The Usual and the Unusual: Solving Remote Associates Test Tasks Using Simple Statistical Natural Language Processing Based on Language Use

In this study we show how complex creative relations can arise from fairly frequent semantic relations observed in everyday language. By doing this, we reflect on some key cognitive aspects of linguistic and general creativity. In our experimentation, we automated the process of solving a battery of Remote Associates Test tasks. By applying Statistical Natural Language Processing techniques to a large web‐based corpus, we perform a frequency and collocation analysis of the test items. Results show that 37% of the 68 tasks were automatically solved, whereas human accuracy reached 43%. Our method outperformed humans in the tasks rated as difficult: 38% and 32%, respectively. Highly relevant is that the novel and adequate relations established in order to solve the RAT were not previously present in the corpus. The frequency based approach pervades all stages of our method: during the divergent stage, highly frequent collocations are listed, while the convergent stage starts by matching each task's triads output, shrinking that list, and finalizing it by choosing the least frequent, therefore more informative and often correct, result. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model in overcoming functional fixedness and understanding cognitive salience in the creative process.     

Mathematical Creativity: A Combination of Domain-general Creative and Domain-specific Mathematical Skills

Creativity is an understudied topic in elementary school mathematics research. Nevertheless, we argue that creativity plays an important role in mathematics, but that more research is needed to understand this relation. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate this relation, specifically between domain-general creativity, domain-specific mathematical creativity, and mathematical ability. Measures for these constructs were administered to 342 Dutch fourth graders. In order to examine the nature of the relation between creativity and mathematics, two competing models were tested, using Structural Equation Modeling. The results indicated that models in which general creativity and mathematical ability both predict mathematical creativity fitted the data better than models in which mathematical and general creativity predict mathematical ability. This study showed that both general creativity and mathematical ability are important to think creatively in mathematics.     

To Brexit or not to Brexit: The roles of Islamophobia,conspiracist beliefs,and integrated threat in voting intentions for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum

We used an identities approach to examine voting intentions in the June 2016 UK referendum on membership of the European Union (EU). In April 2016, 303 British adults (58.7% women, age M = 34.73) indicated their voting intentions for the referendum and completed measures of identification with the national in-group, perceived threat from Muslim immigrants, belief in Islamophobic conspiracy narratives, Islamophobia, general conspiracist beliefs, ambiguity tolerance, and belief in a clash of civilizations. Path and mediation analyses indicated that greater belief in Islamophobic conspiracy theories mediated the link between Islamophobia and intention to vote to leave. Islamophobia and Islamophobic conspiracist beliefs also mediated the effects of perceived threat from Muslims on voting intentions. Other variables acted as antecedents of perceived threat or Islamophobic conspiracy narratives. These findings highlight the role that identity-based cognitions may have played in shaping voting intentions for the UK EU referendum.     

阴谋论信念的产生机制——社会认知视角的三种解释

社会心理学将阴谋论视作一种意识形态上的信念,并定义为人们将重大的政治或社会事件归因为有权力的群体或个人暗中预谋以达成其目的的解释倾向。社会认知视角为个体这种阴谋论信念的产生提供了三种解释。错觉模式感知导致人们认知上倾向于在不相关的事件之间建立联系;敏感性动因觉察影响人们过度感知并假定事件背后的动因、目的和意图等;投射是将自己愿意参与阴谋的意图归因于事件中的他人。     

Conceptualizing Creativity: General and Cultural Biases in Gough's Creative Personality Scale

This study analyzes the validity of Gough's Creative Personality Scale (CPS) for the Adjective Check List (ACL) by using 1773 Swiss, South Korean, and Mainland Chinese students as a sample. Four sources of potential bias were identified in Gough's CPS, two of which are general and two cultural in nature. The two general biases were investigated by conducting correlation analyses and evaluating alternative scoring methods for the CPS. As a result of the first bias, checking a large number of adjectives was found to be more important for achieving a high score than checking the relevant ones. Due to the second bias, the CPS score mostly depends on the number of positive adjectives checked while negative items have little impact. The two cultural biases were analyzed using an implicit version of the CPS (iCPS) and factor analysis. The latter revealed three different clusters of creativity type: exploratory‐type, socially responsible‐type, and intellectual‐type creativity. Based on cultural background, they are all weighted differently, causing a potential experiential bias in the CPS. Findings indicate that in South Korea and Mainland China socially responsible‐type creativity dominates whereas in Switzerland exploratory‐type creativity prevails. Findings from the iCPS suggest the second cultural bias, the socially desirable responding bias arising from differences in responding styles among the three cultures.     

Fighting the Past: Perceptions of Control,Historical Misperceptions,and Corrective Information in the Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict

What makes people deny wrongdoing that their group has inflicted on others? Prior research argues that refusing to acknowledge past misbehavior contributes to intergroup conflict, making historical misinformation important to understand and address. In particular, feeling a lack of control may make people more vulnerable to these misperceptions—a claim we test in a preregistered survey experiment examining beliefs about the Palestinian exodus during the creation of the state of Israel. Consistent with expectations, Jewish Israelis who were asked to recall an event in which they lacked control were more vulnerable to arguments (incorrectly) denying any Jewish responsibility for the exodus. By contrast, corrective information successfully reduced misperceptions regardless of feelings of control. However, corrections had no effect on attitudes toward the outgroup or support for the peace process, which suggests that historical misperceptions may be more of a symptom of intergroup conflict than a cause of its persistence.     

From Implicit Theories to Creative Achievements: The Mediating Role of Creativity Motivation in the Relationship between Stereotypes,Growth Mindset,and Creative Achievement

Research has demonstrated that implicit theories of creativity are crucial in shaping an individual’s behavior and real‐life decisions toward being creative. The present study proposed and examined the underlying mechanisms of how two kinds of implicit theories—the growth mindset of the creative self and the stereotype of creative others—are associated with creative achievements through the mediating role of creativity motivation. Participants were 606 undergraduate students who were enrolled in an education major in two universities in China. Overall, the study found that Chinese students held a positive image toward a creative student, regarding him or her as highly competent, warm, and popular. Student perceptions of a creative other were positively related to their growth mindset of creativity. Moreover, results verified both the mediating role of creativity motivation on growth mindset, as well as the effect of positive stereotyping of the creative other on students’ creative achievement. These findings point to promising creativity motivation strategies including the cultivation of a malleable view of creativity and of creative role models, that may, in turn, promote creative achievement by encouraging students to do, learn, and accomplish new things.     

Creative Reading in the Information Age: Paradoxes of Close and Distant Reading

This article reflects on transformations of modes of reading in an information age, asking what “creative reading” entails in information‐intensive, multimodal environments. We currently face the challenge of the development of reading strategies that oscillate between “close” and “distant” reading. For years, these reading strategies have been a topic of debate between practitioners of Digital Humanities on the one hand, and “traditional” humanists on the other. This ongoing polemics presents reading methods in an unnecessarily polarized manner. I argue that creativity research can be operationalized to come to a more productive model to characterize the ways we read in an information age. I show that the “schism” between close and distant reading is structured around a number of apparent paradoxes that I unravel such as hyper‐ and deep attention/attention and distraction, and convergence and divergence. The paradox of creativity resides in the fact that we find convergence in divergence and vice versa, that the two by definition intertwine. Building on these concepts, I propose a model that considers reading in terms of scale variance. I suggest the humanities turn to creativity research and the interrelations between divergent‐exploratory and convergent‐integrative thinking (Lubart), for a conceptual framework that will allow us to train students on all levels how to read (and how and when not to read), in an information age.     

Creative Change: The Life and Work of Four Novelists: Jane Austen, E. M. Forster, Barbara Pym, and Henry Roth

Robert Kastenbaum has argued that we need to take a life-span approach to the lives of artists in order to determine what factors affected their creativity. To that end, I briefly review the lives of four writers, Jane Austen, E. M. Forster, Barbara Pym, and Henry Roth. Each followed a different pattern: Austen wrote productively until her early death; Forster ceased to write novels after his midlife success; Barbara Pym continued to write until her death from cancer; and Henry Roth restarted his moribund career in his seventies. These differences suggest that creativity is closely connected to life events and the artist's psychological state of mind.     

Making Positive Changes Counseling (MPCC) Program: A Creative Adaptation of Motivational Interviewing for Use with Children in School Settings

ABSTRACT

Motivational Interviewing (MI)-based counseling can be creatively adapted for working with elementary school students in disciplinary alternative education program (DAEP) settings. The purpose of this article is to describe the implementation of MI with elementary-aged students in the DAEP. The Making Positive Changes Counseling (MPCC) program is a six-session program, which addresses children’s readiness for change, exploration of values and goals and current behaviors, recognition of personal strengths, perspective taking, recognition for possible changes, and effective decision making. The program is an adaptation of the standardized MI approach utilizing visuals and age-appropriate materials that are easily adaptable to individualized (or even group) guidance format.     

THE CREATIVE IMPERATIVE: Religious Ethics and the Formation of Life in Common

Challenging a long‐standing assumption of the separation of ethical from poetic activity, this essay develops the basis for a theory of moral life as inherently and radically creative. A range of contemporary post‐Kantian ethicists—including Ricoeur, Nussbaum, Kearney, and Gutiérrez—are employed to make the argument that moral practice requires a fundamental capability for creative transformation, imagination, and social renewal. In addition, this poetic moral capability can finally be understood only from the primordial religious point of view of the mystery of Creation as such. Humanity as an image of its Creator is called to the endless impossible possibility of the re‐creation of its own complex, plural, and fallen social world. Such a perspective is opposed to views of moral life as the application of law‐like principles or the recovery of past moral histories. Without a better understanding of moral life's radically creative imperative, we miss a vital element of social relations' distinctive humanity.     

Creative Fixation is No Laughing Matter: The Effects of Funny and Unfunny Examples on Humor Production

How do people come up with humorous ideas? In creative cognition research, exposure to good examples sometimes causes fixation (people get “stuck” on the examples) but other times sparks inspiration (people's responses are more creative). The present research examined the effects of funny and unfunny examples on joke production. A sample of 175 adults read scenarios that they completed with funny responses. All participants were instructed to be funny, but before responding they read (a) funny responses as examples of good responses to emulate, (b) unfunny responses as examples of poor responses to avoid, or (c) no examples. The participants’ own responses were rated for funniness and for similarity to the example responses, and response times were recorded. Reading either funny or unfunny examples, compared to no examples, caused people to come up with funnier jokes. Similarity to the examples was low in all conditions, so fixation was relatively modest, but people who saw unfunny examples spent more time coming up with their responses. Taken together, the findings support the growing literature showing that examples are often inspiring rather than constraining, and they imply that good and bad examples spark creative thought via different paths.     

The Mediating Role of Creative Process Engagement in the Relationship between Shyness and Self‐Rated Creativity

Shyness has been found to have a negative impact on creativity. However, little attention has been given to the underlying process of the relationship between shyness and creativity. On the basis of literature, we hypothesize that shyness has an indirect impact on creativity through creative process engagement. Two studies were conducted on undergraduate students (Study 1) and working adults (Study 2) to test the hypothetical relationship. Analysis on participants self‐report showed that shyness was negatively associated with self‐reported creativity as well as creative process engagement. There was a positive relationship between creative process engagement and creativity. More importantly, mediation analysis supported that shyness was indirectly linked to creativity via creative process engagement. Specifically, shy people are found to be less involved in creativity‐relevant processes such as information searching and idea generation. The low level of creative process engagement, in turn, hinders their creativity. The findings not only lend support to the detrimental effect of shyness on creativity but also shed light on the underlying mechanism of the relationship.     

Openness to Experience Enhances Creativity: The Mediating Role of Intrinsic Motivation and the Creative Process Engagement

Studies indicate that there is a positive relationship between openness to experience and creativity. However, relatively little attention has been given to the mechanism of this relationship. On the basis of previous findings, we hypothesized a conceptual model and tested the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the creative process engagement in the relationship between openness to experience and creativity. One hundred and ninety‐eight undergraduates in Malaysia participated in the study and completed an online measure of openness to new experience, creativity, intrinsic motivation, and the creative process engagement. Consistent with the hypothesis, people who scored high on openness reported high intrinsic motivation. The high motivation enhanced engagement in creativity‐related activities, which in turn, improved self‐rated creativity. The findings not only shed light on mechanisms that underlie in the openness‐creativity linkage but they also highlight the importance of intrinsic motivation and creative process engagement in the linkage. Together, the study extends the effect of personality trait on creativity and offers a new direction for future studies.     

Reading and Spelling Disabilities in Children with and Without a History of Early Language Delay: A Neuropsychological and Linguistic Study

Language delay is a frequent antecedent of literacy problems, and both may be linked to phonological impairment. Studies on developmental dyslexia have led to contradictory results due to the heterogeneity of the pathological samples. The present study investigated whether Italian children with dyslexia showed selective phonological processing deficits or more widespread linguistic impairment and whether these deficits were associated with previous language delay. We chose 46 children with specific reading deficits and divided them into two groups based on whether they had language delay (LD) or not (NoLD). LD and NoLD children showed similar, severe deficits in reading and spelling decoding, but only LD children showed a moderate impairment in reading comprehension. LD children were more impaired in phonological working memory and phonological fluency, as well as in semantic fluency, grammatical comprehension, and verbal IQ. These findings indicate the presence of a moderate but widespread linguistic deficit (not limited to phonological processing) in a subset of dyslexic children with previous language delay that does not generalize to all children with reading difficulties.     

中国背景下建言行为研究：结构、形成机制及影响

建言行为研究伴随角色外行为研究而兴起, 对其研究顺应了知识管理等管理新理念的要求, 也与弘扬自主创新的时代主题一致。相比国外的盛行, 国内对该主题的本土化实证研究尚待加强。经对以往研究的总结分析, 结合本土化研究取向, 本研究拟采用半结构化访谈、配对成组问卷的现场研究和实验室模拟研究等方法, 以特质激活理论、社会认同理论和经济理性观为基础, 探索中国背景下企业员工建言行为的构思、形成机制及其对组织创新的影响。具体包括以下三个方面：(1)中国背景下建言行为结构研究; (2)建言行为多层次动态形成机制研究, 包括基于特质激活的个体特征对建言行为的影响研究, 基于个人认同的领导行为对建言行为的影响研究, 基于社会认同的组织因素对建言行为的影响研究, 及基于经济理性的个体与情境因素对建言行为交互影响的实验模拟研究; (3)建言行为对组织创新的影响研究。     

Taking Time to Incubate: The Moderating Role of ‘What You Do’ and ‘When You Do It’ on Creative Performance

We explore how the choices available to individuals planning multi‐task work can facilitate the incubation of ideas and enhance creative performance. Using opportunistic assimilation theory, we hypothesize that two considerations can determine the effectiveness of incubation and creative performance. First, we argue that having the discretion to switch tasks when needed, as well as the timing of this discretionary switch between tasks (i.e., earlier versus later in the work process on the main task) is important. Second, the scope of the intervening task (i.e., in the same knowledge domain as the main task versus in a different domain) can lead to more effective incubation and creativity. Results of a laboratory study indicate that participants who made a discretionary switch to an intervening task later in their work process on the main task benefited significantly more in terms of creative performance than those who chose to switch earlier in their work process or chose not to switch tasks. Additionally, participants who worked on an in‐domain intervening task exhibited significantly higher creativity on the main task than those who worked on an out‐of‐domain intervening task. Furthermore, focus of attention on the main task partially mediated these results.