How could we have perceptions or emotions which were ‘excessive or unrealistic’? We can, and do, because our higher mental functions, in particular our consciousness, have no direct contact with ‘reality’ (whatever that might be). (For a discussion of consciousness and unconsciousness and their importance, or otherwise, in education, see notes to chapter six.) What we have in our heads is, and can only ever be, a virtual reality. We invent it. We can only experience ‘reality’ through many layers of unconscious activity, through the activities of a plethora of perceptions and lower mental ‘organs’. ‘Reality’, as experienced in our consciousness, is filtered through prior unconscious processes. Everything is constructed for and by ‘us’, in our unconscious, during this process; everything from what we will decide to perceive to what we will construe from what we decided to perceive and what we will decide to do next. Even (perhaps particularly) our emotions, attitudes and motivations, our ‘affective states’, are thus constructed. Our emotions profoundly affect our higher mental activities, and are affected by them in return. Our ‘affective states’ are, of course, based in part at least on whatever is happening to and around us. They are, though, also partly constructed from (or at least much affected by) our past history and affective experiences. They are constructed by the brain in a continual, reverberating dialogue between ‘higher’ cortical thought and ‘lower’ emotional responses and affective states. Being constructs based upon constructs, they may also be faulty; they may even be complete nonsense. (Ramachandran & Blakeslee 1998, Sacks 1985, Wall 1999)

Arnold (1999 p. 1) writes that ‘Affect will be considered broadly as aspects of emotion, feeling, mood or attitude which condition behaviour.’ She immediately makes the important connection, a connection which we know that our brains make all the time, between our moods, emotions, feelings and attitudes and our behaviour. It has long been neuroanatomically known that ‘… brain mechanisms involved in the processing of emotion have extensive interconnections with cortical areas that subserve higher cognitive processes.’ (Niedenthal & Halberstadt 1995 p.25) Eich says that ‘… cognitive researchers … regard emotions with respect, owing to their potent and predictable effects on tasks as diverse as episodic recall, word recognition and risk assessment.’ (Eich et al 2000 p.2). We recognise, both intuitively and empirically, that our emotions powerfully affect our thinking, and this is confirmed by brain architecture. Affect and cognition are copiously and intimately interconnected. Vygotsky (1986 p. 10) says that the ‘… separation [of intellect and affect] as subjects of study is a major weakness of modern psychology …’ Niedenthal & Halberstadt (1995 p 26) suggest that our emotions may be the ‘… organising nodes in memory.’ (And see Power & Dalgleish 1997)

Goleman (1996) describes this intimate interconnectedness between limbic system and neocortex, and thus between affect and reason, as ‘… the hub of the battles or cooperative treaties struck between heart and head, thought and feeling.’ (ibid. p.27) On the same page he begins his description of ‘… the power of emotion to disrupt thinking itself.’ (He even calls his book ‘Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ’). Damasio (1994) goes even further. Starting with an examination of the case of the unfortunate Phineas Gage, famous throughout psychology, who simultaneously blew away his prefrontal cortex, his soul and his humanity (as Damasio claims) in a horrendous accident with a tamping iron, he makes the case that this intimate interconnectedness of limbic and cortical systems makes for such total interdependence of emotion and rationality, affect and cognition, that:

…emotions and feelings can cause havoc in the processes of reasoning under certain circumstances. Traditional wisdom has told us that they can and recent investigations of the normal reasoning process also reveal the potentially harmful influence of emotional biases. It is thus even more surprising and novel that the absence of emotion and feeling is no less damaging, no less capable of compromising the rationality that makes us distinctively human and allows us to decide in consonance with a sense of personal future, social convention and moral principle. (ibid. p. xiv)

What we are, a little loosely, calling ‘the emotions’ have profound effects on cognition and cognitive behaviour. Emotions affect performance. They affect performance in (e.g. learning, enjoyment) and they affect performance out (e.g. skills, behaviour). Their effect, of course, may be positive or negative. A major vehicle for their effect is motivation - itself a complex of history, educational experience and affect. For example, those of us who have had an educational career of consistent and loudly recognised literacy success will approach reading or writing tasks with confidence, enthusiasm and anticipation of enjoyment. Our self-opinion and expectations, at least in this regard, will be high. We are likely, in such a positive emotional environment, to succeed further. We are likely to surmount difficulty (which we are likely to experience as invigorating and interesting challenge) and continue to succeed. This success, especially if somewhat against the odds, will bolster our confidence and enthusiasm, further stoking our expectation that we can succeed again in the future and our determination to do this. If we fail we may attribute this to the complexity of the text - for example, we may confidently consider the writing to have been poor. We will not attribute failure to personal inadequacy. Task difficulty will positively attract us. We will, in a word, be motivated by literacy.