Distancing (psychology)
This understanding of one's identity is considered an essential phase in coming to terms with symbols, which in turn forms the foundation for full cognition and language.
As a result of depicted imitation, a slight distance occurs between the sounds uttered and the event they represent.
[1] The increased distance in the vehicle from the referent occurs in four types of transitional forms of linguistic representations.
At first, responses may be simple repetitions of pleasurable acts, but eventually events that take place in the present tense are replaced in the subject's mind with more complicated concepts, such as desires, requests, or other expressions which reflect symbolic cognition and understanding of past events.
Schizophrenia is an extreme shrinkage of psychological distance because the waking individual is no longer able to discern the difference between themselves and others, referential object and symbolic vehicle.
Current research has shown that self-immersed individuals experience increased activity in emotional, autobiographical memory recall, and self-reflecting neural networks in the brain such as the medial prefrontal cortex, and brodmann area 10 (BA10).
[5] Additionally self-immersed individuals have increased activity in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and brodmann area 25 (BA25).
Individuals adopting a self-distanced perspective were also shown to be able to reconstrue and derive meaning from negative events as opposed to simply recalling the play-by-play details of what occurred in the memory.
Moreover, it has been shown to promote wise reasoning about interpersonal[8][9] and political conflicts, attenuating polarized attitudes toward outgroup members,[10] and fostering intellectual humility, open-mindedness, and empathy over time.
Studies have indicated that rumination delays the amount of time it takes for a person to recover from negative events physiologically because they are continually reliving their past experiences.
In a neuro-physiological study, it was found that both anxious and avoidant individuals activate the ACC and MPFC regions when told not to think about an event.
[15] Avoidant individuals failed to fully deactivate LPFC and SCC regions while suppressing thoughts and emotions.
For example, increased distance between words and what they refer in terms of time and space allows for mental travel into the past and future.
[2][18] In the beginning of development, there is a short distance between words and what they mean and children are only able to comprehend and speak about the concrete.
Additionally, being able to look backwards and forwards in time allows for the formation of basic cognition such as prediction, evaluation, and action.
