Socially Guarded Cognition
This dissertation is an interdisciplinary exploratory study integrating psychology, communication science, behavioral science, and neuroscience to investigate whether a distinct cognitive processing style, provisionally termed Socially Guarded Cognition, can explain recurring patterns of delayed conversational responses, social misunderstanding, and internal cognitive processing that are not fully accounted for by existing constructs such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, anxiety, giftedness, or introversion.
In other words...
"Some people perform an unusually extensive internal review before speaking because they are trying to produce an accurate, appropriate, and socially safe response."
Most theses answer questions. I'm attempting something different, I'm proposing a new conceptual framework. This means this work would likely be categorized as theory-building research.
The questions are psychological:
What happens inside the mind?
The problems are communicative:
Why do conversations fail?
The solutions are behavioral:
How do we improve outcomes?
This combination is exactly what interdisciplinary research is designed for.
The process will look something like this:
Existing Literature
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Find gaps
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Observe recurring behaviors
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Develop conceptual model
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Test conceptual model
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Revise conceptual model
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Propose framework