A Wandering Mind is Not Always a Creative Mind: How Thought Dynamics Explain the Relationship between Mind Wandering and Creativity

A wandering mind is not always a creative mind. Anecdotes about ideas spontaneously entering awareness during walks, showers, and other off-task activities are plenty. The science behind it, however, is still inconclusive. Creativity might result from how thought context—whether thoughts are on-task or off-task—relates to thought dynamics—how thoughts unfold. To explore this, study 1 (n = 85) surveyed creative professionals about a single idea they had earlier in the day. The spontaneity of thoughts positively correlated with self-reported creativity, whereas off-task thoughts or doing something else did not. Study 2 (n = 180) replicated these findings in a student sample during an idea generation task and added that free movement of thoughts also correlates with self-reported originality during idea generation. As indicated by expert ratings, no relationship of thought dynamics and thought context was found with population-level creativity. Herewith, this study suggests that thought dynamics, rather than thought context, explain the often suggested relationship between mind wandering and creativity.     

The Creative Brain/The Creative Mind

In the past few decades, neuroscience research has greatly expanded our understanding of how the human brain functions. In particular, we have begun to explore the basis of emotions, intelligence, and creativity. These brain functions also have been applied to various aspects of behavior, thought, and experience. We have also begun to develop an understanding of how the brain and mind work during aesthetic and religious experiences. Studies on these topics have included neuropsychological tests, physiological measures, and brain imaging. These different techniques have enabled us to open up a window into the brain. It is by understanding the functioning of the creative brain that we begin to understand the concept of the creative mind. It is through the use of emotions and other higher cognitive functions that the brain and mind can create ideas, music, literature, and ultimately our entire repertoire of behaviors. How these different creative abilities are derived can also be traced to various parts of the brain and how they function. Modern neuroscience allows us to begin to understand the creative aspect of the brain and mind and perhaps can take us one step further toward understanding the most profound types of aesthetic and religious experiences.     

John Nash: Three Phases in the Career of a Beautiful Mind

This article is the Helen Flanders Dunbar Lecture presented at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City in 2002, the centennial year of her birth. It focuses on three periods in the evolution of Nash’s mental illness, the predelusional, delusional, and postdelusional periods, and provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of each. Donald Capps is Professor of Pastoral Psychology at Princeton Theological Seminary. His books include Men, Religion, and Melancholia (1997), Living Stories: Pastoral Counseling in Congregational Context (1998), Social Phobia: Alleviating Anxiety in an Age of Self-Promotion (1999), Jesus: A Psychological Biography (2000), Giving Counsel: A Minister’s Guidebook (2001), Men and Their Religion: Honor, Hope, and Humor (2002), and A Time to Laugh: The Religion of Humor (2005). He has served as President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and has an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. Correspondence to Donald Capps, joan.blyth@ptsem.edu     

研究心理理论的新方法——失言识别任务

心理理论是对他人心理状态进行推论的能力。考察心理理论的经典范式是错误信念任务, 而青少年和成人在这种任务上可能出现天花板效应。为了测量青少年和成人的心理理论, Valerie E. Stone和她的合作者设计了失言识别任务。征求了Stone意见, 对失言识别任务的提出、构成、使用进行了介绍, 说明了该任务相对于经典范式的优势; 与此同时, 分析了失言识别任务范式存在的一些问题, 比如其效度指标问题, 与言语能力的分离问题, 失言识别任务与执行功能之间的分离等。未来研究可以尝试编制失言识别任务的本土化的量表, 并利用其探讨年长个体心理理论水平发展变化的规律。     

Difficult Differences: A Socio‐cultural Analysis of How Diversity Can Enable and Inhibit Creativity

The relationship between diversity and creativity can be seen as paradoxical. A diversity of perspectives should be advantageous for collaborative creativity, yet its benefits are often offset by adverse social processes. One suggestion for overcoming these negative effects is perspective taking. We compared four dyads with low scores on trait perspective taking with four dyads who were high on trait perspective taking on a brainstorming task followed by reconstructive interviews. Trait‐based perspective taking was strongly associated with greater creativity. However, contrary with expectation, interactional perspective taking behaviors (including questioning, signaling understanding, repairing) were associated with lesser creativity. The dyads that generated the fewest ideas were most likely to get stuck within ideational domains, struggling to understand one‐another, having to elaborate and justify their ideas more. In contrast, the dyads that generated many ideas were more likely to recognize each other's ideas as valuable without extensive justification or negotiation. We suggest that perspective taking is crucially important for mediating diversity in the generation of new ideas not only because it enables understanding the perspective of the other, but because it entails an atmosphere of tolerance, playfulness, and mutual recognition.     

Mind,Machine, and Creativity: An Artist's Perspective

Harold Cohen is a renowned painter who has developed a computer program, AARON, to create art. While AARON has been hailed as one of the most creative AI programs, Cohen consistently rejects the claims of machine creativity. Questioning the possibility for AI to model human creativity, Cohen suggests in so many words that the human mind takes a different route to creativity, a route that privileges the relational, rather than the computational, dimension of cognition. This unique perspective on the tangled web of mind, machine, and creativity is explored by an application of three relational models of the mind to an analysis of Cohen's talks and writings, which are available on his website: www.aaronshome.com .     

Cultivating Multiculturally Competent Counselors Through Movies

Confined by monocultural geographic features or encapsulated life experience, many counselor-training programs or trainees suffer from the lack of a multicultural environment, which could benefit students’ education. Recognizing the limitations in reality, the author introduces the use of movies to counterbalance the disadvantages, while maximizing students’ multicultural counseling competency. Aiming toward helping trainees vicariously reach the culmination of studies in counseling, this article addresses the use of cinemeducation in the context of cross-cultural counseling, via the application of qualitative research methodology. The theoretical underpinning of the movie project, the use of movies to augment students’ multicultural counseling opportunities outside classrooms, and students’ reactions are all discussed.     

结构对称性汉语成语的认知研究

运用命名作业,从识别和再认两个方面探讨了结构对称性汉语成语的认知特点,结果发现：（１）成语识别有显著的结构对称效应和熟悉度效应;结构对称性成语的识别明显快于非对称性成语,高熟悉度成语的识别明显快于低熟悉度的成语。（２）成语再认的反应时有显著的结构对称效应,熟悉度效应不显著;而反应错误率则有显著的熟悉度效应,结构对称效应不显著。上述结果都不存在结构对称性和熟悉度之间的显著的交互作用。现有的西方拼音文字认知模型不能恰当地解释汉语成语的认知特点。     

Socio-Economic Status and Creativity: A Meta-Analysis

In the present study, we examined the relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and creativity through a meta-analysis of 885 effect sizes from 151 samples in 117 studies. Analyses of a multivariate model with a robust variance estimator showed a small positive correlation between creativity and SES (r = .120, 95% CI [0.086, 0.154]). Further analyses with four groups of moderators (i.e., creativity measure, SES indicator, sample characteristics, and study characteristics) indicated that the mean effect size is significantly higher when the creativity index is flexibility rather than fluency or when SES is measured by parental or one's own level of education and parental occupation rather than the location of residency. In addition, the relationship between creativity and SES dissipated as the students progressed from elementary school through college. The potential role of schooling in the creativity-SES link is discussed.     

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.     

Creative Actions Scale: A Spanish Scale of Creativity in Different Domains

This article introduces the Creative Actions Scale (CAS), a Spanish self‐report assessment of individual differences in creative actions. The CAS consists of independent scales that assess the frequency of engagement in everyday creative actions across seven domains: Literature, Plastic Arts and Crafts, Science and Technology, Scenic Arts, Music, Social Participation, and Everyday Creativity. The sample included 1604 men and women who lived in different provinces in Argentina. The participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 94 years. All of the participants spoke Spanish and had an average socioeconomic level. People with different levels of education were included in the sample. We applied the following data collection instruments: CAS, Biographical Inventory of Creative Behaviors, and Domains of Creativity Scale. The analysis provided evidence of internal consistency and validity of the CAS. The confirmatory factor analysis showed an adequate fit of the seven‐domain model. The results also showed significant differences according to gender in some CAS domains. Inclusion of the Social Participation and Everyday Creativity domains is novel and useful for assessing creativity in the Spanish‐speaking population.     

Measuring Creativity: A 40+ Year Retrospective

This article describes how, as theories of creativity evolved, so have measures of creativity. Measures thus reflect the theories that generated them.     

In Your Right Mind: Right Hemisphere Contributions to Language Processing and Production

The verbal/nonverbal account of left and right hemisphere functionality is the prevailing dichotomy describing the cerebral lateralization of function. Yet the fact that the left hemisphere is the superior language processor does not necessarily imply that the right hemisphere is completely lacking linguistic ability. This paper reviews the growing body of research demonstrating that, far from being nonverbal, the right hemisphere has significant language processing strength. From prosodic and paralinguistic aspects of speech production, reception, and interpretation, to prelexical, lexical and postlexical components of visual word recognition; strong involvement of the right hemisphere is implicated. The evidence reviewed challenges the notion that language is solely a function of the “verbal” left hemisphere, indicating that the right cerebral hemisphere makes significant and meaningful contributions to normal language processing as well.     

Movies on the couch: The MOVIE model of film therapy

Film therapy, the therapeutic use of movies in psychological therapies, is a growing area of interest to therapists and researchers. This paper discusses the benefits of film therapy and presents a method, the MOVIE model of film therapy, a widely applicable, trauma-informed framework for individual or group therapy, counsellor education and self-help. Film or cinema therapy is a highly accessible and relatable method for many diverse groups. The benefits identified include emotional processing, greater ease of dialogue, increased empathy, interpersonal learning, new perspectives and learning skills. Following the model's reflective steps, clients mindfully observe and voice their emotional and psychological responses to movie-watching; identify how the imagery, characters, themes and story symbolise personal experience; and consider any new possibilities that emerged for their own lives. The model is informed by a practice-focussed review of literature and draws on methods from mindfulness and experiential and narrative therapies. The steps are widely applicable in a range of settings and can be adapted across counselling modalities. Further research to consider the outcomes of using the model, alongside qualitative research on clients' experiences of working this way with film, is recommended.     

The Role of Problem Construction in Creative Production

This paper provides an overview of theory and research regarding problem construction and identification. Specifically, the paper reviews a theoretical model of processes associated with problem construction and empirical evidence in relation to the model. Finally, the paper reviews the literature on team problem construction.     

A study of Mind Image Drawings

This report dealt with a newly introduced method of drawing named, “Mind Image Drawings.” First, the subjects depicted images in their mind freely. Second, the subjects described their own pictures using three epithets. Third, the subjects added “I am” to these words, and read them aloud. Through these techniques, the subjects not only projected the unconscious side of their mind in the drawings, but also could obtain insight into their mind on the cognitive level. Last, the subjects judged their drawings using 17 semantic differential scales. The “originality factor,” the “evaluation factor,” and several types of “expressiveness factors” were extracted in the factor analyses of the scales.     

A Wild West of the Mind

§258 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is often seen as the core of his private language argument. While its role is certainly overinflated and it is a mistake to think that there is anything that could be called the private language argument, §258 is an important part of the private language sections of the Philosophical Investigations. As with so much of Wittgenstein's work, there are widely diverse interpretations of why exactly the private diarist's attempted ostensive definition fails. I argue for a version of the no-stage-setting interpretation of the failure of private ostension. On this interpretation, the reason why the diarist cannot establish a meaning for ‘S’ is that she lacks the conceptual-linguistic stage-setting needed to disambiguate the concentration of her attention (the private analogue of an ostensive definition). Thus, the problem with any subsequent use of ‘S’ is not that there is no criterion of correctness for remembering the meaning of ‘S’ correctly, or for re-identifying S correctly in the future. Rather, it is because of the initial failure to define ‘S’ that there is nothing that could count as a criterion of correctness for the future use of ‘S’; there is nothing to remember or re-identify. My argument for the no-stage-setting interpretation consists in showing how well it fits into the rest of the Philosophical Investigations and in defending it against objections from Robert J. Fogelin, Anthony Kenny, and most recently John V. Canfield. Kenny's and Canfield's objections are found to suffer from problems regarding memory scepticism.