While the study of psychology has offered little in the way of explaining the creative process, Koestler examines the idea that we are at our most creative when rational thought is suspended--for example, in dreams and trancelike states. All who read The Act of Creation will find it a compelling and illuminating book.

The Act of Creation

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

Nationality: American Education: Ph.D. in Sociology and Personality... Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology â€¦ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8694125-alone-together Start by marking â€œAlone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Otherâ€ as Want to Read: ... Unfortunately I am no closer to telling you why we expect more from technology & less from each other than I was before I read this book. One of the main things that bothered me about this book was that, even though I was really interested in these â€¦

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

The shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains

For the large number of people who are still suffering from the effects of trauma, despite the tremendous advances in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) made in the last 20 years, this book offers new insights into psychopathology and recovery. Part scholarly review, part case series, part history, part philosophy, and part memoirs, Dr van der Kolk uses anecdotes elegantly to illustrate evidence-based concepts in a way that patients can grasp yet experts will not find simplistic. Providers, patients, and families will inevitably find that the science and stories resonate with their own experiences. Like all great innovations, this book builds on past innovations. Seemingly unrelated neuroimaging, neurochemistry, endocrinology, animal studies, attachment, interpersonal, psychodynamic, cognitive, and behavioral concepts are woven together, creating an intricate but coherent, unifying tapestry that helps reveal how trauma can change survivors. Freud and Pavlov are referenced alongside films, novels, Galen, and Yogi Berra. Contradictions that have long mystified observers—simultaneously not wanting but needing to talk about trauma, coming alive in the present only when recounting the past, repetition compulsions, maintaining connections with abusers, recklessness resulting in calmness, finding pain in pleasure and pleasure in pain, avoiding treatment for fear recovery will result in forgetting dead comrades, reacting to minor irritations as if life-threatening yet having little apparent reaction to further assaults— suddenly become clearer. Just as he explains how trauma can disturb circuits, hormones, sensorimotor systems, and “how we think and what we think about,” van der Kolk describes how these can be recalibrated. He defines 3 avenues for recovery: “top down” through the medial prefrontal cortex (ie, talking, processing, reconnecting), medicine changing the way the brain organizes and reacts to stimuli, and “bottom up” through the “reptilian brain” (ie, the body having experiences that contradict the physical and emotional impacts of trauma). Not everyone will respond to the same treatments, and most will require a combination to recover. He laments how clinicians often spend more time managing problem behaviors than trying to understand their causes. For some, medications can “deflect attention from dealing with underlying issues” and from relationships, and only talking about trauma can sometimes be counterproductive due to reinforcing a focus on the past instead of the present, or is thwarted by triggering dissociation (his neuroimaging studies found that the brain’s speech centers deactivate in some when trying to recall trauma, making it nearly impossible for this subset of traumatized patients to talk about the trauma). The book pays particular attention to those for whom typical treatments may not be effective: those who freeze, dissociate, have personality disorders, suffer physical collapse, and who have persistent heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations as “the body continues to defend against a threat that belongs in the past.” For them, “the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present.” In addition to typical Marcia L. Verduin, MD, Book Editor

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

WELCOME TO THE SECOND INSTALLMENT of "Mindful Voice," a new column dedicated to the interface between voice pedagogy and cognitive science. In the first installment, "The Missing Brain," I posited the field of cognitive science as a natural arena for the rapprochement between what I have labeled the "eitheror proposition" of voice science versus the practical experience of singers as the basis of voice pedagogy.1 The aversion to science-based teaching evinced by some voice teachers has been ascribed to fear, defensiveness, or arrogance, but a simpler and, I suspect, more prevalent cause is the inference that scientific knowledge is more highly valued than artistic knowledge gleaned from experience. This inference is drawn from the Western cultural milieu in which we live and work, which en masse values certain types of intelligence more highly than others. This premise formed the foundation of Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner's revolutionary Theory of Multiple Intelligences, first published as Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.2 A quarter of a century later, MI Theory has so completely entered the culture that it has taken on a life of its own, and even outstripped its creator in name recognition. The dissemination of MI Theory at every level of education has resulted in significant challenges to a century's worth of fundamental educational principles and practices. Despite its popularity, MI Theory has been roundly criticized in academic psychology circles.3 Much of the criticism is centered on Gardner's insistence on the word "intelligence" (as opposed to "ability" or "talent"), and his repudiation of IQ tests as the only reliable way to measure intelligence. It is outside the scope of this column to entertain a complete review of MI Theory or even to defend it, but the importance of the theory as a paradigm shift in the history of education in general and arts education in particular must be acknowledged. Even though MI Theory corroborated what most educators learned through experience (i.e., that children learn differently from one another, and that some children who do poorly in math or language may demonstrate brilliant abilities in other domains), the fact that a Harvard psychologist gave credence to this simple presumption engendered a grassroots movement among teachers, parents, and learners which continues to this day. Basic assumptions that had been unquestioned for over a century (e.g., intelligence as a dual-domain construct, or even the very existence of talent) have been upturned and examined anew in light of recent research. Gardner's MI Theory was certainly not the sole harbinger of these changes; the so-called "cognitive revolution" was well under way by the time Gardner produced Frames of Mind. But Gardner was able to capture the unease felt by the baby boom generation as they watched their own children march through the same regimented behaviorist school systems and psychometric testing that had been wrought upon them. What academics have criticized as a lack of scientific rigor in MI Theory, the larger populace has evidently found approachable and relevant, if sales of Gardner's twenty-plus books on MI Theory and creative minds are any indication. Regarding arts and education, Gardner recounted the curious dearth of literature that obtained at the time he joined "Project Zero," a research group founded at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1967 and still dedicated to the study and improvement of education in the arts. The founders believed that arts learning should be studied as a serious cognitive activity, but at the time of the project's founding, "zero" had been established about the topic.4 I am often asked how I first got the idea of the theory of multiple intelligences . . . As a young person, I was a serious pianist and enthusiastically involved with other arts as well. When I began to study developmental and cognitive psychology, I was struck by the virtual absence of any mention of the arts. …

Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

THE PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT OF "Mindful Voice," "Creativity in Crisis?," concluded with a look at some of the cognitive effects of digital technology, and what that technology's overuse may be wreaking upon human creativity. As I noted in that column, . . . creativity . . . does need mental space. And space implies time. The experts are still debating whether or not digital technology destroys concentration, but no one who uses it can dispute the fact that it gobbles up big chunks of our time.1 According to technology reporter Matt Richtel, in one recent year (2008), the average person consumed three times as much information each day as he/she did in 1960.2 This is almost entirely due to the limitless amount of information that is now so easily available via the Internet on personal computers and Smartphones. The question is, what is this information overload doing to our brains? That is exactly the question that author Nicholas Carr set out to investigate in his book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. Implicit in Carr's title is one of his central conclusions: when information exceeds the brain's "cognitive load" (the limit of our short-term memory), we lose our ability to think deeply and draw connections between new information and things we already know. Instead of diving deep, we "zip along the surface like guy[s] on Jet Ski[s]."3 In other words, the way we read on the web has not just changed the way we read; it has changed the way we think. "The technology is rewiring our brains," said Nora Volker, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and one of the world's leading brain scientists. She and other researchers compare the lure of digital stimulation less to that of drugs and alcohol than to food and sex, which are essential but counterproductive in excess.4 This and future installments of "Mindful Voice" are a closer examination of cognitive function in the Digital Age, both for so-called "Digital Natives" (those who were born into the Digital Age) and "Digital Immigrants" (those who have migrated to the Digital Age). If you are neither native nor immigrant, life without digital media is still a viable choice, though probably not for long; as we shall see, there is growing concern among experts that technology has the potential to be addictive, and the new wave of self-help books on the market advise "unplugging" as the first line of defense. However, to choose this path is to miss out on the wonders of digital media, which has the potential to enrich as well as entrap. Teachers who maintain a personal aversion to technology should not take a pass on this subject due to their personal views. This column is predicated upon the maxim that a shift in emphasis must occur in light of the Cognitive Revolution, from how well teachers teach, to how well students learn; therefore, understanding the cognitive implications of technology is essential for teaching the new tribe of digital natives. And when it comes to the Digital Revolution, all perspectives are needed because we are, in the words of Sherry Turkle, psychologist and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Initiative on Technology and Self, still in "the early days." Because we grew up with the Net, we assume that the Net is grown up. We tend to see what we have now as the technology in its maturity. This is a dangerous habit of thought. We need to remember that we are in very early days.5 DIGITAL HEAVEN: TAKING THE MEASURE The previous two decades have ushered in an onslaught of new technology, and when compared with other significant innovations that deeply changed human culture (the printing press, the clock, the microscope, the automobile), the magnitude of the effect of the digital revolution is unprecedented in human history. On the upside, human endeavors as disparate as medicine, marketing, and music all have been enhanced by the ability of their practitioners to harness the riches of digital media. …

/pdf/digital-natives-and-digital-immigrants-teaching-and-learning-4hdjc7p9oy.pdf

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants: Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age

HARDLY HAD THE CLOSING STRAINS of "Auld lang syne" echoed off the Wasatch range at the 51st national NATS conference in Salt Lake City last July, than this urgent cover story appeared in Newsweek magazine: The Creativity Crisis: For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong-and how we can fix it.1 The cover itself was comprised of an American flag made of broken red, white, and blue crayons. These iconic symbols of childhood signaled the real focus population of the article, while the title, "Creativity in America," promised to reveal "the science of innovation" and "how to re-ignite our imaginations."2 Alas, the article was less about creativity itself and more about testing for creativity (via the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking), and a perceived lack of it among children. As a rule, I read all screeds decrying kids these days with a skeptical eye, but this caught my attention: With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect-each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.3 According to the authors, a Flynn effect could also be seen regarding creativity until 1990, when a precipitous drop in the creativity quotient (CQ) was noted. According to a leading researcher in the field, "It is the scores of younger children in America-from kindergarten through sixth grade-for whom the decline is most serious."4 Why the decline? The usual guilty culprits were trotted out: too much TV, too many videogames, and the current assessment culture in American education ("teaching to the test"). Predictable, too, was that Bronson and Merryman's deliberately provocative article should spark critics, who simultaneously touted the creative benefits of digital technology, while ridiculing the very idea that an attribute as ethereal as creativity could actually be tested; after all, the article was about the decline in creativity scores, not creativity itself. The authors' suggestion that the "crisis" can be averted by teaching creativity in the classroom drew this outright guffaw: What's the [authors'] recommendation for boosting America's impending underperformance? Why, put creativity classes in school curricula! . . . The same public schools producing students who underperform on standardized tests in math, science, writing and reading comprehension should be performing CPR-Creative Process Recovery-on America's schoolchildren? That doesn't even rise to the level of nonsense. . . . Please. America will truly have a "creativity crisis" when "creativity" becomes a required high school course.5 Considering how much attention this article has garnered, both for the authors and for the subject itself, "creativity" seems a subject worth considering for those of us who teach anything, but most especially for those of us engaged in the performing arts, an endeavor historically yoked to "creativity." CREATIVITY: AN EXPLOSIVE FIELD It is important to begin by considering creativity as a bona fide field of scientific research. I myself have often dismissed "creativity" as a topic, simply because it seems all too familiar. Whether as a performing artist or village dweller, through direct engagement or exposure to the ubiquitous craft fairs and street festivals that attend the manufactured quaintness of the historic town in which I live, I feel fairly steeped in creativity. My earlier stint as the parent of two small children was a creative enterprise in itself, and that's not even counting the invention of car games, sewing of Halloween costumes, and hot-gluing of science fair projects on the dining room table. For many, the word "creativity" conjures up something homey and familiar, like doing crafts on a rainy afternoon. So it may be enlightening to learn that the serious study of creativity as a subject was itself a creative act, a linking of creativity with research "after centuries of being apart. …

https://scholar.dickinson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1072&context=faculty_publications

Creativity in Crisis

IN THE LAST INSTALLMENT of "Mindful Voice," Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner's revolutionary Theory of Multiple Intelligences was examined as a paradigm shift in the history of education. In the years since the publication of Gardner's groundbreaking book Frames of Mind in 1983, the cognitive revolution continues to unfold at a rapid pace, and offers new insights about music in general and the art of singing in particular. Cognitive scientists have long acknowledged the mystery of music, chiefly by noting its utter "uselessness" in the most basic biological sense, that is, the human striving for survival and reproduction. Music is an enigma . . . What benefit could there be to diverting time and energy to the making of plinking noises, or to feeling sad when no one has died? . . . As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless.1 Two theories posited among evolutionary psychologists (those who study the evolution of the human brain) run counter to this argument. One theory is that music may have functioned as a type of mating call among early humans;2 the other is that the voice of the mother crooning her baby to sleep, which morphed into the lullaby, in a small yet significant way may have helped ensure the survival of the species.3 MUSICAL GIFTEDNESS Developmental psychologists agree that one of the earliest talents to emerge in the developing child is musical. Gardner noted that, except among children whose parents create musical opportunities for them via private lessons, for most children "there is little further musical development after the school years begin."4 This may seem merely regrettable, but when contrasted with the development of language, should be deplored by all who are concerned with human development. [W]hereas, in the case of language, there is considerable emphasis in the school on further linguistic attainments, music occupies a relatively low niche in our culture, and so musical illiteracy is acceptable.5 Those who believe that differences in early opportunities and training are the real determinants of musical excellence may find accord with the challenge to the notion of talent itself that was put forth by the cognitive research team of Michael Howe, though possibly not their blunt conclusion: "Innate talents are, we think, a fiction, not a fact."6 I believe Gardner offers a more credible solution to the nature-vs.-nurture dichotomy. I reject the "nature-nurture" dichotomy, as do most other biologically informed scientists. Instead, I stress the constant and dynamic interaction, from the moment of conception, between genetic and environmental factors.7 For the child of exceptional musical talent, the move from an intuitive, "gifted" musical ability to more formal requirements, like reading notation, is often fraught with resistance and even crisis. Because innate musical abilities are situated in the right hemisphere of the brain, while logical/mathematical reasoning is situated in the left, the ability to cross back and forth over the corpus callosum (the major neural connection area between the left and right hemispheres of the brain) is essential to mastering Western classical music. This may help explain why some musically gifted people may resist formal musical training; if they are naturally inclined to right brain activity, this crossing over entails dedicated learning, which by its very nature, unmasks and destabilizes intuitive talents. For precociously talented children and adults alike, this crisis may devastate the natural desire to make music. Interestingly, the more musical training a person has, the more he tends to access left brain function when processing musical information.8 Gardner stated at the time Frames of Mind was published that it was not clear why this is so; a hypothesis at that time suggested that people with a natural musical intelligence would also tend to evince heightened logical/mathematical and spatial intelligences, and vice versa. …

Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences: Musical Intelligence

"INNATE TALENTS ARE, we think, a fiction, not a fact."1 Psychologists Michael Howe, Jane Davidson, and John Sloboda threw down the gauntlet with this bold statement that summarized the gist of their provocative target article, "Innate Talents: Reality or Myth?," published in 1998. The authors' opening salvo was hardly controversial. It is widely believed that the likelihood of becoming exceptionally competent in certain fields depends on the presence or absence of inborn attributes variously labeled "talents" or "gifts" or, less often, "natural aptitudes."2 But they then proceeded to completely debunk the notion they branded "the talent account," concluding that: Even people who are not believed to have any special talent can, purely as a result of training, reach levels of achievement previously thought to be attainable only by innately gifted individuals.3 They further defended their takedown of the talent account by citing its importance in educational and policy decisions, and the observation that belief in this account is especially ubiquitous among those who instruct, pursue, and support musical training: teachers, students, and parents. Within the accelerated timeline of cognitive science, 1998 is in the far distant past, yet the strong contemporaneous responses provoked by the Howe et al. title question still reverberate. In the interim, the popular press has seized on both the talent account and what it really takes to achieve success, particularly in professional sports and marketing. Books like Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers codified the so-called "10,000 Hour Practice Rule,"4 and the title of Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code foreshadowed his thesis: that the "code" can be cracked (with a little help from recent research in cognitive science).5 The talent account demands reconsideration, not just by academic psychologists or for-profit motivational speakers, but more urgently by practitioners who actually work with those deemed to possess (or not to possess) that most intangible of attributes, talent. THE CRITICS SPEAK: PSYCHOLOGISTS "Innate Talents: Reality or Myth?" roused a variety of strong responses from among reigning luminaries in cognitive science at the time of its publication. August cognitive psychologist Robert J. Sternberg weighed in with a response whose snarky title presaged his opinion. In "If The Key's Not There, The Light Won't Help," Sternberg declared "deliberate practice" as patently obvious "for proficient levels of competence," and charged Howe and company with citing studies that were "almost all irrelevant to the issue."6 (Indeed, one study proffered the ability of seasoned cocktail waitresses to "regularly remember as many as 20 drink orders at a time" as proof that it is training that accounts for success, and not talent.)7 Another researcher allowed that even though the Howe et al. article demonstrated "little evidence for the talent account," he still wasn't buying "training and early experience" as the only factors that can account for individual achievement.8 This author's plaintive plea, "Might we adopt the learning-related account instead of the talent account?," and his subsequent suggestion that there are "problematic social implications" in stressing hard work alone, "especially in cultures in which effort is emphasized," revealed his own biases: the late Giyoo Hatano was a professor of cognitive science at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan, a country that suffers one of the world's highest suicide rates among industrialized nations.9 The causes for suicide are varied and complex, but most experts attribute Japans epidemic suicide problem to the toxic result of personal failure within a culture that values extreme effort. Several respondents stressed the importance of industriousness, basically agreeing with the authors' contention that talent is a myth, in part because "emphasis on innate talent as the basis for outstanding achievement underestimates the importance of hard work. …

https://scholar.dickinson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=faculty_publications

Innate Talent: Myth or Reality?

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