General,Artistic and Scientific Creativity Attributes of Engineering and Music Students

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research was to investigate similarities and differences in general, artistic, and scientific creativity between engineering versus music students, as 2 groups respectively representing scientific and artistic domains. One hundred music and 105 engineering students from a large, Northeastern university completed measures of general creativity, music creativity, engineering creativity, and a demographic questionnaire. Results indicated that musicians scored higher in general and artistic creativity, with no significant differences in scientific creativity. Participants had higher levels of creativity, compared with normative data from previous studies. Gender, age, and specialization within major yielded no significant differences. Implications for creativity measures are discussed, including cognitive risk tolerance.     

Measures of Mentoring,Department Climate,and Graduate Student Preparedness in the Responsible Conduct of Psychological Research

Drawing upon two independent national samples of 201 and 241 psychology graduate students, this article describes the development and psychometric evaluation of 4 Web-based student self-report scales tapping student socialization in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) with human participants. The Mentoring the Responsible Conduct of Research Scale (MRCR) is composed of 2 subscales assessing RCR instruction and modeling by research mentors. The 2 subscales of the RCR Department Climate Scale (RCR-DC) assess RCR department policies and faculty and student RCR practices. The RCR Preparedness scale (RCR-P) and the RCR Field Integrity scale (RCR-FI) measure respectively students' confidence in their ability to conduct research responsibly and their belief in the RCR integrity of psychology as a discipline. Factor analysis, coefficient alphas, correlations, and multiple regression analyses demonstrated each of the scales had good internal consistency and concurrent and construct validity.     

Reason,emotion, and love

Wittgenstein's private language argument is interpreted as an example of a kind of transcendental argument which, if valid, explains why a certain concept must possess certain features. Cognition and affect are shown to require each other by an application of Bennett's account of what beings capable of true cognition must be capable of, and the necessity of certain emotions to the existence of any rules in a community is argued in similar fashion. Hume's account of love and admiration being rejected, an account of love, intended to explain some of love's familiar features, is defended, and various proposed additions to the analysis are rejected. The idea of love is linked to those of value, agency, and the transcendental self by argument showing that each of these ideas requires all of the others. Finally, the idea of love is linked by a direct argument to that of the transcendental self.     

Adolescent Group Psychotherapy: Collaborative Opportunity for Patients,Parents, and Therapist

This brief report examines the uses of an Observation Team with a Parent Support Group. In particular, attention is placed on the idea of the Observation Team acting as a Reflecting Team in the final session of the group's life. Using the Observation Team in this manner has evolved from an amalgamation of ideas from family therapy and group therapy theory.     

Factors Associated with Transposition Behavior of Preschool Children

To assess ideas, derived from a contextual paradigm, stressing the influence of adolescents' perceptions of the physical and social components of their school environment on their self-esteems and academic performances, 183 black early adolescents (mean age = 12.1 years, SD = .5 years; 54.6% female) were administered five semantic differential scales. The first provided a measure of self-esteem, while the remaining four provided measures of perceptions of the social environment of the school (i.e., of peers and of teachers) and of the physical environment of the school (i.e., of the classroom and of the school building). There were few systematic sex differences in responses to the scales. As predicted, school environment perceptions were significantly related to self-esteem in both males and females. However, although self-esteem and a report of grade point average, as a measure of academic performance, were significantly related, there was no relation between school environmental perceptions and reported grade point average.     

Transfer of Motor Learning Engages Specific Neural Substrates During Motor Memory Consolidation Dependent on the Practice Structure

The authors investigated how brain activity during motor-memory consolidation contributes to transfer of learning to novel versions of a motor skill following distinct practice structures. They used 1 Hz repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) immediately after constant or variable practice of an arm movement skill to interfere with primary motor cortex (M1) or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The effect of interference was assessed through skill performance on two transfer targets: one within and one outside the range of practiced movement parameters for the variable practice group. For the control (no rTMS) group, variable practice benefited delayed transfer performance more than constant practice. The rTMS effect on delayed transfer performance differed for the two transfer targets. For the within-range target, rTMS interference had no significant affect on the delayed transfer after either practice structure. However, for the outside-range target, rTMS interference to DLPFC but not M1 attenuated delayed transfer benefit following variable practice. Additionally, for the outside-range target, rTMS interference to M1 but not DLPFC attenuated delayed transfer following constant practice. This suggests that variable practice may promote reliance on DLPFC for memory consolidation associated with outside-range transfer of learning, whereas constant practice may promote reliance on M1 for consolidation and long-term transfer.     

Context-Dependent Learning in People With Parkinson's Disease

Context-dependent learning is a phenomenon in which people demonstrate superior performance in the context in which they originally learned a skill but perform less well in a novel context. This study investigated context-dependent learning in people with Parkinson's disease (PD) and age-matched nondisabled adults. All participants practiced 3 finger sequences, each embedded within a unique context (colors and locations on a computer screen). One day after practice, the participants were tested either under the sequence-context associations remained the same as during practice, or the sequence-context associations were changed (SWITCH). Compared with nondisabled adults, people with PD demonstrated significantly greater decrement in performance (especially movement time) under the SWITCH condition, suggesting that individuals with PD are more context dependent than nondisabled adults.     

Self-Actualization of “Paranormals”

A sample of 56 Ss nominated by others as paranormals and self-stated as experiencing paranormal (occult) phenomena, were administered measures purportedly reflected dimensions of the self-actualization concept. Ss reported both their interest in, and experience of, 15 areas of paranormal phenomena. Ss were given the Marlowe-Crown Social Desirability Scale (measuring ego-defensiveness), Shostrom's Self-Actualization Test (POI), and an Aphorism test (designed to measure degree of “expanded awareness”). Ss scores were compared with various normative and experimental group scores for the three tests. Although statistically significant differences were rare, there was usually a trend for paranormals to score in the direction of self-actualization on most measures.     

A Muscle Awareness Model for Changes in Rorschach Human Movement Responses

The present series of studies sought to provide evidence that M would increase under any conditions which make an S more aware of his muscles. The studies demonstrated that at least in women, M increased over a variety of conditions involving heightened muscle awareness. Specifically M increased in conditions utilizing muscle activation, deactivation, hypnosis, and focusing thoughts on the body musculature. The muscle awareness model unlike the sensory-tonic model accounts for increases in M following hyperactivity as well as inhibition.     

Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Differences in Interpersonal Perceptions

The purpose of this research was to study the patterns of interpersonal behavior of depressed students. Depressed participants rated themselves lower than non-depressed controls on assertiveness and initiation of interactions and significantly higher than controls on concern about what others think, introversion, and submissiveness. Depressed participants also scored significantly higher than controls on measures of dependency, self-criticism, and the need to please others. Ratings of depressed participants by their roommates were not correlated with depressed participants' self-reports. In contrast, most subscale self-ratings and roommate ratings for the nondepressed participants and their roommates were significantly correlated.