Internal structure and standardised scores of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking

The present work sets out to study the internal structure of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) and to establish standardised scores that will enable the test to be used in both a diagnostic and educational context. 649 students (319 girls and 330 boys), aged 5 to 12 years from various schools in Murcia and Alicante (SE Spain), took part in the study. The findings suggest that the psychometric characteristics of TTCT are satisfactory, and its internal structure can be attributed to three factors that are responsible for a high percentage of the variance (73.8%). The standardised score tables, which are provided for first time in this context, will be useful in the evaluation of creativity and the identification of students with high intellectual abilities.     

Telepsychology and Self-help: The Treatment of Fear of Public Speaking

This work presents a self-help, Internet-based telepsychology program for the treatment of public speaking fears. The system is comprised of 3 parts: The assessment protocol gives the patient information about his or her problem (i.e., amount of interference it creates in his or her life, severity, degree of fear and avoidance). The system also includes a structured treatment protocol, organized into separate blocks, reflecting the patient’s progress. This ensures that the patient does not skip any steps in the treatment (something quite common in traditional self-help manuals), which provides more control over the process. The treatment protocol is a cognitive-behavioral program that provides exposure to the feared situation using videos of real audiences. Finally, the control protocol assesses treatment efficacy, not only at closure, but also at every intermediate step. Efficacy data from 12 social phobia patients are presented from pretreatment to posttreatment and at 1-month follow-up. These preliminary data support the efficacy of our telepsychology program for the treatment of fear of public speaking. This is a preliminary work in a promising research path that examines the possibility of using the Internet for the treatment of psychological disorders.     

A survey of women's social representations of aging and rejuvenation

The goal of this work was to analyze the social representations that women of three different age groups had about aging, rejuvenating, and methods of rejuvenation. The research was performed in S?o Paulo between 2004 and 2005. The participants of this research were three groups of women of different ages: 19 to 24 years, 25 to 35 years, and over 60 years. The data were collected by the focus group technique. Data was analyzed using the lexical analysis software ALCESTE 4.5. The main results show a social representation of aging centered on losses and gains. The subjects appraised the possibility of using rejuvenating methods only when it was extremely necessary, because of the health risks that most of them involve. The three groups agreed about natural methods of rejuvenating instead of resorting to invasive methods.     

Effects of prime task on affective priming by facial expressions of emotion

Priming of affective word evaluation by pictures of faces showing positive and negative emotional expressions was investigated in two experiments that used a double task procedure where participants were asked to respond to the prime or to the target on different trials. The experiments varied between-subjects the prime task assignment and the prime-target interval (SOA, stimulus onset asynchrony). Significant congruency effects (that is, faster word evaluation when prime and target had the same valence than when they were of opposite valence) were observed in both experiments. When the prime task oriented the subjects to an affectively irrelevant property of the faces (their gender), priming was observed at SOA 300 ms but not at SOA 1000 ms (Experiment 1). However, when the prime task assignment explicitly oriented the subjects to the valence of the face, priming was observed at both SOA durations (Experiment 2). These results show, first, that affective priming by pictures of facial emotion can be obtained even when the subject has an explicit goal to process a non-affective property of the prime. Second, sensitivity of the priming effect to SOA duration seems to depend on whether it is mediated by intentional or unintentional activation of the valence of the face prime.     

Action planning with two-handed tools

In tool use, the intended external goals have to be transformed into bodily movements by taking into account the target-to-movement mapping implemented by the tool. In bimanual tool use, this mapping may depend on the part of the tool that is operated and the effector used (e.g. the left and right hand at the handle bar moving in opposite directions in order to generate the same bicycle movement). In our study, we investigated whether participants represent the behaviour of the tool or only the effector-specific mapping when using two-handed tools. In three experiments, participants touched target locations with a two-jointed lever, using either the left or the right hand. In one condition, the joint of the lever was constant and switching between hands was associated with switching the target-to-movement-mapping, whereas in another condition, switching between hands was associated with switching the joint, but the target-to-movement-mapping remained constant. Results indicate pronounced costs of switching hands in the condition with constant joint, whereas they were smaller with constant target-to-movement mapping. These results suggest that participants have tool-independent representations of the effector-specific mappings.

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Does the intention to communicate affect action kinematics?

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of communicative intention on action. In Experiment 1 participants were requested to reach towards an object, grasp it, and either simply lift it (individual condition) or lift it with the intent to communicate a meaning to a partner (communicative condition). Movement kinematics were recorded using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The results indicate that kinematics was sensitive to communicative intention. Although the to-be-grasped object remained the same, movements performed for the ‘communicative’ condition were characterized by a kinematic pattern which differed from those obtained for the ‘individual’ condition. These findings were confirmed in a subsequent experiment in which the communicative condition was compared to a control condition, in which the communicative exchange was prevented. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive pragmatics and current knowledge on how social behavior shapes action kinematics.     

Spoken and gestural production in a naming task by young children with Down syndrome

Lexical production in children with Down syndrome (DS) was investigated by examining spoken naming accuracy and the use of spontaneous gestures in a picture naming task. Fifteen children with DS (range 3.8-8.3 years) were compared to typically developing children (TD), matched for chronological age and developmental age (range 2.6-4.3 years). Relative to TD children, children with DS were less accurate in speech (producing a greater number of unintelligible answers), yet they produced more gestures overall and of these a significantly higher percentage of iconic gestures. Furthermore, the iconic gestures produced by children with DS accompanied by incorrect or no speech often expressed a concept similar to that of the target word, suggesting deeper conceptual knowledge relative to that expressed only in speech.     

Programming tool-use actions

When humans plan to execute a tool-use action, they can only specify the bodily movement parameters by taking into account the external target or goal of the tool-use action and the target-movement mapping implemented by the tool. In this study, the authors used the movement precuing method to investigate how people prepare for actions made with tools. More specifically, they asked whether people would be able to specify the spatial target and the target-movement mapping of the tool-use action independently of each other, and to what degree they would be able to prepare these components in advance. In 3 experiments, they precued either the target or the target-movement mapping of tool-use actions involving either a compatible or an incompatible target-movement mapping. Results indicate that participants benefit from partial advance information about the target-movement mapping, whereas no significant effects were found for precuing the spatial target of the action. These results occurred regardless of whether the target-movement mapping was compatible or incompatible and provide evidence for the notion that the target-movement mapping of a tool-use action is part of its cognitive representation.