Evaluation, Expulsion, Expansion, and Reframing: Building Processing Speed and Tolerance to Cognitive Strain

Abstract

This chapter discusses the cognitive effects of exposure to Beckett’s texts, as introduced in the previous chapter, in relation to a larger number of Beckett’s postwar works, showing how, first, as these effects progressively gain in intensity, interpreters are likely to adapt by developing increased abilities for the processing of complex information at increasing speed; and, second, how such operations are likely to be of evolutionary relevance in the current digitalization and globalization context. The chapter links Beckett’s consistent conversion of shock and anchoring effects into laughter to the generation of an eerie, exclusively nourishing form of “cognitive high” and an increased tolerance to cognitive strain.