Self as a Mental Representation - Research Paper Example

Perception-based representations are those types of representations which stores the knowledge of the perceptual structure of events and objects of a person. This type of representations comes in two forms namely linear orderings and spatial orderings. The linear orderings representation encodes information about sequential order, progression or temporal succession of events for example before/between/after/ or first/last. On the contrary, spatial ordering encodes information about the relative position or configuration of an array of objects or features like left/right, up/down, front/back.

Episodic memoirs can also form part of the linear orderings. This is because specific episodes in our lives like helping a child cross the street, could be represented by single propositions (Markus and Wur, 1987). The meaning-based self-representations are more abstract as compared to the perception-based representations. This type of representation encodes information about the semantic relations between and among events and objects. Meaning-based self-representations come in two forms or sub-types namely verbal prepositions and schemata.

Verbal prepositions state or define the relationship between two arguments like for example the subject-verb-object relationship. On the other hand, schemata refers to organized structures of knowledge that contain slots for different attributes of a category and their typical values (Kihlstrom and Cantor, 1984). Another difference between verbal propositions and schemata is that propositions represent specific events and objects. For example, Dan’s house was made of wood and cement. This description differentiates Dan’s house because there could be other houses but not build of similar materials.

Kihlstrom and Cantor (1984) state that though schemata are knowledge-based structures, they are not completely made up of propositions. They can also include perception-based knowledge structures. This includes visual and spatial images and linear orderings. The above-mentioned representations are very important such that if we posses something else besides the meaning-based and verbal representations, the self-image will betray the propositional knowledge about self. A deeper explanation about this is that we all have analog representations of our bodies with respect to internal sensations as well as external appearance.

An example is that adolescents perceive transformations in their bodies, infants and monkeys recognize when their faces have been painted and lovers recognize each other’s smell, taste and touch. Metacognitive aspects of self-knowledge The metacognitive aspects of self-knowledge refer to the features or characteristics that differentiate some views from others. These characteristics include certainty, stability and importance. The following is a discussion of metacognitive aspects of knowledge that have attracted significant empirical scrutiny.

The first cognitive aspect is valence of knowledge. There is a great association between the valence of the specific self-views of people and their global self-esteem feelings. The effect of this is that those people who have a greater self-esteem tend to have more positive views of themselves and few negative ones (Fiske et al, 2008). Using the bottom up perspective, the explanation of valence of knowledge is that global self-esteem