On the sociohistorical context of creativity programs

What role does emotion play in helping youth reach their creative potential? Does it alter how they process ideas, and how many ideas they can generate? By varying the levels of arousal associated with low, medium, and high levels of exertion in the video game Dance Dance Revolution, and inducing a positive or negative mood, this study offers evidence that emotion significantly affects creativity through the interaction of arousal and valence. Faced with the cognitive demand of creativity, lower arousal levels resulted in higher creativity scores when coupled with a negative mood. At high arousal levels, a positive mood resulted in greater creative potential than a negative mood. These results are discussed here in light of theories of emotion as a prime, as information, and as a moderator of attention.     

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.     

Diagnosing Organizational Innovation: Measuring the Capacity for Innovation

Organizational innovation involves reconciling many contradictions or paradoxes. Dividing the process of innovation into phases ranging from Activation to Validation and examining each phase in terms of the six Ps of creativity offers a framework for making sense of these contradictions. The Innovation Phase Assessment Instrument (IPAI) was designed to assess organizations according to such an approach. The scale was administered to 454 student volunteers and an analysis of their responses indicated that the IPAI is highly reliable and has substantial construct validity. At a practical level, it can be used for assessing the strengths/weaknesses of organizations in a differentiated way and for making recommendations for improving their capacity for innovation. It is also a source of research questions for examining creativity and innovation in an organizational context.     

Visually Controlled Locomotion and Visual Orientation in Animals

A general theory of locomotor behavior in relation to physical objects is presented. Since the controlling stimulation for such behavior is mainly optical, this involves novel assumptions about object perception and about what is called visual kinaesthesis. Evidence for these assumptions is cited. On the basis of this theory it is possible to suppose that animals are visually oriented to the surfaces of their environment, not merely to light as such. In short, it is possible to explain why they seem to have space perception. Implications of this approach for maze-learning are pointed out.     

Executive Function as an Interaction-Dominant Process

Traditional theories of psychology define the cognitive system as composed of insular, encapsulated components, controlled by a central executive. An alternative hypothesis suggests that cognitive control arises from the complex interaction among temporal scales of activity within the system. We examined the hand motions of preschool-age participants gathered during an executive-function task, card sorting, for evidence of multiplicative interactions across temporal scales. The time series of hand motions were submitted to iterated amplitude adjusted Fourier transformation (IAAFT), a surrogate data analysis technique that removes nonlinear, multiscale dependencies while preserving the linear structure of the time series. We found that removing multiscale effects via IAAFT led to a significant change in the width of the multifractal spectrum, an indicator of multiplicative interactions. The results suggest that cognitive control may arise from the interactions among temporal scales of activity within the system rather than as the result of a central executive.     

Relatedness Support and the Retention of Young Female Golfers

In this study, self-determination theory was used as a guiding framework to understand the putative role of relatedness support for retention in golf among young females. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 10 female participants (M_age = 21.40, SD = 3.13). Content analyses revealed 5 distinct factors that contributed to the provision of relatedness support: Parents, Peers, Coaches, Golf Club, and Institutional and Societal Support. Findings highlighted that retention of female golfers may be facilitated through promoting valued relationships with parents, peers, coaches, and golf clubs. Policies that decrease the perceived marginalization of female participants may also be perceived as a form of relatedness support and may promote retention within this cohort. This study underscores the importance of relatedness support for young women and identifies strategies that may help to improve female retention in sport.     

Correlates of Dispositional and State Flow in Tennis Competition

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between psychological correlates and flow in tennis competition. Using a cross-sectional design, the sample of 261 junior tennis athletes showed moderate-to-strong correlations between flow (dispositional and state) and confidence (r _disp = .59; r _state = .35), imagery use (r _disp = .58; r _state = .32), and action control (r _disp = .41; r _state = .40), whereas absorption was orthogonal to flow. Commonality analysis revealed that imagery and confidence accounted for 34.2% of the variance in dispositional flow. The results are discussed for the development of intervention studies in order to enhance flow in competition.     

Evaluation of a Mental Toughness Training Program for Youth-Aged Australian Footballers: I. A Quantitative Analysis

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of two different psychological skills training (PST) packages in enhancing mental toughness among three youth-aged (under 15 years old) Australian football teams. We compared a program targeting the keys to mental toughness identified previously (Gucciardi, Gordon, & Dimmock, 2008 Gucciardi, D. F., Gordon, S. and Dimmock, J. A. 2008. Towards an understanding of mental toughness in Australian football. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 20: 261–281. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) with a more traditional PST program targeting self-regulation, arousal regulation, mental rehearsal, attentional control, self-efficacy, and ideal performance state as well as a control group. Overall, both intervention groups reported more positive changes in subjective ratings of mental toughness, resilience, and flow than the control group. Similar ratings for mental toughness were reported by the parents and coaches. Both PST packages appeared to be equally effective in enhancing mental toughness.     

Social cognitive models of health and exercise behavior: An introduction and review of conceptual issues

Abstract

This article reviews the major social cognitive models of adherence or compliance in health and exercise behavior and attempts to show that these models are more similar to each other than different from each other. Self-efficacy theory and the theory of reasoned action/planned behavior have guided most of the theory-based research on exercise behavior. Two other models, protection motivation theory and the health belief model, have guided much research on the role of social cognitive factors in other health behaviors. These models are comprised largely of the same basic set of social cognitive variables: self-efficacy expectancy, outcome expectancy, outcome value, and intention. Two other factors, situational cues and habits, although not common to all the models, round out the theoretical picture by explaining how the relationship between the major social cognitive variables and behavior may change with repeated performance of a behavior over time.An integration of these models is offered using the theory of planned behavior as a foundation. It is suggested that research on health and exercise behavior that pits one model against another to determine which one is the better predictor of behavior is likely to be unproductive due to the striking similarities of the models. It is suggested instead that theorists and researchers focus their efforts on integration of the major social cognitive models and on determining the relative predictive utility of the various social cognitive factors with various health behaviors and in various contexts.     

The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms,Second Edition,Revised and Expanded

A collection of books, ephemera, and correspondence belonging to Lawrence Kaye Hyde located in the San Diego State University Library provides an intriguing glimpse into 19th- and 20th-century Western Esotericism. Hyde belonged to numerous metaphysical organizations and maintained a wide-ranging correspondence with religious thinkers around the world. By considering Hyde's unique esoteric library against the backdrop of current scholarship in Western Esoteric Studies, this article examines key concepts in the field (such as gnosis, concordance, and the cultic milieu) and assesses the collection's potential for supporting research in this emerging discipline.