Fertile green: green facilitates creative performance

The present research sought to extend the nascent literature on color and psychological functioning by examining whether perception of the color green facilitates creativity. In four experiments, we demonstrated that a brief glimpse of green prior to a creativity task enhances creative performance. This green effect was observed using both achromatic (white, gray) and chromatic (red, blue) contrast colors that were carefully matched on nonhue properties, and using both picture-based and word-based assessments of creativity. Participants were not aware of the purpose of the experiment, and null effects were obtained on participants' self-reported mood and positive activation. These findings indicate that green has implications beyond aesthetics and suggest the need for sustained empirical work on the functional meaning of green.     

Early childhood cognitive development and parental cognitive stimulation: evidence for reciprocal gene-environment transactions

Parenting is traditionally conceptualized as an exogenous environment that affects child development. However, children can also influence the quality of parenting that they receive. Using longitudinal data from 650 identical and fraternal twin pairs, we found that, controlling for cognitive ability at age 2 years, cognitive stimulation by parents (coded from video recorded behaviors during a dyadic task) at 2 years predicted subsequent reading ability at age 4 years. Moreover, controlling for cognitive stimulation at 2 years, children's cognitive ability at 2 years predicted the quality of stimulation received from their parents at 4 years. Genetic and environmental factors differentially contributed to these effects. Parenting influenced subsequent cognitive development through a family-level environmental pathway, whereas children's cognitive ability influenced subsequent parenting through a genetic pathway. These results suggest that genetic influences on cognitive development occur through a transactional process, in which genetic predispositions lead children to evoke cognitively stimulating experiences from their environments.     

Socioeconomic Status Modifies Interest-Knowledge Associations among Adolescents

Researchers have recently taken a renewed interest in examining the patterns by which noncognitive traits and cognitive traits relate to one another. Few researchers, however, have examined the possibility that such patterns might differ according to environmental context. Using data from a nationally representative sample of approximately 375,000 students from 1,300 high schools in the United States, we examined the relations between socioeconomic status (SES), interests, and knowledge in eleven academic, vocational/professional, and recreational domains. We found little support for the hypothesis that SES-related differences in levels of interest mediate SES-related differences in levels of knowledge. In contrast, we found robust and consistent support for the hypothesis that SES moderates interest-knowledge associations. For 10 out of 11 of the knowledge domains examined, the interest-knowledge association was stronger for individuals living in higher SES contexts. Moderation persisted after controlling for an index of general intelligence. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that low SES inhibits individuals from selectively investing their time and attention in learning experiences that are consistent with their interests.     

From neural responses to population behavior: neural focus group predicts population-level media effects

Can neural responses of a small group of individuals predict the behavior of large-scale populations? In this investigation, brain activations were recorded while smokers viewed three different television campaigns promoting the National Cancer Institute's telephone hotline to help smokers quit (1-800-QUIT-NOW). The smokers also provided self-report predictions of the campaigns' relative effectiveness. Population measures of the success of each campaign were computed by comparing call volume to 1-800-QUIT-NOW in the month before and the month after the launch of each campaign. This approach allowed us to directly compare the predictive value of self-reports with neural predictors of message effectiveness. Neural activity in a medial prefrontal region of interest, previously associated with individual behavior change, predicted the population response, whereas self-report judgments did not. This finding suggests a novel way of connecting neural signals to population responses that has not been previously demonstrated and provides information that may be difficult to obtain otherwise.     

The Survey of European Psychotherapy Training 2: questionnaire data

49% of 730 Psychotherapists surveyed in 8 European Countries provided information about obstacles to accessing training. Distance, childcare (especially in women) and family responsibilities and educational background (especially in men). The introduction of a common platform for the training, the European Certificate of Psychotherapy, had not, the respondents thought, reduced these barriers but the Certificate was considered beneficial for other reasons.     

What student psychotherapists want from an experiential group

A study of four thirty-week experiential groups, involving two group conductors and forty-one other group members showed that 90 per cent of students' expectations of change were exceeded, indicating increase in interpersonal learning and, over a longer period, emotional change. the culture of the groups was consistently positive and expressive. There was some evidence that conductors had a similar style which corresponded to that predicted by the group analytic method, and that both showed behaviours which were indicators of ‘good quality' therapy. There were substantial correlations between a positive culture and better than expectation outcome at the end of term one, and good psychodynamic practice by the conductors and outcome at the end of the course.     

Fitts' Theorem and Movement Time Dissociation for Amplitude and Width Manipulations: Replying to Hoffmann

The commentary by Errol Hoffmann in this issue asserts that previous work by our group provides the spurious conclusion that amplitude and width manipulations to a movement environment elicit dissociable relations between movement time (MT) and P. M. Fitts' (1954) index of difficulty (ID). Hoffmann concludes that any such dissociation is the result of actions evoked entirely as ballistic. In this reply, we demonstrate that Hoffmann's commentary is a clear misrepresentation of the study goals and conclusions stated by our group. Additionally, we provide kinematic evidence that actions involving online trajectory amendments are associated with dissociable MT–ID relations for amplitude versus width manipulations. Finally, we contend that the kinematic analyses of movement trajectories, and Hoffmann's failure to acknowledge its importance, is an important step in further understanding speed–accuracy relations in human movement.