cognition/emotion

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Sat Feb 10 2001 - 16:12:27 PST


Yesterday I got to hear/see at least part of a presentation by Chuck
Goodwin who was one of the editors of the issue of MCA in which Aug
Nishizaka's article on perception, emotion, and activity appears.

One very interesting part of the talk -- and Chuck's work in general--
is that he includes visual representations of the sound contours of
the talk along with the words, sequences, semiotic resources, etc.

Having this kind of representation is something I miss in my own work
and I think it would provide additional resources for Nishizaka's
discussion of emotion/seeing/doing on p. 114 ff of the article. The
emotional expression in this case is "Aaaaa" which Nishizaka provides
supplementary info on concerning timing, level, and dynamics VERBALLY.
Crucial to his argument (which I find convincing) is the centrality
of the sound contours of the talk which are simply very difficult to
render in print: Chucks visual representations were more precise in
making sensible the relations under discussion. (Another emotion dicsussed
was surprise, but with less attention to its manifestations).

I have been in the same boat as Nishizaka and now I am again, reluctantly,
motivated to go back and look at some tapes and think about how, with
current technology, I could do a better job of capturing the cognition/
emotion dynamic. In *Cultural Psychology*, for example (p. 316) I describe
a child/student pair working through a problem on the number line. Cognition
and emotion are clearly interconnected, but look how impovrished my
representation of the interconnections are:

 the number line was from 0 to 50 and that 16 would be too far to the left. "OK," he said, "25, no 29 and (for the distance) -70". He shot the harpoon and it was a little off line. He analyzed it without my help. "Oh, its perfect(referring to the distance)... Ooops just a little to the right. It has to be 26!!" He had harpooned the shark and we were now on level six. "I'm on level six," he screamed as he examined the task card, "Sheesh!".

All i have is exclamation points and words indexing volume like "screamed" to
work with.

What do others have to say on this issue?
mike



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