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.     

Terror Management and Personality: Variations in the Psychological Defense Against the Awareness of Mortality

Drawing on terror management theory (TMT), we discuss the psychological motivations that shape personality at two levels: the characteristically human personality common to us all and the individual differences that distinguish some people from others. TMT posits that the motivation to protect the self against deep-rooted fears about mortality drives people to maintain meaningful, reliable conceptions of reality and positive evaluations of themselves, two broad tendencies that form the foundation of every person’s personality. We review studies showing that mortality reminders increase efforts to bolster cultural sources of meaning and self-esteem in similar ways across individuals and cultures. TMT also posits that individual differences in personality partly reflect the different sources of meaning and self-esteem that people invest in to assuage mortality fears. We review evidence that individual differences predict the degree and direction of people’s defensive responses to mortality reminders. Directions for future research are discussed.     

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.     

The roles of stimulus repetition and hemispheric activation in visual half-field asymmetries

Hardyck, Tzeng, and Wang (1978, Brain and Language, 5, 56–71) hypothesized that ample repetition of a small number of stimuli is required in order to obtain VHF differences in tachistoscopic tasks. Four experiments, with varied levels of repetition, were conducted to test this hypothesis. Three experiments utilized the general task of object-picture naming and one utilized a word-naming task. Naming latencies constituted the dependent measure. The results demonstrate that for the object-naming paradigm repetition is required for RVF superiority to emerge. Repetition was found to be unnecessary for RVF superiority in the word-naming paradigm, with repetition actually reducing RVF superiority. Experiment I suggested the possibility that RVF superiority developed for the second half of the trials as a function of practice or hemispheric activation, regardless of repetition level. Subsequent experiments, better designed to assess this possibility, clearly refuted it. It was concluded that the effect of repetition depends on the processing requirements of the task. We propose that, for tasks which can be processed efficiently by one hemisphere, the effect of repetition will be to reduce VHF asymmetries; but tasks requiring substantial processing by both hemispheres will show shifts to RVF superiority as a function of repetition.     

The role of spatial-frequency channels in the perception of local and global structure

Adaptation and reaction-time techniques were used to examine the role of different spatial-frequency channels in the perception of local and global structure. Subjects were shown figures consisting of a large C composed of smaller Cs and asked to identify the orientation of either the global C or its local elements. Prior to performing the task subjects were adapted to different spatial frequencies and the effect on subsequent performance was assessed. Two main results were found. First, the adapting frequency that most affected the global task was often lower than that most affecting the local task, suggesting that high and low frequencies independently code the structure of an image. Second, reaction time to global figures was often faster than to local figures at all levels of detectability, again suggesting a role of low-frequency channels in global processing.     

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.