Visual Creativity Across Cultures: A Comparison Between Italians and Japanese

Culture-related differences in visual creativity were investigated, comparing Italian and Japanese participants in terms of divergent (figural completion task) and product-oriented thinking (figural combination task). Visual restructuring ability was measured as the ability to reinterpret ambiguous figures and was included as a covariate. Results showed that in divergent thinking, Italians only outperformed Japanese participants in elaboration and in product-oriented thinking in terms of originality of products. Visual restructuring ability was found to play a key role both in originality and practicality of products. Both groups scored the same in terms of fluency, originality, and flexibility of visual divergent thinking, as well as in term of practicality of creative products. These findings are consistent with the idea that Italians and Japanese have the same creative potential, although from the early stages of the design Japanese seem to show a greater tendency to take practicality constraints into account when creating in the visual domain.     

Bicultural Effects on the Creative Potential of Chinese and French Children

This study examined possible bicultural effects on creative potential of children in four groups of Chinese and French children in Hong Kong and Paris. An international battery of widely used divergent measures (Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests; WKCT) and newly constructed divergent-plus-integrative measures (Evaluation of Potential Creativity; EPoC) was established for assessment. Study 1 showed that most measures of WKCT and EPoC were reasonably high in reliability and they had expected correlations with the fluency scores of some subtests of Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Study 2 found some interestingly mixed bicultural effects favoring verbal divergent responses for French children and graphic integrative responses for Chinese children. Compared with Paris-French children, the bicultural Hong Kong-French children had significantly higher scores in figural fluency, figural flexibility, and figural uniqueness of WKCT (requiring only verbal divergent responses) but significantly lower scores in the graphic divergent-exploratory measure of EPoC. Compared with Hong Kong-Chinese children, the bicultural Paris-Chinese children had significantly higher scores in the graphic convergent-integrative measure of EPoC, but significantly lower scores in verbal fluency, verbal flexibility, figural fluency, figural flexibility, figural uniqueness, and figural unusualness of WKCT. Implications of the mixed bicultural effects in relation to the diverse creativity measures and children groups are discussed.     

Gender Differences in the Creativity of Hong Kong School Children: Comparison by Using the New Electronic Wallach–Kogan Creativity Tests

Gender differences in creativity scores of the Wallach–Kogan Creativity Tests were found for a sample of 2476 4th- to 9th-graders from 8 primary schools and 4 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Specifically, girls in the junior high grades excelled boys in verbal flexibility, figural fluency, figural flexibility, figural uniqueness, and figural unusualness. These findings contrasted with previous findings of no gender differences in a norming study of the same instrument carried out eight years before this study. The gender differences were explained in terms of environmental effect and cultural effect.     

Confirmatory factor analysis of the WAIS-IV/WMS-IV

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-fourth edition (WAIS-IV) and the Wechsler Memory Scale-fourth edition (WMS-IV) were co-developed to be used individually or as a combined battery of tests. The independent factor structure of each of the tests has been identified; however, the combined factor structure has yet to be determined. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to the WAIS-IV/WMS-IV Adult battery (i.e., age 16-69 years) co-norming sample (n = 900) to test 13 measurement models. The results indicated that two models fit the data equally well. One model is a seven-factor solution without a hierarchical general ability factor: Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Reasoning, Processing Speed, Auditory Working Memory, Visual Working Memory, Auditory Memory, and Visual Memory. The second model is a five-factor model composed of Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Reasoning, Processing Speed, Working Memory, and Memory with a hierarchical general ability factor. Interpretative implications for each model are discussed.     

青少年创造性思维的特点及其对日常创造性行为的影响：人格的中介作用

采用言语和空间创造力测验、青少年人格问卷、中学生日常创造性行为问卷对1048名中学生施测,考查青少年创造性思维的特点,并探讨创造性思维、人格对日常创造性行为的影响.结果发现:(1)女生在言语创造力的流畅性、灵活性维度以及图形创造力各维度的得分均显著高于男生;高一年级的言语创造力流畅性、灵活性维度显著高于其他三个年级,高一年级的图形创造力质量维度显著高于初二、高二年级;(2)言语创造力与人格的开放性和外向性、语言文学、文艺表演和社会活动维度呈显著正相关.图形创造力与开放性、语言文学、文艺表演和手工技术呈显著正相关;(3)开放性和外向性在言语创造力和创造性行为之间起完全中介作用,在图形创造力上中介作用不显著.具体到创造性行为的各个领域,开放性和外向性在创造性思维和创造性行为间起着不同的作用.     

The relationship between auditory recall and dysfluency in young stutterers

This study examined the relationship between auditory recall and dysfluent behavior in children. Subjects were 11 stutterers and 11 nonstutterers, ages 4.9–11.10. The Auditory Sequential Memory subtest of the ITPA and the Auditory Attention Span for Related Syllables subtest of the Detroit Test of Learning Aptitudes were administered to both groups. Results indicated that scores on the ITPA were not significantly different. Comparison of the group's scores on the DTLA were highly significant with the control group's scoring 35 months higher. After 6 months of therapy, six children in the experimental group were fluent. Posttests revealed no significant differences on the ITPA. On the DTLA, the experimental group's mean scores significantly increased by 13.9 months. The gain in auditory recall of meaningful material substantiated the hypothesized relationship between auditory recall and dysfluency. This relationship was not viewed as causative of stuttering; data were interpreted as evidence that increased fluency allows children to use previously suppressed linguistic data.     

Domain‐General and Domain‐Specific Creative‐Thinking Tests: Effects of Gender and Item Content on Test Performance

The study examined the effects of gender and item content of domain‐general and domain‐specific creative‐thinking tests on four subscale scores of creative‐thinking (fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration). Chinese tenth‐grade students (234 males and 244 females) participated in the study. Domain‐general creative thinking was measured by using two domain‐independent items—box and newspaper. Domain‐specific creative thinking was measured in the domain of history by two history‐specific items—school uniform and health food—that were part of lessons in modern Chinese history. Domain‐general creative‐thinking scores were not different across gender in any of the four subscales. In domain‐specific creative thinking, female students produced more responses (fluency) and more categories of ideas (flexibility), and more detailed answers (elaboration) on both items than did males. Gender difference was not found in originality. Item effects were significant in both general and specific creative‐thinking scores, with higher fluency, flexibility, and elaboration for the newspaper than the box item, and higher fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration for the school uniform than the health food item. The findings on both gender and item effects support the contention that personal interest and life experience influence the generation of creative solutions. The finding that gender did not differ in domain‐general creative‐thinking was expected, as the two general items (box and newspaper) are experienced similarly by both genders. As most of the creative‐thinking tests are influenced by individuals' experience beyond creative‐thinking ability, judicial evaluation and use of creative‐thinking scores are underscored.     

Neuropsychological outcome following unilateral stereotactic pallidotomy in intractable Parkinson's disease

Neuropsychological functioning was examined at baseline and 2- to 3-month follow-up in 40 subjects with advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) who underwent unilateral posteroventral pallidotomy. Most subjects demonstrated improved verbal learning, visual memory, confrontation naming, and figural fluency at follow-up. Right pallidotomy was associated with decreased cognitive flexibility and increased verbal fluency, whereas Left pallidotomy uniquely resulted in a decline in verbal fluency. Significant motor improvement was demonstrated in both groups. Pallidotomy appears to be an effective treatment for advanced PD, providing a significant improvement in motor functioning, while resulting in few deleterious neurocognitive changes in most cases.     

The Effects of a Verbal and a Figural Creativity Training on Different Facets of Creative Potential

This study investigated the effects of different types of creativity interventions on different facets of creative potential, also including more school-related creativity demands. In a sample of 77 fourth-graders in the age between 9 and 12 years, we administered a verbal and a figural creativity training, realized in two school lessons over two consecutive days each. As outcome measures, creative potential in both the verbal and the figural domain by means of two well-established divergent thinking tasks was assessed. As additional measures of creative potential, a story completion task and a picture painting task were administered to examine training effects on more school-related types of creative behavior. The verbal training was found to increase both verbal and figural divergent thinking ability, but not creative potential in the story completion and the picture painting task. The figural training yielded significant training effects only regarding the picture painting task. Findings suggest a specific training effect of the figural creativity training, and moreover indicate that the verbal creativity training, rather than stimulating “verbal” creative abilities per se, was more strongly concerned with domain-general creativity processes including ideational fluency, flexibility, and originality that are characteristics of divergent thinking tasks across different domains.     

Divergent Thinking in Alzheimer's and Frontotemporal Dementia

Twenty-three patients with mild dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) or frontotemporal type (DFT) and age- and education-matched control subjects were administered tests of complex fluency involving divergent thinking and tests of letter, category, and figural fluency. The tests of complex fluency discriminated the dementia patients from control subjects more strongly than did the other fluency tests. The results suggest that divergent thinking as assessed by complex fluency tests is a cognitive domain that is impaired early in the course of dementia. The sensitivity of complex fluency tests compared to that of letter, category, and figural fluency tests may be related to greater demands for conceptualization in relating stimulus attributes to function and greater demands for flexible thinking during self-directed search processes.     

Assessing Ideational Fluency in Primary Students in Hong Kong

We tested 462 primary students (244 boys and 218 girls) in Grades 1, 2, and 3 from 20 primary schools in Hong Kong. Their ideational fluency was assessed by using 2 items each on 3 types of verbal tasks (instances, uses, and similarities) and 2 types of figural tasks (pattern meanings and line meanings) from the Wallach-Kogan tests. On the average, students generated about 20 instances, gave 9 alternative uses of a common object, listed 11 possible similarities between a pair of named objects, and gave 13 and 15 possible meanings for visual patterns and lines, respectively. Although boys scored consistently higher in ideational fluency than girls on verbal tasks, significant gender differences did not emerge for figural tasks. Significantly higher scores on ideational fluency were evident for students in higher grades especially for verbal tasks. The use of the Wallach-Kogan tests in the assessment of divergent thinking ability and creativity for Chinese children is discussed.     

Conceptual tempo as a moderator variable in predicting first grade achievement test scores

This study examined the utility of a set of tests for predicting the academic achievement of separate samples of impulsive and reflective first graders. The predictor tests were the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale, Wepman's Auditory Discrimination Test, the ITPA Sound Blending Subtest, the WISC Digit Span Subtest, and Kaufman's WISC-R Verbal Comprehension Factor (Comprehension, Information, Similarities, and Vocabulary). The criterion measures were drawn from the Stanford Achievement Test and included scores for Total Auditory, Total Mathematics, Total Reading, Vocabulary and Listening Comprehension. Multiple regression analyses revealed that (a) for three of the five criterion variables, the optimal equations for predicting the achievement test scores differed for impulsives and reflectives, and (b) given the same predictor scores, the predicted achievement of impulsive and reflective children different considerably. It was concluded that conceptual tempo is an important moderator variable in predicting academic performance.     

Identifying Creativity During Problem Solving Using Linguistic Features

Creativity is commonly assessed using divergent thinking tasks, which measure the fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration of participant output on a variety of different tasks. This study assesses the degree to which creativity can be identified based on linguistic features of participants’ language while completing collaborative divergent thinking tasks. To this end, 78 participants’ conversational dialogs (i.e., 39 dyads) within a chat environment were collected while completing three open-ended problem-solving tasks. Expert raters scored the dialogs in terms of fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality, as well as three types of creative language (metaphor and simile, humor, and word play). Factor analyses indicated that these scores captured two main constructs (creativity and elaboration). The linguistic features of the participants’ language (captured computationally using natural language processing tools) accounted for significant amounts of variation in both the creativity (R² = .640) and elaboration (R² = .550) scores within linear mixed effect (LME) models. These results highlight specific linguistic features that can be used to explain large amounts of variance in constructs related to creativity.     

Divergent thinking in Alzheimer's and frontotemporal dementia

Twenty-three patients with mild dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) or frontotemporal type (DFT) and age- and education-matched control subjects were administered tests of complex fluency involving divergent thinking and tests of letter, category, and figural fluency. The tests of complex fluency discriminated the dementia patients from control subjects more strongly than did the other fluency tests. The results suggest that divergent thinking as assessed by complex fluency tests is a cognitive domain that is impaired early in the course of dementia. The sensitivity of complex fluency tests compared to that of letter, category, and figural fluency tests may be related to greater demands for conceptualization in relating stimulus attributes to function and greater demands for flexible thinking during self-directed search processes.     

发散性思维的年龄差异及“位置法”记忆训练的作用

该研究的目的是探讨发散性思维的年龄差异以及“位置法”记忆训练对发散性思维的迁移作用。训练组为经过记忆训练的青年人24名,老年组20名,对照组为相匹配的青年人24名、老年人19名。结果表明:(1)在图形、符号、语义三方面的流畅性、变通性和独特性上,老年组均很显著地比青年组差。青年组的个别差异较大,老年组的更大,尤其是独特性。(2)青年训练组的图形流畅性、独特性及语义的独特性成绩显著优于其对照组,老年训练组图形的变通性有优于其对照组的趋势(P=.052),说明“位置法”记忆训练对发散性思维有一定的间接迁移作用,尤其是对青年人。(3)发散性思维与想象力、数字符号、训练前和训练后词的记忆以及图形的记忆成绩均有很显著正相关。而词汇成绩只与训练组两项发散性思维有显著相关。     

A Gender-Fair Look at Variability in Creativity: Growth in Variability Over a Period Versus Gender Comparison at a Time Point

Using two normative datasets of the Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests (WKCT), variability in creativity was studied in terms of growth over a period and gender comparison at a time point. New indices were introduced to tap growth in variability for men and women and new results were obtained for the growth in variability of various creative abilities measured by the WKCT. It was found that both male variability and female variability increased with time in both verbal and figural fluency, flexibility, uniqueness, and unusualness. For gender comparison of variability at a time point, the widely accepted gender-difference variance ratio was employed. In line with previous cognitive-intellectual research findings, results of this study showed that the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis had supportive evidence from responses to figural stimuli but not responses to verbal stimuli of the WKCT. The findings and the advantages of the new indices were discussed.     

Development and preliminary validation of the Concise Neuropsychological Screening Inventory (CNSI): A clinical tool for use in psychiatric settings

We describe the development and preliminary validation of the Concise Neuropsychological Screening Inventory (CNSI), designed to afford clinical psychologists working in psychiatric settings a simple, rapid, and objective assessment of 10 vital left- and right-hemisphere brain functions: (1) Receptive and Expressive Language, (2) Orientation, (3) Attention/Concentration/Immediate Memory, (4) Recent Auditory and Visual Memory, (5) Remote Memory, (6) Motor/Sensory/Tactile Functioning, (7) Visual/Spatial/Motor Integration, (8) Academic Functioning, (9) Intellectual Processes, and (10) Judgment and Reasoning. Preliminary findings suggest that the CNSI can discriminate patients diagnosed with organic mental syndrome from patients with various psychiatric disorders, including chronic schizophrenia (i.e., specificity in screening). Moreover, with regard to predicting neuropsychological differences among various diagnostic groups, the CNSI is superior to some of the most commonly employed tests by psychologists in psychiatric settings (e.g., WAIS-R Digit Span, Digit Symbol, and Bender-Gestalt).     

Intra- and interindividual differences in lateralized cognitive performance and asymmetrical EEG activity in the frontal cortex

The study shows that changes in relative verbal vs. figural working memory and fluency performance from one session to a second session two to 3 weeks apart covary with spontaneously occurring changes of cortical asymmetry in the lateral frontal and central cortex, measured by electroencephalography (EEG) in resting conditions before the execution of tasks. That is, it was examined whether the current state of cortical asymmetry predicts verbal vs. figural performance. The findings complete the circle from studies showing correlations between changes of EEG asymmetry in the lateral frontal cortex and changes of mood to studies showing correlations between changes of mood and changes of relative verbal vs. figural working memory and fluency performance. The study suggests that state-dependent changes of lateralized cortical activity may underlie certain cognitive-emotional interactions observed in previous studies, and supports the assumption of reciprocal influences of specific emotional and specific cognitive processes.     

PROCEDURES TO INCREASE SOME ASPECTS OF CREATIVITY

Instructions, reinforcement (team points), and practice were applied to four behaviorally defined creative behaviors of eight fourth- and fifth-grade students. All four aspects (number of different responses, fluency; number of verb forms, flexibility; number of words per response, elaboration; and statistical infrequency of response forms, originality) were demonstrated to be under experimental control. The procedures also raised students' scores on Torrance's tests of creativity. Application of the experimental procedures may well be practical for classroom teachers.     

FIGURAL REVERSAL RATE AND PERSONAL TEMPO

K ünnapas , T. Figural reversal rate and personal tempo. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1969, 10, 27 –32.—Thirty subjects participated in a figural fluctuation experiment. The same subjects were given five perceptual tests representing personal tempo. Coefficients of correlation between figural reversal rate and personal tempo were generally positive but low. Three main factors were found to account for the variability of perceptual activity: ( a ) perceptual fluency, (b) decision speed, and ( c ) immediate perceptual memory.