A pilot exploration of the use of compassionate images in a group of self‐critical people

Self‐criticism has long been associated with a variety of psychological problems and is often a key focus for intervention in psychotherapy. Recent work has suggested that self‐critics have underelaborated and underdeveloped capacities for compassionate self‐soothing and warmth. This pilot study developed a diary for monitoring self‐attacking and self‐soothing thoughts and images. It also explored the personal experiences of a group of volunteer self‐critics from the local depression support group who were given training in self‐soothing and self‐compassion. Although using small numbers, this study suggests the potential value of developing more complex methodologies for studying the capacity for self‐compassion, interventions to increase self‐compassion (including imagery techniques), and their effects on mental health.     

Confabulation and the Control of Recollection

It is argued that current models of memory do not adequately account for the confabulations that are found in the recall of certain neurological patients. A model of the relation between control processes and memory involved in recalling autobiographical episodes is put forward. It is based on detailed analysis of the protocols of healthy volunteers' autobiographical recollections of recent everyday events. It is held that damage to different components of the model fits with the different patterns of performance found in confabulators, and examples of the errors that confabulators make are discussed in terms of those made by normal subjects.     

Constructive Empiricism and the Vices of Voluntarism

Abstract

Constructive empiricism – as formulated by Bas van Fraassen – makes no epistemological claims about the nature of science. Rather, it is a view about the aim of science, to be situated within van Fraassen’s broader voluntarist epistemology. Yet while this epistemically minimalist framework may have various advantages in defending the epistemic relevance of constructive empiricism, I show how it also has various disadvantages in maintaining its internal coherence.     

Measuring cognitive and dispositional characteristics of creativity in elementary students

This article describes the theoretical underpinning and development of a measurement instrument that provides teachers with a tool to observe the personal creativity characteristics of individual students. The instrument was developed by compiling a list of characteristics derived from the literature to be indicative of the personal characteristics of creative people. The list was then reduced by grouping like characteristics to 9 cognitive and dispositional traits that were considered appropriate for elementary students. The 9‐item instrument was then administered in 24 classrooms to 520 Year 6 and Year 7 students. Factor analysis using maximum likelihood extraction with an oblimin rotation revealed a single factor with an eigenvalue greater than 1 and accounting for 63% of the variance. All 9 items on this factor loaded at .72 or greater. The results indicated that the Creativity Checklist has very high internal consistency and is a reliable measurement instrument (a = .93).     

Thinking Outside the Square: Business Students' Conceptions of Creativity

Creativity is an important attribute of a successful graduate of higher education, recognised by universities and employers alike. In this paper, we investigate ideas about creativity that were discussed during interviews by a group of business students at a university in Sydney, Australia. Using a phenomenographic approach, we identified three levels of conceptions of creativity, labeled Definition, Attribute, and Comprehensive, from the narrowest and most limited to the broadest and most inclusive. We discuss the characteristics of these different ways of viewing creativity and the pedagogical implications of our findings for business education (and higher education generally).     

Creativity and Cognitive Control: Explorations of Generation and Evaluation Skills

Two experiments are reported in which relationships between cognitive control and generative as well as evaluative aspects of creativity were studied. Cognitive control was assessed through the interference effects of the Navon and Stroop tasks. Generative and evaluative aspects of creativity were studied with a procedure, called Generation and Evaluation (GenEva). Each participant first generated a number of solutions to a set of divergent problems, and then he or she evaluated solutions provided by another participant, chosen at random. The data suggest that participants scoring high on Urban and Jellen's Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production showed better indexes of cognitive control than participants with lower scores. A similar relationship has been found concerning the originality of participants' productions (GenEva procedure) but not their fluency and flexibility. These findings are interpreted in terms of basic cognitive processes, which are probably responsible for idea production. It also appeared that cognitive control allowed more accurate evaluation of other people's ideas, but only in the case of participants with global cognitive style of information processing.     

Consequence of Self Versus Externally Generated Visual Motion on Postural Regulation

A limiting factor in the use of virtual environments to examine perception and action is that it is dependent on the quality of the interaction. A virtual reality game (first-person viewpoint with moderate difficulty) was used to investigate the link between control and postural regulation. Postural regulation was examined using a motion capture system, and the differences that emerged as a result of the participant being a passive observer versus an active participant were evaluated using a fractal procedure: dispersion analysis. A significant interaction was found between control and health, namely, participants' postural behavior tended to be less uniform when they were sick and when they were in control of the environment. These results lead the authors to suggest that successful interaction with novel environments depends on the ability to find and consistently use appropriate control strategies.