Affective meanings (AFMs) represent a challenging issue to be addressed by embodied theories of cognition since AFMs foster action, social bonds and simplified interpretations of the reality. The project aims to set an interdisciplinary, empirically grounded model about AFMs, focusing the characteristics differentiating AFMs from other kinds of meanings and their role in interpersonal life. AFMs are assumed as having structural characteristics linked to specific cognitive processes and contextual conditions concerning their acquisition and use. Moreover, AFMs are assumed as constraining the access and the use of cognitive resources in interpersonal exchanges. The project comprises three workpages (WPs). WP1 focuses AFMs acquisition by the mediation of caring environments. We expect to identify the emergence of AFMs within and through intersubjective exchange aimed at mediating/regulating relation between child and mother. WP2 analyzes the structural and functional characteristics of AFM and their interplay with the context. We expect to identify AFMs characteristic detecting the role of cultural and relational context in modulating them. WP3, focuses the role of AFMs in feeding interpersonal context. We expect to identify a specific feedforward-feedback mechanism through which AFMs regulate - and are regulated by - the relation between therapist and patients in individual and couple therapy. In their whole, results are expected to provide an integrated understanding about the characteristics of the AFMs and their dependence on the way they are acquired. On the other hand, AFMs study in developmental and interpersonal context enables to model AFMs dynamic and functional characteristics as well as the role they play in grounding and regulating cognition and action.
The novelty in our approach lays in its interdisciplinary. It identifies a crucial theme, the representation of AFMs and their contextual and relational dependence, and it declines it in a variety of disciplines and of experimental methods and situations. The disciplines range from developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, cognitive (neuro)science, affective neuroscience, to dynamic psychology and clinical psychology. The methods span from the analysis and coding of textual corpora, to rating tasks, to sorting tasks, to behavioral experiments with response times, to computational analyses of linguistic data, to analyses of the interactional dynamics of therapist-patients.
It is worth adding that though the research aim pursued by each WP result meaningful in itself, their synergy is expected to provide a relevant, interdisciplinary contribution to the psychology science. Specifically, two main advancements are expected to accomplish thanks to the interdisciplinary architecture adopted. A) As it has been underlined, the peculiar characteristics of the AFMs crucially depend on the way they are acquired. Accordingly, the joint developmental and structural analysis of AFMs enables a deeper understanding of what AFMs are and how they work. B) The study of the affective concepts in the context of their interpersonal use enables to model their dynamic and functional characteristics as well as of the role AFMs play in grounding and regulating cognition and action.
With respect to the theories of abstract concepts and to the literature on representation of ACs and AFMs, our project represents an important advancement in at least two domains, a conceptual and a methodological one.
a) Conceptual domain. As said, so far some scholars have tended to distinguish CCs, ACs and AFMs, while others tend to consider AFMs as a subset of ACs. In our project we will provide evidence on extensive comparisons between the two kinds of concepts, ACs and AFMs. This will allow us to identify fine-grained differences among different concept kinds, and to verify whether these structural dimensions are modulated by the linguistic, cultural and relational context, in line with the more promising research lines in the area of conceptual representation.
b) Methodological domain. So far the majority of studies on abstract, affective/emotional and concrete concepts have been conducted either on single words, or using simple sentences, testing their processing and recall. The research lines described in our project represent an important advancement with respect to the state of the art. Concepts will be namely investigated taking into account their context, at different levels: we will consider the linguistic, the cultural and the relational context. More crucially, in some experiments we will investigate concepts online, during their use in real life conversations and in interactive situations. These methodological choices have also a theoretical counterpart: they clearly imply the adoption of a conceptual framework that underlies the flexibility and dynamicity of ACs and AFMs.
With respect to the study of the AFMs in the context of psychotherapy, the focus on the recursive relation between AFMs and interpersonal regulation foregrounded by our approach enables the psychotherapy process research to make a relevant step ahead in the direction of a deeper understanding of: a) the structural and functional characteristics of AFMs that enable them to operate as super-ordered regulative frame of the clinical meaning-making; b) the specific mechanisms mediating the recursive nexus between the course of the meaning-making and the regulation of the patient-therapist relationship; c) the analysis of the impact of the clinical interventions on the meaning and relational regulation.
Moreover, the inclusion of psychotherapy with couples will provide the chance to contribute to the building of a useful method (Rodomonti, Crisafulli, Mazzoni, Curtis, Gazzillo; 2019) encompassed for understanding couple's complex dynamics, planning case-specific interventions, monitoring the therapeutic process and its evolution.