Neurology and Creative Thought: Some Thoughts About Working Memory,the Cerebellum,and Creativity

Abstract

Students of creativity have long been interested in the neurological mechanisms that underlie creative thought. Vandervert, Schimpf, and Liu (this issue) have proposed a new model of the neurological mechanisms that give rise to creative thought. In the present commentary, we examine this model for what it might tell us about creative problem solving. We conclude that the proposed model is in line with much of what is known about creative problem solving. However, certain key predictions of this model, for example the role of visual images and basic cognitive images, are questioned. The implications of these observations for future neurological research are discussed.     

Creativity and Cooperation in the Elementary Music Classroom*

The author examines attitudes towards, and the effects of focus on, creativity and cooperation in the elementary music classroom. First, elementary music teachers were interviewed regarding their values towards creativity and cooperation. Then, a curriculum was field tested that utilized cooperative learning and emphasized activities designed to encourage creative thinking and problem solving. A pretreatment-posttreatment study, with experimental and control group, was conducted to measure actual changes in student levels of creativity and attitudes towards cooperation. A follow-up of creativity measures was conducted four years later. Results indicate that elementary music teachers can adapt cooperative learning models to their teaching and can, short-term, influence students' levels of creativity and attitudes towards cooperation. Implications and opportunities for social-psychological creativity research and classroom educators are discussed. In 1983, Goodlad observed that, in general, there was a “gap between the rhetoric of individual flexibility, originality, and creativity … and the cultivation of these [things] in our schools” (p. 241) and that schools provided students with little opportunity to develop “satisfying relations with others based on respect, trust, cooperation, and caring” (p. 240). Goodlad encouraged teachers in the arts to provide opportunities for creative problem solving and to “boldly demonstrate the potentiality for doing through the arts what cannot be done readily through the other fields” (p. 238). His appeal to arts teachers is reminiscent of Maslow (1968):     

对创造力与儒家传统的若干反思

中国社会科学院的庞朴教授根据文化不断融合的多种动力将中国思想史划分为三个时期.受此睿见的启发,我想要探索文化碰撞和融合的某些方面;我将把思考的重心集中在儒家传统的创造性主题上,主要方向包括以下几个问题:儒学如何从文化碰撞中获益,特别是历代儒生如何创造新的儒家学说去应对他们时代的危机?我们能从这些转化和再创儒学传统的努力中学些什么?当今中国的研究课题是否继承了这种文化复兴传统?这类当今复兴传统的研究是否有一个特好的例子,而可以引起在当代东亚关注类似文化价值观的人?     

Some Thoughts on Supervision

Quite often we have the experience that adolescents do not accept an offer of treatment, in spite of the fact that they feel miserable. Or, that they do start in treatment and then change their minds and break off contact. The author reflects about factors and conditions contributing to these analytic failures. He discusses elements of analytic method, setting, neutral position, analytic relationship, and how the frames are put under pressure in work with adolescents. He thereafter presents some vignettes and examples of analytic work, where intuitive interventions and interpretations appear against a background of ordinary psychoanalytic method. For the analyst, these interventions can feel unexpected, incidental, like ideas out of the blue. On second thoughts, we may sometimes be able to trace and understand how these intuitions are based on non-conscious processes, like counter-transference feelings, an understanding of the patient still unclear and unarticulated for the analyst or perhaps a last desperate attempt to reach the patient and get in contact at a decisive or critical moment. Finally, the author reflects on the double face of psychoanalysis: both a contemplated, carefully described and systematic method and a craft with elements of intuition, creativity and, sometimes, inspiration.     

关于感觉的几点思考

通过对感觉定义的分析,发现动物及不具备语言能力或相应生活经验的婴幼儿是不具备感觉能力的,而这显然是不正确的。究其实质,传统意义上的感觉或认知心理学中的感觉等当属于意识的范畴,而这与感觉是最低级的心理现象这一认识相矛盾,最后指出有必要对感觉进行重新规范     

Supportive Classroom Environments For Creativity in Higher Education

ABSTRACT This qualitative study was an investigation of a supportive classroom environment for developing student creativity. Observations and interview data collected focused on assessment, classroom activities, and the teacher's effort in creating this supportive environment. Teacher-student relationships, de-emphasizing standardized assessment, and encouraging multiple perspectives was significant to this creative milieu.     

儒学与生态女权主义

引言:宝岛上的悖论 近年来有关环境伦理学的研究主要致力于,将对人类利益的道德关切引申到所有其他的生命以及整个自然.     

Teacher and Pupil Characteristics in the Perception of the Creativity of Classroom Climate

This article presents results of a study of pupils' perceptions of the level of creativity of the classroom climate. The purpose was to determine whether the teachers' classroom behaviors provided a means to identify relatively stable behavior patterns in individuals or groups of teachers categorized by subject taught and pupils' perceptions of the classroom climate. Secondly, the aim was to identify those teacher behaviors correlating with high or low level of creative classroom climate perceptions respectively. Observation was the principal method in identifying teacher behaviors related to creative classroom climate perception. Several behavioral categories were identified that correlated significantly with a high level of creativity in classroom climate perception. Furthermore it was found that some of the teachers' behaviors may be so influenced by context that they reverse the resulting effect.     

Some Thoughts on the Contents of Hypatia

Hypatia, as a journal, seems to adhere to die “party line” of academic philosophy. Is this a hindrance to creative feminist thinking?     

Planting Some New Thoughts on the Landscape

In this comment on Jonathan Glover's Alien Landscapes? I'll focus on two issues: social cognition in autism, and delusions; and I'll introduce a new topic – solitary confinement – as a supplement to Glover's far‐ranging analyses.     

Some Irreverent Thoughts on Paradox

There is currently great interest in the use of paradox in psychotherapy. Unfortunately, there is also considerable confusion and misunderstanding of paradox, owing, in part, to the lack of a comprehensive theory that explains the role of paradox in human problems. This paper does not address itself to such theory but explores some cultural and epistemological components of therapists' misperceptions and misattributions of “paradox.”