THEORETICAL RESEARCH PROPOSAL Medium-Independent, Criterion-Relative Functional Significance Reconfiguration Theory (MICR-FSRT)
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This manuscript proposes the Medium-Independent, Criterion-Relative Functional Significance Reconfiguration Theory (MICR-FSRT), a general theoretical architecture for investigating why the same input can acquire different functional significance, evaluative meaning, felt intensity, perceived depth, attentional priority, or behavioral consequences across systems and criteria.The theory treats significance as a relational outcome rather than as a property determined exclusively by the intrinsic characteristics of an input. Its proposed mechanism integrates system state, reference criteria, state-reference discrepancy, functional demand, resource availability, substitutability, input-criterion fit, expected efficacy, sensitivity, gain modulation, contextual constraints, and inter-system interaction. It distinguishes functional significance from evaluation, emotional intensity, felt depth, inference about another system, independently assessed quality, and behavioral response.The architecture is medium-independent in its intended scope, but does not assume that empirical effects remain invariant across media. Criteria are generalizable rather than dispensable, and system count is unrestricted in principle: one-system, two-system, multi-agent, networked, and nested-system applications are permitted when their boundaries and variables are explicitly defined. Time is not treated as a universal medium. Static evaluation, ordered-event models, discrete-time transitions, and continuous-time dynamics are available according to the research problem.The primary illustrative case is Need-Gap Amplification in Interpersonal Significance (NGAIS): under some conditions, an isolated person may experience modest companionship as unusually meaningful or deep, while another person may interpret the same interaction as ordinary friendship. The case is used to motivate the general architecture, not to define its full scope.The manuscript specifies a twenty-layer architecture, a formal variable registry, candidate mathematical models, sixteen general propositions, primary-case hypotheses, alternative explanations, falsification criteria, measurement requirements, model-comparison procedures, and a staged research roadmap. It is a theory-building proposal rather than an empirically validated universal law.
Author: Shan, Shamiul Hoque
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225178234