Abstract
Almost one decade has passed since the “abstract model of associative cognition and emotion” (AMACE) was first proposed to map constructs of the person-centered approach (PCA) to those of cognitive neuroscience. The primary purpose of this model is to complement the current perception of the PCA by a profound intellectual understanding of the cognitive and emotional effects of person-centered interaction . The resulting insight into major constructs of the PCA and their interplay as well as impact on interpersonal communication are aimed at a broader acceptance of its principles, leading to applications in numerous areas in which personal relationships are essential. This chapter will complement the initial version of AMACE by addressing recent research on its constructs and by exploring the effects of person-centered interaction in everyday relationships.
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Notes
- 1.
The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in JHP, 43/4, 2003 by SAGE Publications, All rights reserved. © SAGE.
- 2.
In fact, there exist several theories on the concept of short-term- or WM, going back to William James (1890). In AMACE, we just build on some essential features and thus abstract from further details.
- 3.
As a consequence, highly complex problems can hardly be resolved purely cognitively (Claxton 1998).
- 4.
- 5.
We hypothesize that it equally can flow to other mental images such as those symbolizing emotions and to various processes and dispositions in unconscious areas.
- 6.
- 7.
An emotion is defined as a “specifically caused transient change of the organism state.” (Damasio 2000, p. 282). The brain induces emotions from a remarkably small number of brain sites. Most of them are located below the cerebral cortex and are known as subcortical.
- 8.
A feeling is defined as “the private, mental experience of an emotion, while the term emotion should be used to designate the collection of responses, many of which are publicly observable.” (Damasio 2000, p. 42).
- 9.
The scope of core consciousness is the here and now. Core consciousness is a simple biological phenomenon; it is stable across the lifetime of the organism; it is not exclusively human.
- 10.
Damasio 2000, p. 147–148: “The records that we hold of objects and events that we once perceived include the motor adjustments we made to obtain the perception in the first place and also include the emotional reactions we had then. They all are co-registered in memory, albeit in separate systems. […] p. 161: …we retrieve not just sensory data but also accompanying motor and emotional data […] we recall not just sensory characteristics of an actual object but the past reactions of the organism to that object.” For the purposes of this article, we emphasize emotional aspects and ignore motor-related ones. However, the function of the body is central in the chapter by Carol Wolter-Gustafson in this volume.
- 11.
In fact, two categories of rigid chunks belong to zone II. First, (neutral) learned constructs lacking one’s own experience and second, introjections with more or less distorted experience. In our view, based on Damasio (2000), chunks need at least some minimal OrgExp symbolization in order to be able to be symbolized as chunks in WM and LTM.
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Motschnig-Pitrik, R., Nykl, L. (2013). An Interactive Cognitive-Emotional Model of the Person-Centered Approach. In: Cornelius-White, J., Motschnig-Pitrik, R., Lux, M. (eds) Interdisciplinary Handbook of the Person-Centered Approach. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7141-7_4
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