The first article focused on determining the underlying structure of creativity and intelligence, partly by looking at how they are defined and measured, and came up with the following schema for creativity:

1. The first factor is of UTILITY: whether one produces something that is useful. As evident from the alternate uses task the utility of something is ambiguous and context dependent. Creativity is the ability to deal with this inherent ambiguity, be comfortable with it and look at things from multiple simultaneous perspectives to find useful contexts. Politics (leadership) epitomises this ability. This is also related to speed and fluency with which you can hold multiple representations or generate multiple ideas. Taken to an extreme this may result in flight of ideas and racing thoughts typical of mania. Relating to personality constructs this is measured by feelings/ actions facets of openness to experience. The product associated with this type of creativity is typically an invention. In terms of existing schemata, you use multiple schemas simultaneously or let the member belong to multiple categories.
2. The second factor is ORIGINALITY: whether one produces something that is appealing and aesthetically satisfying and original. Originality sometimes lies in making remote associations (think mixing of metaphors etc). Creativity is the ability to think beyond conventional boundaries or categories, loosen up the associations and make remote associations between and within categories. Art epitomises this ability. This is also related to flexibility with which you can walk across categories and disciplines. Taken to extreme this may lead to apophenia (or seeing patterns everywhere and correlating everything in a loose framework), over-inclusive delusions, and scizotypy or even full blown schizophrenia. Relating to personality constructs this is measured by aesthetics facets of openness to experience. The product associated with this type of creativity is typically a new stylistics. In terms of existing schemata, you loosen your schemata boundaries and let them overlap.
3. The third factor is SURPRISABILITY: whether one produces something that is really unique and novel and unheard of before. Surprisabililty is creativity that is not just combinatorial but perhaps associated with transforming and transcending. The role of imagination is prominent here. Also serendipity and latent thinking is more prominent here. Mythmaking / religion epitomises this ability. This is also related to originality where a truly unique take is evident. Fantasy and role playing are important. Constructs like distractibility and latent inhibition are also relevant here. Taken to extreme this may result in attention problems associated with ADHD always being enthralled by something novel rather than paying attention to routine but boring stuff. Relating to personality constructs this is measured by fantasy facets of openness to experience. The product associated with this type of creativity is typically a social innovation. In terms of existing schemata, you transform your schemata and create new categories by principle of accommodation.

A similar, tripartite structure, for intelligence was also arrived at:

To sum up, The three broad factors of intelligence are:

 

 

1. Processing speed: related to inductive part of Gf, selective attention and set updating. This is measured using problem solving especially puzzles. This is also the algorithmic mind using the method of simulation (Stanovich). This parallels fluency/utility facet of creativity.
2. (Working) memory: related to crystallized Gc, sustained attention and set shifting. This is measured using ability to recognise explicit patterns and analogies. This is also the remembering mind using the method of serial associative cognition (Stanovich). This parallels flexibility/ beauty facet of creativity.
3. Planning: related to deductive part of Gf, divided attention and set initiation. This is measured using abstract reasoning and inhibition tasks like the stroop task. This is also the reflective mind using the method of TASS override (Stanovich). This parallels originality/novelty facet of creativity.

In the second article I related this tripartite structure to the underlying BVSR process as follows:

So, how does BVSR lead to creativity?

 

Blind means unsighted or unplanned or something which comes out of such a blind process will not be expected but necessarily involve leaps and be non-obvious and surprise us with the serendipitous results. Thus blindness ensures Surprisability.

 

Variation means recombination or transformations or some such process that leads to new and novel variants. Thus variation guarantees Originality.

 

Selection means separating wheat from the chaff based on either subjective criteria like Beauty or objective criteria like Truth. In either case the idea retained will be either true or adaptive/useful. In other words, Selection necessitates Utility.

 

Retention means developing the selected idea to completion, validating it and using similar means again. Typical means may include trying to replicate the phenomenon. Given that the BVS part of BVSR may work unconsciously it is hard to replicate or deliver the same creative performance again; the same may not be true of a scientific discovery though. We will not focus on retention here which has to do with repetition of the act, in my opinion, and not that relevant to the creative process.

 

As you move towards more sighted variant of BVSR, you move from creativity to intelligence.
With that in mind I propose the following table for creativity and intelligence

 

 

 

 

and the following for intelligence…

Of course you should read the original Psychology today blog posts to get the full context.

Image via Wikipedia

This post originally appeared on my Psychology Today blog “The Fundamental Four” on 15th Dec. 2011.  This is cross-posted from there.

Abundant evidence exists that psychosis is more prevalent in urban areas as compared to rural areas. The fact that living in the city makes one vulnerable to psychosis is not up for debate – but healthy debate ensues about the mediating mechanisms.
Last year, Zammit et al claimed that the high incidence of psychosis in urban settings is a result of greater social fragmentation in urban areas.
Today I came across a study [pdf] that had nothing to do with psychosis and came up with this novel hypothesis that the mediating mechanism may be global versus local focus or processing style. If that seems farfetched, bear with me for a while.
First a bit of background, the new study was referenced by Christian Jarrett in a BPS research digest blog post in which he lucidly shows that it has been found that living in urban areas has been found to be associated with a propensity for global processing style (seeing the forest); while living in rural areas has been found to be associated with a local processing style (focusing on the trees and missing the forest).

The study itself is pretty straight forward; in one of the local/global task it used the famous Ebbinghaus illusion (see image) to measure the amount of bias towards global vis-a-vis local processing.

In the second task it used large, composite (global) shapes/letters made of small, parts (local) which were also themselves shapes/letters and then measured whether one was more drawn in making inferences/similarity based on global percepts or the local figurine.

The study measured this global vs. local bias in Himba society (Namibia) members who had varying level of exposure to urban environments as well as Japanese and British urbanites. What they found was that living in urban areas/ exposure to urban areas was significantly predictive of whether you would lean more towards more global mode of processing. The authors link this with more ‘visual clutter’ in the cities necessitating a global style of processing.
Christian mentions in passing the fact that autistic people have a very local bias of processing and are marked by weak central coherence; what he perhaps doesn’t realize is that psychotics, which have been conceptualized to lie diametrically opposed on a continuum from autistic, have a global processing bias and a strong central coherence.
Badcock and Crespi, and I even before them, have been crying from the rooftops to conceptualize psychosis and autism as diametrical disorders – and some investigators have paid heed. Suzzana N et al [pdf] have recently shown that as conceptualized by Badcock and Crespi , Autistics and Psychotics are actually at opposed ends of local vs global processing.

To quote:

We refer particularly to Crespi and Badcock (2008), who make the novel claim that the autism and positive schizophrenia spectra are diametrically opposed. They argue that individuals with autistic traits and individuals with positive symptoms of schizophrenia (e.g., magical ideation, unusual perceptual experiences and paranoia) should exhibit opposite cognitive profiles. The current investigation focuses specifically on their claim that autistic and positive schizophrenia traits contrastingly affect preference for local (i.e., piecemeal) versus global (i.e., integrative) processing.

Crespi and Badcock (2008) argue that while autistic traits are associated with a preference for local over global processing, positive schizophrenia traits are associated with a preference for global over local processing. That is, these authors claim that while individuals with autism show a tendency to focus on detail or process features in their isolation, individuals with traits of positive schizophrenia show a tendency to look at the ‘bigger picture’ or process features as an integrated whole. Although a preference for local processing fits theoretically with the tendency of individuals with autism to notice minor features or changes to the environment that are often overlooked by others (Hayes 1987), the link between traits of positive schizophrenia and a preference for global processing is less obvious. It is hypothesized though, that a global processing style could contribute to the complex delusions and enhanced creativity for individuals with positive schizophrenia (Nettle 2006; Oberman and Pascual-Leone 2008), as well as the tendency of these individuals to make ‘‘loose” associations between words and between aspects of the environment (Maher 1983; Spitzer 1997; Spitzer et al. 1993). Importantly, the effect of such loose associations is that one thought does not logically relate to the next, and thus these associations may be strongly linked to the hallucinations and delusions experienced by individuals with positive schizophrenia. However, while there are potential links of local and global processing to features of autism and positive schizotypy, the preferred processing styles for individuals with autistic and schizophrenic traits are yet to be examined together in the one investigation. Therefore, the current study aims to provide the first complete empirical test of Crespi and Badcock’s claim regarding local-global processing.

And this is exactly what they found. They used an embedded figural task to assess the global vs. Local bias and their results showed that indeed psychosis prone individuals had a more global style of processing.

Now one thing I am good at is putting two and two together and the moment I saw the new study correlating global style with urban living, a lot of pieces fell into place. Form the above it is apparent that global processing style may be an intermediate mediating factor that leads to association between urban living and psychosis.

What neural mechanism may be involved?

To quote from the Suzzana et al paper again:

The contrasting preferences for local versus global processing are identified with differences in brain connectivity in particular (Crespi and Badcock 2008). Reference is made to both structural (intrahemispheric and interhemispheric) and functional connectivity. Specifically, Crespi and Badcock argue that the preference for local over global processing displayed by individuals with autistic traits, compared to controls or individuals low on autistic traits, is a result of increased connectivity within neural regions relative to decreased connectivity across regions (Courchesne and Pierce 2005a, b; Happe´ and Frith 2006). Crespi and Badcock then argue that schizophrenia is associated with decreased connectivity within neural regions relative to an increased connectivity across brain regions (Colger and Serafetinides 1990; Siekmeier and Hoffman 2002), leading individuals with traits of positive schizophrenia to favor a global (over local) processing style, compared to controls or people low on these traits. These differences in brain connectivity for autism and positive schizophrenia are said to be mediated, at least in part, by genomic imprinting.

While genomic imprinting may be one mechanism, maybe there is something about exposure to urban environments (maybe it’s ‘visual clutter’) that also has a similar effect on pruning of synapses and unduly affect local pruning at the cost of pruning between widely separated regions thus leading to global processing bias.

Instructive to pause here and note that in children they start with local bias and around 6 year of age revert to global bias that adults typically have and this is mediated by synaptic pruning. See this open access PLOS one article.

Thus, it seems Psychosis and the City are intimately connected; and that, this is because, to live in a city, you need to (de)focus on ‘the big picture’.

Caparos, S., Ahmed, L., Bremner, A., de Fockert, J., Linnell, K., & Davidoff, J. (2012). Exposure to an urban environment alters the local bias of a remote culture Cognition, 122 (1), 80-85 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.08.013
Crespi, B., & Badcock, C. (2008). Psychosis and autism as diametrical disorders of the social brain Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31 (03) DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X08004214
Zammit, S., Lewis, G., Rasbash, J., Dalman, C., Gustafsson, J., & Allebeck, P. (2010). INDIVIDUALS, SCHOOLS AND NEIGHBOURHOODS; A MULTILEVEL LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF VARIATION IN INCIDENCE OF PSYCHOTIC DISORDERS Schizophrenia Research, 117 (2-3), 181-182 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2010.02.223
Russell-Smith, S., Maybery, M., & Bayliss, D. (2010). Are the Autism and Positive Schizotypy Spectra Diametrically Opposed in Local Versus Global Processing? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40 (8), 968-977 DOI: 10.1007/s10803-010-0945-7

Some days back, Vaughan Bell of Mind Hacks blog linked to a blog post from Sabrina, of the Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists blog, and they both lamented the fact that modern psychology has a pre-dominantly western slant and speculated what might have been the case had psychology been developed under Korean influence (where for example Mind is ‘Maum’ or composed of feelings, motivations etc as opposed to being cognitive in nature).

To boot:

In the West, and, specifically, in the English-speaking West, the psychological aspect of personhood is closely related to the concept of “the mind” and the modern view of cognition. But, how universal is this conception? How do speakers of other languages think about the psychological aspect of personhood?

In Korean, the concept “maum” replaces the concept “mind”. “Maum” has no English counterpart, but is sometimes translated as “heart”. Apparently, “maum” is the “seat of emotions, motivation, and “goodness” in a human being” (Wierzbicka, 2005; p. 271). Intellect and cognitive functions are captured by the Korean “meli” (head). But, “maum” is clearly the counterpart to “mind” in terms of the psychological part of the person. For example, there are tons of Korean books about “maum” and body in the same way that there are English texts on “mind” and body.

Today I wish to extend the debate and focus specifically on how psychology might have been if it had been developed under Indian influence.

Firstly, instead of focusing on the somewhat dubious mind-body duality, we would be focussed on the more fruitful matter-consciousness duality.

As per the Samkhyaa (or Number- based) system of Indian philosophy (the oldest philosophical tradition), the world is composed of two distinct fundamental realities. The first is Purush (sentient pure consciousness) and the second is Prakriti (insentient Nature) and these two are not reducible to each other. This is very strong form of dualism.

The Purush is supposed to deform the Prakriti and this interaction leads to Prakriti splitting into 24 tattvas (or 24 basic elements) and that is the reason we see such diversity in nature.

Before you lose patience and leave as to what this has to do with personhood and mind, just bear with me for one more minute.

The prakriti gives rise to Mahat Tatva or Buddhi (intellect) as the first of the 24 elements. This is the subtlest aspect of a life form. Buddha or enlightened one derives from being at this stage.

From Mahat rises Ahamkar or Self and I. This is of three forms – sativk (stable; I, the observer) , rajasik ( in motion; I, the doer) and tamasik (stationary; I, the unchanging) .

From Ahamkar arises Mann (feelings) and Chitta (unconscious memories and precepts).

The ‘antahkaran‘ or the equivalent of subjective aspect of personhood i.e. what is referred to as Mind in English is made up of these 4 element - Chitta (unconscious memories, precepts etc) , Mann (feelings) , Ahamkar (sense of I or selfhood) and Buddhi (Intellect or reason).

Thus the second difference, if Psychology had evolved in India, would have been that Mind would not be predominantly cognitive and conscious in nature , but will have had unconscious aspects, as well as conscious aspects of feeling, willing and deciding.

To continue on the Samkhya evolution (from subtle towards grosser aspects of personhood), Mann gives rise to 5 Sense organs (gnyana indriyas) and 5 Action organs (karma indriyas); while chitta gives rise to 5 Mahabhut (matter forms) and 5 tanmatras (matter qualities).

Here I believe is where modern Psychology has heavily gone astray. Most scientists conceive of brain as an information processing tool and lean towards sensation, perception and believe that brain evolves basically for these purposes and action or movement is secondary; thus the focus on the 5 sense organs – those of vision, audition, somatosensation (touch), olfaction (smell) and gustatory (taste).

Psychology harps about these 5 sense organs but is silent on the agentic conception of the person/ life form whereby it is movement for which brains have evolved. A stray scientist like Daniel Wolpert or C H vanderwolf makes the case for primacy of movement and action , but that voice is easily lost in the cacophony surrounding research on vision and other senses.

Indian psychology/ philosophy/ religion puts action organs at equal footing with sense organs and implicitly imply that brains or mind is for both sensation/perception as well as for action/motion.

The five karmendreyas (action organs ) are mouth (from whose movement speech flows), hand (to handle tools) , feet (for locomotion), excretory organs (for pushing out the residues) and reproductive organs ( to inject / take inside reproductive material from a partner.

Thus, I guess the greatest contribution that Indian culture would have made to psychology would have been by making it more even handed towards both research paradigms focused on sensations and perceptions as well as research paradigms focused on action and motion.

What unique perspective does your culture/ religion offer on the sense of person-hood, the cultural nature of mind or the framing of the mind-body problem. Let us get as many insights from other cultures as possible and loosen the grip of WEIRDism on Psychology.

c: copyright: 2011 Sandeep Gautam

Mind mapping is a technique that I have been fascinated with ; I have tried my hands with some online mind mapping tools like the FreeMind and have also tried a few offline mind maps, but before reading this book was largely unaware of how to create a great and memorable mind map. My mind maps were monochromatic and mostly words.

Dilip , who has learnt Mind Mapping from none other than Tony Buzan, shows you the right way to mind map (using a central figure, use colors, use figures etc so that both sides of minds – the literal left side and the figurative right side are utilized to the hilt)  . He walks the reader through many mind mapping exercises that make you conversant with the technique.

The subject of the mind map exercises are themselves a bundle of techniques designed to help you read/ write better etc. and he provides example mind maps that delineate the techniques in an easy to remember format. He shows and not tells and leads by example.

Mind mapping is the second part of the book. the first part of the book is on overview od brain science. Here apart from repeating some obvious fluff like the fact that we use only 1% of our brain (god , when will this myth die) , he is mostly able to stick to the facts and gives an accurate assessment of how our brains function and how they have evolved. /e also deals to some length with the right brain-left brain asymmetry but does not go too much overboard; considering that one of the main advantage of mind mapping is using both the halves, we can grant him that much liberty.

The format of the book is pretty good. there is a lot of colour, a lot of figures and mind mas and a lot of white spaces where you can do mind mapping yourself.

there are two other sections in the book focusing on puzzles and brainteaser and it is healthy workout for your brain.

Overall , I have little patience with those writers or books that claim to phenomenally increase your brain power , but I am quite sympathetic to this book and recommend this to anyone who wants to learn the right way to  Mind Map.

Mind mapping is an extremely powerful technique and there is none better than dilip from which to learn it. If you’re really interested in utilising both your brains for mapping out pieces of your life or remembering difficult to master associations, then money spent on this book would be worth it.

However this book will be most useful to those who will actually  practise the exrcises and try their hands actively on mind mapping; if your interest is theoretical or you shy from exercises you will not be able to reap that much benefit from the book.

Full disclosure: I got this book for free for reviewing and am intrigued by the Mind Mapping methods.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Image by ohdearbarb via Flickr

Dear Mouse Trap readers, I have some good news to share.

I have started blogging on Psychology Today and my brand new PT blog is named The Fundamental Four .

I am quite excited to be a part of a blogging platform as esteemed as that of PT, where I will be blogging alongside Timothy D Wilson and Art Markman, to name a few,  in the cognition category.  I’m awed to be writing alongside those whose work  I admire like Robert Biswas-deiner, Sonja Luybomirsky , Chris Peterson, Chris Badcock, Scott Barry Kaufman and Michael Michalko, again, to single out a few.

I look forward to that opportunity and to have conversations with these great minds and put forth my perspective.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my focus on the ABCD model of Psychology,  the four basic evolutionary processes and the eight stage evo-devo process. These themes I will now take to The Fundamental Four, (so will request all The Mouse Trap readers to subscribe to the new blog), but the Mouse Trap will continue in its present form focusing on many other themes that are dear to my heart.

I’ll also be cross-posting some of the stuff from The Fundamental Four over here, but do not depend on that:  subscribe to The Fundamental Four too, to keep up to date with my explorations in that sphere.

With that said, I would exhort all readers to at least read my first post there and if it resonates with you, please subscribe to that blog too and carry on reading!