Adults' memories of childhood: Affect,knowing, and remembering

Adult questionnaire respondents reported, for each of a number of events, if they had experienced that event during childhood and, if so, if they remembered the experience or merely knew it had happened. Respondents also rated the emotion of each event and judged whether they would remember more about each reportedly experienced event if they spent more time trying to do so. Study 1 respondents were 96 undergraduates, whereas Study 2 tested 93 community members ranging widely in age. Respondents often reported no recollections of reportedly experienced events. Reportedly experienced events rated as emotional were more often recollected than those rated as neutral, and those rated as positive were more often recollected than those rated as negative. Predicted ability to remember more was related to current memory. Claims of remembering reportedly experienced events increased with age, but predicted ability to remember more about them declined with age.     

Applying Multiple Knowledge Structures in Creative Thought: Effects on Idea Generation and Problem-Solving

Prior studies have indicated that multiple knowledge structures, schema, associations, and cases, are involved in creative thought. Few studies, however, have examined how these different knowledge structures operate together in idea generation and creative problem-solving. Accordingly, in the present study 247 undergraduates were asked to generate ideas relevant to a social innovation problem and then provide a potential solution to the problem. A training manipulation was used to encourage application of schematic, associational, or case-based knowledge either alone or in combination. It was found that prompting use of a single knowledge structure, specifically schema or associational knowledge, resulted in the production of more high quality ideas. However, prompting use of multiple knowledge structures, specifically combining either schema or associations with cases, resulted in the production of higher quality and more original problem-solutions. The implications of these findings for understanding the role of different knowledge structures in creative thought are discussed.     

Climate for Creativity: A Quantitative Review

Abstract

Creativity is commonly held to emerge from an interaction of the person and the situation. In studies of creativity, situational influences are commonly assessed by using climate measures. In the present effort, a meta-analysis was conducted to examine 42 prior studies in which the relationships between climate dimensions, such as support and autonomy, and various indices of creative performance were assessed. These climate dimensions were found to be effective predictors of creative performance across criteria, samples, and settings. It was found, moreover, that these dimensions were especially effective predictors of creative performance in turbulent, high-pressure, competitive environments. The implications of these findings for understanding environmental influences on creativity and innovation are discussed.     

Associations Between the Repressive Adaptive Style and Self-Reported Hope in Mexican American and Euro-American Children

The investigators factor-analyzed abstract art preferences and correlated art factors with traits on the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey. Factors were derived from preference ratings on the “Abstract Art Test” developed by Knapp and Green in a previous study. Two of the three multiple loading factors were “non-geometric” or expressionistic; one was “geometric,” rationalistic. Only 2 of the 30 correlations with the GZTS scales were significant at the .10 level, and these could have been due to chance. There is support for dichotomizing abstract art types into “geometric” and “non-geometric” but little support for the role of temperament in aesthetic preference.     

Bias in Eyewitness Accounts: The Effects of Question Format,Delay Interval,and Stimulus Presentation

One of three representations of a staged automobile collision was shown to 180 students from introductory psychology classes. We then questioned the students about details of the accident, using either marked or unmarked modifiers. Half the students were questioned immediately after viewing the stimulus material and half after a 20-min delay. The results indicated that estimates of the magnitude of a number of aspects of the collision were significantly greater when unmarked modifiers were used in phrasing the relevant questions. Students who were questioned after the 20-min delay gave significantly greater estimates of monetary damage than the students who answered immediately after viewing the representation. The nature of the stimulus material had inconsistent but significant effects.     

Religious Orientation and Health among Active Older Adults in the United States

This study utilizes a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic Religious Orientation Scales to explore the connection between religion and health in a sample of physically active, older adults. The revised Religious Orientation Scale and the RAND Short Form 36 (SF-36) were adopted to relate religious orientation (intrinsic, extrinsic, pro-religious, and non-religious) and self-rated mental and physical health status. Individuals of pro-religious orientation reported significantly worse health for physical functioning, role limitations due to physical health, and energy or fatigue when compared with those of all other religious orientations; however, no dose–response relationships were found between religious orientation and self-rated health. The results of this study indicate that deleterious health effects may accompany pro-religious orientation. Caution is provided for directors of religious programs for older adults.     

Anchoring and Adjusting in Questionnaire Responses

Do survey designers bias respondents' answers on attitude/opinion questionnaires through the organization of their survey items? We hypothesize that respondents often employ an anchoring and adjusting strategy in which their response to an initial survey item provides a cognitive anchor from which they insufficiently adjust in answering the subsequent item. Three experiments indicate that respondents often anchor and insufficiently adjust in certain situations. Ultimately, this tendency can affect reliability estimates of scales and the resultant correlations with other measures. In organizing their surveys, researchers may wish to combat this bias by intermixing items designed for different but related constructs.     

The effects of team strategic orientation on team process and information search

We tested the effects of team strategic orientation on team member perceptions, work strategy and information search. In Experiment 1, 80 teams worked on a hidden profile decision-making task. A defensive team strategic orientation increased members’ perceptions of the problem’s scope, leading to a more process-focused work strategy and broader information search compared to an offensive team strategic orientation. When teams needed critical information from the environment, defensive teams outperformed offensive teams; offensive teams performed better when critical information resided within the team. In Experiment 2, these findings were replicated with 92 teams performing a different decision task. When making a second decision, half of the teams were led to change their strategic orientation; teams shifting from offense to defense altered their information search behavior more readily than did teams shifting in the opposite direction, suggesting an asymmetric adaptation effect.