Sensational Thinking A Teaching/Learning Model for Creativity

Change, the acknowledged constant: The paradox of two seeming opposites contained as one. In the world today we find ourselves challenged by a multitude of paradoxical problems and our need to resolve these issues drives a change process, the nature of which is dynamic and complex. Dynamic change is recognized as a process of moving from one state or form to another, in ways that appear chaotic, non-linear, and unpredictable (Gleick, 1987). This results from the interactions between and among individual component parts of a system (Gleick, 1987; Bohm & Peat, 1987; Goodwin, 1991), and studies to understand how and why this type of change occurs have found that dynamic change is a creative process that occurs naturally in physical, biological and social systems.     

Personality characteristics of sensitivity group volunteers

Thirty-nine undergraduates who volunteered for sensitivity groups and 62 who did not were compared on 11 scales of the California Psychological Inventory. As predicted, sensitivity group members scored significantly lower on 8 of 11 scales. Differences on the other three scales were in the predicted direction but insignificant. The authors suggested that students are motivated to seek sensitivity groups because of self-perceived problems in the same way that students are who seek counseling. The assumption that the well-functioning individual joins sensitivity groups was challenged.     

Inverse association between dopaminergic neurotransmission and Iowa Gambling Task performance in pathological gamblers and healthy controls

Linnet, J., Møller, A., Peterson, E., Gjedde, A. & Doudet, D. (2011). Inverse association between dopaminergic neurotransmission and Iowa Gambling Task performance in pathological gamblers and healthy controls. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 28–34. The dopamine system is believed to affect gambling behavior in pathological gambling. Particularly, dopamine release in the ventral striatum appears to affect decision‐making in the disorder. This study investigated dopamine release in the ventral striatum in relation to gambling performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in 16 Pathological Gamblers (PG) and 14 Healthy Controls (HC). We used Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to measure the binding potential of [¹¹C] raclopride to dopamine D2/3 receptors during a baseline and gambling condition. We hypothesized that decreased raclopride binding potentials in the ventral striatum during gambling (indicating dopamine release) would be associated with higher IGT performance in Healthy Controls, but lower IGT performance in Pathological Gamblers. The results showed that Pathological Gamblers with dopamine release in the ventral striatum had significantly lower IGT performance than Healthy Controls. Furthermore, dopamine release was associated with significantly higher IGT performance in Healthy Controls and significantly lower IGT performance in Pathological Gamblers. The results suggest that dopamine release is involved both in adaptive and maladaptive decision‐making. These findings may contribute to a better understanding of dopaminergic dysfunctions in pathological gambling and substance related addictions.     

Conversations With Able-Bodied and Visibly Disabled Strangers An Adversarial Test of Predicted Outcome Value and Uncertainty Reduction Theories

Conversations with visibly disabled strangers entail unequivocally higher uncertainty and relatively more negative predicted outcome values compared to conversations with able-bodied strangers. Contrasting derivations from uncertainty reduction and predicted outcome value theories were tested by comparing observations associated with respondents’ separate conversations with able-bodied and visibly disabled partners. Four hypotheses were cast to favor predicted outcome value interpretations with respect to information seeking, three global features of the respondent's awareness of the partner's behavior, and the association of information seeking with nonverbal affiliative expressiveness and amount of verbal communication. Statistically significant differences in information seeking and awareness of the partner's behavior favored the predicted outcome value interpretation. Implications for predicted outcome value theory and interaction with visibly disabled conversational partners are discussed.