4. Is synaesthesia a ‘gift’ or a ‘condition’?

Author(s):  
Julia Simner

Is there a consequence to having synaesthesia, even beyond the obvious difference of experiencing merged sensations? Do synaesthetes also have qualities that make them different to non-synaesthetes in other ways? Do they show differences in everyday abilities like memory, mental calculation, general perception, creative thinking, use-of-language and so on? ‘Is synaesthesia a “gift” or a “condition”?’ describes studies that show synaesthetes are objectively more creative than the average person, and have certain personality traits linked to heightened imagination. Synaesthetes also have specific visual benefits, such as the ability to better distinguish facial features and their expressions. Synaesthesia appears to come with a number of benefits, but it can also bring challenges.

Author(s):  
Stephen M. Kosslyn ◽  
Ben Nelson

Minerva is a response to problems that beset higher education writ large. We focus in large part on the most significant problem, which centers on the value of higher education. We address this problem by teaching “practical knowledge,” which is knowledge the students can use to achieve their goals. Practical knowledge is rooted in critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication and effective interaction. We also have considered in depth how to teach this material effectively; all of our pedagogy is informed by the science of learning, which has led us to develop new forms of active learning. In addition, we have developed a software platform that supports our unique pedagogical and curricular model. This platform provides tools that not only facilitate teaching but also--and more importantly--enhance student learning. Furthermore, we believe that the future is increasingly international and thus our students learn to use practical knowledge in a global context. To achieve this, no one nationality is a majority—so students learn from each other—and students live and study together in up to seven different cities around the world. Finally, the Minerva talent agency supports our students from the beginning of their tenure through their post-graduate career, helping them succeed for many years to come.


2002 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gideon P. De Bruin

This This study examined the relationship between vocational interests and basic personality traits. The interest fields of the 19-Field-Interest Inventory were related to the second order factors of the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire by means of a factor extension analysis. The results showed that extroverts tend to be interested in fields related to social contact and the influencing of other people. Emotionally sensitive individuals tend to be interested in the arts and languages. Independent individuals tend to be interested in creative thinking. The implications of the findings for career counselling are discussed. Opsomming Hierdie studie het ondersoek ingestel na die verband tussen beroepsbelangstellings en basiese persoonlikheidstrekke. Die 19 belangstellingsvelde van die 19-Veld-belangstellings-vraelys is aan die hand van ’n faktorverlengingsontleding met die tweede orde faktore van die 16-Persoonlikheids-faktorvraelys in verband gebring. Die resultate dui daarop dat ekstroverte geneig is omin veldewat sosiale kontak en die beinvloeding vanmense behels, belang te stel. Emosioneel sensitiewe individue is geneig om in kunssinnge en taal verwante velde belang te stel. Onafhanklike individue is geneig om in kreatiewe denke belang te stel. Die implikasies van die resultate vir loopbaanvoorligting word bespreek.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Spatola ◽  
Serena Marchesi ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska

In the decades to come, robots could become more present in the human environment increasing the likelihood to interact with them. When reasoning about them, individuals tend to endow robots with human-like characteristics such as intentions or emotions, they develop attitudes toward them and differ in their likelihood to cooperate with them . However, how these different variables emerge, interact in the human mind and effect actual behaviour in HRI is still poorly understood. In three studies, using the intentional and phenomenal stance theoretical framework, the attitudes toward robots evaluation and the Big-Five personality traits framework we investigated the attribution of intentional and phenomenal experience to robots and the influence of imaginative representation robots on the interpretative attributions (Experiment 1). We also evaluated how the context of evaluation presenting robots with different level of human-likeness as potential social actors compared to mere technological prototypes and the prior attitudes toward them could bias intentional/phenomenal attributions (Experiment 2). Finally, we used a human-robot a prisoner’s dilemma game and developed a structural integrative model using attributions, attitudes and personality traits to evaluate the likelihood of participants to make a prosocial decision in HRI (Experiment 3).Experiment 1, 2 and 3 results showed that intentional stance is more readily adopted than phenomenal stance and that the imaginative type of the stances predicts the interpretative type. In experiment 2 level of attributions were predicted by attitudes toward robots. Also, attributions were influenced by robot human-likeness and the presentation of robots as social, compared to non-social, agents. Finally, experiment 3 structural integrative model showed a predominance of personality traits and attitudes to predict the likelihood to cooperate in an actual HRI.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-65
Author(s):  
Malavika Sundararajan

Generating new ideas is the call of the day as teachers seek to differentiate the students’ capabilities in unique and creative ways preparing them to face uncertainties in the work environment. A critical component of this process is to ensure that students are taught how to come up with new ideas, and making the classroom environment conducive to creative thinking. This study offers an observation of a business classroom experience that led to highly effective flow of ideas through the use of tools and techniques that create a safe environment for students, which can also be applied to any organizational setting. Participants were first taught to develop the rules of engagement required for a safe environment and then were trained in utilizing different creative thinking tools. The impact on the participants’ creative and innovative abilities as evidenced in their final design sprint project was found to be significant. The implications of these findings for management and leaders in education and organizational settings are highlighted.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Bogoyavlenskaya

The article refers the formation and development of the Russian methodology in the frame of which the theory of thinking has been built. The exposition of the theory developed in the Twenties-Nineties of the 20th century becomes topical because of two factors. The first factor of the demand from the intensively developing neuroscience. Various directions in this field aiming to studying thinking disorders, particularly in schizophrenia, are lacking theoretical concordance. That is why the specialists come to the conclusion on necessity of a common scientifically justified platform: the development of the theory of thinking. We would like to mention that the attention for an impaired function is typical for a physician, whereas for a psychologist the problem of revealing unusual strength of thinking is schizophrenia is significant. Solving this problem is important for the theory of thinking itself. The second factor of the demand for designing the theory of thinking is the change of paradigm in the science and education during the Nineties of the 20th century, which has stimulated the variety of theoretically unjustified approaches to interpretation of nature of thinking. That is why when reviewing the theory of thinking we consider the significant events which defined the vector of its development beginning with Rubinstein’s article of 1922 “The Principle of Creative Self-Activity (To the Philosophical Foundations of Modern Pedagogy),” where methodological justification of the conception of subject is given. In 1930 he formulates the principle of thinking as the “unity of consciousness and activity.” At the same period Luria explains the positions which are in tune with the future cultural-historical methodology of Vygotsky. The research of thinking as a process is given in the Soviet psychology by the school of Rubinstein in the Fifties-Sixties and after his death in 1969. The works with description of meaning, sense and nature of the word became Luria’s contribution in the analysis of the structure of thinking process when solving problems. We consider the common idea of solving problematic situations as the result of creative thinking to be its lowest stage, immature form, as in the frame of solving the given tasks, i.e. stimulus-projective model in which the whole psyche had been studied, it is impossible to come to analysis of the phenomenon of creativity. That succeeds only in designing a new method. In the course of the experiment, the Creative Field method allows revealing the ability of a person to develop the accepted ability by his initiative. The levels of cognition to be reached by the testee are described. They correspond to the level of displays of creativity or to its absence. This approach finds its theoretical basis in the cultural-historical psychology (Vygotsky). We have revealed the highest mature form of creativity as development of the activity by one’s initiative which is the unit of analysis where, according to Vygotsky, “the meeting of affect and intellect occurs” (Vygotsky, 2016, p. 8). The examples of children who have shown the highest level of creativity are described. Among them there is a nine-year boy with the diagnosis of schizophrenia, who spontaneously formulated very precise and capacious definition of creativity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naiera Ebrahim Mahmoud ◽  
Shaimaa Mohamed Kamel ◽  
Tamer Samir Hamza

Creativity is a cognitive ability that enables individuals to come up with both original and functional ideas and products. As architectural design requires producing aesthetic and practically useful solutions, it is a primary concern to enhance creativity in design disciplines. Many theorists argued that design is a non-linear process and many components of design problems are not clear at the beginning. At the start of the process, designers are always working at the periphery of a solution space where there is less coherence and more ambiguity. Thus, they must deal with a lot of ambiguity in every design situation. These states of uncertainty and confusion can be annoying for architecture students. On the other hand, tolerance of ambiguity is a personality trait that has been linked to creative thinking. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate the correlation between tolerance of ambiguity of architectural students and their creativity via a qualitative study. The researchers implemented a mixed-method approach and recruited 18 architecture students. The results from this study revealed that there is a significant correlation between students’ creative thinking abilities and their tolerance for ambiguity. Our results also indicated that there is no statistically significant correlation between students’ tolerance of ambiguity and their design creativity.


1991 ◽  
Vol 159 (S11) ◽  
pp. 28-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. P. Berney ◽  
S. R. Bhate ◽  
I. Kolvin ◽  
O. O. Famuyiwa ◽  
M. L. Barrett ◽  
...  

This paper examines the family background, premorbid personality traits and adverse life events preceding childhood depression. The non-depressed group proved more likely to have experienced pre-school bereavement and familial disturbance, and to come from the more deprived background; there was also an excess of premorbid anxiety and hysterical personality traits in this group. School phobia and premorbid obsessional traits were associated with the depressed group. Although there was an association between depression and the total number of adverse life events, this was more substantial when the perceived impact of the events was taken into account. Of the individual classes of life event, only illness and a change in social relationships were associated specifically with depression.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110479
Author(s):  
Matthew Berry ◽  
Steven Brown

Actors make modifications to their face, voice, and body to match standard gestural conceptions of the fictional characters they are portraying during stage performances. However, the gestural manifestations of acting have not been quantified experimentally, least of all in group-level analyses. To quantify the facial correlates of character portrayal in professional actors for the first time, we had 24 actors portray a contrastive series of nine stock characters (e.g., king, bully, lover) that were organised according to a predictive scheme based on the two statistically independent personality dimensions of assertiveness (i.e., the tendency to satisfy personal concerns) and cooperativeness (i.e., the tendency to satisfy others’ concerns). We used three-dimensional motion capture to examine changes in facial dimensions, with an emphasis on the relative expansion/contraction of four facial segments related to the brow, eyebrows, lips, and jaw, respectively. The results demonstrated that expansions in both upper- and lower-facial segments were related to increases in the levels of character cooperativeness, but not assertiveness. These findings demonstrate that actors reliably manipulate their facial features in a contrastive manner to differentiate characters based on their underlying personality traits.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 630-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Surendra Munshi

AbstractThe failure of sociology to come to grips with larger societal issues is not just a failure of sociology in India. A widespread problem faced by the discipline at present is the reluctance to raise 'big questions'. Quite apart from the problem of 'Euroschauism' which imposes partial views as the universal view, it is necessary for sociologists in a country like India to raise the issue of social change in India and the rest of the world as a theoretical issue that demands adequate conceptualisation. Such a task demands a critical perspective. It is possible to be critical of one's culture while being rooted in it. The first step to take is to study the concerns of the average person and to look at one's society critically, not as an outsider who finds the country of his birth difficult to take but as an insider who chooses to live in his country and undergoes what everyone else is going through. Along with this is the ability to step outside one's own society, not to go away but to return.


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