ABSTRACT
Cognitive science contributes to the understanding of ritual largely in its elucidation of the way the human mind universally tends to construct the images, themes, and narratives that are used in ritual. However, it is distinct from the study of the biological systems likely involved in ritual. Cognitive scientists of ritual Robert McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson explain that transmission actually tends to transform ideas rather than replicate them faithfully, and this transformation is along certain predictable lines as a result of our universal mental structure. Cognitively optimal concepts are ones that the human mind is naturally well-equipped to process and remember, or that readily trigger exceptionally salient or attention-grabbing inferences, in the absence of any special training or inducement to learn such concepts. Imagistic modes tend to be personal, intensely emotional, and idiosyncratic, but can be chaotic and fractionating.
