Concerted Creativity in the Digital Age: How do we Crack the Code…?

The purpose of the present article is to contribute to the development of a socio-material, situated conceptualization of creativity, in exploring music making as it becomes meaningful in performative emergence processes of the digital age. It uses the creative practices of musicians to analyse and discuss the qualities of ‘digital materials’ in a creative setting, today very often playing a critical role in the production and performance of music. Methodologically, the analysis is based on interviews with professional musicians performing at Roskilde Festival and observations inspired by the autoethnographic approach. The study concludes that creative musical emergence in performance situations of the digital age depends on an openness towards a fragility, imperilling the situation and ‘cracking’ the digital materiality.     

Cognitive dysfunction in depression: neurocircuitry and new therapeutic strategies

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a disabling medical condition associated with significant morbidity, mortality and public health costs. However, neurocircuitry abnormalities underlying depression remain incompletely understood and consequently current treatment options are unfortunately limited in efficacy. Recent research has begun to focus specifically on cognitive aspects of depression and potential neurobiological correlates. Two fundamental types of cognitive dysfunction observed in MDD are cognitive biases, which include distorted information processing or attentional allocation toward negative stimuli, and cognitive deficits, which include impairments in attention, short-term memory and executive functioning. In this article, we present a selective review of current research findings in these domains and examine neuroimaging research that is beginning to characterize the neurocircuitry underlying these biases and deficits. We propose that deficient cognitive functioning, attention biases and the sustained negative affect characteristic of MDD can be understood as arising in part from dysfunctional prefrontal-subcortical circuitry and related disturbances in the cognitive control of emotion. Finally, we highlight potential new pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapeutic strategies for MDD based on an evolving mechanistic understanding of the disorder.     

Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach

This paper contests traditional psychological understandings of resilience through reference to a research project exploring resilience in the lives of disabled people. The paper briefly historically locates individualistic accounts of resilience (which have often been unhelpful in the lives of disabled people) and then moves into more recent social constructionist theories of this phenomenon. This latter perspective necessarily locates resilience in a network of resources including material resources, relationships, identity, bodies and minds, power and control, community participation, community cohesion and social justice. We argue that the recognition of resilience as a relational product is important and in tune with attempts to make psychology less an individualistic encounter and more a community intervention. However, disabled people, their politics and the development of critical disability studies, contest and challenge normative ideas of what it means to live with a resilient network of resources. In this sense disability offers new and exciting ways of addressing resilience.     

Temporal integration in vision: Masking can aid detection

Temporal form-part integration is the process whereby two discrete sets of stimuli, presented at different times, are perceived by the visual system as a single integrated percept. Dixon and Di Lollo (Cognitive Psychology 26(1):33-63, 1994) proposed a temporal correlation model that was able to quantitatively account for a number of findings related to both form-part integration tasks and partial report. The present study demonstrates a novel approach to form-part integration—the addition of a whole-field mask stimulus at the termination of the second set of stimuli. According to an extension of the correlation model, the mask stimulus should reduce the visual system’s response to the trailing display, thus increasing the relative overlap of the two displays, fostering integration. Experiment 1 supported this hypothesis, showing a maximum benefit when the mask followed the trailing display immediately, as opposed to after a delay of 60 ms. Experiment 2 showed that this same mask actually did yield worse performance when presented immediately after a single set of stimuli. The third experiment collected detailed data for a few observers over a larger number of mask delays. Taken together, these experiments provide a rare example of masking degrading a target stimulus, and yet aiding perception.     

Measurement of alcohol-related consequences among high school and college students: application of item response models to the Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index

The Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index (RAPI; H. R. White & E. W. Labouvie, 1989) is a frequently used measure of alcohol-related consequences in adolescents and college students, but psychometric evaluations of the RAPI are limited and it has not been validated with college students. This study used item response theory (IRT) to examine the RAPI on students (N = 895; 65% female, 35% male) assessed in both high school and college. A series of 2-parameter IRT models were computed, examining differential item functioning across gender and time points. A reduced 18-item measure demonstrating strong clinical utility is proposed, with scores of 8 or greater implying greater need for treatment.     

The cognitive-affective neuroscience of the unconscious

There is an ongoing debate about how best to conceptualize the unconscious. Early psychodynamic views employed theories influenced by physics to explain clinical material, while subsequent cognitivist views relied on computational models of the mind to explain laboratory data. More recently, advances in cognitive-affective neuroscience have provided new insights into the workings of unconscious cognition and affect. We briefly review some of this recent work and its clinical implications.     

Personal growth in adults' stories of life transitions

Abstract This study identified four themes of personal growth (integrative, intrinsic, agentic, and communal) in adults' stories of life transitions in careers and religions. Specific themes were expected to relate differentially to two forms of personality development (social-cognitive maturity and social-emotional well-being) and to transition satisfaction. Integrative themes correlated primarily with social-cognitive maturity (ego development; Loevinger, 1976), whereas intrinsic themes correlated primarily with social-emotional well-being. Agentic-growth themes correlated primarily with transition satisfaction, whereas communal-growth themes correlated primarily with global well-being. Themes of agentic and communal growth also differentiated the two types of transitions studied-changes in careers and changes in religions-in ways that both supported and contradicted traditional notions of those transitions. We discuss these findings in terms of narrative meaning making, the mature and happy person, and intentional self-development via life transitions.     

Traits and stories: links between dispositional and narrative features of personality

Dispositional traits and life narratives represent two different levels of personality that have not previously been empirically linked. The current study tested five hypotheses connecting Big-Five traits to life-narrative indices of emotional tone, theme, and structure. Students (Study 1) and adults (Study 2) completed a self-report measure of the Big-Five traits and provided extended written accounts of either ten (students) or eight (adults) key life-narrative scenes, including life high points, low points, and turning points. Content analysis of the narrative data revealed that for both samples Neuroticism was positively associated with an emotionally negative life-narrative tone, Agreeableness was correlated with narrative themes of communion (e.g., friendship, caring for others), and Openness was strongly associated with the structural complexity of life narrative accounts. Contrary to prediction, however, Conscientiousness was not consistently associated with themes of agency (e.g., achievement, self-mastery) and Extraversion was unrelated to positive narrative tone. The results are discussed in the context of contemporary research and theorizing on the narrative study of lives and the relation of narrative research in personality to more conventional, trait-based approaches.     

Feeling better about doing worse: social comparisons within romantic relationships

The authors examined the role of closeness between self and partner in determining the impact of social comparisons within intimate relationships. To the extent that one's partner is a central aspect of one's identity, one may be able to restore one's positive self-regard following an upward comparison with the partner by turning to the relationship as a self-affirmational resource. Studies 1 and 2 examined reactions to imagined comparisons; Studies 3 and 4 examined reactions to actual comparison feedback. Across studies, closeness moderated the impact of upward comparisons with the partner; that is, higher closeness participants responded to a more successful partner by focusing on their relationship-related strengths. However, closeness did not moderate the impact of downward comparisons with the partner.     

Psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC) among Icelandic schoolchildren

A psychometric assessment of the Icelandic version of the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC) was undertaken among Icelandic schoolchildren, between 10 and 15 years of age. In a first study 625 children between 10 and 15 years of age filled in the MASC. A confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the four-factor structure of the instrument was justified. Further, means and standard deviations of the total scale and the subscales were similar to the original normative data reported by March (1997). In a second study the MASC, the Children Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) were administered to a sample of 249 schoolchildren between 10 and 15 years of age. The results supported the convergent and divergent validity of the MASC. Together the two studies show satisfactory psychometric properties of the Icelandic version of the MASC in a normal population.