A design-based approach to sleep-onset and insomnia: Super-somnolent mentation, the cognitive shuffle and serial diverse imagining

This paper describes an approach to sleep onset (SO) and insomnia that involves a broad, design-based theory of cognition and affect (H-CogAff, Sloman, 2003). It proposes that the SO Control System (SOCS) has somnolent and insomnolent mentation inputs. A disruption of situational awareness and temporal sense making is posited to be somnolent. Perturbance (tertiary emotion) and primary emotions are posited as insomnolent. Many prior deliberate mentation strategies, prescribed as cognitive therapy for insomnia (CT-I), appear to be insufficiently counter-insomnolent (e.g., insufficiently able to compete with insistent motivators) and not inherently somnolent. According to tenets presented here, serial diverse imagining, a deliberate form of mentation involving a cognitive shuffle, is predicted to be super-somnolent (somnolent and counter-insomnolent). This paper calls for the development of SOCS theories and CTI, both from the design stance. Particular attention should be given to perturbance and the possibility of super-somnolent mentation.