Recommend me a software for editing photos and creating new designs, please. Well, there are many different programs to work with graphics, a list of photo editing software you will find the link. The most popular software programs now are Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator. Here you can download this software: download adobe photoshop cs5
Download CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 Download Illustrator CS4 I hope I helped you! Yes thanks, this information helped me a lot, I downloaded Adobe Photoshop and is very happy with it.

Archive for January, 2011

Our Bodies Amplify Cognitive Impact of Metaphors

Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

new-view.jpgThe last 30 years of research in the brain, cognitive and behavioral sciences have revealed 10 core traits about how minds work that are especially relevant for designers. Taken together, we can say these 10 traits make up a new view of how minds really work.  For example, two of the traits reveal that our minds are:

Embodied or grounded in sensory information and pattern recognition not abstract thought. We literally use our physical bodies to think, learn and do all things mental.

Metaphor Obsessed or constantly associating one concept with another as a primary means for remembering, making sense of the world, learning and creative expression.

The importance and subtle nature of these two traits are illustrated nicely in a  new Scientific American article,  Body of Thought: How Trivial Sensations Can Influence Reasoning, Social Judgments and Perception.    

“But a rapidly growing body of research indicates that metaphors joining body and  mind reflect a central fact about the way we think: the mind uses the body  to make sense of abstract concepts. Thus, seemingly trivial sensations and  actions-mimicking a smile or a frown, holding smooth or rough objects,  nodding or giving a thumbs-up-can influence high-level psychological  processes such as social judgment, language comprehension, visual perception and even reasoning about insubstantial notions such as time. ”

The interplay between metaphors and embodiment can be especially fruitful for cognitive designers.  The article highlights research that looks at the impact of bodily metaphors (e.g. gestures that trigger metaphorical associations) and seemingly minor sensations (e.g. temperature, hardness, smoothness, smells etc.)  on emotional processing, reasoning about past/future and moral cognition.   For example, striking the so-called power pose can actually influence people to make bolder decisions.

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