ATENÇÃO E AUTOCONSCIÊNCIA, PROCESSOS COGNITIVOS ENTRELAÇADOS: EXPLORAÇÕES NA INTERFACE ENTRE COGNIÇÃO E CINEMA

Abstract

The aim of this essay aims to discuss the interactive aspects between the cognitive processes “attention” and “self-awareness”, exemplifying how this relationship occurs through the transcription and discussion of a scene from the French film “Angel-A” by Luc Besson.  As a methodological approach, two strategies were used to elaborate this theoretical research, namely, (i) the essay genre, whose writing is particularly conducive to the critical exploration of theoretical and epistemological issues relevant to a scientific field of science, and (ii) the critical comparison of theoretical models and concepts of cognitive psychology with an object of art, namely, a filmic object. Although unusual in writings in the cognitive sciences, both strategies are not, however, unknown in the production of knowledge in Psychology, being at the origin of classics in this field. Attention, in its character as a basic process of the mind, has been at the heart of theorizing in psychology since its inception, unlike self-awareness, whose first explanatory theoretical models date from the late twentieth century, its dimensional structure and cognitive and functional dynamics, and linkage to other processes of cognition. The reflection undertaken through the comparison of theoretical models that support research in cognitive psychology of both processes, compared with the comprehensive analysis of an excerpt from the aforementioned filmic object, could show links of systematic interactions between the two cognitive processes, prompting its approach in careful future empirical studies, both experimental and of phenomenological content.

Keywords: Attention, self-awareness, cognitive processes, cognitive psychology, cinema.