Andreas Kappes and M.J. Crockett, ‘The Benefits and Costs of a Rose-Coloured Hindsight’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20 (2016), 644-6.

I wrote about the benefits of nostalgia once (here). Now Kappes and Crockett are proposing reasons why our self-serving biases extend into the past as well as the future. We’re habitually optimistic, but we also have a kind of ‘unethical amnesia’: ‘memories of unethical behavior are less vivid than memories of good deeds’. This amnesia takes a while to set in, and once an unwanted memory has been suppressed once, it gets less likely that it will be remembered. This appears to be a matter of retrieval rather than encoding: the memories that reflect badly on us go in alright, but we don’t recover them again.
      There are benefits and costs. It might protect us from psychopathology, and it might help our ‘social impression management’: we need to convince other people we’re good to be around, so it makes sense that we convince ourselves first. It may seem benign enough, this ability to keep thinking well of ourselves, but the authors are concerned that it also extends to other members of social groups. They link it to historical episodes in which ‘white-washed narratives replace the despicable episodes many would rather forget’.

*

Aeschylus portrays something like this in Agamemnon. The King returns from the ten-year Trojan war in triumph. He and his army have come to terms with the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia as they travelled to Troy. (Agamemnon was told that this was the only way of getting the Gods to bring some wind for the becalmed fleet.) She is not forgotten, but the whole episode is cocooned in necessity: it had to be done, there was no other option. At home in Argos, however, Clytemnestra has not moved on at all: for her the death of Iphigenia is crying out for vengeance as freshly as ever. However, she has a new lover and has enjoyed power over the city in her husband’s absence, so her motives are complex. Rose-tinted and blood-stained are all one here.

Matthias Mittner, Guy E. Hawkins, Wouter Boekel, and Birte U. Forstmann, ‘A Neural Model of Mind Wandering’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20 (2016), 570-8.

Having written a longer post (here) about mind-wandering recently, I will handle this briefly, though it’s just as interesting. It is a bit more focused on brain imaging than the Seli et al. article I cited there, which means it includes a lot of stuff I (and the literary tradition) can’t really engage with in a nuanced way.
      One of the brain regions in question is the Default Mode Network which is (as the name suggests) really a combination of regions, and it keeps cropping up. I mentioned that last time too. Mittner et al., however, are interested in more parts of the brain and in the complex connectivity between them. They say that ‘it is essential for future studies to simultaneously collect data reflecting the involvement of the various neural components, which will require the development of better neuroimaging protocols’. Theirs is ‘an integrative framework’, which ‘attempts to explain how dynamic changes in brain systems give rise to the subjective experience of mind wandering’.
      Most tangible for my purposes, especially in the light of that earlier post which focused on the intentional quality of some mind-wandering, is their attempt to define (or at least pursue) ‘a neural and conceptual distinction between an off-focus state and an active mind-wandering state’. They take this ‘off-focus state’ to an extreme by bringing in the phenomenon of ‘mind-blanking’, wherein (I suppose) the switching off from the perceptual world doesn’t get anywhere.

*

This idea took me back to Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Aubade’. After feeling that in some ways I was not at all grateful to be re-entering its bleak world, I have decided that in the end I am very grateful, because I think it’s great. ‘I work all day, and get half-drunk at night’, he says; ‘Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare’. And then it cheers up. Oh, no, it, doesn’t! He lies in the dark, seeing ‘what’s really always there […] Unresting death’. Dread ‘flashes’, and then in the second stanza, ‘The mind blanks at the glare’. The poem’s rejection of consolation (Christian, classical) is gloomily thrilling. It has several little hints of Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be’ speech, sardonically making its point that fine words are no use. As ‘light strengthens’, the day starts, and ‘work has to be done’, but mortality is still there.
      This is a perfect opposite to the Chaucerian dream-vision opening I described in my previous post. There, the process of going to sleep allows the mind to flourish into far-reaching imaginative explanations. In Larkin’s poem, the process of waking up leaves the mind ‘blank’ in the face of blunt truths. It’s inspiration, of a sort.

I’ll take my own bait (from here). I’ll offer one dream vision in tentative support of the idea that some literary genres may develop interesting taxonomies of the sort of wandering thinking that cognitive scientists are interested in at the moment. This is the beginning of Chaucer’s House of Fame. The pose is that the speaker of the poem, completely at a loss to understand the mysteries of dreams, just hopes that God will make things turn out alright. Underlying the modesty, however, there is a lightly-worn expertise in the theory of dreams. Along the way, he gives a whole range of explanations of dreaming, and some key words arise as if casually — ‘reflexiouns’ and ‘impressiouns’ strike me as particularly thought-provoking.
      Its real value as a contribution to the theory of mind-wandering, I think, would come in a nuanced and wide-ranging analysis of many such poems, identifying the particular emphases and deviations. I was tempted, for example, to start with Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls instead: here the speaker falls asleep after reading Cicero’s ‘Dream of Scipio’ and is then visited by Scipio in a dream. Nice touch, with its own idiosyncratic twist on how and why the mind moves.

God turne us every dreem to gode!
For hit is wonder, ,
To my wit, what causeth
Either on morwes, or on evens;
And why the effect folweth of somme,
And of somme hit shal never come;
Why that is an avisioun,
And this a revelacioun,
Why this a ,
And nat to every man even;
Why this a fantom, these oracles,
I ; but who-so of these miracles
The causes knoweth bet than I,
Devyne he; for I certeinly
Ne can hem noght, ne never thinke
To besily my wit to ,
To knowe of hir signifiaunce
The , neither the distaunce
Of tymes of hem, ne the causes,
For-why this more than that cause is;
As if folkes complexiouns
Make hem ;
Or ellis thus, as other sayn,
For to greet feblenesse of brayn,
By abstinence, or by seeknesse,
Prison, stewe, or greet distresse;
Or elles by disordinaunce
Of naturel acustomaunce,
That som man is to curious
In studie, or melancolious,
Or thus, so inly ful of drede,
That no man ;
Or elles, that devocioun
Of somme, and contemplacioun
Causeth swiche dremes ofte;
Or that the cruel lyf unsofte
Which these ilke lovers leden
That hopen or dreden,
That purely hir
Causeth hem avisiouns;
Or if that spirites have the might
To make folk to dreme a-night
Or if the soule, of propre kinde
Be so parfit, as men finde,
That hit ,
And that hit warneth alle and somme
Of everiche of hir aventures
Be avisiouns, or by ,
But that our flesh ne hath no might
To understonden hit aright,
For hit is warned to ; —
But why the cause is, noght wot I.
Wel worthe, of this thing, grete clerkes,
That trete of this and other werkes;
For I of noon opinioun
as now make mensioun,
But only that the holy rode
Turne us every dreem to gode!
For never, sith that I was born,
Ne no man elles, me biforn,
Mette, I trowe stedfastly,
So wonderful a dreem as I
The tenthe day dide of Decembre,
The which, as I can now remembre,
I wol yow tellen every .

* Paul Seli, Evan F. Risko, Daniel Smilek, and Daniel L. Schacter, ‘Mind-Wandering With and Without Intention’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20 (2016), 605-17.
* Michael C. Corballis, The Wandering Mind: What The Brain Does When You’re Not Looking (Chicago, 2015)

I have written about mind-wandering before, and it proved to be one of my favourite topics: literature can offer us representations of the way that the mind wanders, versions of the outcomes (positive and negative), and it may present itself as the product of mind-wandering or like mind-wandering itself: ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’. I caught up with Corballis’s book a bit belatedly. It’s a very readable survey of lots of ideas about the mind’s more and less useful kinds of wandering. Storytelling, creativity, dreams, hallucinations, and more, are all drawn in to the picture.
      For some reason I found the book less thought-provoking than I find pieces like the one above in Trends. Perhaps it’s because books like Corballis’s are written in order to be interesting to people like me, and I am a contrary sort of person. Seli et al. rejoin the fray with a desire to achieve a better understanding of intentional mind-wandering, as opposed to the unintentional kind. They point to recent research suggesting that they are separate things, ‘dissociable’ indeed. They propose mechanisms to help explain and understand the differences.
      One problem, it seems, is that the key distinction between ‘on-task’ and ‘mind-wandering’ (which is made in experiments by asking subjects to report this way or that) simply obscures the way that people may be doing it deliberately and for a reason. So, new experiments have been asking them to make the distinction: on task, intentionally off on a wander, unintentionally so. The results were that 34-41% of the time the mind-wandering was intentional. Two kinds of intention are offered (or admitted): people may just not be engaged in their experimental tasks, or they find the tasks uninvolvingly easy, so they can do some extra thinking about the weather or the shopping or the mind-body problem.

*

There is a local, practical problem, which is that research into mind-wandering sometimes involves boring tasks designed to elicit unintentional distraction. If mind-wandering is something being done deliberately, then researchers need to be careful. It’s also acknowledged that they need to find out how reliable or meaningful such self-reports are, and whether such episodes may include both intentional and unintentional aspects, possibly separable across time (it started off deliberate, but then it took on a momentum of its own). More interesting to me is the possibility that we send our thoughts on detours for relatively substantial reasons: it’s a way of getting somewhere.
      As Seli et al. acknowledge, theories of outward attention allow for shifts prompted by intentional searching (‘where’s ?’) and inescapable responses (‘is that my child I can hear calling?’). So we may be able to accept the same with what could be thought of as inward attention. The act of tuning in to the motions of one’s thoughts might be strategic or automatic. The neural evidence might suggest some independent features, it seems, but it’s far from clear.
      This essay reminds us that mind-wandering seems in some way to be associated with autobiographical memory, planning ahead, metacognition, and my old friend the , which is linked to dreams, storytelling, and more. Understanding it better might get us further into the ways we solve problems and understand ourselves in relation to the complexities of past, present, and future. We need to be plural with the prepositions of useful thinking: we don’t just think of or at things, or through them. We also think over them, under them, around and across and… well, to be honest, I think it may go beyond the ability of these deictic components of language to capture what mind-wandering is like.
      Literary accounts of inspiration often explore this intentional-unintentional dynamic. Poets are sometimes swept up in a frenzy of creation that is beyond their control; sometimes they drift into it. Of course there are also times when the writing is purposeful, occasional, even compelled. And writers don’t always tell the truth about what may be many layers of inspiration. However, their descriptions of the creative process might come together to make an interesting taxonomy of the intentional and unintentional varities of mind-wandering. Medieval dream-visions, for example, figure the creative process as something that comes to the poet in sleep, but they all map out that process in different ways. Their careful thinking about the workings of the mind needs a bit of translating, but it’s not beyond reach.

This nycht, halff sleiping as I lay,
Me thocht my in ane new aray
Was all with many divers hew
Of all the nobill storyis, ald and new,
Sen formed was of clay.
(William Dunbar, ‘A Dream’, 1-5)

* Mark Dingemanse, Francisco Torreira, and N.J. Enfield, ‘Is “Huh?” a Universal Word? Conversational Infrastructure and the Convergent Evolution of Linguistic Items’, PLOS One, 2013: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078273
* Mark Dingemanse, Seán G. Roberts, Julija Baranova, Joe Blythe, Paul Drew, Simeon Floyd, Rosa S. Gisladottir, Kobin H. Kendrick, Stephen C. Levinson, Elizabeth Manrique, Giovanni Rossi, and N.J. Enfield, ‘Universal Principles in the Repair of Communication Problems’, PLOS One, 2015: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0136100

I found myself looking at Nick Enfield’s work (homepage here) and got interested in this study of ‘huh’. I like the way Enfield et al. dealt graciously with the award of an ‘Ig Nobel’ award — look at the acceptance speech here. I probably miss the layers of generous irony in the Ig Nobel process when I say… this is a classic example of why these awards seem small-minded and depressing to me. I recognise the point of what this article is aiming at, and the second piece cited above gets across more of the importance of ‘language repair’, so it’s frustrating to see people taking a shallow skim across the surface of the article in order to invite a scornful crowd to say ‘huh?’.
      So ‘huh’ is (i) ‘not trivial’ — it’s part of an indispensable system for cooperative language repair, which is crucial to communication, which is crucial to… everything; (ii) ‘universal’ — in 31 languages examined a similar sound exists, with a similar function; (iii) ‘a word’ — it is ‘integrated into each linguistic system’, varying with the phonetic characteristics of different languages, and is thus different from universal sounds like sneezing and crying; (iv) ‘not innate’ — apes don’t do it and children have to learn to do it; (v) ‘likely shaped by convergent evolution’ — because the need for a ‘simple, minimal, quick-to-produce questioning syllable’ applies everywhere. All of which I buy and/or like: there’s a link with a favourite topic of mine, turn-taking.
      Into the mix I will put a very neat bit of represented-observed conversational business in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, 3.3. It has a very nice ‘huh?’ equivalent (a ‘ha’) and some very subtle manoeuvring as the Greeks work on Achilles, trying to get him back into the battle. I suppose there may not be lots of other things quite like this in theatrical dialogue: perhaps (as in this case) it’s only going to be useful on rare occasions, or even realistic, to have characters failing to understand one another. Then again, something like language repair could appear in lots of other forms.

*

AGAMEMNON
We’ll execute your purpose, and put on
A as we pass along:
So do each lord, and either greet him not,
Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more
Than if not look’d on. I will lead the way.
ACHILLES
What, comes the general to speak with me?
You know my mind, I’ll fight no more ‘gainst Troy.
AGAMEMNON
What says Achilles? would he aught with us?
NESTOR
Would you, my lord, aught with the general?
ACHILLES
No.
NESTOR
Nothing, my lord.
AGAMEMNON
The better.
[Exeunt AGAMEMNON and NESTOR]
ACHILLES
Good day, good day.
MENELAUS

[Exit]
ACHILLES
What, does the cuckold scorn me?
AJAX
How now, Patroclus!
ACHILLES
Good morrow, Ajax.
AJAX

ACHILLES
Good morrow.
AJAX
Ay, and good next day too.
[Exit]
ACHILLES
What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?
PATROCLUS
They pass by strangely: they were used to bend
To send their smiles before them to Achilles;
To come as humbly as they used to creep
To holy altars.
ACHILLES
What, am I poor of late?
‘Tis certain, greatness, once fall’n out with fortune,
Must fall out with men too: what the declined is
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others
As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,
And not a man, for being simply man,
Hath any honour, but honour for those honours
That are without him, as place, riches, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit:
Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that lean’d on them as slippery too,
Do one pluck down another and together
Die in the fall. But ’tis not so with me:
Fortune and I are friends: I do enjoy
At ample point all that I did possess,
Save these men’s looks; who do, methinks, find out
Something not worth in me such rich beholding
As they have often given. Here is Ulysses;
.
How now Ulysses!
ULYSSES
Now, great Thetis’ son!
ACHILLES
What are you reading?
ULYSSES
A strange fellow here
Writes me: ‘That man, how dearly ever parted,
How much in having, or without or in,
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them and they retort that heat again
To the first giver.’
ACHILLES
.
The beauty that is borne here in the face
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others’ eyes; nor doth the eye itself,
That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,
Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed
Salutes each other with each other’s form;
For speculation turns not to itself,
Till it hath travell’d and is mirror’d there
Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.
ULYSSES
I do not strain at the position,
, but at the author’s drift;
Who, in his circumstance, expressly proves
That no man is the lord of any thing,
Though in and of him there be much consisting,
Till he communicate his parts to others:
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught
Till he behold them form’d in the applause
Where they’re extended; who, like an arch,
reverberates
The voice again, or, like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
His figure and his heat. I was much wrapt in this;
And apprehended here immediately
.
Heavens, what a man is there! a very horse,
That has he knows not what. Nature, what things there are
Most abject in regard and dear in use!
What things again most dear in the esteem
And poor in worth! Now shall we see to-morrow —
An act that very chance doth throw upon him —
Ajax renown’d. O heavens, what some men do,
While some men leave to do!
How some men creep in skittish fortune’s hall,
Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!
How one man eats into another’s pride,
While pride is fasting in his wantonness!
To see these Grecian lords! — why, even already
They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder,
As if his foot were on brave Hector’s breast
And great Troy shrieking.
ACHILLES
I do believe it; for they pass’d by me
As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me
Good word nor look: what, are my deeds forgot?
ULYSSES
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enter’d tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours;
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.
The present eye praises the present object.
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye
Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,
And still it might, and yet it may again,
If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive
And case thy reputation in thy tent;
Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,
Made emulous missions ‘mongst the gods themselves
And drave great Mars to faction.
ACHILLES
Of this my privacy
.
ULYSSES
But ‘gainst your privacy
The reasons are more potent and heroical:
‘Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love
With one of Priam’s daughters.
ACHILLES
known!

Let’s all search for more examples of the literary ‘huh?’.