24 Jun
1994
24 Jun
'94
2:51 a.m.
David Navon: "Paradoxical Effects in Cognition"
The target article whose abstract follows below has just been published
in BBS's electronic counterpart, PSYCOLOQUY, a refereed electronic
journal of Open Peer Commentary (ISSN 1055-0143) sponsored
on an experimental basis by the American Psychological Association
and currently estimated to reach a worldwide readership of 40,000.
PSYCOLOQUY publishes brief reports of new ideas and findings on which
the author wishes to solicit rapid peer feedback, international and
interdisciplinary ("Scholarly Skywriting"), in all areas of psychology
and its related fields (biobehavioral science, cognitive science,
neuroscience, social science, etc.). All contributions are refereed.
The qualified professional readership of PSYCOLOQUY is hereby invited
to submit Open Peer Commentary. The full article is retrievable by
anonymous ftp (or gopher, archie, www) from:
host: princeton.edu
directory: pub/harnad
filename: psyc.94.5.36.paradoxical-cognition.1.navon
Full ftp instructions at end of this message.
TARGET ARTICLE AUTHOR'S RATIONALE FOR SOLICITING COMMENTARY
This is a target article on paradoxical effects in cognition (e.g.,
trying in vain not to think of a pink elephant). Though it uses the
basic reasoning typical of cognitive psychology, it impinges on
several topics in physiological, clinical, and sport psychology.
Commentary providing relevant evidence from any area would be
welcome, but because the article attempts to erect a bridge between a
number of diverse phenomena it would be particularly helpful to hear
how specialists from these disparate domains view the relationships
among the phenomena touched upon (e.g., panic, anxiety,
hypochondriasis, respiratory disorder, pain, sleep/consciousness,
voluntary control, motivation, and cognition).
psycoloquy.94.5.36.paradoxical-cognition.1.navon Thursday, 23 June 1994
ISSN 1055-0143 (62 paragraphs, 4 notes, 182 references, 1622 lines)
PSYCOLOQUY is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA)
Copyright 1994 David Navon
FROM PINK ELEPHANTS TO PSYCHOSOMATIC DISORDERS:
PARADOXICAL EFFECTS IN COGNITION
David Navon
Department of Psychology
The University of Haifa
Haifa, Israel
RSPS311(a)UVM.HAIFA.AC.IL
ABSTRACT: Several paradoxical effects in cognition are discussed.
One type is "evasions" -- of a thought, a perception, or a response
-- that may cause the presence of precisely what is meant to be
avoided. Another type is "lay interventions" that channel
information to mental processes that do not know how to deal with
it, often resulting in aggravation of the problem meant to be
solved by the intervention. Some psychosomatic effects may be due
to lay interventions. Paradoxical effects may stem from attempts to
bypass, or substitute for, the normal functioning of subsystems of
the mind.
KEYWORDS: attention, automatic processes, consciousness, controlled
processing, incidental learning, motor set, pain, panic attacks,
paradoxical effects, positive feedback, psychosomatic disorders,
recall failures
INSTRUCTIONS FOR PSYCOLOQUY COMMENTATORS
Accepted PSYCOLOQUY target articles have been judged by 5-8 referees to
be appropriate for Open Peer Commentary, the special service provided
by PSYCOLOQUY to investigators in psychology, neuroscience, behavioral
biology, cognitive sciences and philosophy who wish to solicit multiple
responses from an international group of fellow specialists within and
across these disciplines to a particularly significant and
controversial piece of work.
If you feel that you can contribute substantive criticism,
interpretation, elaboration or pertinent complementary or supplementary
material on a PSYCOLOQUY target article, you are invited to submit a
formal electronic commentary. Please note that although commentaries
are solicited and most will appear, acceptance cannot, of course, be
guaranteed.
1. Before preparing your commentary, please read carefully
the Instructions for Authors and Commentators and examine
recent numbers of PSYCOLOQUY.
2. Commentaries should be limited to 200 lines (1800 words, references
included). PSYCOLOQUY reserves the right to edit commentaries for
relevance and style. In the interest of speed, commentators will
only be sent the edited draft for review when there have been major
editorial changes. Where judged necessary by the Editor,
commentaries will be formally refereed.
3. Please provide a title for your commentary. As many
commentators will address the same general topic, your
title should be a distinctive one that reflects the gist
of your specific contribution and is suitable for the
kind of keyword indexing used in modern bibliographic
retrieval systems. Each commentary should have a brief
(~50-60 word) abstract
4. All paragraphs should be numbered consecutively. Line length
should not exceed 72 characters. The commentary should begin with
the title, your name and full institutional address (including zip
code) and email address. References must be prepared in accordance
with the examples given in the Instructions. Please read the
sections of the Instruction for Authors concerning style,
preparation and editing.
Target article length should normally not exceed 500 lines [c. 4500 words].
Commentaries and responses should not exceed 200 lines [c. 1800 words].
All target articles, commentaries and responses must have (1) a short
abstract (up to 100 words for target articles, shorter for commentaries
and responses), (2) an indexable title, (3) the authors' full name(s)
and institutional address(es).
In addition, for target articles only: (4) 6-8 indexable keywords,
(5) a separate statement of the authors' rationale for soliciting
commentary (e.g., why would commentary be useful and of interest to the
field? what kind of commentary do you expect to elicit?) and
(6) a list of potential commentators (with their email addresses).
All paragraphs should be numbered in articles, commentaries and
responses (see format of already published articles in the PSYCOLOQUY
archive; line length should be < 80 characters, no hyphenation).
It is strongly recommended that all figures be designed so as to be
screen-readable ascii. If this is not possible, the provisional
solution is the less desirable hybrid one of submitting them as
postscript files (or in some other universally available format) to be
printed out locally by readers to supplement the screen-readable text
of the article.
PSYCOLOQUY also publishes multiple reviews of books in any of the above
fields; these should normally be the same length as commentaries, but
longer reviews will be considered as well. Book authors should submit a
500-line self-contained Precis of their book, in the format of a target
article; if accepted, this will be published in PSYCOLOQUY together
with a formal Call for Reviews (of the book, not the Precis). The
author's publisher must agree in advance to furnish review copies to the
reviewers selected.
Authors of accepted manuscripts assign to PSYCOLOQUY the right to
publish and distribute their text electronically and to archive and
make it permanently retrievable electronically, but they retain the
copyright, and after it has appeared in PSYCOLOQUY authors may
republish their text in any way they wish -- electronic or print -- as
long as they clearly acknowledge PSYCOLOQUY as its original locus of
publication. However, except in very special cases, agreed upon in
advance, contributions that have already been published or are being
considered for publication elsewhere are not eligible to be considered
for publication in PSYCOLOQUY,
Please submit all material to psyc(a)pucc.bitnet or psyc(a)pucc.princeton.edu
Anonymous ftp archive is DIRECTORY pub/harnad/Psycoloquy HOST princeton.edu
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To retrieve the Navon file by ftp from a Unix/Internet site, type either:
ftp princeton.edu
or
ftp 128.112.128.1
When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
Enter password as per instructions (make sure to include the specified @),
and then change directories with:
cd /pub/harnad
Next type:
get psyc.94.5.36.paradoxical-cognition.1.navon
Or just:
mget *navon
(type "y" when queried with the full filename)
When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit
In case of doubt or difficulty, consult your system manager.
A more elaborate version of these instructions for the U.K. is
available on request (thanks to Brian Josephson)>
These files can also be retrieved using gopher, archie, veronica, etc.
----------
Where the above procedures are not available (e.g. from Bitnet or other
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ftpmail(a)decwrl.dec.com
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bitftp(a)pucc.bitnet
that will do the transfer for you. To one or the
other of them, send the following one line message:
help
for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in
the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or
bitftp will then execute for you).
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