Mechanisms of imagination - Theoretical idea of ​​imagination, its types and functions

What is imagination

Note 1
“Imagination” in psychology is understood as the process through which a person is able to create images and ideas in his mind.

Imagination is of great importance for the human psyche, as it plays an important role in such processes as:

• modeling
• planning
• creative activity
• memory

The process of imagination can be differentiated by the result; it can be: reproductive and productive. Reproductive is understood as imagination, during which images that already exist in reality are recreated. Productive imagination is the process by which something new comes into being.

Depending on the degree of purposefulness, the process of imagination can be voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary imagination consists of reconstructive and creative imagination, while involuntary imagination is unintentional and unpredictable.

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Images, in turn, can be concrete and abstract, and imagination can be concrete and abstract.

Imagination performs a number of important functions. It allows a person to imagine the world around him in images, and makes it possible to use them to solve problems.

Imagination helps regulate emotions, cognitive processes and human states. Imagination provides the opportunity to think about and imagine in images a certain plan of action. It also allows a person to carry out planning, programming and evaluation of activities.

The following mechanisms of imagination are distinguished:

• agglutination
• hyperbolization
• schematization
• accentuation
• typing

Specific Characteristics of Imagination

1. Imagination is aimed at creating something new; it is a process involving the creation of new images, ideas and ideas. In this regard, imagination allows a person to go beyond personal experience.
2. The new created in the process of imagination is connected with what has already been perceived by a person. Elements of the new, created by the imagination, represent what is already known, existing in reality, but the imagination transforms the relationships between really existing objects and thereby achieves the effect of novelty.
3. Imagination is inextricably linked with a person’s personality; A particularly close connection is found between imagination and personality orientation. A significant role in determining the direction in which the imagination develops is played by the orientation of the individual - interests that create special centers of emotional sensitivity associated with them. The activity of imagination is generated by the transformative effect of orientation on images of consciousness that reflect reality.

Agglutination as a mechanism of imagination

Agglutination is the process of creating a new image from parts of other convoys. This process provides a lot of information about a person's personality. The human personality is a rather complex mechanism. A person has intellectual abilities; a thought process is always going on in his mind. Everything that exists in the world is either created by nature or created thanks to man. Man has an amazing ability: he can create something completely new and unique.

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There are many examples of agglutination among fairy-tale creatures: a centaur is a combination of the upper part of a human body and the lower part of a horse, a mermaid is the upper part of a woman, and the bottom is a tail, a hut on chicken legs, and so on.

Agglutination represents what happens during the mental activity of every person. The process of agglutination occurs in almost all people, both healthy and unhealthy. It is especially common in people suffering from schizophrenia.

Agglutination is considered an automatic action; we can only see the result of agglutination, but we cannot see the process itself, since it is inside the human consciousness. In order for the agglutination process to take place, a person needs a supply of experience. But nevertheless, agglutination is not an arbitrary process, that is, a person does not specifically turn to his experience, but unconsciously and spontaneously.

As we know, a person’s imagination is enriched by human experience; the more a person has learned and seen in his life, the more widely developed his imagination is, the more new images he can produce.

Agglutination in its origin is not accidental; its images are obtained from what is embedded deep in a person’s subconscious. The process itself is divided into two parts:

• elements are not criticized or analyzed.
• components must influence mental generalization in order to build a whole image.

Types of imagination

1. Active (voluntary) imagination is a conscious, purposeful process, always aimed at fulfilling a creative or personal task. The participation of volitional processes in this case is maximum: the process of active imagination is controlled and directed by the person himself. Active imagination is divided into active recreative and active creative imagination. Active recreating imagination consists of imagining something that is not directly perceived by the senses, but created in the mind in accordance with the description (for example, in the process of listening to an interlocutor, reading books).
2. Unlike active recreation, the process of active creative imagination occurs without relying on description. This process is carried out by a person independently (for example, the work of an artist, writer).

Hyperbolization as a mechanism of imagination

The term “hyperbolization” is understood as the process of exaggerating or minimizing an object or parts of an object. In other words, these are fantasies about an unusual creature that acquires qualitatively new properties. Hyperbole is often used in fairy tales. Examples of hyperbolization are giants, gnomes, Thumb, Gulliver, the many-armed Indian god, Cyclops, Serpent Gorynych, Dwarf Nose, Thumbelina. Some scientists consider the process of hyperbolization to be one of the types of emphasis.

Note 2

Also, some scientists share the concept of hyperbolization and litotes: hyperbolization is an exaggeration of an object, and litotes is an understatement.

Schematization as a mechanism of imagination

“Schematization” is understood as the process of smoothing out the differences that objects have and searching for similarities. In this case, secondary elements are cut off. Individual characteristics are also ignored.

An example of schematization could be an ornament created by an artist in which elements of plants were used.

Schemas are a series of interconnected thoughts. Schematization can be represented by several types:

• taking notes
• infographics
• illustrated chart
• algorithmic graph
• conceptual schematization

Schematization

Categorization Read more: Attribution

2. Schematization

As a person, event or situation is categorized, schematization is included in the socialization process - finding a corresponding scheme in experience. The most common definition of schema is knowledge about concepts or types of stimuli, including their attributes and the relationships between them. Schemas are a series of interconnected thoughts, ideas, social attitudes and stereotypes that provide the ability to quickly recognize objects in the presence of limited information resources. In their most general form, they represent some generalized ideas based on individual experience regarding objects and situations, applied to their rapid assessment and prediction of the possible development of relationships. Cognitive schemas organize people's representations in relation to specific aspects of their environment and create the basis for orientation and selection of the optimal treatment strategy. The circuits are very similar to the prototypes and are often used interchangeably [29].

In many cases, when faced with a situation or a specific object, a person already has a certain schematized structure of ideas about the object, the situation and the possible logic of the development of events. Moreover, even when the inadequacy of the chosen scheme is obvious to others, he stubbornly adheres to it. Moreover, a person is literally stuffed with a wide variety of schemes that make up his algorithmic evaluative and behavioral baggage. People are not equipped with all the necessary attributes for every day. Each object, or rather ideas about it, have an element of uncertainty, filled with available information resources presented in existing diagrams. A number of schemas can be combined with each other into semantic networks. The closer the circuits are to each other, the more likely they are to activate simultaneously, providing useful information. Having the ability to draw conclusions and make generalizations for the future, people recorded in experience in the form of schemes receive additional resources for optimal functioning. Subsequent verification of the correctness of a given scheme leads to an increase in the likelihood of its future reproduction.

Yanchuk V.A. distinguishes the following types of schemes: personality schemes; role schemes; scripts; Free content schemes; self-schemas [29]. For our understanding of the processes of formation of social stereotypes, it is most important to consider personality schemas and role schemas.

Personality schemas are individualized structures of knowledge about specific people and their characteristics. Essentially, in relation to any familiar or unfamiliar person, a certain implicit theory of personality is formed, which is presented in experience in the form of a diagram that subjectively reflects the most significant or significant characteristics. It is at the stage of formation of this idea of ​​​​a person that the scheme is saturated with one’s own judgments, which subsequently take root in the form of social stereotypes. When meeting a person, in most cases we do not carry out a detailed study of him, but rather search for the most suitable scheme, which will serve in the future as a guide for the development of relationships. The detail of the scheme is largely determined by the degree of familiarity with the person, his typicality, etc. [29].

Role schemas are structures of knowledge about the requirements for certain social roles. Each of us has ideas about what a person who occupies a certain position in society should do, what he should be like, i.e. fulfilling a corresponding social role. These perceptions may vary from person to person and from situation to situation, but they nonetheless define our expectations. On the basis of such ideas and expectations, a social stereotype is formed, which is based on an attitude, a kind of pre-preparedness for a certain kind of assessments and interpretations [29].

Using diagrams. People, situations and events may have different characteristics that are not always obvious for selection as grounds for categorization, and therefore for choosing an appropriate scheme. In the process of schema selection, people initially prefer the adoption of subtypes rather than levels of representation in the hierarchy, as well as a more preferable acceptance of stereotypes and social roles compared to trait schemas. Preference may also be given to more easily identified and activated schemes based on individually significant indicators, for example, skin color, clothing, attractiveness, contextual distinctiveness (the only woman in a company of men), etc. The familiarity of using schemes to evaluate a person plays an important role [29].

The more often a scheme is used, the more verified it is subjectively perceived, creating the illusion of validity. An example of this kind of rigidity in the use of schemes is often the practice of people working in the person-person system for many years, in particular, teachers. Experience with many classes and students leads to typification of the latter and subsequent schematization of at least the most prominent ones. Subsequently, the developed scheme begins to provide a disservice to the teacher, because he forms an idea of ​​what he already imagines, what development of relationships with this student awaits him.

Acquisition, development and modification of schemes. According to general schema theory, they are learned or acquired from direct or indirect experience with the social environment. It is through direct experience that the formation of the basic repertoire of schemes occurs.

The process of schema formation has been less studied. Most of the processes proposed by various authors are predominantly hypothetical in nature. Yanchuk V.A. gives two classifications of the processes underlying the formation of schemes.

R. Norman identifies the following three processes:

1. Buildup - a type of learning facts, tracking of which leads to their fixation in memory for subsequent reproduction.

2. Attunement – ​​the established schema is redefined and adapted to more closely relate to life experience.

3. Restructuring is the process of creating new schemes through their patterned generalization.

Rothbbart suggests the following three processes:

1. Accounting is a slow process of change in response to new evidence.

2. Conversion - a change in the event that the contradictions of the old scheme reach a state of critical mass, accompanied by a radical transformation.

3. Subtyping – changing the configuration of schemes, as a reaction to refutations, by identifying a number of subcategories [29].

Such a detailed consideration of the problems of schematization is due to the popularity that it gained in research in the 1980s and 90s. At the same time, along with the already noted advantages, the schematic approach also has a number of vulnerable features. Nevertheless, its role in the formation of stereotypical ideas about social reality is indisputable, and research in this problem area continues to develop intensively today.

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Emphasis as a mechanism of imagination

The concept of “emphasis” is understood as the process of emphasizing certain specific features of an object. In this case, a change in the proportions of the object may occur. Accentuation, in other words, is called sharpening.

Examples of emphasis can be caricatures - a type of art that ridicules ideas, vices, phenomena, people using stereotypes, caricatures - a type of art similar to a caricature, but there is no purpose to ridicule, only an emphasis is placed on certain specific features.

The concept of emphasis includes the concepts of hyperbolization (exaggeration of the properties of an object) and litotes (decreasing the properties of an object).