Can Creativity Predict Cognitive Reserve?

Cognitive reserve relies on the ability to effectively cope with aging and brain damage by using alternate processes to approach tasks when standard approaches are no longer available. In this study, the issue if creativity can predict cognitive reserve has been explored. Forty participants (mean age: 61 years) filled out: the Cognitive Reserve Index questionnaire, the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking in visual and verbal form, Raven's Progressive Matrices (PM38), and the Verbal Judgments Test. The analysis revealed that all indices of verbal creativity were positively correlated with indices of cognitive reserve, except with cognitive reserve related to working activity. However, using the composite score of verbal creativity, all indices of cognitive reserve were predicted, including the index related to working activity. These results show that verbal creativity could be considered as another proxy indicator of cognitive reserve, and open to the hypothesis that verbal creativity enhances cognitive reserve and sustains active aging.     

Cognitive dissonance in children: Justification of effort or contrast?

Justification of effort is a form of cognitive dissonance in which the subjective value of an outcome is directly related to the effort that went into obtaining it. However, it is likely that in social contexts (such as the requirements for joining a group) an inference can be made (perhaps incorrectly) that an outcome that requires greater effort to obtain in fact has greater value. Here we present evidence that a cognitive dissonance effect can be found in children under conditions that offer better control for the social value of the outcome. This effect is quite similar to contrast effects that recently have been studied in animals. We suggest that contrast between the effort required to obtain the outcome and the outcome itself provides a more parsimonious account of this phenomenon and perhaps other related cognitive dissonance phenomena as well. Research will be needed to identify cognitive dissonance processes that are different from contrast effects of this kind. nt]mis|This research was facilitated by a fellowship from the Fulbright Scholar Program and the Nord-Pas de Calais Regional Council, as well as by a visiting professorship at the University of Lille III for T.R.Z. Preparation of the article was facilitated by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 63726 to T.R.Z.     

Cognitive changes in pregnancy: mild decline or societal stereotype?

This research compared pregnant and non‐pregnant women's perceptions of cognitive change and their performance on 13 sensitive memory and attention tasks (Study 1) and two complex driving simulation tasks (Study 2). The pregnant, but not the non‐pregnant, women rated their cognitive abilities as worse than before, but only two performance measures from Study 1 differentiated the two groups (speed of language processing and attentional switching). Study 3 examined beliefs about pregnancy‐related cognitive decline. Women and men with and without immediate experience of pregnancy rated pregnant women's cognitive abilities as slightly worse than before pregnancy. Memory ratings were worse from women and from those with immediate experience of pregnancy. It is concluded that there may be some mild effects of pregnancy on performance of some specific cognitive functions but that cultural expectations based on a stereotype of cognitive decline also contribute to pregnant women's perception of cognitive change. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Acceptance in Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapies: Different or the Same?

Acceptance is a key construct in both rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). The objectives of this study were to assess and compare the properties of ACT acceptance with those of REBT acceptance in predicting emotions. A sample of 112 subjects, comprising different educational and occupational status, completed three measures of acceptance (REBT and ACT), two of mindfulness, as well as completing depression and anxiety scales. Both ACT acceptance as process and REBT acceptance could predict significant ACT acceptance as outcome. Mindfulness as a trait also predicted the level of ACT outcome acceptance as well as the level of REBT acceptance, but mindfulness as process predicted only ACT outcome acceptance. The results show that REBT acceptance, ACT acceptance and mindfulness can explain anxiety and depression in different ways. The results show that the difference between ACT acceptance and REBT acceptance primary concern the process of acceptance, most likely due to the underlying cognitive processing. The outcome acceptance and emotional level are similar in the two conditions. Future research should employ multiple cognitive measurements.     

“Blind” interviewing: Is ignorance bliss?

Current investigative interviewing guidelines [e.g., Technical Working Group: Eyewitness evidence. (1999). Eyewitness evidence: A guide for law enforcement. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/178240.pdf] suggest that interviewers review available case information prior to conducting a witness interview. The present study investigated the effect of interviewers’ pre-interview awareness of crime details on eyewitnesses’ memory and interviewer behaviour shortly after a mock crime or a week later. Results indicate that blind interviewers with no knowledge about the crime elicited more correct information than those who were correctly informed about the crime. Differences in interviewer behaviour emerged only in the very first question of the interview: Blind interviewers were more likely to begin the interview with a non-suggestive question than the informed interviewers. Blind interviewers also recalled more details than the informed interviewers when asked to generate a report after the witness interview documenting the witness’ account.     

Variation in working memory capacity and intrusions: Differences in generation or editing?

The current study explored the reason for the relation between individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and intrusions in free recall. High and low WMC individuals were tested in standard delayed free recall and externalised free recall in which participants recalled everything that came to mind. Additionally, in externalised free recall participants were instructed to press a key for each item that they knew was an intrusion. In delayed free recall, low WMC individuals recalled fewer correct items and more previous list and extralist intrusions than high WMC individuals. In externalised free recall, differences only arose in previous list intrusions. Furthermore, in externalised free recall it was found that low WMC were less likely to identify both types of intrusions than high WMC individuals. It is argued that the reason low WMC individuals recall more intrusions than high WMC in free recall is due to differences in both generation and editing abilities.     

Posttraumatic Growth Following Trauma: Is Growth Accelerated or a Reflection of Cognitive Maturation?

Over the past two decades, there has been an exponential increase in studies investigating posttraumatic growth (PTG) in samples exposed to various traumatic experiences. The prevalence of PTG following trauma has been variable, and mixed findings have emerged pertaining to factors associated with PTG. To date, however, there has been a notable paucity of research that has considered the PTG phenomenon in relation to lifespan developmental, cognitive, and humanistic theories. The objective of this review is to evaluate the prominent theory of PTG proposed by Tedeschi and Calhoun (1996 Tedeschi, R. G. & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The posttraumatic growth inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9, 455–471.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in context of the theories of Erikson and Maslow, as well as Frankl's theory of meaning-making postadversity. Methodological issues are also considered to inform the advancement of future research in this field.     

Is Psychology a Cognitive Science?

ABSTRACT Since the 1970s there has been a significant paradigm shift in psychology away from behaviourism and towards cognitive psychology. Indeed a recent survey discovered that by 1983 more than half American psychologists were describing their approaches as cognitive. However, while behaviourism has had an identifiable philosophical 'line' in positivism, reductionism and the hypothetico-deductive model, such a framework has been noticeably lacking from cognitive psychology. A view of cognitive psychology based on functionalism and ideas from systems analysis is put forward.     

Is There a Developmental Slump in Creativity in China? The Relationship Between Organizational Climate and Creativity Development in Chinese Adolescents

The major objectives of this study were to determine the characteristics of creativity development of Chinese children, the creative organizational climate of Chinese schools, and the relations among them. The results provided evidence that the creativity scores of children in elementary school were significantly higher than those of children in middle school. The teachers' evaluation of the creative organizational climate of the elementary school was significantly higher than that of the middle school. When the two variables were analyzed together, both the creative organizational climate of schools and the creative thinking development of children decreased during the children's development. Moreover, the creativity and climate scores were highly correlated, and the results from a path analysis suggested that a school's creative organizational climate has a significant impact on all seven dimensions of creativity measured in this study.     

Is Human Life Absurd?

Philosophia - This essay examines whether or not absurdity is intrinsic to human life. It takes Camus’ interpretation of ‘The Absurd’ as its conceptual starting point. It traces...     

Cognitive Performance in Adults’ Daily Lives: Is There a Lab-Life Gap?

This article addresses the “lab-life gap” in cognitive aging research as an important issue of ecological validity in developmental research. Older adults often function competently in complex everyday situations despite age-related deficits on laboratory-based cognitive tasks. Therefore, to what extent do lab-based cognitive tasks predict real-life outcomes in older adults? Our review shows that although they are similar, measures of everyday cognitive competence predict relevant outcomes beyond basic measures. We provide our perspective on critical questions concerning the relevance of everyday cognitive tests in our ever-changing world, new methods of everyday cognitive assessment, and whether everyday cognition can be improved.     

Is Human Learning Rational?

We can predict and control events in the world via associative learning. Such learning is rational if we come to believe that an associative relationship exists between a pair of events only when it truly does. The statistical metric ΔP, the difference between the probability of an outcome event in the presence of the predictor and its probability in the absence of the predictor tells us when and to what extent events are indeed related. Contrary to what is often claimed, humans' associative judgements compare very favourably with the ΔP metric, even in situations where multiple predictive cues are in competition for association with the outcome. How do humans achieve this judgemental accuracy? I argue that it is not via the application of an explicit mental version of the ΔP rule. Instead, accurate judgements are an emergent property of an associationist learning process of the sort that has become common in adaptive network models of cognition. Such an associationist mechanism is the “means” to a normative or statistical “end”.     

Mechanisms of perceptual timing: Beat-based or interval-based judgements?

Summary What is the nature of the human timing mechanism for perceptual judgements about short temporal intervals? One possibility is that initial periodic events, such as tones, establish internal beats which continue after the external events and serve as reference points for the perception of subsequent events. A second possibility is that the timer records the intervals produced by events. Later, the stored intervals can be reproduced or compared to other intervals. A study by Schulze (1978) provided evidence favoring beat-based timing. In contrast, our two experiments support an interval theory. The judgements of intervals between tones is not improved when the events are synchronized with internal beats established by the initial intervals. The conflict between the two sets of results may be resolved by the fact that an interval timer can recycle from one interval to the next, thus operating in a beat-like mode. However, a timer of this sort is just as accurate when comparing intervals that are off the beat.     

Blind or deaf? A matter of aesthetics

Blind or deaf? Surprisingly, a small but noticeable minority, 17%, opted for blindness. Another 6% were indifferent. For these individuals (23% of the sample), the loss of the aesthetic experience--music--was given relatively greater weight than the loss of the practical--conversation. This was not a symmetric effect in that those who opted for being deaf did not place greater value on the aesthetic aspects of vision compared to those who opted for being blind. What predicts the preference for being blind was not the amount of time spent listening to music but the extent to which one formally studied, created, and played music and experienced intense emotions when engaged by music.     

East-West Difference in Views on Creativity: Is Howard Gardner Correct? Yes,and No

The cultural aspect of creativity has in recent years begun to attract the attention of creativity researchers both at the conceptual and empirical levels. Howard Gardner posits a performance-oriented regimental approach to creativity in China, based on his visit to the country a decade ago. He also proposes five assumptions underlying such an approach. The present study tests these conceptions empirically by contrasting the views of Singapore teachers steeped in Chinese culture with those in the Western tradition. Teachers' choices of action contradict Gardner's contention but his assumptions are largely supported.     

Human geography in the French Institute: new discipline or missed opportunity?

The geography section of the Class of Moral and Political Sciences of the French National Institute, which was in existence from December 1795 to January 1803, responded inadequately to the theoretical challenges of Montesquieu, the hygienists, Volney, and Degérando to study thoroughly native peoples to determine the effects of physical geographic conditions on the body and mind. Most geographers had no interest in human geography, and even statistical geography received only superficial discussion. Despite the emergence of the scientific journal, only a few authors partly transcended the stereotypes of the noble-ignoble savage. The only expedition partly planned by the Institute in this period had an ambitious exploration program that precluded a linguistically sophisticated study of native peoples. Bonaparte's dissolution of the Class hindered further opportunities for studying human geography during the Empire.     

Processing Pitch and Temporal Structures in Music Reading: Independent or Interactive Processing Mechanisms?

Music provides a useful domain in which to study how the different attributes of complex multidimensional stimuli are processed both separately and in combination. Much research has been devoted to addressing how the dimension of pitch and time are co-processed in music listening tasks. Neuropsychological studies have provided evidence for a certain degree of independence between pitch and temporal processing, although there are also many experimental reports favouring interactive models of pitch and temporal processing. Here we extended these investigations by examining the processing of pitch and temporal structures when music is presented in the visual modality (i.e. in the form of music notation). In two experiments, musician subjects were presented with visual musical stimuli containing both pitch and temporal information for a brief amount of time, and they were subsequently required to recall both the pitch and temporal information. In Experiment 1, we documented that concurrent, unattended, pitch and rhythmic auditory interference stimuli disrupted the recall of pitch, but not time. In Experiment 2, we showed that manipulating the tonal structure of the visual presentation stimuli affected the recall of pitch, but not time. On the other hand, manipulating the metrical properties of the visual stimuli affected recall of time, and pitch to a certain extent. Taken together, these results suggest that the processing of pitch is constrained by the processing of time, but the processing of time is not affected by the processing of pitch. These results do not support either strong independence or interactive models of pitch and temporal processing, but they suggest that the processing of time can occur independently from the processing of pitch when performing a written recall task.