This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
A great deal of contemporary research argues that humans learn from experience. This research, however, rarely explicates what constitutes an experience for humans, let alone experiences that lead to deep learning for human flourishing. Experience is constituted of inner and out sensations processed in certain ways. Thus, a biologically realistic…
A great deal of contemporary research argues that humans learn from experience. This research, however, rarely explicates what constitutes an experience for humans, let alone experiences that lead to deep learning for human flourishing. Experience is constituted of inner and out sensations processed in certain ways. Thus, a biologically realistic theory of learning must be based on a theory of sensation and how sense making derives from sensation. This dissertation seeks such a theory in the emerging literature on what kinds of creatures humans are and what this implies about how they learn and flourish. This literature ranges across several different disciplines, including neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and work on how affect guides cognition and action. Humans are as able to learn from experiences they have had in media as they are from experiences they have had in the real world. In either case, however, humans do not learn deeply from random experiences. They learn best from experiences that have been designed to recruit affect, help them manage their attention, and give them ways to assess the success of actions they take toward goals. Thus, teaching in the sense of experience design—a task for teachers in schools, as well as media designers and artists of all different sorts—is fundamental to human learning and flourishing. The dissertation defines flourishing in terms of the state of a human being’s allostatic load, a variable which can be measured. Since I am interested how experience designers design sensation to create sense making and sense making that can enhance human flourishing, I am interest in experience design in the arts, a domain that has traditionally been seen as an important source of insight built on sensation. I use examples from traditional and contemporary art in the dissertation. The last chapter is an extended study of the anime Attack on Titan I show how the design of Attack on Titan uses sensation to engender deep contemplation and discussion of complex political, historical, and philosophical issues. The way it achieves this goal has important implications for teaching and learning in and out of school.
