The Role of Hardiness and Grit in Predicting Performance and Retention of USMA Cadets

We examined the relative effectiveness of hardiness and grit as predictors of performance and retention among first year cadets at the USMA. Based on past research and theory, we expected that both hardiness and grit would predict unique variance in performance and retention even after controlling for past performance as measured by the Whole Candidate Score. Results of regression analyses revealed that hardiness and grit predicted unique variance in first year retention, but only hardiness predicted first year performance at USMA. These findings suggest that hardiness assessment and training may prove valuable in enhancing performance and retention within military training environments.     

Mood Swings and Creativity

ABSTRACT:

This article evaluates recent evidence for an association between creativity and bipolar mood disorders. Eminent creativity and everyday creativity are distinguished, with high rates of major mood disorders‐particularly bipolar disorders— appearing among eminent creators in the arts. However, among everyday persons, including the 4–5% of the population that may develop a bipolar “spectrum”; disorder and their relatives, it is those with relatively milder mood disorders and normalcy who may show the greatest creative advantage. These seemingly conflicting results are reconciled through comparison of research designs and the creativity and diagnostic variables studied. Evidence regarding mood states that enhance creativity is also considered, both for eminent and everyday creators, and some preliminary results from a study of patients are presented. Here, milder mood elevations were tied most closely to the experience of creativity, although other patterns can exist. Three patterns are examined in terms of 23 mood, cognitive, and behavioral features that Jamison (1989) studied in eminent creators.     

Performance on creativity measures with examination‐taking instructions intended to induce high or low levels of test anxiety

The major purpose of this investigation was to ascertain whether differential levels of performance on three tests of creativity portraying divergent production of verbal (semantic), figural (visual), and mathematical (symbolic) responses would be associated with two sets of test‐taking instructions: (a) one intended to induce a relatively high level of anxiety or stress and (b) the other designed to minimize the degree of anxiety or stress in the testing experience. Participants were 132 private secondary school students (82 females and 50 males) in a college preparatory program who were divided into experimental and control groups. On the basis of three univariate four‐way factorial designs at each of two levels per variable (treatment x sex x test anxiety x mathematics anxiety) with the pretest serving as a covariate, it was observed that only in the instance of a mathematics fluency test did the experimental group exposed to anxiety‐inducing test‐taking instructions achieve a significantly lower mean score on the posttest than did the control group that had been administered instructions intended to minimize anxiety (p < .001). A marginally significant interaction occurred between gender and mathematics anxiety on the mathematics fluency test with highly‐anxious males showing a greater decrement in performance than highly‐anxious females when exposed to anxiety‐inducing instructions. The results were interpreted primarily within a conceptual framework developed by Tobias (1985), who proposed an integration of cognitive capacity and interference as explanatory constructs for decrements in the performance of tasks involving anxiety.     

A Kantian Moral Duty for the Soon-to-be Demented to Commit Suicide

It has been argued that, on Kantian grounds, pedophiles, rapists and murderers are morally obligated to take their own lives prior to committing a violent action that will end their moral agency. That is, to avoid destroying the agent's moral life by performing a morally suicidal action, the agent, while he still is a moral agent, should end his body's life. Although the cases of dementia and the morally reprehensible are vastly different, this Kantian interpretation might be useful in the debate on the permissibility of suicide for those facing dementia's effects. If moral agents have a duty to act as moral agents, then those who will lose their moral identity as moral agents have an obligation to themselves to end their physical lives prior to losing their dignity as persons.     

Visual extinction and awareness: The importance of binding dorsal and ventral pathways

Patients with visual extinction were tested on three tasks involving stimulus identification and localization. In the first experiment, in which patients were to identify and localize stimuli, they demonstrated high levels of contralesional omissions. This primarily occurred under conditions of double simultaneous stimulation (DSS), consistent with the character of extinction. In contrast, when patients had to simply localize or count stimuli in Experiment 2, their contralesional omissions were very low. Similarly, when patients were to identify stimuli without localizing them (Experiment 3) they again showed very low contralesional error rates. These results support the view (Baylis, Driver, & Rafal, 1993) that visual extinction may be greatest when information about location cannot be bound to information about identity.     

Do children utilize motion when recognizing faces?

Previous research indicates that unfamiliar faces may be recognized better if they are viewed in motion. This study utilized a three trial learning paradigm to investigate whether unfamiliar faces are learnt more quickly from moving clips than from static images. Children aged 6–7 years and 10–11 years were shown a series of faces as either static images or dynamic clips, followed by either by a static or a dynamic recognition test. Faces were recognized more accurately when presented in motion, but there was no advantage for testing in motion. Although older children were more accurate overall, younger females performed as well as older children for faces presented in motion, suggesting that females’ face processing skills develop more quickly than those of males. Results are discussed in terms of the motion advantage arising due to additional structural information enhancing the internal representation of the face.     

Book synopsis

Abstract

Ford, C.M., & Gioia, D.A. (Eds.). (1995). Creative action in organizations: Ivory tower visions and real world voices. London: Sage. Pp. 400. ISBN 0-8039-5349-6. £42.50. ISBN 0-8039-5350-X (£19.95 paperback).¹     

Shinran and Heidegger on Dwelling: Reading Shinran as a Phenomenology of Shinjin

This article explores Shinran's depiction of the life of nembutsu through a discussion of his use of the term ‘dwelling’. It seeks thereby to propose a way of reading his writings that might serve as a corrective to the more usual doctrinal views of his teaching. In order to elucidate Shinran's phenomenological endeavour, I consider his writings together with Heidegger's exposition of ‘dwelling’ in his later essays. There are four characteristics of dwelling in particular that both Shinran and Heidegger elaborate in ways that resonate with each other: settledness, freedom, joy, and nearness. The article takes up each of these aspects of the account of dwelling in the two thinkers with the aim of casting new light on Shinran's understanding of human existence in its fullest potential.