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.     

My Child Is Better Than Average: The Extension and Restriction of Unrealistic Optimism1

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether parents make unrealistic evaluations of children and what factors predict these evaluations. Parents of 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds rated their child's risk for various positive and negative outcomes, temperament, and health and behavior problems. Parents also completed an adult attachment measure. Parents appeared to give relatively little consideration to realistic constraints when predicting their child's future. Parents scoring higher on attachment avoidance were less optimistic that their child would attain positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes, consistent with the view that optimism is a motivated phenomenon. Greater child internalizing behaviors also were associated with less parental optimism for positive outcomes. Findings have implications for the delivery of health messages to parents.     

Narcissism Predicts Heightened Cortisol Reactivity to a Psychosocial Stressor in Men

Narcissists' sensitivity to social evaluation should increase their physiological reactivity to evaluative stressors. However, very few studies have assessed the physiological correlates of narcissism. In this study, participants completed an evaluative laboratory stressor or a non-evaluative control task. Cortisol reactivity-a marker of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis stress response-and negative affect (NA) were higher in the stress versus control condition. However, men showed larger cortisol responses and, among men, higher narcissism scores predicted greater cortisol reactivity and larger increases in NA. Narcissism was unrelated to cortisol reactivity and NA among women and in the control condition. These findings highlight the influence of defensive personality traits on HPA reactivity and suggest a pathway through which narcissistic traits might influence long-term health outcomes.     

Introduction to the Special Issue: Toward an Explicit Technology for Generalizing Academic Behavior

This special issue of the Journal of Behavioral Education was designed to call attention to a much needed area of academic intervention research: generalization programming. Although the occurrence of generalized responding across items, settings, tasks, and time is clearly recognized as a goal of intervention, less research has been devoted to the technology through which such generalization may occur. This introductory article revisits the concept of generalization and the methods that may be used to facilitate generalization.     

Standard back-translation procedures may not capture proper emotion concepts: a case study of Chinese disgust terms

We present data questioning the adequacy of standard back-translation procedures for investigating emotion states across cultures (Brislin, 1970). Our data indicate that the Chinese back-translation of the term disgust has led cross-cultural researchers to accept terms whose themes, goals, and motivations are more akin to the English term anger. Evidence is presented showing that, compared with the standard back-translation method, a more painstaking interview method found a better translational Chinese equivalent for the English term disgust. Implications for the use of back-translation in cross-cultural research are considered.     

The Virtuous Body at Work: The Ethical Life as <Emphasis Type="Italic">Qi</Emphasis> 氣 in Motion

This essay argues that moral self-cultivation as described in the Confucian tradition involves the cultivation of the body. Preparing the body in certain ways, perhaps by making it healthy, is a necessary part of moral self-cultivation. This claim includes: (a) nourishing the body in a proper way is a first step in moral self-cultivation, and the bodily care is instrumentally valuable to one’s flourishing life; (b) making and keeping a healthy body is partly constitutive of a moral well-being and hence bodily care is also intrinsically valuable to a flourishing life. This perspective on embodied virtue is established through a discussion of qi. The body as the storehouse of qi is not only a passive reservoir of knowledge that serves as moral guidance, but also actively plays an indispensable and integral role in activities related to one’s moral transformation. A well-cared for body provides a moral agent with the temporal and spatial possibility for moral refinement and an enhanced good life.     

Eyetracking for two-person tasks with manipulation of a virtual world

Eyetracking facilities are typically restricted to monitoring a single person viewing static images or prerecorded video. In the present article, we describe a system that makes it possible to study visual attention in coordination with other activity during joint action. The software links two eyetracking systems in parallel and provides an on-screen task. By locating eye movements against dynamic screen regions, it permits automatic tracking of moving on-screen objects. Using existing SR technology, the system can also cross-project each participant’s eyetrack and mouse location onto the other’s on-screen work space. Keeping a complete record of eyetrack and on-screen events in the same format as subsequent human coding, the system permits the analysis of multiple modalities. The software offers new approaches to spontaneous multimodal communication: joint action and joint attention. These capacities are demonstrated using an experimental paradigm for cooperative on-screen assembly of a two-dimensional model. The software is available under an open source license.