REPRESENTATION AND THEORIES

Representation And Theories

Representation And Theories

Introduction

The media don't just offer us a window on the world. They don't just present reality, they represent it. Media producers inevitably make choices: they select and combine, they make events into stories, they create characters, they invite us to see the world in a particular way. Media offer us versions of reality. But audiences also compare media with their own experiences, and make judgments about how far they can be trusted. Media representations can be real in some ways and not in others: we may know that something is fantasy, yet it can still tell us about reality.

The media constructs views of the real world for us to read and interpret. These views having been mediated provide filtered and partial meanings. However we mostly ignore this selection and often fail to question the language and images that are used. Like wallpaper they are just there; as Athusser suggested ideologies happen behind our backs. In order for our students to begin to see behind their backs we need to show them how such meanings are constructed to appear 'natural'.( Cho, 2005, 79)

The issue of realism therefore is linked to representation. Do we accept the producers' views of reality? Can audiences read in differentiated ways to judge realism? Can discourses around representations change? Representations of others can have a fundamental effect not only on personal behaviour but also on political and global events. Terrorism and immigration continue to be huge issues.( Cho, 2005, 89)

Discussion

This book is based on the notion that, while new tools and approaches for understanding cognition are valuable, representational approaches do not need to be abandoned in the course of constructing new models and explanations. Rather, models that incorporate representation are quite compatible with the kinds of complex situations being modeled with the new methods. This volume illustrates the power of this explicitly representational approach--labeled "cognitive dynamics"--in original essays by prominent researchers in cognitive science. Each chapter explores some aspect of the dynamics of cognitive processing while still retaining representations as the centerpiece of the explanations of the key phenomena. These chapters serve as an existence proof that representation is not incompatible with the dynamics of cognitive processing. The book is divided into sections on foundational issues about the use of representation in cognitive science, the dynamics of low level cognitive processes (such as visual and auditory perception and simple lexical priming), and the dynamics of higher cognitive processes (including categorization, analogy, and decision making).

Although new tools and approaches for understanding cognition are valuable, representational approaches do not need to be abandoned in the course of constructing new models and explanations. Rather, models that incorporate representation are quite compatible with the kinds of complex situations being modeled with the new methods. This volume illustrates the power of this explicitly representational approach-labeled "cognitive dynamics"-in original essays by prominent researchers in cognitive science. Each chapter explores some aspect of the dynamics of cognitive processing while still retaining representations as the centerpiece of ...