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This chapter introduces the cognitive paradigm. The concept of translation and associated problems is discussed. Several arguments for the adoption of a cognitive-based social sciences are provided. A brief history of the term cognition is provided and the origin of theory in tourism discussed. Justifications for the use of cognitive psychology in the field of tourism are provided. These include the (mostly) hedonic and hence emotional nature of tourism experiences, the novelty of travel outside one's usual environment, the importance of imagining, daydreams, emotions and desire for travel decisions and the importance of autobiographical memories because of travel.

This chapter documents initial results of using skin conductance measures to compare the relative effectiveness of three commercials for destinations and one beer advertisement. Data were collected from 12 respondents in a laboratory-based study. Analysis of skin conductance data showed that the beer commercial evoked a greater intensity of emotional response than the three tourism commercials. Moreover, the time trace of the tourism commercials indicated a downward trend, and this is interpreted as a lack of overall emotional arousal. The results suggest that skin conductance measures may be used for testing tourism advertising effectiveness and also a need for further research to examine the emotional content of tourism advertising.

This chapter discusses the main psychological paradigms used in the past 100 years, psychodynamism, behaviourism and cognitivism based on an information processing paradigm, and later cognitivism based on complex interactive mental processes. It briefly introduces the main concepts of later cognitive psychology: consciousness, sensation, perception, attention, emotion and memory. Each of these concepts will be discussed in detail in later chapters along with their application to tourism. One basic assumption of cognitive psychology is that the brain emerged through evolution and has survival value. However, this means that the brain is not a unified designed organ but has layers of development, one building on the others.

Effective experience design requires not only a knowledge of tourist goals, but an understanding of how these can be met in a particular tourism site. Research on experiences and experience design is supported by cognitive psychology concepts such as perception, attention, appraisal, emotion, consciousness, feelings and memory. However, these concepts are often used in a combination with others from sociology, social or environmental psychology in a manner that leads to confusion rather than clarity, without apparent understanding of the theoretical mechanisms by which these concepts are related. This chapter develops a series of propositions for potential application to tourism experience design. Future research should examine the efficacy of these propositions from cognitive psychology for tourism experience design.

This chapter presents a case for updating the use and development of psychological theory in tourism through an examination of the psychological stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model. The historical development and the criticism of the model has been addressed. A revised version of the model is provided based on importing new theoretical knowledge from the original discipline. This chapter argues that with an explicit focus on tourism psychology, there is some evidence to suggest that tourism theory may benefit from adopting theory from the parental discipline rather than inventing its own. Future research can address other examples of imported theories and to further examine mechanisms for this knowledge transfer and update from original disciplines relevant to the study of tourism.

This chapter clarifies the definition and reviews recent theories of consciousness, such as the dual systems framework, global workplace theory, and higher-order theory. Aspects of conscious experiences are useful in studying tourism decisionmaking, memory, emotions, tourism behaviour, and other topics related to tourism psychology. For instance, studies on conscious experiences of decisionmaking are useful to better understand destination choice and tourists' emotions elicitation, unconscious biases help to understand tourism attitude formation, while explicit and implicit cognition research provides insights to destination image attributes. Future studies may consider using objective and subjective methods of studying consciousness in the tourism context.

This chapter provides a holistic understanding of memory and the tourism-memory nexus. This chapter begins with an overview of what memory is and the history of research on it. Following this, the chapter outlines key memory-related themes in cognitive psychology. Next, the implications of the tourism-memory nexus for research on memorable tourism experiences are discussed. It provides a critical analysis of the research which examines tourism and memory from the viewpoint of cognitive psychology. The chapter concludes with an outline of key avenues for further research in order to delve into tourism-memory nexus.