Learning for Sustainability - LforS: Stakeholder dialogue

Description of the role fo stakeholder dialogue in rural extension and development. Tools and methods for stakeholder dialogues.

A neurophysiological fingerprint of the empty-chair dialogue

The empty chair dialogue is a validated technique used in Gestalt and emotion focused therapy to help clients overcome unresolved interpersonal grievances. It aims at influencing emotional processing in a way that emotional states characterized by advanced meaning making, thus by the integration of cognition and affect, are facilitated. Even though a variety of studies demonstrated the effectiveness of this technique as well as the usefulness of improvements in emotional processing, it remains unclear how these changes are characterized on a neuronal level. The present study aimed at tracing changes induced by the empty-chair dialogue with electrophysiological methods. Subjects reporting long-standing interpersonal grievances were recruited. After informed consent, an experienced therapist guided subjects to work on their individual interpersonal theme using the empty chair dialogue. During this one-session intervention, multichannel EEG was recorded and the session was video-taped. Afterwards, a validated observational rating instrument was used to identify time periods representing emotional states characterized by either high or low meaning making and the preprocessed, artifact-free EEG-data was labeled accordingly. Thus the comparison of neurophysiological activity during two distinct types of emotional processing becomes possible. EEG-data will be analyzed with modern methods of frequency analysis. Furthermore global field synchronization will be compared between the two types of emotional processing.

Collective Referential Intentionality in the Semantics of Dialogue

The concept of a dialogue is considered in general terms from the standpoint of its referential presuppositions. The semantics of dialogue implies that dialogue participants must generally have a collective intentionality of agreed-upon references that is minimally sufficient for them to be able to disagree about other things, and ideally for outstanding disagreements to become clearer at successive stages of the dialogue. These points are detailed and illustrated in a fictional dialogue, in which precisely these kinds of referential confusions impede progress in shared understanding. It is only through a continuous exchange of question and answer in this dialogue case study that the meanings of key terms and anaphorical references are disambiguated, and a relevantly complete collective intentionality of shared meaning between dialogue participants is achieved. The importance of a minimally shared referential semantics for the terms entering into reasoning and argument in dialogue contexts broadly construed cannot be over-estimated. Where to draw the line between referential agreement and disagreement within any chosen dialogue, as participants work toward better mutual understanding in clearing up referential incongruities, is sometimes among the dialogue’s main points of dispute.