Think Different
Ella Miron-Spektor, Francesca Gino & Linda Argote
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across industries, organizations operate in increasingly complex and uncertain environments. To succeed in such environments, organizations require their members to think creatively and integrate conflicting demands. We propose that the adoption of paradoxical frames - mental templates that encourage individuals to recognize and embrace contradictions - increases creativity. In four laboratory studies using different creativity tasks and different manipulations for eliciting paradoxical frames, participants who adopted paradoxical frames were more creative than their counterparts who did not. Our results suggest that the positive influence of paradoxical frames on creativity is due to the paradoxical relationship between task elements and not merely to their joint activation. This paradoxical relationship creates a sense of conflict in individuals and enhances their ability to integrate contradictions, which in turn increases creativity.
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Flexible intuitions of Euclidean geometry in an Amazonian indigene group
Véronique Izard et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 14 June 2011, Pages 9782-9787
Abstract:
Kant argued that Euclidean geometry is synthesized on the basis of an a priori intuition of space. This proposal inspired much behavioral research probing whether spatial navigation in humans and animals conforms to the predictions of Euclidean geometry. However, Euclidean geometry also includes concepts that transcend the perceptible, such as objects that are infinitely small or infinitely large, or statements of necessity and impossibility. We tested the hypothesis that certain aspects of nonperceptible Euclidian geometry map onto intuitions of space that are present in all humans, even in the absence of formal mathematical education. Our tests probed intuitions of points, lines, and surfaces in participants from an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucu, as well as adults and age-matched children controls from the United States and France and younger US children without education in geometry. The responses of Mundurucu adults and children converged with that of mathematically educated adults and children and revealed an intuitive understanding of essential properties of Euclidean geometry. For instance, on a surface described to them as perfectly planar, the Mundurucu's estimations of the internal angles of triangles added up to ∼180 degrees, and when asked explicitly, they stated that there exists one single parallel line to any given line through a given point. These intuitions were also partially in place in the group of younger US participants. We conclude that, during childhood, humans develop geometrical intuitions that spontaneously accord with the principles of Euclidean geometry, even in the absence of training in mathematics.
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Choking under pressure: Multiple routes to skill failure
Marci DeCaro et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Poor performance in pressure-filled situations, or "choking under pressure," has largely been explained by two different classes of theories. Distraction theories propose that choking occurs because attention needed to perform the task at hand is coopted by task-irrelevant thoughts and worries. Explicit monitoring theories claim essentially the opposite - that pressure prompts individuals to attend closely to skill processes in a manner that disrupts execution. Although both mechanisms have been shown to occur in certain contexts, it is unclear when distraction and/or explicit monitoring will ultimately impact performance. The authors propose that aspects of the pressure situation itself can lead to distraction and/or explicit monitoring, differentially harming skills that rely more or less on working memory and attentional control. In Experiments 1-2, it is shown that pressure that induces distraction (involving performance-contingent outcomes) hurts rule-based category learning heavily dependent on attentional control. In contrast, pressure that induces explicit monitoring of performance (monitoring by others) hurts information-integration category learning thought to run best without heavy demands on working memory and attentional control. In Experiment 3, the authors leverage knowledge about how specific types of pressure impact performance to design interventions to eliminate choking. Finally, in Experiment 4, the selective effects of monitoring-pressure are replicated in a different procedural-based task: the serial reaction time task. Skill failure (and success) depends in part on how the performance environment influences attention and the extent to which skill execution depends on explicit attentional control.
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Jens Förster & Markus Denzler
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Holistic (global) versus elemental (local) perception reflects a prominent distinction in psychology; however, so far it has almost entirely been examined in the domain of vision. Current work suggests that global/local processing styles operate across sensory modalities. As for vision, it is assumed that global processing broadens mental categories in memory, enhancing creativity. Furthermore, local processing should support performance in analytic tasks. Throughout separate 12 studies, participants were asked to look at, listen to, touch, taste or smell details of objects, or to perceive them as wholes. Global processing increased category breadth and creative relative to analytic performance, whereas for local processing the opposite was true. Results suggest that the way we taste, smell, touch, listen to, or look at events affects complex cognition, reflecting procedural embodiment effects.
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Long-lasting effect of subliminal processes on cardiovascular responses and performance
Rémi Capa et al.
International Journal of Psychophysiology, July 2011, Pages 22-30
Abstract:
Students were exposed to a priming task in which subliminal representations of the goal of studying were directly paired (priming-positive group) or not (priming group) to positive words. A control group without subliminal prime of the goal was added. Just after the priming task, students performed an easy or a difficult learning task based on their coursework. Participants in the priming-positive group performed better and had a stronger decrease of pulse transit time and pulse wave amplitude reactivity than participants of the two other groups, but only during the difficult condition. Results suggested that subliminal priming induces effortful behavior extending over twenty five minutes but only when the primes had been associated with visible positive words acting as a reward. These findings provide evidence that subliminal priming can have long-lasting effects on behaviors typical of daily life.
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Short- and long-term benefits of cognitive training
Susanne Jaeggi et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does cognitive training work? There are numerous commercial training interventions claiming to improve general mental capacity; however, the scientific evidence for such claims is sparse. Nevertheless, there is accumulating evidence that certain cognitive interventions are effective. Here we provide evidence for the effectiveness of cognitive (often called "brain") training. However, we demonstrate that there are important individual differences that determine training and transfer. We trained elementary and middle school children by means of a videogame-like working memory task. We found that only children who considerably improved on the training task showed a performance increase on untrained fluid intelligence tasks. This improvement was larger than the improvement of a control group who trained on a knowledge-based task that did not engage working memory; further, this differential pattern remained intact even after a 3-mo hiatus from training. We conclude that cognitive training can be effective and long-lasting, but that there are limiting factors that must be considered to evaluate the effects of this training, one of which is individual differences in training performance. We propose that future research should not investigate whether cognitive training works, but rather should determine what training regimens and what training conditions result in the best transfer effects, investigate the underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms, and finally, investigate for whom cognitive training is most useful.
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Naomi Friedman et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined whether self-restraint in early childhood predicted individual differences in 3 executive functions (EFs; inhibiting prepotent responses, updating working memory, and shifting task sets) in late adolescence in a sample of approximately 950 twins. At ages 14, 20, 24, and 36 months, the children were shown an attractive toy and told not to touch it for 30 s. Latency to touch the toy increased with age, and latent class growth modeling distinguished 2 groups of children that differed in their latencies to touch the toy at all 4 time points. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we decomposed the 3 EFs (measured with latent variables at age 17 years) into a Common EF factor (isomorphic to response inhibition ability) and 2 factors specific to updating and shifting. Less-restrained children had significantly lower scores on the Common EF factor, equivalent scores on the Updating-Specific factor, and higher scores on the Shifting-Specific factor than did the more-restrained children. The less-restrained group also had lower IQ scores, but this effect was entirely mediated by the EF components. Twin models indicated that the associations were primarily genetic in origin for the Common EF variable but split between genetics and nonshared environment for the Shifting-Specific variable. These results suggest a biological relation between individual differences in self-restraint and EFs, one that begins early in life and persists into late adolescence.
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Marieke Jepma & Sander Nieuwenhuis
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, July 2011, Pages 1587-1596
Abstract:
The adaptive regulation of the balance between exploitation and exploration is critical for the optimization of behavioral performance. Animal research and computational modeling have suggested that changes in exploitative versus exploratory control state in response to changes in task utility are mediated by the neuromodulatory locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system. Recent studies have suggested that utility-driven changes in control state correlate with pupil diameter, and that pupil diameter can be used as an indirect marker of LC activity. We measured participants' pupil diameter while they performed a gambling task with a gradually changing payoff structure. Each choice in this task can be classified as exploitative or exploratory using a computational model of reinforcement learning. We examined the relationship between pupil diameter, task utility, and choice strategy (exploitation vs. exploration), and found that (i) exploratory choices were preceded by a larger baseline pupil diameter than exploitative choices; (ii) individual differences in baseline pupil diameter were predictive of an individual's tendency to explore; and (iii) changes in pupil diameter surrounding the transition between exploitative and exploratory choices correlated with changes in task utility. These findings provide novel evidence that pupil diameter correlates closely with control state, and are consistent with a role for the LC-NE system in the regulation of the exploration-exploitation trade-off in humans.
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The Effects of Competition on Improvisers' Motivation, Stress, and Creative Performance
Jacob Eisenberg & William Forde Thompson
Creativity Research Journal, Spring 2011, Pages 129-136
Abstract:
We explored how competition affects the quality of musical improvisation, as well as the intrinsic motivation and stress reported by improvisers. Amateur musicians improvised on a keyboard in one of two conditions: induced competition and no competition. Employing the consensual assessment technique, improvisations were assessed for creativity and technical goodness by 10 expert judges. Findings indicate that improvisations were judged as more creative under competitive than non-competitive conditions. Moreover, improvisers in the competition condition were more intrinsically motivated, as well as more stressed, than improvisers in the no competition condition. The creativity and technical goodness dimensions of improvisations were positively related to each other. The findings are discussed in light of the intense debate over the effects of extrinsic motivators on intrinsic motivation and creativity and offer mechanisms through which competition may affect creative performance as well as discuss the role of stress in affecting motivation and creativity.
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Approach, avoidance, and inhibition: Personality traits predict cognitive control abilities
Ranjani Prabhakaran, David Kraemer & Sharon Thompson-Schill
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The extent to which approach and avoidance personality trait sensitivities are associated with specific cognitive control abilities as well as with verbal and nonverbal domains remains unclear. In the current study, we investigated whether approach and avoidance trait sensitivities predict performance on verbal and nonverbal versions of the Stroop task, which taps the specific cognitive control ability of inhibiting task-irrelevant information. The findings from the current study indicate that whereas approach (specifically, Extraversion) sensitivity was predictive of verbal Stroop performance, avoidance (specifically, Behavioral Inhibition System) sensitivity was predictive of nonverbal Stroop performance. These results provide novel evidence suggestive of the integration of motivational personality traits and the ability to inhibit task-irrelevant information in a domain-specific fashion.
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Influences of APOE ε4 and expertise on performance of older pilots
Joy Taylor et al.
Psychology and Aging, June 2011, Pages 480-487
Abstract:
Little is known about how APOE ε4-related differences in cognitive performance translate to real-life performance, where training and experience may help to sustain performance. We investigated the influences of APOE ε4 status, expertise (FAA pilot proficiency ratings), and their interaction on longitudinal flight simulator performance. Over a 2-year period, 139 pilots aged 42-69 years were tested annually. APOE ε4 carriers had lower memory performance than noncarriers (p = .019). APOE interacted with Expertise (p = .036), such that the beneficial influence of expertise (p = .013) on longitudinal flight simulator performance was more pronounced for ε4 carriers. Results suggest that relevant training and activity may help sustain middle-aged and older adults' real-world performance, especially among APOE ε4 carriers.
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Claire Zedelius, Harm Veling & Henk Aarts
Consciousness and Cognition, June 2011, Pages 355-362
Abstract:
Two experiments examined similarities and differences in the effects of consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards on the active maintenance of goal-relevant information. Participants could gain high and low monetary rewards for performance on a word span task. The reward value was presented supraliminally (consciously visible) or subliminally at different stages during the task. In Experiment 1, rewards were presented before participants processed the target words. Enhanced performance was found in response to higher rewards, regardless whether they were presented supraliminally or subliminally. In Experiment 2, rewards were presented after participants processed the target words, i.e., during maintenance. Performance increased in response to relatively high rewards when they were presented subliminally, but decreased when they were presented supraliminally. We conclude that both consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards boost resources supporting the maintenance of task-relevant information. Conscious processing of rewards can, however, heavily interfere with an ongoing maintenance process and impair performance.