Factors Related to the Long-Term Course of PTSD in Older Ex–Prisoners of War

This study examined relationships between socioenvironmental factors occurring in later-life and current and changing PTSD symptom levels in a sample of 177 community-dwelling World War II and Korean era ex–prisoners of war. Factors examined included negative life events, negative health events, social support, and death acceptance. PTSD was assessed at Time 1. PTSD and the later-life factors were then assessed 4 years later (Time 2). Cross-sectional analysis examined the relationship of the later-life factors to current PTSD symptomatology. Longitudinal analysis examined their relationship to changing PTSD symptomatology over the 4-year interval. Negative health changes, social support, and death acceptance were significantly related to current and changing PTSD symptomatology, but negative life events were not. The authors conclude that health and psychosocial factors that may occur in later-life can be related to PTSD symptom levels even many decades after a traumatic experience.     

The influence of string length and repetition on chunking of digit strings

This study examined the effects of string length and repetitions on number processing with a data entry task. Participants read and entered strings of between three and eight digits and then typed them on the keypad of a computer. Chunking effects were found for all string lengths, with chunk sizes of as small as two digits. Chunk boundary placement varied depending on the length of a digit string, and chunking was avoided at positions between digit repetitions, even when those positions were otherwise common chunk boundaries. Digit repetitions significantly reduced the study time required to process a string prior to its entry. These results are interpreted as showing that flexible chunking strategies and the presence of repetitions are used to facilitate number processing.Means with an asterisk correspond to repeated digits     

Remuneration differences in the emerging economies of China and India

Emerging economies by definition tend to be less dependent on expatriate skills and labour than lower-income countries, yet remuneration (pay plus benefits) differences between expatriate and local workers persist in them to some degree. According to relative deprivation theory, economic development paradoxically elevates the salience of relatively small gaps in remuneration. We therefore expected workers to report injustice and demotivation regarding relative remuneration, despite the closing of remuneration gaps between expatriate and local workers due to the economic development of recent years. To explore that possibility, 482 skilled professionals from a variety of sectors and organizations in two emerging economies, India (n = 233, response rate = 54%) and China (n = 249, response rate = 58%), participated in the research. International salaries were greater than local salaries by a factor of 2.73:1 in India and 1.90:1 in China; these mean ratios bordered on intolerable in the India sample and were largely tolerable among the sample from China. In both countries, differently remunerated workers differed in their justice cognitions and their demotivation, with lowered motivation and fewer justice cognitions in the locally salaried, local workers. These differences were however more statistically significant between people working in India than in China. Insofar as the motivational and justice gaps persisted, the findings support relative deprivation theory. Insofar as the same gaps appear to be sharper in the country with the higher-not lower-mean remuneration differential, they do not. An in-country workshop with local experts who interpreted the findings (in India), and content analysis of the participants' recommendations (in China) jointly recommended linking remuneration to (i) workplace performance instead of (ii) economy-of-origin, to help promote (iii) fairness.     

Creativity insights: The phenomenon of calculated ignorance and credibility

ABSTRACT: When a problem is abandoned, a solution may subsequently and unexpectedly emerge. The intervening period, known as incubation, has sometimes been ascribed to opportunity assimilation. According to this theory, impasses to a problem create failure indexes, which ensure that random clues in the environment are detected and utilized. To assess the notion that failure indexes enhance clue utilization, 50 participants undertook a series of word problems. After this initial attempt, the participants were deceived and told that half the unsolved problems were insoluble. A series of general knowledge questions was then presented; the answers to the original problems were surreptitiously incorporated within this questionnaire. The instruction that certain problems were insoluble was retracted, and the items that had yet to be solved were reinstated. High-ability problem solvers were less likely to correctly answer the items that were designated as insoluble. Low-ability problem solvers, however, generated the reverse pattern. A model that links failure indexes to the forgetting of suboptimal strategies was formulated to accommodate these findings.     

Book reviews

A glance toward a neglected field: Creativity and affect

Russ, Sandra W. (1993). Affect and Creativity: The Role of Affect and Play in the Creative Process. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum (136 pp.). ISBN 0–8058–0986–4.

More ways than one: Fostering creativity

Cropley, Arthur J. (1992). More Ways Than One: Fostering Creativity. Norwood, NJ: Ablex (VIII + 134 pp.). ISBN 0–89391–789–3.

Whitehead revisited: A rediscovered founding father of Creativity Studies

Rapp, F. &; Wiehl, R. (1990). Whitehead's Metaphysics of Creativity. Albany, NY: SUNY Press (X + 223 pp.). ISBN 0–79140202–9.     

'Most Dear to All the Muses': Mapping Tagorean Networks of Enterprise--A Study in Creative Complexity

ABSTRACT: The network of enterprise concept was applied to an "uncontroversially creative" subject from a non-Western culture-Rabindranath Tagore, the 1913 Nobel laureate in literature. The approach followed here is developmental, describing and analyzing the evolution of aspects of the creative work. It reflects historical reconstruction, examining not only the creative products but other phenomenological materials as well; but care is taken to remain sensitive to the multiple contexts in which the individual operated, including work tasks and enterprises; family and private worlds; professional milieus; and the sociohistorical period. The study explains the challenges in mapping Tagore's network of enterprises and analyzes his overall purpose in undertaking creative work. The analysis of Tagore's literary enterprises provided the basis for defining his uniqueness, along with the density, longevity, cyclicity, and branching nature of his enterprises. Furthermore, the realm of drawing and painting provided confirmation of some of the findings obtained from the study of the network of his literary enterprises. -     

Political Philosophy: The View from Cambridge

This article reports on a conversation convened by Quentin Skinner at the invitation of the Editors of The Journal of Political Philosophy and held in Cambridge on 13 February 2001.