Individual differences in imagery and reports of aversions

Recent theoretical models highlighting the role of imagery in trauma and aversion learning focus on the role of images in memory (e.g., Brewin, Dalgleish, & Joseph, 1996) and images as substitute stimuli in aversive conditioning (Dadds, Bovbjerg, Redd, & Cutmore, 1997). An unanswered question is whether individual differences in imagery are associated with different rates of traumatisation and aversion states (fear and avoidance of various stimuli). We examine one aspect of this: does high imagery ability correlate with the frequency with which people report aversions? Three samples of university students were tested on the Betts Questionnaire Upon Mental Imagery, the Tellegen Absorption Scale, and a new measure we designed to sample of range of aversions. As hypothesised, vividness of imagery showed positive correlations with number of aversions reported. This relationship held after controlling for general neuroticism and proneness to disgust. Results for absorption showed no relationship. The results are unable to disentangle causal paths but suggest a focus on individual differences in imagery vividness may be fruitful for understanding individual differences in aversion learning.     

Different rates of forgetting following study versus test trials

Two experiments investigated recall following two study conditions, (1) repeated test: a study trial followed by multiple recall trials, and (2) repeated study: multiple study trials with no tests. At a retention interval of 5 minutes, repeated study produced a higher level of recall than repeated test. When the retention interval was extended, forgetting was much more rapid in the study condition, with the repeated test manipulation leading to higher recall at an interval of 7 days. We conclude that study and test trials have different effects upon memory, with study trials promoting memory acquisition, and test trials enhancing the retrieval process itself, which protects against subsequent forgetting.     

Fear conditioning and extinction in anxiety- and depression-prone persons

Anxiety and depression frequently co-occur and may share similar deficits in the processing of emotional stimuli. High anxiety is associated with a failure in the acquisition and extinction of fear conditioning. Despite the supposed common deficits, no research has been conducted on fear acquisition and extinction in depression. The main aim of the present study was to investigate and compare fear acquisition and extinction in anxiety- and depression-prone participants. Non-clinical anxious, depressive, anxious-depressive and control participants performed a fear discrimination task. During acquisition, the CS+ predicted an aversive event (unconditioned stimulus, US) and the CS? safety (no US). During extinction, the CS+ was no longer followed by the US, rendering it (temporarily) into a safety signal. On each CS participants rated their US expectancy; skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured throughout. The expectancy scores indicated that high anxiety resulted in less safety learning during acquisition and extinction; no effect of depression was observed. SCRs showed that high-anxiety persons displayed less discrimination learning (CS+ minus CS?) during acquisition than low-anxiety persons. During extinction, high-depression persons demonstrated more discriminative SCR than low-depression persons. The observed discrepancies in response patterns of high-anxiety and -depression persons seem to indicate distinctive information processing of emotional stimuli.     

Against One Form of Judgment-Determinism

Taking 'rationalized judgments' to be those formed by inference from other judgments, I argue against 'Extreme Determinism': the thesis that theoretical rationalization just is a kind of predetermination of 'conclusion-judgments' by 'premise-judgments'. The argument rests upon two key lemmas: firstly, that a deliberator - in this case, his/her assent to some proposition - to be predetermined (I call this the 'Openness Requirement'): secondly, that a subject's logical insight into his/her premise-judgments must enter into the explanation of any judgment s/he forms that is rationalized by those judgments. My contention is that, given the Openness Requirement, no version of Extreme Determinsim can allow for the role played by logical insight in the rationalization of judgment. I end by indicating briefly how this result might figure in a wider argument against any form of determinism about rationalized judgment, and by explaining why I have focused specifically upon rebutting a deterministic view of theoretical as opposed to 'practical' rationalization.     

Creativity research: Originality,utility, and integration

Case studies of major creative figures who were active in different domains can help to indicate commonalities and distinctive features in the creative process. With this goal in mind, a comparison is made between the mathematician Georg Cantor's study of various orders of infinity and the psychologist Sigmund Freud's exploration of the operation of the unconscious. In both cases, similar processes can be discerned: (a) articulations of a new intuition; (b) construction of local coherences; (c) the reworking of standard symbol systems, giving way to the creation of a new, more adequate symbolic system; and (d) the articulation of a new thema (Holton, 1988). The study also describes a number of contrasts, among them the criteria by which formulations are judged in the two domains, the contrasting cosmological stances assumed by the investigators toward their projects, and the differing needs for a formal symbol system.     

The Creativity of Lying: Divergent Thinking and Ideational Correlates of the Resolution of Social Dilemmas

The goal of this study was to develop a measure of creativity that builds on the strengths of youth with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The assessment of creativity focused on the visual-spatial abilities of these youth using 3D modeling software. One of the objectives of the research was to develop a measure of creativity in an authentic learning environment that built on the interests and creative talents of youth with ASD. Traditional creativity tests may underestimate the creativity of youth with ASD because of the tests’ constrained nature, such as having a time limit, being limited to paper and pencil, testing in an over- or understimulating environment, and overlooking visual-spatial ability. A random selection of 27 student 3D design projects (out of approximately 100 projects) was assessed using dimensions of fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. The validity of this assessment was examined by comparing the creativity scores of the 27 projects to the creativity scores given by a team of Google experts (3D designers and software engineers). Results indicated that the scores were significantly correlated for three of the four dimensions of the creativity assessment. There was high inter-rater reliability among coders (M = .82) using intra-class correlation (ICC). Results suggest that this assessment process could be used as a visual-spatial creativity measure for youth with ASD, as well as a creativity measure used by employers to determine real-world creative potential in their employees, particularly those with neurodiversity.     

Solving and Creating Raven Progressive Matrices: Reasoning in Well- and Ill-Defined Problem Spaces

We studied the development of creative cognition in children ranging from nursery school to Grade 6 (4–12 yr old, N = 511), performing a problem generation task. The task involved inventing a novel item for a classical problem solving task they had completed beforehand: the Raven Progressive Matrices (RPM). This task and the generating task both comprise matrixes of components, to which a set of transformational relations are applied; only in the first case these are inferred to solve a puzzle, but in the second they are invented to create one. We analyzed the matrixes invented in the generation task and compared them to those of the original solving task. We observed that (a) both in solving and generation, the ability to combine more than 1 relation increased with grade level, (b) within all 8 grades, except Grades 3 and 6, performance was uncorrelated between both tasks, (c) relations that were applied in the generation task often did feature in the solving task, and (d) relations occurring in both tasks were applied with different frequencies. Overall, we conclude that standard problem solving ability is not a precondition for creative reasoning and that the comprehension of relations between components featured in solving task differs from that applied in generation.     

Bilingualism and Creativity in Early Childhood

This study examined the possible effect of bilingualism on creativity in nonmathematical and mathematical problem solving among bilingual and monolingual preschoolers. Two groups of children (M age = 71.9 months, SD = 3.6) from the same monolingual kindergartens participated in this study: 15 Russian/Hebrew balanced bilinguals and 16 native Hebrew-speaking monolinguals. All children were administered the Working Memory Test, the Verbal (Semantic) Fluency Test, the Pictorial Multiple Solution Task on general creativity, and the Creating Equal Number Task on mathematical creativity. The results showed that balanced bilingualism has a positive effect on the development of creativity in problem solving, but that the effect differs according to the domain: verbal, general, or mathematical creativity.