There's an interesting three minutes in this talk by Helen Fisher on the differences between male and female brain functioning. It's between 10 and 13 minutes into this talk that she give a nice, succinct simplification--unavoidably an oversimplification, but a really good snapshot regardless.
In my language, I've said that some people have a temperamental or biological propensity towards "doing" certain levels and abilities more easily. And in general, women are better at Appreciation while having to work harder at valuing Purpose while men are better at Purpose, having to work harder at valuing Appreciation. So we communicate and Understand in typically different manners (generally speaking). The largely male influence on meditation traditions has often influenced our understanding of mindfulness away from mindful appreciation, webbed mindfulness, connected mindfulness, social mindfulness. It seems that the American influences on meditation--towards social action, female influences including women in leadership roles, and psychological applications all bring meditation "off the mountain" so to speak, pragmatically demystifying much of what is possible.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Research Support for Purpose/Concentration
Well, it hasn't been all that easy finding research that relates directly to what I've been looking for in terms of attentional abilities, but our neuroscientists are getting it done. In the book THE ATTENTIVE BRAIN, chapter 18 "Executive Attention: Conflict, Target Detection, and Cognitive Control", the authors cite research that supports the idea that infants at around 10 months have trouble "concentrating" in the manner I mean it, while at 18 months, this ability is common. This gives a background for determining the basic brain structuring involved in the function of concentrating as well as giving a strong relative date for common development of the basic ability. A.B Clohessy and Michael Posner are two of the cited researchers on this topic.
This is exciting because it points the direction for determining a solid anatomical foundation for this second step. Most likely, adequate research already exists for distinguishing the stage of Understanding. Beyond that stage, the abilities may be less dependent on developments in anatomical structure, although they will be related to changes in anatomical structure. For example, mindfulness may come more easily once we're through the chemical firestorm, neuronal growth, and pruning that adolescence brings--related to physical changes in adolescence while not being so directly dependent upon changes in anatomical structure because it is so directly influenced by chemical elements, hormones.
This is exciting because it points the direction for determining a solid anatomical foundation for this second step. Most likely, adequate research already exists for distinguishing the stage of Understanding. Beyond that stage, the abilities may be less dependent on developments in anatomical structure, although they will be related to changes in anatomical structure. For example, mindfulness may come more easily once we're through the chemical firestorm, neuronal growth, and pruning that adolescence brings--related to physical changes in adolescence while not being so directly dependent upon changes in anatomical structure because it is so directly influenced by chemical elements, hormones.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Associational Matrices
A friend of mine recently commented on how it is as if we all live in our own personal universes, like interacting video games. To me, this sort of comment seems connected to how I have described intuition and distributed processes (in the glossary). Rather than thinking in politically and psychologically loaded terms like biases and prejudices, and rather than trying to model our living experience on mechanical processes like video games, I think we can talk about our "individual universes" or familiar frames of reference as associational matrices. This seems like a fairly neutral/abstract term that people can apply in their own ways.
Part of what I find fascinating is that much of what exists in my associational matrix is not always accessible to my attention or conscious awareness. (We can think of an association matrix as including items that are reside in conscious access awareness and nonintentional or nonconscious access awareness.) Many of my associations, then, function without me being aware of them. This happens in positive ways of training or habituation, like in learning to drive a car. Much of what needs to happen to drive fairly safely happens "on autopilot" so to speak--and my conscious intentional attention is pulled to the fore only when necessary. This "active" autopilot is different than when I am simply spacing out or daydreaming and not paying attention to driving at all. These nonintentional functions can also happen in ways that are politically "negative"--concerning bigotry and prejudice, for example.
My associational matrix will be mostly made up of things from my past and things I am becoming peripherally aware of now. We are usually more likely to have intentional control of whatever item or process when we can name that item, remember it when we want to, and "see" multiple other things that are connected to it. (By "see" in this sentence, I mean think about.)
One of the interesting points that comes up is that it is equally stupid to expect ourselves to not react to things within our association matrices as it is to expect ourselves to react to things which are not included in our association matrices. An example is that earlier environmental activists could react to pollution, but we cannot hold them accountable for reacting to "global warming" until we reach that point in history where people have tied together and compounded the effects of multiple sources of pollution as "global warming". Likewise, we can't hold people accountable for dealing with things in a simplistic or prejudiced way when their association matrix is thin on those particular things.
While these ideas may lend themselves to all sorts of whacko apologists, I am only an apologist for sensibility here. Once we have relatively position-neutral terms, we can work on those items in our actual universe in a shared endeavor rather than in a position-privileged manner. This helps to grind "wisdom" into a more pragmatic definition as well. If we are trying to engage in a conversation that incurs minimal resistance from another party, it makes sense to converse in ways that are not necessarily position-privileged or "loaded". Dealing with associational matrices as common, necessary, and not always open to intentional control allows us to emphasize the aspects of our lived experiences that tend to be common--such as trying for position-privileged ways of interacting that privilege our position over their positions. From that common ground, we can expand our matrices and explore our world(s) together.
**For those of us who have been talking about perspective-taking, I'd say that a "position" added to personal history yields a particular momentary perspective. While we may never get the fully individual perspective of another person, we can get our own taste of their experience by taking their position and that position's perspective to the extent we are able. The more richly populated and similar two association matrices, the closer the individual experiences will be when we "share" positions.
Part of what I find fascinating is that much of what exists in my associational matrix is not always accessible to my attention or conscious awareness. (We can think of an association matrix as including items that are reside in conscious access awareness and nonintentional or nonconscious access awareness.) Many of my associations, then, function without me being aware of them. This happens in positive ways of training or habituation, like in learning to drive a car. Much of what needs to happen to drive fairly safely happens "on autopilot" so to speak--and my conscious intentional attention is pulled to the fore only when necessary. This "active" autopilot is different than when I am simply spacing out or daydreaming and not paying attention to driving at all. These nonintentional functions can also happen in ways that are politically "negative"--concerning bigotry and prejudice, for example.
My associational matrix will be mostly made up of things from my past and things I am becoming peripherally aware of now. We are usually more likely to have intentional control of whatever item or process when we can name that item, remember it when we want to, and "see" multiple other things that are connected to it. (By "see" in this sentence, I mean think about.)
One of the interesting points that comes up is that it is equally stupid to expect ourselves to not react to things within our association matrices as it is to expect ourselves to react to things which are not included in our association matrices. An example is that earlier environmental activists could react to pollution, but we cannot hold them accountable for reacting to "global warming" until we reach that point in history where people have tied together and compounded the effects of multiple sources of pollution as "global warming". Likewise, we can't hold people accountable for dealing with things in a simplistic or prejudiced way when their association matrix is thin on those particular things.
While these ideas may lend themselves to all sorts of whacko apologists, I am only an apologist for sensibility here. Once we have relatively position-neutral terms, we can work on those items in our actual universe in a shared endeavor rather than in a position-privileged manner. This helps to grind "wisdom" into a more pragmatic definition as well. If we are trying to engage in a conversation that incurs minimal resistance from another party, it makes sense to converse in ways that are not necessarily position-privileged or "loaded". Dealing with associational matrices as common, necessary, and not always open to intentional control allows us to emphasize the aspects of our lived experiences that tend to be common--such as trying for position-privileged ways of interacting that privilege our position over their positions. From that common ground, we can expand our matrices and explore our world(s) together.
**For those of us who have been talking about perspective-taking, I'd say that a "position" added to personal history yields a particular momentary perspective. While we may never get the fully individual perspective of another person, we can get our own taste of their experience by taking their position and that position's perspective to the extent we are able. The more richly populated and similar two association matrices, the closer the individual experiences will be when we "share" positions.
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