Florian Morin

Independent researcher examining how evaluative monitoring shapes access to positive affect and contributes to shifts between regimes.

Current empirical direction

Development of the M-ZRT, an Evaluation/Z Reduction Task

Childhood play contains brief suspensions of optimization. It may reflect a distinct control configuration characterized by reduced monitoring and a greater propensity for joy and vivid mental imagery.

This is the principle underlying the M-ZRT exercises: each one interrupts a different form of optimization before recruiting its next policy.

Hypotheses

The task is designed to test the hypothesis that temporarily suspending optimization alters access conditions to a distinct affective regime, where:

joy is the norm;
vividness of imagination occasionally happens;
completion of positive memories occasionally happens;
odors, colors, and tastes are recruited simultaneously from simple cues.

Z functions as a state variable tracking how much behavior is being evaluated and optimized. High Z increases monitoring and blocks entry into joy. Attempts to measure or intentionally reproduce the state may themselves raise Z, producing a measurement constraint.