Incorporating good programs into the larger laboratory context

The Scheduled Measurement System (SMS) is a collection of related programs for administering performance and rating tasks to human subjects. It was designed to provide a common task scheduling and data management environment for a diversity of measures. SMS has greatly reduced the effort required to analyze and archive data after experiments, but it has been less successful in reducing some of the effort required to implement experiments. While programming is not difficult, documentation and user training remain the most primitive parts of the system.     

On the development of creativity in children

There seems to be a quantitative increase in creativity scores through the years of childhood and adolescence, with some strong declines at certain developmental stations. However, earlier studies give no information about qualitative changes in creativity development. Traditional divergent thinking tests, for example, give more or less pure quantitative information about cognitive skills. The present investigation examined age trends using the recently developed Test zum schöpferischen Denken—Zeichnerisch, or in English, Test for Creative Thinking‐Drawing Production (TCT‐DP). The TCT‐DP recognizes qualitative response categories. In the present investigation, the TCT‐DP was administered to children between four and eight years of age (N = 272) from kindergarten and the first two school grades. In addition to a quantitative analysis, a special qualitative analysis of the drawings shows how and in which way different subcomponents of creativity develop. Six developmental stages of creativity, closely related to general cognitive development, were identified.     

On economic theories of creativity

Creativity is a key ingredient of organizational effectiveness, business innovation, and entrepreneurship. Yet there remain substantial gaps in the literature in terms of understanding the antecedents of creative achievement. This study investigated the effect of perfectionism, employee engagement, and entrepreneurial potential as predictors of creative achievement. As predicted, Structural Equation Modelling demonstrated that entrepreneurial potential was significantly and positively related to all creative achievement outcomes. The hypothesised negative relationship between perfectionism and creative achievement was not supported. Furthermore, no significant associations were found between employee engagement and creative achievement. Implications are discussed in terms of the importance of entrepreneurial potential as a determinant of creative achievements.     

Sociocultural context of individual creativity: a transhistorical time-series analysis.

Hypotheses were stated which specify individual creativity as a function of developmental and productive period variables. It was then argued that these hypotheses could be better tested by examining generational fluctuations in creativity. Information from cultural and political archival sources was thus aggregated to form time series spanning 127 generations of European history. Data quality checks, control variables, data transformations, time-lagged comparisons, and trend analyses were used to improve the validity of the causal inferences. While the results varied according to the type of creativity (discursive or presentational) and the degree of achieved eminence, creative development was found to be affected by the following: (a) role model availability, (b) political fragmentation, (c) imperial instability, and (d) political instability.     

On the development of creativity in South America

This study examined relations between creative thinking and performance on routine, everyday tasks. Results were considered in light of past research on the putative relation between creativity and schizophrenia/psychotic thinking. Thirty healthy undergraduates completed the Alternative Uses Task, a measure of divergent thinking, and the 2 × 3 Multi-Level Action Test, a performance-based measure of everyday action. The Alternative Uses Task was scored for fluency (total plausible uses), originality (uniqueness of responses), and errors (inappropriate uses). The 2 × 3 Multi-Level Action Test was scored for omissions (step not performed), commissions (step performed incorrectly), and additions (performing off-task step). Correlations between Alternative Uses Task and 2 × 3 Multi-Level Action Test variables showed originality was highly associated with both omissions and commissions, such that the more unique responses one generated, the fewer everyday action errors were made. Alternative Uses Task errors were positively correlated with action additions, indicating that overinclusive thinking on a measure of divergent thinking was associated with off-task/overinclusive everyday action. These results demonstrated meaningful associations between specific dimensions of creativity and specific everyday task errors. When considered in light of past research on schizophrenia, the results suggest creativity in psychosis may reflect inappropriate, overinclusive thinking rather than original, effective thought.     

易之"生"意与理学的生生之学

"生生之谓易"既是哲学家对宇宙相状的揭示,也是"易"本身的性质。从"天地之大德日生"到"易简"之善和"复其见天地之心",贯穿的都是同一个"生"意。理学继承前人又广加扩展,天地生物之心既是静与动的综合集成,又是天地生物与仁德流行的统一。从静体到动用,从"动之端"到"动之机",现象存在虽有生死显微,"生"之理却通贯不息。     

Understanding when bad moods foster creativity and good ones don't: the role of context and clarity of feelings

Using a mood-as-input model, the authors identified conditions under which negative moods are positively related, and positive moods are negatively related, to creative performance. Among a sample of workers in an organizational unit charged with developing creative designs and manufacturing techniques, the authors hypothesized and found that negative moods were positively related to creative performance when perceived recognition and rewards for creative performance and clarity of feelings (a metamood process) were high. The authors also hypothesized and found that positive moods were negatively related to creative performance when perceived recognition and rewards for creativity and clarity of feelings were high.     

Narrowing the creativity gap: the moderating effects of perceived support for creativity

This article examines the role of 3 types of perceived support for creativity in moderating the relation between creative self-efficacy and self-perceived creativity. The findings suggest significant interaction effects for perceived work-group support and supervisor support, but not for perceived organizational support. This study is among the first to (a) examine the importance of perceived support for creativity in unlocking creative potential and increasing creativity in organizations and (b) use interaction terms in structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate moderator effects in an applied research setting. These results imply that organizational interventions focused on training supervisors and work-group members to support creativity in the workplace may be more effective than broader and less focused interventions at the organizational level.     

On the neurobiological investigation of language understanding in context

There are two significant problems in using functional neuroimaging methods to study language. Improving the state of functional brain imaging will depend on understanding how the dependent measure of brain imaging differs from behavioral dependent measures (the "dependent measure problem") and how the activation of the motor system may be confounded with non-motor aspects of processing in certain experimental designs (the "motor output problem"). To address these problems, it may be necessary to shift the focus of language research from the study of linguistic competence to the understanding of language use. This will require investigations of language processing in full multi-modal and environmental context, monitoring of natural behaviors, novel experimental design, and network-based analysis. Such a combined naturalistic approach could lead to tremendous new insights into language and the brain.     

Grammars of creativity

Wonder can be found in human creativity as well as in nature. While one version of belief in inspiration precludes human creativity, another presupposes it. Margaret Boden, however, suggests that creativity is continuous with generic human powers, and arises through breaking recognised rules. Problems are raised for this latter view. It needs to be added that creativity commonly involves participation in a tradition of skill or craftsmanship, and in a creative community. Further, the continuity approach is argued to be consistent with a version of the inspiration approach, according to which the Creator can communicate through minds reflective of his/her creative imagination, as suggested by Austin Farrer.     

Types of creativity

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Imagine the impact if we were to understand, and thus could reliably enhance, something – anything – about how creativity works in the brain. The...     

A sociohistorical view of group psychotherapy in the United States: the ideology of individualism and self-liberation

A deep strain of individualism permeates American culture, rooted in the political-economic ideology of capitalism. The ideal of a self-governing individual is promoted, independent from social, historical, and cultural forces, whose thoughts and emotions are located within the construct of a masterful self, ready to be filled and expanded. This article traces the influence of self-liberatory ideology in American group psychotherapy through the religious revivalist and Mental Hygiene movements. The "progressivism" of pioneering group theorists is examined in terms of revisionist psychology and self-liberatory practice. Psychodrama and T-groups are demonstrated to be precursors to the encounter group movement in which the belief in self-liberation reached its zenith. Early group analytic approaches are seen to eschew transpersonal and group dynamic processes.     

On historicity,context and the existence of African philosophy

Abstract

The author reviews the second edition of Philosophy from Africa by comparing it with the first edition and with other anthologies in African philosophy. Questions regarding the existence and identity of African philosophy receive special attention. It is argued that a negation of the existence of African philosophy results from monolithic, ahistorical and decontextualized thinking about Africa and about philosophy. The roots and development of African philosophy are inseparably bound up with the continent’s historical, political, cultural and economic complexities. The challenge facing African philosophers is twofold: deconstructing the notion of philosophy as constructed and conceived by the West; and reconstructing the history of African philosophy.