Creativity and Aging: Personal Journals and the Creation of Self

This article considers the writing of personal journals as a process through which an individual constructs a linguistic representation of one's self, with the self constituting a narrative. Rather than a fixed narrative, one's life exists as a narrative subject to revision and reinterpretation. Through journal writing, then, one constructs and reconstructs his or her identity. Berman finds the value in personal journals not only in the themes that surface but also in the creative process they reveal. In this article, he examines passages from five journalists that demonstrate this process of creating and revising meaning in one's life.     

The development of same and different judgments

Junior kindergarten children, third-grade children, and college students were given a simultaneous pattern discrimination task, with simple and complex patterns, under either unlimited or limited (150 msec) viewing time. Under unlimited viewing, RTs to same patterns were faster than to different patterns for younger children and older males. Under limited viewing, same and different RTs were equivalent, but more errors were made in judging different patterns by all age groups. The RTs were longer to complex than to simple patterns, but the increase was differentially less for the youngest Ss, especially on same pairs. Since this age difference was found under both limited and unlimited viewing, it was not attributable to age differences in perceptual scanning strategies. The same-different asymmetry in RT under unlimited viewing and in error rate under limited viewing confirms across a wide age range previous findings with adults using codable stimuli. A two-process model for same and different judgments appears to be required, although young children may have had a response bias for same in Expt II.     

Effects of manipulating incentive visibility during the baiting phase of delayed-response problems

Rhesus monkeys were given 960 delayed response (DR) problems. The incentive was either visible or not visible during the baiting phase of each problem, and a 0-, 5-, 10-, or 20-sec intraproblem delay was imposed. Performance was substantially better when the incentive could be seen during the baiting phase. When the incentive was visible during baiting, at all stages of training performance decreased as a function of increased chance levels after short delays, and the rate of improvement with training was comparable after each of the four intraproblem delays. When the incentive was not visible during the baiting phase, an inverse relationship between performance and delay duration became evident only during the later stages of training. On the initial problems performance was at chance levels, and although improvement with training was evident, the rate of this improvement was inversely related to delay duration. The findings were interpreted in terms of Fletcher's orienting response analysis of DR performance.     

Cardiovascular responses to acetylcholine: Effects of pentobarbital and autonomic blocking agents

The effect of acetylcholine chloride (ACh) on heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) was studied in four dogs, awake and under anesthesia by means of pentobarbital sodium. In the awake dog, ACh caused a triphasic change in HR—a rise, fall and secondary rise. The BP showed an initial gradual fall followed by a secondary precipitous fall coinciding with the fall in HR, and then return to base line. Anesthesia accentuated the precipitous fall in HR due to ACh, and narrowed the pulse pressure during the initial fall in BP due to ACh. The effects of atropine sulphate, propranolol and d-tubacurarine on the above were studied, indicating the roles of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems in mediating the HR and BP reactions to ACh in the awake state and under pentobarbital sodium anesthesia.