FLUENCY AS A PERVASIVE ELEMENT IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CREATIVITY1

It was suggested that fluency, defined as number of responses, may misleadingly influence both high Intercorrelations sometimes reported among measures of creativity and low correlations sometimes reported between measures of creativity and intelligence. Subjects were 93 Saturday art school students between the ages of 9 and 15 years. Intercorrelations among five “creativity” scores derived from a slightly modified version of Torrance's Figure Completion Test and between these scores and Henmon-Nelson Intelligence were compared using both raw creativity scores and creativity scores corrected for the effect of fluency. Uncorrected creativity scores intercorrelated high among themselves (mean r= .45) and low with intelligence (mean r= .09), while corrected creativity scores showed low intercorrelations among themselves (mean r= .08) and with intelligence (mean r= .13). These findings are interpreted as confirming the influence of fluency upon high intercorrelations among so-called measures of creativity and as failing to support the suggestion that fluency may also influence low correlations among creativity and intelligence measures.     

Systematic Desensitization as an Instructional Module

This article reports on the development and evaluation of an instructional module for teaching systematic desensitization. As the module makes use of widely available published materials, it requires little classroom time or work for the instructor. Furthermore, the module gives the student an evaluated quasiclinical experience with desensitization. Physiological and self-report data reflecting changes in client fear levels were gathered in an attempt to determine whether the instructional module is effective.     

IMPLICATIONS OF PRESTEL AND OTHER TV PRINT SOURCES

Since Prestel and other televised print sources signal a revolution in the presentation of reading material to the public, it is necessary to ensure that the viewers are able to read the material. Are they ready and able to adapt their reading skills to read televised texts? Differences between page print and television print are discussed, with respect to form and style, and recommendations are made about the responsibility of the educational establishment towards the preparation of potential viewers.     

Acquisition and extinction of differential responses to signals paired with shock or shock omission in goldfish: Evidence for truly discriminated avoidance learning

Goldfish trained to discriminate between signals paired with shock (S?) and signals paired with shock omission (S+) with a linear presentation procedure, originally learned (OL) to control the signal state of a shuttle box and showed a decided preference for the S+ signal. In Experiment 1, following OL, groups had one OL signal replaced (S+ or S?), both signals replaced (S+ and S?), or the OL signals reversed (S+ and S? reversed) and were then tested in a transfer training procedure. In transfer, groups with one signal replaced maintained discriminated performance at OL levels; the S+ replaced group was slightly superior to the S? replaced group on the first day of transfer. With both OL signals replaced, discrimination dropped to chance performance levels, whereas, with OL signal shock pairing reversed, discrimination performance dropped below chance levels. In Experiment 2, following OL, extinction procedures consisted of turning off the shocker (0% shock) or of shocking 100% or a random 25% of the trials. A fourth extinction procedure (R,) retained the trial start response-dependent shock-omission contingency, but shock differentiating the S+ and S? signals was eliminated entirely. Extinction of the S+/S? discrimination was measured both during extinction training per se and with reversal retraining of the S+/S? discrimination later. Groups for which the OL S+ was paired with shock during extinction extinguished on both measures, but groups for which the OL S? was paired with shock omission did not extinguish, especially as shown by the reversal test procedure. Theoretical implications and the implications for several conditioning procedures are discussed.