Divergent and Convergent Group Creativity in an Asynchronous Online Environment

This study examined the influence of various group diversity dimensions on collaborative creativity related to the healthcare system. Research findings on the association between diversity and brainstorming performance has been mixed. Diversity that increases cognitive stimulation or promotes elaboration has been shown to increase group performance. Participants exchanged ideas, replied, and elaborated using an electronic discussion board in an asynchronous fashion in groups of five over a period of 4 weeks. The groups varied in diversity of ethnicity, gender, age, and political orientation, but participants were not made aware of this diversity. Age and gender diversity were related to lower levels of replying to ideas and lower idea novelty but political diversity was related to increased replies and novelty. If a topic engages people with different perspectives to actively respond to others’ ideas, this can increase the creative potential of idea sharing in groups. Political or value-based diversity has the potential for creative solutions if the other participants’ political or value-based identities are not made salient.     

Bingeing,purging, and estimates of parental attitudes regarding female achievement

A questionnaire measuring respondents' beliefs about the attitudes regarding female achievement held by their parents was distributed to 326 women attending a state university. Women who report frequent bingeing are more likely than other women to report that (1) their parents believed a woman's place is in the home (2) their mothers were unhappy with their own careers, (3) their fathers thought the respondents' mothers were not intelligent, and (4) their fathers treated a male as the most intelligent sibling in the family. Reports of fathers' attitudes regarding mothers' intelligence and the proper role for women are related to respondents' self-reports of purging, but only among those women who are much more concerned with academic achievement than with household skills.     

Technique and countertransference in Freud's analysis of the Rat Man

Freud's records of his treatment of the Rat Man constitute a unique document in the history of psychoanalysis. Through the years different analysts have used these records to support different theories about analytic technique. Certain non-interpretive interventions of Freud's have especially aroused their interest, and many reasons have been put forward to "explain" Freud's behavior. One reason never yet advanced and documented is that a countertransference tension may have been involved in one of these instances. This is surprising, since countertransference is a necessary part of every analysis. Evidence is presented that Freud's behavior may indeed have been under the sway of countertransference. Some recently discovered details concerning his early life are discussed as constituting a plausible background for ths countertransference enactment.     

A note on accepting the null hypothesis: problems with respect to the mass-spring and pulse-step models of movement control

Models are sometimes developed on the premise that there are no differences between two or more conditions regardless of experimental manipulation. This article argues that unless a very sensitive experiment (or series of experiments) was conducted, such conclusions are often premature. Design and statistical factors such as alpha level, variability, sample size, and treatment effect are all determinants of the sensitivity of the experiment. It is sometimes the case that an experiment produces differences between means and yet the null hypothesis is not rejected because of high variability within experimental conditions or because too few subjects were used. Unless the probability of detecting a difference between groups is known, it would seem unwise to conclude that no difference exists. Judgment on the model should be suspended. Examples are taken from the mass-spring and pulse-step models fro voluntary movement control to illustrate the problem.     

A Computational Model of the Simplest Motor Program

A computational procedure (program) is defined to generate control signals for the motoneuron pools of agonist and antagonist muscles that will move a limb segment from one stationary position to another. The program accounts for the ability to move different distances with different inertial loads and for the influence of instructions concerning movement speed and accuracy. These motor commands allow the program to produce EMG patterns as well as force and kinematic trajectories that are consistent with much of the data found in the literature of these movements. The program is premised on the notion that kinematically defined tasks are accomplished by programming commands to the motoneuron pools, based on only a few cognitively recognized kinematic and dynamic features of the task. Most of the features found in EMG and kinematic patterns can be considered consequences of the program's algorithmic procedures rather than specifically planned features of those movements.     

Cerebral Anesthetization for Localization of Speech: The Contribution of W. James Gardner

In 1949, the neurologist Juhn Wada reported the first use of a new procedure for determining the localization of speech and language in neurological patients: examination of the effects on speech and language after injecting a barbiturate, sodium amytal, into the internal carotid artery of each hemisphere in succession. By the 1960s, Wada'sIntracarotid Amobarbital Procedure,orIAP,had become the method of choice for identifying the speech-dominant side in one kind of neurological patient, persons with epilepsy who are candidates for surgical resection, and it remains so today. In 1941, however, an American neurosurgeon, W. James Gardner, reported his use of a different anesthetization procedure for speech localization in neurological patients. Instead of injecting sodium amytal through the blood supply, as in the IAP, Gardner injected procaine hydrochloride directly into cortical tissue. In this paper, we provide a brief biography of Gardner. We then discuss his method of cortical anesthetization, the theoretical and empirical background guiding his use of this method and his choice of patients, and, finally, the fate of Gardner's method within the scientific community.     

On the naming of color words and color patches

Subjects can name color words faster than they can name color patches. To account for that effect, a generic model of naming is described which assumes that words access the mental lexicon directly, whereas color patches do so only indirectly via an initial imaginal or semantic representation. However, Lund (1927) reported that the naming advantage for words disappeared when all the items to be named on a page were the same (i.e., they were blocked). In the present study, three experiments are reported that were designed to provide a clearer empirical definition of Lund’s blocking effect and to ascertain the extent to which it requires a modification of the generic model. The blocked lists had 50 items arranged into 10 blocks, with each block homogeneous with respect to color. The block lengths were either all a predictable length of 5 items or they varied randomly from 1 to 9 items. The data indicated the following: (1) The blocking effect occurred even when the task required a full identification of each item, and (2) the blocking effect was confined to within-block transitions. Blocking seemed to eliminate the word advantage by allowing the subject to re-use the lexical entry used for the immediately prior item, which is consistent with the generic model.     

Production deficits in aphasia: A voice-onset time analysis

An experimental study was conducted to examine phonetic and phonemic deficits in the speech production of aphasics. Subjects included four Broca's aphasics, four Conduction aphasics, five Wernicke's aphasics, one nonaphasic dysarthric patient, and four normal controls. The subjects read a list of words containing word-initial stop consonants which were subsequently measured acoustically for voice-onset time. The results showed that Broca's aphasics exhibit a more severe production disorder than Conduction aphasics who in turn exhibit a more severe disorder than Wernicke's aphasics, in accord with clinical observations. In addition, although Broca's aphasics produced both phonetic and phonemic errors, the results showed that they have a pervasive phonetic disorder which affects their correct target productions as well as the total number of phonetic errors produced. This deficit however seems to be a speech deficit rather than a low-level motor control problem. In contrast, the Wernicke's aphasics show a deficit characterized by isolated phonemic mistargeting errors. Finally, the pattern of productions for the Conduction aphasics indicates that some patients show a predominantly phonetic disorder similar to the Broca's aphasics and others show predominantly a phonemic disorder similar to the Wernicke's aphasics.