Exploring the role of schizotypy in creative cognition

<p>Creativity is hugely important in our everyday lives. Understanding what makes some people more creative than others is not just important in traditional creative fields. Creative problem solving is the key to solving all significant challenges we face as a society, including but not limited to technological, political and environmental challenges. Mental illness, in both popular culture and in psychological science, have long been linked to creative thought. Many eminent creatives, both past and current, attribute their success to their mental illness. For example, in schizophrenia, the grandiose thinking and florid hallucinations that characterise this disorder may be supportive of creative thinking. However, schizophrenia is characterised by severe cognitive deficits that, according to models of creativity, would be disadvantageous to creative thinking. Schizotypy is a personality trait that is characterised by some features of schizophrenia (unusual thinking, poor interpersonal communication), but is not accompanied by the same severe cognitive deficits seen in schizophrenia. Based on this view, it is reasonable to assume that people high on schizotypal traits may be more creative than those who are low on schizotypal traits. While there a number of studies examining this relationship, findings are inconsistent, with effect sizes ranging from -.42 to .8. In my thesis, I explored a) whether there was a relationship between schizotypy and creativity and b) whether that relationship could be explained by underlying differences in cognitive processing (associative processing and executive control). I predicted that positive schizotypy in particular (typified by unusual thinking, superstitious beliefs) would be positively correlated with schizotypy in three different measures of creativity (two performance based tasks and one self-report measure) in two different samples of participants. In Chapters 3 + 4, I tested the relationship between schizotypy and creativity using two different methods. In chapter 3, I found no evidence for the predicted effect. In fact, I found a negative association between positive schizotypy and scores on one measure of creativity (the Remote Associates test) and a positive association between negative schizotypy (characterised by interpersonal deficits) and performance on the RAT. These effects did not replicate in the second sample. Finally, there was a positive association between disorganised schizotypy and creativity on the Alternate Uses task. The results of Chapter 4, using a latent profile analytic approach, mirrored the results of Chapter 3. Finally, Chapter 5 found no support for any relationship being mediated by associative processing or executive control; however, there was partial support for two models of creativity. Overall, evidence suggests that schizotypal traits are not helpful for creativity. These results shed light on some of the challenges when conducting research regarding both schizotypy and creativity.</p>

Exploring the role of schizotypy in creative cognition

<p>Creativity is hugely important in our everyday lives. Understanding what makes some people more creative than others is not just important in traditional creative fields. Creative problem solving is the key to solving all significant challenges we face as a society, including but not limited to technological, political and environmental challenges. Mental illness, in both popular culture and in psychological science, have long been linked to creative thought. Many eminent creatives, both past and current, attribute their success to their mental illness. For example, in schizophrenia, the grandiose thinking and florid hallucinations that characterise this disorder may be supportive of creative thinking. However, schizophrenia is characterised by severe cognitive deficits that, according to models of creativity, would be disadvantageous to creative thinking. Schizotypy is a personality trait that is characterised by some features of schizophrenia (unusual thinking, poor interpersonal communication), but is not accompanied by the same severe cognitive deficits seen in schizophrenia. Based on this view, it is reasonable to assume that people high on schizotypal traits may be more creative than those who are low on schizotypal traits. While there a number of studies examining this relationship, findings are inconsistent, with effect sizes ranging from -.42 to .8. In my thesis, I explored a) whether there was a relationship between schizotypy and creativity and b) whether that relationship could be explained by underlying differences in cognitive processing (associative processing and executive control). I predicted that positive schizotypy in particular (typified by unusual thinking, superstitious beliefs) would be positively correlated with schizotypy in three different measures of creativity (two performance based tasks and one self-report measure) in two different samples of participants. In Chapters 3 + 4, I tested the relationship between schizotypy and creativity using two different methods. In chapter 3, I found no evidence for the predicted effect. In fact, I found a negative association between positive schizotypy and scores on one measure of creativity (the Remote Associates test) and a positive association between negative schizotypy (characterised by interpersonal deficits) and performance on the RAT. These effects did not replicate in the second sample. Finally, there was a positive association between disorganised schizotypy and creativity on the Alternate Uses task. The results of Chapter 4, using a latent profile analytic approach, mirrored the results of Chapter 3. Finally, Chapter 5 found no support for any relationship being mediated by associative processing or executive control; however, there was partial support for two models of creativity. Overall, evidence suggests that schizotypal traits are not helpful for creativity. These results shed light on some of the challenges when conducting research regarding both schizotypy and creativity.</p>

Do You Have a "Strict Purse"? The Routes to Meaning in Metaphor

<p>Theoretically there are two processing systems through which meaning can be found for a given statement: an effortless, associative processing system (meaning retrieval), or an effortful, analytical processing system (meaning construction). The current study investigated whether or not the context in which target (loosely figurative) word-pairs are presented can influence whether a person relies on associative or analytical processing to find their meaning. Participants were presented with target (loosely figurative) novel word-pairs and asked to judge them for meaningfulness. These target novel word-pairs were presented in different contexts: either mixed with clearly meaningful word-pairs or with additional novel word-pairs. By nature, meaning cannot be retrieved for novel word-pairs, so if a novel word-pair is to be found "meaningful," then its meaning must usually be constructed online (via the analytical processing system). Consistent with increased reliance on analytical processing, participants who saw target novel word-pairs mixed with additional novel word-pairs judged them meaningful more often than did participants who saw them mixed with clearly meaningful word-pairs. Participants who saw target novel word-pairs mixed with additional novel word-pairs also had more negative N400s to target novel word-pairs, indicating that they committed more semantic effort to the processing of these (again consistent with analytical processing). Associative processing does not involve attempts to construct new meaning for given word-pairs. Consistent with increased reliance on associative processing, participants who saw target novel word-pairs mixed with clearly meaningful word-pairs judged them meaningful less often than did participants who saw them mixed with additional novel word-pairs. These participants also had less negative N400s to target novel word-pairs, indicating that they committed less semantic effort to the processing of these (again fitting with associative processing). Further evidence for different contexts leading to differential processing of the same target novel word-pairs was provided by examination of wave morphology. Two distinctive patterns of neural activation were found in response to the same target novel word-pairs, differing depending on the context in which these appeared. Overall, the results of the current study were consistent with the hypothesis that context can influence which processing system is relied upon to find meaning for a given statement. This finding challenges contemporary models of meaning construction and metaphor comprehension by showing that context is essential to these processes and needs to be taken into consideration.</p>

Do You Have a "Strict Purse"? The Routes to Meaning in Metaphor

<p>Theoretically there are two processing systems through which meaning can be found for a given statement: an effortless, associative processing system (meaning retrieval), or an effortful, analytical processing system (meaning construction). The current study investigated whether or not the context in which target (loosely figurative) word-pairs are presented can influence whether a person relies on associative or analytical processing to find their meaning. Participants were presented with target (loosely figurative) novel word-pairs and asked to judge them for meaningfulness. These target novel word-pairs were presented in different contexts: either mixed with clearly meaningful word-pairs or with additional novel word-pairs. By nature, meaning cannot be retrieved for novel word-pairs, so if a novel word-pair is to be found "meaningful," then its meaning must usually be constructed online (via the analytical processing system). Consistent with increased reliance on analytical processing, participants who saw target novel word-pairs mixed with additional novel word-pairs judged them meaningful more often than did participants who saw them mixed with clearly meaningful word-pairs. Participants who saw target novel word-pairs mixed with additional novel word-pairs also had more negative N400s to target novel word-pairs, indicating that they committed more semantic effort to the processing of these (again consistent with analytical processing). Associative processing does not involve attempts to construct new meaning for given word-pairs. Consistent with increased reliance on associative processing, participants who saw target novel word-pairs mixed with clearly meaningful word-pairs judged them meaningful less often than did participants who saw them mixed with additional novel word-pairs. These participants also had less negative N400s to target novel word-pairs, indicating that they committed less semantic effort to the processing of these (again fitting with associative processing). Further evidence for different contexts leading to differential processing of the same target novel word-pairs was provided by examination of wave morphology. Two distinctive patterns of neural activation were found in response to the same target novel word-pairs, differing depending on the context in which these appeared. Overall, the results of the current study were consistent with the hypothesis that context can influence which processing system is relied upon to find meaning for a given statement. This finding challenges contemporary models of meaning construction and metaphor comprehension by showing that context is essential to these processes and needs to be taken into consideration.</p>

To Grasp the World at a Glance: The Role of Attention in Visual and Semantic Associative Processing

Associative relations among words, concepts and percepts are the core building blocks of high-level cognition. When viewing the world ‘at a glance’, the associative relations between objects in a scene, or between an object and its visual background, are extracted rapidly. The extent to which such relational processing requires attentional capacity, however, has been heavily disputed over the years. In the present manuscript, I review studies investigating scene–object and object–object associative processing. I then present a series of studies in which I assessed the necessity of spatial attention to various types of visual–semantic relations within a scene. Importantly, in all studies, the spatial and temporal aspects of visual attention were tightly controlled in an attempt to minimize unintentional attention shifts from ‘attended’ to ‘unattended’ regions. Pairs of stimuli—either objects, scenes or a scene and an object—were briefly presented on each trial, while participants were asked to detect a pre-defined target category (e.g., an animal, a nonsense shape). Response times (RTs) to the target detection task were registered when visual attention spanned both stimuli in a pair vs. when attention was focused on only one of two stimuli. Among non-prioritized stimuli that were not defined as to-be-detected targets, findings consistently demonstrated rapid associative processing when stimuli were fully attended, i.e., shorter RTs to associated than unassociated pairs. Focusing attention on a single stimulus only, however, largely impaired this relational processing. Notably, prioritized targets continued to affect performance even when positioned at an unattended location, and their associative relations with the attended items were well processed and analyzed. Our findings portray an important dissociation between unattended task-irrelevant and task-relevant items: while the former require spatial attentional resources in order to be linked to stimuli positioned inside the attentional focus, the latter may influence high-level recognition and associative processes via feature-based attentional mechanisms that are largely independent of spatial attention.

To grasp the world at a glance: The role of attention in visual and semantic associative processing

Associative relations among words, concepts and percepts are the core building blocks of high-level cognition. When viewing the world ‘at a glance’, the associative relations between objects in a scene, or between an object and its visual background are extracted rapidly. The extent to which such relational processing requires attentional capacity, however, has been heavily disputed over the years. In the present manuscript I review studies investigating scene-object and object-object associative processing. I then present a series of studies in which I assessed the necessity of spatial attention to various types of visual-semantic relations within a scene. Importantly, in all studies, the spatial and temporal aspects of visual attention were tightly controlled in an attempt to minimize unintentional attention shifts from ‘attended’ to ‘unattended’ regions. Pairs of stimuli - either objects, scenes, or a scene and an object - were briefly presented on each trial, while participants were asked to detect a pre-defined category of stimuli (e.g., an animal, a nonsense shape). Response times (RTs) to the target detection task were registered when visual attention spanned both stimuli in a pair vs. when attention was focused on only one of two stimuli. Findings consistently demonstrated rapid associative processing when stimuli were fully attended, i.e., shorter RTs to associated than unassociated pairs. Focusing attention on a single stimulus only, however, largely impaired this relational processing. The only exception to this result pattern was observed with the target stimuli that were prioritized by task demands: such stimuli continued to affect performance even when positioned at an unattended location, indicating that their relations with the attended items were well processed and analyzed. Our findings suggest that attention plays a critical role in processing visual-associative relations when these involve stimuli that are irrelevant to one's immediate goals.

The Effects of Dichotomous Thinking on Depression in Japanese College Students

The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of dichotomous thinking on depression. We attempted to test the following hypotheses: 1) dichotomous thinking increases depression, and 2) dichotomous thinking has two routes to increase depression&mdash;direct, associative processing, and indirect, reflective processing. Two hundred Japanese college students (Males: 107, Females: 93, M age= 20.02 &plusmn; 1.42) were asked to complete the Dichotomous Thinking Inventory, which consists of three subscales: dichotomous belief, profit-and-loss thinking, and preference for dichotomy; the Kessler 6 Distress Scale; and the Japanese version of the Rumination-reflection Questionnaire. We conducted structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses. The results supported the hypotheses and indicated that dichotomous thinking increased depression. There were two different routes: dichotomous belief directly increased depression and profit-and-loss thinking indirectly increased depression by way of rumination. There are some implications of the findings. This study suggests that cognitive distortions might causes depression from two paths and practical interventions might also have two different routes or approaches to depression.

RV-Across: An Associative Processing Simulator

Associative Processing provides high-performance and energyefficient parallel computation using a Content-Addressable Memory (CAM). Emerging big data applications can be significantly sped-up by Associative Processing, but validation and evaluation are key challenges. We present RVAcross, a RISC-V Associative Processing Simulator for testing, validation, and modeling associative operations. RV-Across eases the design of associative and near-memory processing architectures by offering interfaces to both building new operations and providing high-level experimentation. Our simulator records memory and registers states of each associative operation pass, giving the user visibility and control over the simulation. The user can employ the simulation statistics provided by RV-Across to compute performance and energy metrics. RV-Across implements common associative operations and provides a framework to allow for easy extension. We show how the simulator works by experimenting with different scenarios for associative operations with three applications that test the functionality of logic and arithmetic computations: matrix multiply, checksum, and bitcount. Our results highlight the direct relation between the data length and potential performance improvement of associative processing in comparison to regular CPU serial and parallel operation. In case of matrix multiplication, the speed-up increases linearly with matrices dimension, achieving 8X for 200x200 bytes matrices and overcoming parallel execution in an 8-core CPU.