An Updated Evaluation of the Dichotomous Link Between Creativity and Mental Health

The theory of the mad genius, a popular cultural fixture for centuries, has received widespread attention in the behavioral sciences. Focusing on a longstanding debate over whether creativity and mental health are positively or negatively correlated, this study first summarized recent relevant studies and meta-analyses and then provided an updated evaluation of this correlation by describing a new and useful perspective for considering the relationship between creativity and mental health. Here, a modified version of the dual-pathway model of creativity was developed to explain the seemingly paradoxical relationship between creativity and mental health. This model can greatly enrich the scientific understanding of the so-called mad genius controversy and further promote the scientific exploration of the link between creativity and mental health or psychopathology.

The cognitive mechanisms involved in the “DEGREE ADVERB + PROPER NAME” construction: Evaluating proposals from Construction Grammar and Formal Semantics

There are broad disagreements between existing models regarding the mental representations and processes involved in the "DEGREE ADVERB + PROPER NAME" construction, including disagreements regarding the semantics of the degree device, the category status of the proper name, the construction’s expressed meaning and its (non-)compositionality, and, crucially, the operation that holds between the degree device and the proper name. Our corpus-based investigation into two competing models from Construction Grammar and Formal Semantics shows that these models collectively make useful contributions to the scientific understanding of this construction, but neither is empirically adequate. Most importantly, we find that the construction participates in several non-predicted expressed meanings; multivariate analyses show that the three amenable to statistical analysis cluster with different semantic usage-features. We argue that the best way to account for the construction’s semantics-pragmatics is via a previously-dismissed cognitive mechanism: an enrichment-/strengthening-type operation whereby a pragmatically-supplied scale is added to the message.

Contact Electrification through Interfacial Charge Transfer: A Mechanistic Viewpoint on Solid-liquid interface

Contact Electrification (Triboelectrification) has been a long-standing phenomenon for 2600 years. The scientific understanding of contact electrification (triboelectrification) remains un-unified as the term itself implies complex phenomena involving mechanical contact/sliding...

ПСИХОЛІНГВІСТИКА В НЕКЛІНІЧНІЙ ПСИХОТЕРАПІЇ: АСПЕКТИ ВЕРБАЛЬНОГО ВПЛИВУ

Applied psycholinguistics has a wide range of its applications in various fields of modern science and human practice. Psychotherapy is not an exception. The purpose of this article is to provide a modern scientific understanding of the role of psycholinguistics in the development of non-clinical psychotherapy, to present promising ways of psychotherapeutic science development and medical practice as a speech (discursive) influence exerted by verbal means.

Iron Formations as Palaeoenvironmental Archives

Ancient iron formations - iron and silica-rich chemical sedimentary rocks that formed throughout the Precambrian eons - provide a significant part of the evidence for the modern scientific understanding of palaeoenvironmental conditions in Archaean (4.0–2.5 billion years ago) and Proterozoic (2.5–0.539 billion years ago) times. Despite controversies regarding their formation mechanisms, iron formations are a testament to the influence of the Precambrian biosphere on early ocean chemistry. As many iron formations are pure chemical sediments that reflect the composition of the waters from which they precipitated, they can also serve as nuanced geochemical archives for the study of ancient marine temperatures, redox states, and elemental cycling, if proper care is taken to understand their sedimentological context.

Public misconceptions about dyslexia: The role of intuitive psychology

Despite advances in its scientific understanding, dyslexia is still associated with rampant public misconceptions. Here, we trace these misconceptions to the interaction between two intuitive psychological principles: Dualism and Essentialism. We hypothesize that people essentialize dyslexia symptoms that they anchor in the body. Experiment 1 shows that, when dyslexia is associated with visual confusions (b/d reversals)—symptoms that are naturally viewed as embodied (in the eyes), laypeople consider dyslexia as more severe, immutable, biological, and heritable, compared to when dyslexia is linked to difficulties with phonological decoding (a symptom seen as less strongly embodied). Experiments 2–3 show that the embodiment of symptoms plays a causal role in promoting essentialist thinking. Experiment 2 shows that, when participants are provided evidence that the symptoms of dyslexia are embodied (i.e., they “show up” in a brain scan), people are more likely to consider dyslexia as heritable compared to when the same symptoms are diagnosed behaviorally (without any explicit evidence for the body). Finally, Experiment 3 shows that reasoning about the severity of dyslexia symptoms can be modulated by manipulating people’s attitudes about the mind/body links, generally. These results show how public attitudes towards psychological disorders arise from the very principles that make the mind tick.

Advancing the Science on Unexpected Episodes of Clarity and Lucidity in People With Dementia

People with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) have been reported, largely by way of anecdote, to exhibit unexpected episodes of spontaneous, meaningful, and relevant communication or behavior. These episodes of lucidity (EL) are characterized by spontaneous mental clarity in people living with dementia (PLWD) who are assumed to have lost coherent cognitive capacity. Given the transient nature and limited understanding of underlying mechanisms responsible for this phenomenon, these episodes are frequently overlooked and have received little scientific attention. Few studies have documented EL among PLWD with precision; scientific understanding is limited to anecdotes and case studies, which have not operationalized EL. Thus, there is a critical need for an evidence-based understanding and systematic operationalization of EL. Precise and robust operationalizations of EL will allow future research to assess if EL has different effects on ADRD prognosis or alters how family members manage and adapt to ADRD progression in their care recipient. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) has funded six studies to advance the scientific understanding of EL in dementia. These studies use a variety of methodological approaches to capture EL experiences, and together, they will provide evidence-based operational definitions of EL, novel approaches for measurement of this phenomenon, and estimates of its prevalence. This symposium will provide an overview of the funded studies and three different methodological approaches that are being used to better operationalize and understand EL.

Introduction: New Discoveries and Theoretical Implications for the Last Foraging and First Farming in East Asia

Worldwide, scientific understanding about domestication and the origins of food production is undergoing rapid change based on new data from discoveries in paleoclimates and environments, paleobiology, and archaeology [...]

Strengthening the Scientific Basis of Ecosystem Collapse Risk Assessments

Progress is being made in assessing the conservation status of ecosystems, notably through initiatives such as the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) and the NatureServe Conservation Status Assessment (NCS). Both of these approaches consider conservation status in terms of the risk of ecosystem collapse. However, the scientific understanding of ecosystem collapse is still at a relatively early stage. Consequently, concerns have been raised regarding the scientific basis of ecosystem conservation assessments focusing on collapse risk. Here I explore how these concerns might potentially be addressed by considering how the concept is defined, and by briefly reviewing the theoretical basis of ecosystem collapse. I then examine the implications of recent research results for the design of ecosystem collapse risk assessments, and the challenges identified in those assessments conducted to date. Recommendations are made regarding how collapse risk assessments might be strengthened based on current scientific understanding, and how this understanding could be improved by further research. In addition, I examine the potential implications for conservation policy and practice if the scientific basis of collapse risk assessments is not strengthened in this way.