects. I describe how verbal descriptions of the situation, or of their reasons for action, can be formally represented within field models. Finally, I describe how field models can be used to represent arguments about how traits relate to one another, such as how a person’s level of extraversion or callousness might affect the levels of many other traits. More generally, functional field models can help to represent how people actively construct their environment, and how we can better utilize people’s verbal descriptions of their own traits or their reasons for action.
Discussion of philosophical and theoretical issues that go beyond individual traditions and schools in the social sciences and humanities is hampered by the absence of generalizing terms that would be minimally loaded with metaphysical and ideological connotations. The concept of “behavior” understood in the context of its use in Kurt Lewin’s field theory, may be the most suitable to generalize such linguistic categories as “action”, “activity”, “interaction”, “behavior”, “practice”, “communication”. The goal of the study is to clarify the methodological prerequisites for the development of this concept by K. Levin, its meaning in the field theory, its relations to empirical observations, and the prospects for its use in modern theoretical models. “Behavior” in the field theory is analogical to “velocity” of classical physics and has the same conceptual dimension as the rate of change of position with respect to time, “position” meaning not only a person’s place in physical environment but psychophysiological state of the person as well. A person’s behavior is understood as function of the person’s states and psychologically significant properties of environment at a given time. This idea is used in several contemporary theoretical models of behavior and can be used to model cultural and social regulation of human behavior as well. In particular, a model was proposed for situational grammar of behavior and the associated method of analyzing fictional narratives, which allows one to identify human dispositions to different forms of behavior in various situations, including sacrifice and its acceptance, which is important for research in anthropology of sacrifice.
The objective of this article is to highlight the role of the spirit as an intangible component in the attractiveness, conviviality and success of public places. The comparative study, which covers two public places having the same typo-morphology and sharing the same geographical and sociocultural context, aims to measure the spirits of these two places. The study is based on a theoretical conceptualisation and quantitative analysis of data collected using a measurement tool having satisfactory psychometric qualities. The two main statistical techniques employed are the relative importance index (RII) and the T-test. The results of the study show that the valence Kurt Lewin was one of the first to use the word ‘valence’. This is in a way synonymous with the value of psychic force with a positive or negative polarity and a degree of high, low or neutral intensity (Rainio 2009).
of the spirit affects the attractiveness, the conviviality and the success of public places.
On the basis of K. Lewin's formula of behavior it is possible to formulate behavioral grammar of situations, i.e. to describe relations between typical human states, circumstances and patterns of behavior. But what are typical human states, and typical emotional states in particular? The goal of this research was to analyze the conceptual assumptions about existence of typical emotional states and to figure out what exactly can be considered them. Among different philosophical approaches to understand types, the semiotic account of types as social norms was chosen to be the methodological basis for comparative analysis of main contemporary theories of emotion: basic emotion theories, the semantic theory of emotional concepts, and the conceptual act theory. The conclusion was made that so called basic emotions cannot be considered as typical emotional states. Most typical emotional states must be culture-specific, however some of their components could be universal. In fiction, the typical states are described in repeating terms which make these descriptions recognizable. An individual token state belongs to a type when is similar to its prototypical examples. What particular emotional states are typical of a culture cannot be decided a priori, an empirical research is needed to answer the question.
As more is asked of simulations, especially in the area of reliable depiction of Human Behavior Modeling (HBR), the need to model at different (but related) levels of resolution will increase. Recent publications in the area of HBR have pointed out that to accurately consider such behaviors, several perspectives are required (perhaps simultaneously) - these include the behavior of an individual, the behavior of whatever organizations that individual belongs to, and the behavior of the whole society that the individual and his/her organizations belong to. This presents a challenge to modelers. A possible way forward of using a family of related Base Object Model (BOM) templates to depict similar models (separated by, in this case, the level of resolution). This paper shows how different resolution models may be related to each other, and how a family of related BOM templates may provide a solution to this challenge.
Mainstream cognitive neuroscience typically ignores the role of quantum physical effects in the neural processes underlying cogni¬tion and consciousness. However, many unsolved problems remain, suggesting the need to consider new approaches. We propose that quantum theory, especially through an ontological interpretation due to Bohm and Hiley, provides a fruitful framework for addressing the neural correlates of cognition and consciousness. In particular, the ontological interpretation suggests that a novel type of 'active information', connected with a novel type of 'quantum potential energy', plays a key role in quantum physical processes. After introducing the ontological interpretation we illustrate its value for cognitive neuroscience by discussing it in the light of a proposal by Beck and Eccles about how quantum tunneling could play a role in controlling the frequency of synaptic exocytosis. In this proposal, quantum tunneling would enable the 'self' to control its brain without violating the energy conservation law. We argue that the ontological interpretation provides a sharper picture of what actually could be taking place in quantum tunneling in general and in synaptic exocytosis in particular. Based on the notions of active information and quantum potential energy, we propose a coherent way of understanding how mental processes (understood as involving non-classical physical processes) can act on traditional, classically describable neural processes without violating the energy conservation law.
The nature and historical development of both stochastic and deterministic models for binary graphs are discussed. Here the focus of applications is sociological and emphasizes representations of networks of interpersonal relations as directed graphs. Models from the natural sciences and from the social sciences are examined and suggestions for future research are given.
Our current understanding of mental processes in health and disease is limited by the absence of a practical model describing the physiology of the mind as an informational system. The mind is described here as a physical system with four functional dimensions that can be interrelated mathematically on the basis of information theory. These variables describe the information processing activities of the mind, and include: a) a state function (g), which is the number of potential states that the system can occupy at a given time and relates to the complexity and activity of the brain; b) a power function (P), the number of state changes per unit time; c) time (t); and d) the relative entropy of the system (R), which describes the ordering of mental states in time. Using these variables, the evolution of states of mind can be described as a trajectory in a multidimensional phase space representing all possible mental states. Ego functions constrain the field of brain states within this space, thereby giving rise to the information content of consciousness and to the individual psyche. Functional mental disorders, as disorders of the psyche, are dysfunctions in the ordering processes that give rise to conscious information.