Understanding the Reality-Fiction Distinction: The BLINCS Model

Join us for a special seminar featuring Anna Abraham, E. Paul Torrance Professor in the department of Educational Psychology and director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia, entitled "Understanding the Reality-Fiction distinction: The BLINCS Model."

Time: Nov 15, 2024 12:30 PM (ETC Time)
Location: Jesse W. Mason Building, Rm. 2117, 790 Atlantic Dr NW, Atlanta, GA 30332 or Zoom

Attend in person at our seminar venue in Mason 2117 and have the opportunity to meet with the speaker, or join virtually via Zoom.

Speaker: Anna Abraham
E. Paul Torrance Professor
Department of Educational Psychology
Director, Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development
University of Georgia

Students and faculty interested in meeting with Abraham are encouraged to contact Francesco Fedele (fedele@gatech.edu).

Abstract: We readily engage in fictional worlds, and experience alternative realities through storytelling via novels, movies, and games. Yet even when we are completely immersed and emotionally engaged within these worlds, we have little difficulty in leaving the fictional landscapes and getting back to the day-to-day of our own world.

How are we able to do this? How do we acquire our understanding of our real world? How is this similar to and different from the development of our knowledge of fictional worlds?

In this talk,  I briefly review the BLINCS model: a novel multilevel explanation of our implicit understanding of the reality-fiction distinction. I argue that we are able to readily tell apart fiction from reality because fictional worlds are bounded, inference-light, sparse, and curated. I end with tentative explorations of the consequences of having such an implicit understanding in place – could it become blurred in the emerging post-truth and AI-dictated world order?