Mind-based media and communications technologies. How the form of symbolical information influences felt meaning

The problem of the study is the design of modern, computerized mediaand communication technologies which systematically influence subjective experiences and knowledge of the perceivers. The interaction of mind and the information embedded in modern media and communications technologies is complex. The result of this interaction is the making of meaning for information. There are sources of variability of meaning in the perceiver and media and communications technologies. These sources of variability partly determine the resulting meanings which are made. Meaning may instantly change subjective experience, such as emotion, and change knowledge. By semi-systematically controlling the making of meaning, one may indirectly influence subjective experience and change the knowledge of a certain perceiver. This happens by manipulating the information embedded in a particular media and communications technology to reach a certain goal, such as to produce a subjective experience or change knowledge via influencing meanings in a certain way. This study focuses on the influence of the way of designing and presenting information on non-linguistic, presentational and image-schematic meanings and the consequent changes in subjective experience and/or knowledge of the perceiver. As a result of theoretical and conceptual elaborations the study presents an approach to the design of mind-based media and communications technologies. To describe the problem area the study constructs models of making meaning. Making meaning in a real, physical environment is influenced by complex interactions of the perceiver, the object of perception and the context of perception. An object of perception is perceived via attention, which relegates the other objects of perception to the background, or context. Meaning is made in unconscious processes via three interacting loops of processing. In the perception-action loop, the sensory mechanisms resonate with the features of the object of perception, reflecting the embeddedness of the perceiver in the context. In the attention loop some sensory representations produced in the perception-action loop are identified and quickly categorized by projecting non-linguistic symbolic models, such as primary metaphors, onto the sensory representations. This results in non-linguistic, image-schematic and presentational felt meaning. It may also be the basis of personal meaning, which is based on the unconscious evaluation of the immediate relevance of the object of perception to personal values, ego, goals and well-being. Felt and personal meaning may directly influence subjective experiences, such as emotion, due to the close link of emotion and cognition. Partly similar mechanisms of change may apply to other types of subjective experience, such as daydreaming or flow. In a further-processing loop, meaning is made via more elaborated comparisons of mental representations and previous knowledge. This may lead to knowledge construction, accumulative and mechanistic change in knowledge. It may also lead to knowledge creation, which implies the change of levels of meaning in knowledge. Also, subjective experiences may be altered. When perceiving information via media and communications technologies, the mind is psychologically transported into a quasi-natural experience of the events described. This is called presence. In presence, information becomes the focused object of perception, while the immediate, external context, including the technological device, fades into the background. Various empirical studies show that information experienced in presence has real psychological effects on perceivers and