标题:Mental Perturbance An Integrative Design-Oriented Concept for Understanding Repetitive Thought, Emotions and Related Phenomena Involving a Loss of Control of Executive Functions
摘要:Understanding intrusive mentation, rumination, obsession,worry, known also as "repetitive thought" (RT), is important for understanding cognitiveaffective processes in general. RT is of transdiagnostic significance—for example obsessive-compulsive disorder, insomniaaddictions involve counterproductive RT. It is also a key but under-acknowledged feature of emotional episodes. We argue that RT cannot be understood in isolation but must rather be considered within models of whole mindsfor this purpose we suggest an integrative design-oriented (IDO) approach. This approach involves the design stance of theoretical Artificial Intelligence (the central discipline of cognitive science), augmented by systematic conceptual analysis, aimed at explaining how autonomous agency is possible. This requires developing, exploringimplementing cognitive-affective-conative information-processing architectures. Empirical research on RTemotions needs to be driven by such theories,theorizing about RT needs to consider such data. Mental perturbance is an IDO concept that, we argue, can help characterize, explain,theoretically ground the concept of RT. Briefly, perturbance is a mental state in which motivators tend to disrupt, or otherwise influence, executive processes even if reflective processes were to try to prevent or minimize the motivators’ influence. We draw attention to an IDO architecture of mind, H-CogAff, to illustrate the IDO approach to perturbance. We claim, further, that the intrusive mentation of some affective states— including grieflimerence (the attraction phase of romantic love) — should be conceptualized in terms of perturbancethe IDO architectures that support perturbance. We call for new taxonomies of RTemotion in terms of IDO architectures such as H-CogAff. We point to areas of research in psychology that would benefit from the concept of perturbance.