A Cross Cultural Examination of Creative Problem Solving Style: The Dutch Translation of VIEW

Creativity and Creative Problem Solving are globally important. This study examined the cross‐cultural applicability of creative problem solving styles by translating VIEW: An Assessment of Problem Solving Style from its native English into Dutch and examining its psychometric properties and preliminary validation evidence. In general, support was found for the Dutch translation of VIEW in that it performed similarly to its original with regard to item performance on factor analysis, had acceptable levels of internal consistency and stability over time, and correlated in a similar manner with two alternative measures of style. Implications for future translations were identified.     

Science as Structured Imagination

This paper offers an analysis of scientific creativity based on theoretical models and experimental results of the cognitive sciences. Its core idea is that scientific creativity — like other forms of creativity — is structured and constrained by prior ontological expectations. Analogies provide scientists with a powerful epistemic tool to overcome these constraints. While current research on analogies in scientific understanding focuses on near analogies, where target and source domain are close, we argue that distant analogies — where target and source domain differ widely — are especially useful in periods of intense conceptual change. To argue this point, we discuss three case studies from the history of science: early physiologists like Harvey, early evolutionary biologists like Darwin, and recent theorists on the evolution of the human mind like Mithen.     

“A GREATEST MIRACLE”: STANLEY CAVELL,MORAL PERFECTIONISM,AND THE ASCENT INTO THE ORDINARY

What to make of “the ordinary,”“the everyday,” and their common “eventfulness”? What to think of what Veena Das, in her recent book Life and Words, prefaced by Stanley Cavell, has called our need to “descent into the ordinary”? Is there a parallel figure of “ascent,” again, into the same “ordinary,” that we might we want to juxtapose with it and that resembles the motif of “change,” even “conversion,” that Cavell analyzes at some length in The Claim of Reason and throughout his oeuvre as a whole? And what could be our reasons for doing so? This essay will draw on Cavell's reading of Ibsen's work in the volume Cities of Words to spell out what such an “ascent” might mean.     

Academic Performance of High School Students as a Function of Mental Capacity,Cognitive Style,Mobility‐Fixity Dimension,and Creativity

The purpose of this study is to explore how creativity and the cognitive variables (mental capacity, cognitive style & mobility‐fixity dimension) can explain academic performance of high school students. Students at a high school in Maturin (Venezuela) were tested to determine creativity (Torrance Tests), cognitive variables and academic performance. Results based on multiple regression analyses showed that the mobility‐fixity dimension was the most consistent predictor of academic performance, by explaining a significant amount of the variance in Spanish, English, Geography, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, Mathematics, Physics and the Mean score. Creativity scores explained a significant amount of the variance in Spanish, Geography, Earth Science and the Mean score. It appears that the mobility‐fixity dimension and creativity although related, perhaps represent different aspects of academic performance.     

Changes in Family Structure After a Renal Transplant

Two girls (9 and 10 years old) and one male adolescent (19 years old) with chronic renal failure (CRF) were studied along with their families in order to evaluate their family structure before (4–5 weeks) and after (3–5 weeks) a renal transplant from a live donor. After the renal transplant there was a close association between the donor and the recipient that led to the creation of an alliance or the reinforcement of an alliance already present before the transplant. This may favor a family disruption or a better family equilibrium depending upon whether the donor ranked highest in the family hierarchy and was already in a rigid alliance with the patient before the transplant. It is suggested that the study and diagnosis of the family structure before the renal transplant may help to: (a) select the most suitable donor candidate from a biological as well as psychological point of view so as to allow a better possibility of success in the structural functioning of the family after the transplant; (b) predict changes that will appear within the family after the transplant, which in turn may alert the personnel to detect changes in the family structure as early as possible; and (c) offer more rapid therapeutic assistance to bring the family back to a functional level within its social framework.