One critique of the life-events approach is that the theory puts too much emphasis on

Cognitive Theories

Cognitive theories emphasize the creative process and person: process, in emphasizing the role of cognitive mechanisms as a basis for creative thought; and person, in considering individual differences in such mechanisms. Some cognitive theories focus on universal capacities, like attention or memory; others emphasize individual differences, like those indexed by divergent thinking tasks; some focus on conscious operations; others, on preconscious, implicit, or unintentional processes.

One classic cognitive theory, by Sarnoff A. Mednick, argues that creative insights can result from associative processes in memory. In this view, ideas are chained together, one after another, and more remote associates tend to be more original. This perspective argues that more creative individuals tend to have flatter hierarchies of associations than less creative individuals; in other words, more creative people have many more relatively strong associates for a given concept, rather than only a few. This is thought to provide greater scope for the simultaneous activation of far-flung representations, which many believe to be an important engine of creative thought.

Along similar lines, another cognitive theory focuses on how concepts are combined to generate novelty. Research suggests that conceptual combination – bringing two different sets of information together – is often involved in creative ideation, that original insights are more likely when two disparate features are brought together, and that connections between these concepts might only be seen at a very high level of abstraction. This kind of thinking has been called metaphoric logical, the idea being that something like ‘angry weather’ is only comprehensible in a nonliteral fashion. Such processes may suggest creative alternatives to well-worn lines of thought.

More generally, research in the ‘creative cognition approach’ tradition, another important contemporary view of creativity developed mainly by Ronald A. Finke, Steven M. Smith, and Thomas B. Ward, has likewise emphasized ideas drawn from cognitive psychology (e.g., conceptual combination, conceptual expansion, creative imagery, and metaphor) to understand how individuals generate ideas and explore their implications in laboratory-based invention and design tasks. Such processes are thought to play out in two fundamental regimes of thought: generating ideas and exploring their implications. In practice, the two are strongly interleaved and combined in the ‘geneplore’ model of creative thought (from generate + explore).

Finally, metacognitive processes (thinking about one's own thinking) are also frequently tied to creativity. Many tactics for increasing creative problem solving have been proposed and popularized, including ‘think backwards,’ ‘shift your perspective,’ ‘put the problem aside,’ and ‘question assumptions.’ Tactical thinking is especially useful for programs designed to facilitate creative problem solving since they are a function of conscious decisions and can be employed when necessary.

Cognitive Theories

Cognitive theories of human behavior and decision-making models became popular in the early 1970s and 1980s as a response to behaviorism. The cognitive theories relevant to gambling focus on cognitive distortions related to gambling. The psychological literature supports that human beings maintain several thought distortions especially about gambling. Illusions of control refer to a belief that one has a greater amount of control on the gambling outcome than would be expected. Early experimental work found that people would behave differently if given the appearance that they could control the outcome. For example, Langer demonstrated that people who picked their number for a lottery ticket placed higher monetary value on that ticket than people whose tickets had already been randomly chosen for them, despite the fact that the outcome would be completely determined by chance and the expected value of both tickets is therefore identical. A second type of cognitive distortion relevant to gambling situations is commonly known as attribution bias. Wagenaar demonstrated that people who won on a series of hands of blackjack would attribute their wins to their skill, as compared to those who lost several hands, who would not make a personal skill attribution. There has been some support for the contention that disordered gamblers have significantly more cognitive distortions or qualitatively differ in the types of distortions made compared to non-disordered gamblers. However, other studies have not found support for differences in the frequency of erroneous statements made by disordered or non-disordered gamblers. Overall, cognitive distortions appear to be common regardless of gambling severity.

Cognitive Assessment

Cognitive theory posits that an extensive cognitive system exists that has a taxonomical structure, varying from surface level thoughts (products), to mechanisms that operate on information (processes), and deep structures (schemas). Cognitive structures drive the manner in which information is processed which, in turn, manifest as cognitive products (see Beck & Dozois, 2014; Dozois & Beck, 2008). Each level of this taxonomy is assumed to be relevant to risk for disorder, although it is not currently known which has the most relevance to negative outcomes and, therefore, to assessment. Cognitive clinical assessment is defined as “systematic empirically derived protocols, procedures, or instruments intended to measure the frequency, intensity, and salience of meaningful information comprising the thoughts, images, and beliefs that characterize psychopathological states” (Brown & Clark, 2015, p. 5). Cognitive assessment poses particular challenges to researchers and clinicians due to the private, internal, and unobservable nature of cognitive content, making it difficult for patients to access and accurately report on their cognitions (Kendall, 1981).

Cognitive Theories

Cognitive theories are based around the premise that movements are driven by what infants are thinking. Though there are multiple approaches to cognitive theories, developmental, behavioral, and motor learning all place cognition as the driver of the developmental change with varying perspectives on the contribution of the environment, behavior, and motor repetition. Perhaps the most significant contributor to developmental cognitive theory was Jean Piaget (1896–1980) (Piaget, 1952). He observed infants in a context, and used movement to understand what children were thinking. He pioneered the idea of “stages” of development, linking infant overt behavior to stages of cognitive constructs available to the infant. His focus was to understand how infants think by watching their interaction with objects in the world.

Piaget described four broad stages of cognitive development. The first is the sensorimotor stage (0–2 years), followed by the preoperational stage (2–7 years), the concrete operational stage (7–11 years), and finally the formal operations stage (11+). Each of these stages has sub-stages describing a continuum of constructs that the child understands. In addition, Piaget's work on the development of cognitive constructs forms the basis of tests and research paradigms used today in children with typical motor development. Some examples are searching for a hidden object (object permanence concept), and pulling a cloth to obtain a toy (means-end concept) (Bayley, 2006; Lobo and Galloway, 2013). However, many of these measures required motor action to complete, thus limiting their validity in children with motor impairments (Morgan et al., 2018).

Motor learning is the cognitive theory that highlights the impact of movement experience on the development of motor pathways and motor skills. Massive dose of practice, such as the 9000 steps per day walked by a new walkers, allows infants to learn from their experiences (Adolph, 1997). Although the word “learning” was not used directly in previous developmental theories, learning is implied even in the neuromaturational theories. The word learn, defined as “to gain knowledge or understanding of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/) can be applied to the developmental process in multiple ways, including the gradual acquisition of motor skill.

6 Knowledge Gap

Cognitive theory also fits nicely with another paradigm of media effects called information-gap or knowledge-gap. Its thesis is that an information (not influence) campaign will be more readily absorbed by those who are information-rich on the subject of the campaign than by the information-poor (Tichenor et al. 1970). Even though everybody learns something—about ways of investing money, or contraceptive techniques–the net result will be that the gap between the classes will further widen, thus paving the road to hell with another good intention. The explanation, it appears, lies not with the valence of a cognitive structure—since the message is not challenging an existing attitude—but the complexity of the structure, inasmuch as well-developed structures can more easily make room for yet more. Thus, knowledge gap studies may be mapped on our scheme as (a) reinforcement (b) of the stratification (c) of society (d) in the short-run (e) as a result of an information campaign. The requisite theory, of course, proceeds from the level of individual response to the level of social structure. It can be sloganized as the media telling us ‘who should think.’

Cognitive approaches

Cognitive theories of depression are among the most widely studied theories in the etiology of depression. One of the most influential of these theories was proposed by Aaron Beck in 1967. Beck's model argues that depression results from the activation of depressive self-schemas. These schemas refer to organized mental structures that, in the case of depression, are negatively toned representations of self-referent knowledge. Moreover, schemas guide appraisals and interact with information to influence selective attention, memory, and cognition. Although all persons evidence schemas, the schemas of depressed individuals are dysfunctional because they lead to negative perspectives about oneself, the world, and the future, or what Beck has termed, the negative cognitive triad.

An important aspect of Beck's model is that depressive schemas lay dormant until activated by relevant stimuli: “Whether he will ever become depressed depends on whether the necessary conditions are present at a given time to activate the depressive constellation.” Thus, stressful life events are necessary to activate negative schemas, and once activated, schemas provide access to a complex system of negative personal themes that give rise to a corresponding pattern of negative information processing that eventuates in depression.

Cognitive Theories of Anxiety and Depression

Cognitive theory suggests that once an individual has experienced the negative thinking associated with anxiety and depression, there is an increased risk that he or she will develop maladaptive cognitive schemas, which, with repetition, can become entrenched (Beck, 1995). For many clients, a small amount of nervousness or disappointed expectations can trigger a rush of negative cognitions (e.g., “Terrible things will happen,” “I am a failure,” “I feel overwhelmed,” “I can’t control my life”). You may watch your client ruminating: “What has gone wrong?” “Why is this happening to me?” “This is all my fault.” “When will it all end?” During an episode of anxiety, worried mood and feelings of inadequacy in the face of impending doom typically accompany pessimistic futuristic thinking, while depressive thinking is characterized by a backward-looking orientation that is often accompanied by excessive feelings of failure, guilt, remorse, or self-blame. What anxious and depressed thinking have in common is that, in both, the individual is not fully engaged in the present moment. Body sensations associated with anxiety include muscular tension, heart palpitations, gastrointestinal distress, shallow breathing or hyperventilation, and hyperarousal. Mild sadness or dysphoric moods may precipitate body sensations of fatigue, apathy, hypoarousal, or unexplained pains. The negative thoughts and the physiological reactions may be out of proportion to the environmental or situational triggers. When the episode has passed, and the mood has returned to normal, the anxious or depressive cognitions and body sensations fade away. These experiences, however, have not really disappeared. The brain has learned associations between the depressed or anxious cognitive, affective, and physiological states. Reactivation of anxious or depressive schemas and physiological reactivity becomes automatic and can foster inaccurate perceptions of the threat level of the present situation. This automaticity suggests that, essentially, the mind has developed “a mind of its own.” Therefore, when an undesirable event reactivates an anxious or dysphoric mood, even minor changes in mood state can trigger these now automatic responses. When this happens, old habits of anxious or depressed thinking begin again. Consequently, cognitive, affective, or physiological reactions to present moment events may prove to be maladaptive or inappropriate responses to the situation. Negative thinking falls into the same rut, and a full-blown episode of anxiety or depression may ensue. The discovery that, even when a client’s mood is euthymic, the habituated link between negative moods and negative thoughts remains ready to be reactivated is of enormous importance. It means that self-management of anxiety and depression may depend on learning how to keep mild states of dysphoria or apprehension from spiraling out of control.

Cognitive risks

Cognitive theories of depression emphasize the contribution of maladaptive mental representations and patterns of thinking to the onset and maintenance of depressive disorders. These theories posit that such cognitive attributes will have a particularly pronounced effect on depressive symptoms in response to negative life experiences. Three primary cognitive styles have been identified as risk factors for depressive disorders. The first depressogenic cognitive style (‘negative cognitive triad’) was proposed by Aaron Beck during the 1960s; according to Beck's theory, and more recent elaborations, dysfunctional attitudes predispose individuals to process information in a negatively biased manner. These maladaptive interpretations specifically pertain to inferences about the self (i.e., that one is flawed or inadequate), the world (i.e., that stressors will encompass all life domains), and the future (i.e., that negative experiences will persist in the future). A second depressogenic cognitive style (‘negative attributional or inferential style’) also highlights the role of negative inferences in response to stressful events; specifically, it is believed that individuals who attribute negative events to stable and global causes, who interpret negative events as having widespread detrimental consequences, and who perceive feelings of deficiency and hopelessness about themselves, as a result, are at heightened vulnerability to depression. A third depressogenic cognitive style (‘low perceived control’) involves the tendency to perceive oneself as incompetent and lacking control over life experiences, thereby priming the anticipation of perpetual life stress and emotional distress. Empirical research generally yields support for the notion that cognitive vulnerability, particularly in combination with stressful life events, predisposes adolescents to experience depressive symptoms.

I Introduction

Cognitive theories explain the mind as the interaction of mental representations and the processes that operate on them. Neither representation nor process is sufficient by itself. Representations do not do anything without processes to operate on them and processes do not do anything without representations to operate on. But put them together and they “execute” like the running of a program. The “steps” they go through are the mind in action, manifest in various behavioral and biological measures, from reaction time and accuracy to event-related electrical brain potentials and functional magnetic resonance imagery.

There is an important balance between representation and process. Representations must provide the information that is necessary to support the processing, and the processes must be able to exploit the information available in the representation. Theories that attempt to specify one without the other or focus on one more than the other are incomplete and underdeveloped.

In our view, the balance between representation and process is far from optimal in current theories of visual spatial attention. Spatial selection has been a central topic in attention research for 35 years (Averbach & Coriell, 1961; Sperling, 1960) and a dominant paradigm in attention research for the last 15 (Bundesen, 1990; Cave & Wolfe, 1990; Duncan & Humphreys, 1989; Nissen, 1985; Treisman & Gelade, 1980; Treisman & Gormican, 1988; van der Heijden, 1992, 1993; Wolfe, 1994). Theories abounded, processes flourished, but little was said about the representation of space.

This reticence about representation of space limits the theories in important ways. For one thing, the meager representations of space available in current theories of attention are not sufficient to support the computation required to direct attention from a cue to a target, which is an essential ability in many attention paradigms (Logan, 1995). For another, the meager representations in current theories do not provide accounts of several distance and grouping-by-proximity effects that pervade the literature on visual spatial attention (Logan, 1996). It seems to us that a theory of spatial attention should explain the effects of space on selective attention.

The purpose of this chapter is to propose a theory that strikes what we hope is a better balance between representation and process in visual spatial attention, and to use that theory to explain distance and grouping effects in the Sperling (1960) and Averbach and Coriell (1961) partial report paradigm. The theory is an extension of Bundesen’s (1990) Theory of Visual Attention (TVA), which already provides an excellent account of temporal factors, load effects, and similarity between targets and distractors in partial report tasks, but does not account for the distance effects. We extend the theory by combining it with van Oeffelen and Vos (1982, 1983) COntour DEtector theory of perceptual grouping by proximity, which parses the display into regions that TVA samples. The theory, which we call the CODE Theory of Visual Attention (CTVA), is explained in detail and applied to several paradigms in Logan (1996). Our purpose here is to apply it to the partial report paradigm, fitting an important data set, reported by Mewhort, Campbell, Marchetti, and Campbell (1981), that shows a variety of spatial effects.