| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Autopoietic questions and answers (AQAs) are sequences of spontaneously structured thinking processes that underlie re-examination of self, existence, and future-oriented problem solving. Although the AQAs are thought to play important positive and negative roles in the problem solving that takes place in our daily life, very little is known about how these processes actually function. The present study was conducted to establish the research area of the AQAs through empirical and theoretical analysis.
The empirical analysis was composed of two questionnaire investigations, a half-structured interview, and a laboratory-based experiment. In the first investigation, several groups of the AQAs that university students experienced in everyday life were collected. The other investigation was based on items derived from the first investigation. A questionnaire about the AQAs was then constructed and administered.
Factor analysis was applied to the data obtained from 331 university students and revealed that, in form, the AQAs consisted of four factors : the spatial form factor, the temporal form factor, the recursive form factor, and the existential form factor. Six postgraduate students participated in interviews conducted twice at intervals of one year. The data obtained from the interviews clarified the processes involved in the reconstruction of the self through the use of AQAs. The model of AQAs was constructed to explore the relationship between cognitive processes of the AQAs and involuntary triggering of autobiographical memories.
The empirical findings of this study suggested that AQAs play both positive and negative roles in decision making that can affect choice of career, for example, by promoting the creation of a actual self through internal observation. The study also proposed a cognitive model for the processes underlying the AQAs as well as discussion of direction for further research.
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