Working memory benefits creative insight, musical improvisation, and original ideation through maintained task-focused attention

Anecdotes from creative eminences suggest that executive control plays an important role in creativity, but scientific evidence is sparse. Invoking the Dual Pathway to Creativity Model, the authors hypothesize that working memory capacity (WMC) relates to creative performance because it enables persistent, focused, and systematic combining of elements and possibilities (persistence). Study 1 indeed showed that under cognitive load, participants performed worse on a creative insight task. Study 2 revealed positive associations between time-on-task and creativity among individuals high but not low in WMC, even after controlling for general intelligence. Study 3 revealed that across trials, semiprofessional cellists performed increasingly more creative improvisations when they had high rather than low WMC. Study 4 showed that WMC predicts original ideation because it allows persistent (rather than flexible) processing. The authors conclude that WMC benefits creativity because it enables the individual to maintain attention focused on the task and prevents undesirable mind wandering.     

Power and Legitimizing Ideologies in Hierarchy‐Enhancing vs. Hierarchy‐Attenuating Environments

According to social dominance theory, intergroup dynamics are strongly influenced by the social positions which individuals hold in society. Several studies suggest that holding a position of power can, sometimes automatically, generate negative attitudes and hostile behaviors toward subordinate social groups. However, at present, the studies carried out on these effects of power have not taken into account the influence of the normative context. Based on the distinction made by Sidanius and Pratto between “hierarchy‐enhancing” (HE) vs. “hierarchy‐attenuating” (HA) environments, this study examines if the effects of power on legitimizing cognitions vary as a function of the normative environment. A laboratory study and a study conducted in a natural environment confirm our hypothesis that individuals holding a powerful or dominant social role in a HE setting differ significantly from individuals holding an equally powerful role in a HA setting. The effects of power observed in past research probably resulted from studying power in hierarchy‐enhancing environments, but not in hierarchy‐attenuating ones.     

Can fast and slow intelligence be differentiated?

Responses to items from an intelligence test may be fast or slow. The research issue dealt with in this paper is whether the intelligence involved in fast correct responses differs in nature from the intelligence involved in slow correct responses. There are two questions related to this issue: 1. Are the processes involved different? 2. Are the abilities involved different? An answer to these questions is provided making use of data from a Raven-like matrices test and a verbal analogies test, and the use of a psychometric branching model. The branching model is based on three latent traits: speed, fast accuracy and slow accuracy, and item parameters corresponding to each of these. The pattern of item difficulties is used to draw conclusions on the cognitive processes involved. The results are as follows: 1. The processes involved in fast and slow responses can be differentiated, as can be derived from qualitative differences in the patterns of item difficulty, and fast responses lead to a larger differentiation between items than slow responses do. 2. The abilities underlying fast and slow responses can also be differentiated, and fast responses allow for a better differentiation between the respondents.     

Longitudinal intergroup contact effects on prejudice using self- and observer-reports

Longitudinal effects of intergroup contact on prejudice were investigated in a sample of 65 young adults (Sample 1) and a sample of their close friends (Sample 2, N= 172), adopting a full cross-lagged panel design. We first validated the self-report measure of intergroup contact from Sample 1 with observer ratings from Sample 2 by demonstrating that self-reports and observer ratings of contact were highly correlated. Moreover, we obtained significant cross-lagged effects of intergroup contact on prejudice with both contact measures, thereby providing a second validation for the use of self-reports of intergroup contact. Finally, by the use of latent change modelling, we demonstrated that, although no overall significant change in contact and prejudice over time was found, there was meaningful variation in absolute change in the individual levels of intergroup contact and prejudice. In particular, some individuals showed increases while others showed decreases in contact or prejudice across time. Moreover, higher levels of intergroup contact at Time 1 were followed by larger subsequent decreases in prejudice between Time 1 and Time 2, and changes in contact were significantly and negatively related to changes in prejudice. Methodological implications of the findings are discussed.     

Gaze aversion during social interaction in preterm infants: a function of attention skills?

Preterm infants avert their gaze more often and for longer periods in early social interactions compared to full term infants. In previous studies this finding is interpreted as being a function of the higher degree of parental stimulation that is often found in parents of preterm children. The current study explores an additional hypothesis. Since the development of general visual attention abilities is found to be less optimal in preterm children, it is possible that less optimal maturation of attention abilities partially explains the elevated gaze aversion in a social context. Therefore, the current study investigated the association between gaze aversion in a social context and the ability to disengage and shift visual attention in a non-social context in 20 preterm and 42 full term infants aged 4 and 6 months. Results confirm that preterm infants are slower to shift their attention in a non-social context and that they avert their gaze more often in a social context compared to full term children. Furthermore, more frequent gaze aversion during social interaction at 6 months was related to longer disengagement and the shifting of attention at 4 and 6 months, but only within the preterm group. The results suggest that attention maturation is less optimal in preterm children; this can be observed in a non-social as well as a social context. Less attention maturation in preterm children can negatively influence the amount of time they can stay actively involved in social interaction.     

This is funny: on the beneficial role of self-enhancing and affiliative humour in job design

Building on positive psychology, the present study aims to address the role of humour in the workplace, and particularly in job design, one of the crucial job aspects contributing to employee well-being. Specifically, we examine the main effects of self-enhancing and affiliative types of humour both on burnout and work engagement. Furthermore, we study whether these humour styles serve as personal resources, moderating the associations of job hindrances (i.e., role conflict), job challenges (i.e., workload) and job resources (i.e., social support) with burnout and work engagement, as outlined in the Job Demands-Resources model. Results in a large sample of Belgian employees ( N = 1200) showed that both types of humour related negatively to burnout and positively to work engagement. No interactions between humour and the job characteristics were found in the prediction of burnout. The significant interactions in predicting work engagement showed that self-enhancing and affiliative humour played a positive role, particularly when role conflict and social support were low. No interactions with workload were found. The discussion aims to shed light on the unexpected results and to further the study of the humour-health hypothesis.     

Is pride a prosocial emotion? Interpersonal effects of authentic and hubristic pride

Pride is associated with both prosocial and antisocial behaviour. Do others also infer such behaviours when pride is expressed and does this affect their own prosocial behaviour? We expected that authentic pride (i.e., confidence, accomplishment) would signal and elicit more prosocial behaviour than hubristic pride (i.e., arrogance, conceit). In a first laboratory experiment, a target in a public-good dilemma was inferred to have acted less prosocially when displaying a nonverbal expression of pride versus no emotion. As predicted, inferences of hubristic pride-but not authentic pride-mediated this effect. Participants themselves also responded less prosocially. A second laboratory experiment where a target verbally expressed authentic pride, hubristic pride, or no emotion replicated the effects of hubristic pride and showed that authentically proud targets were assumed to have acted prosocially, but especially by perceivers with a dispositional tendency to take the perspective of others. We conclude that authentic pride is generally perceived as a more prosocial emotion than hubristic pride.     

Adding the goal to learn strengthens learning in an unintentional learning task

Previous research has demonstrated that contingency learning can take place in the absence of the intention to learn. For instance, in the color-word contingency learning task, each distracting word is presented most often in a given target color (e.g., "month" in red and "plate" in green), and less often in the other colors. Participants respond more quickly and accurately when the word is presented in the expected rather than an unexpected color, even though there is no reason why they would have the intention to learn the contingencies between the words and the colors. It remains to be determined, however, whether learning in such situations would benefit or suffer from adding the goal to learn contingencies. In the reported experiment, half of the participants were informed that each word was presented most often in a certain color, and they were instructed to try to learn these contingencies. The other half of the participants were not informed that contingencies would be present. The participants given the learning goal produced a larger response time contingency effect than did the control participants. In contrast to some results from other learning paradigms, these results suggest that intentional learning adds to, rather than interferes with, unintentional learning, and we propose an explanation for some of the conflicting results.     

Development of an Intervention for Foster Parents of Young Foster Children with Externalizing Behavior: Theoretical Basis and Program Description

Foster parents are often faced with serious externalizing behaviors of their foster child. These behavioral problems may induce family stress and are related to less effective parenting and often increase. Foster children with behavioral problems are also more at risk of placement breakdown. An intervention to support foster parents of young foster children with externalizing behaviors is necessary to improve the effectiveness of foster placements. Based on research on effective parenting interventions and special needs of foster children, a treatment protocol was developed. This paper describes theoretical foundations for the content and form of the intervention and gives an overview of the modular treatment protocol. Preliminary outcomes of this intervention as well as challenges and future developments and research activities are discussed.     

Analysing user's reactions in advice-giving dialogues with a socially intelligent ECA

In this paper, we investigate the user's reactions to received suggestion by an Embodied Conversational Agent playing the role of artificial therapist in the healthy eating domain. Specifically, we analyse the behaviour of people who voluntarily requested to receive information from the agent, and we compare it with the results of a previous evaluation experiment in which subjects were not properly motivated to interact with the agent because they were selected for evaluating the system. This study is part of an ongoing research aimed at developing an intelligent virtual agent that applies natural argumentation techniques to persuade the users to improve their eating habits.