Linked Life Data

11737792

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/11737792

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
6
pubmed:dateCreated
2001-12-13
pubmed:abstractText
In the present study we introduce a novel task for the quantitative assessment of both originality and speed of individual associations. This 'BAG' (Bridge-the-Associative-Gap) task was used to investigate the relationships between creativity and paranormal belief. Twelve strong 'believers' and 12 strong 'skeptics' in paranormal phenomena were selected from a large student population (n > 350). Subjects were asked to produce single-word associations to word pairs. In 40 trials the two stimulus words were semantically indirectly related and in 40 other trials the words were semantically unrelated. Separately for these two stimulus types, response commonalities and association latencies were calculated. The main finding was that for unrelated stimuli, believers produced associations that were more original (had a lower frequency of occurrence in the group as a whole) than those of the skeptics. For the interpretation of the result we propose a model of association behavior that captures both 'positive' psychological aspects (i.e., verbal creativity) and 'negative' aspects (susceptibility to unfounded inferences), and outline its relevance for psychiatry. This model suggests that believers adopt a looser response criterion than skeptics when confronted with 'semantic noise'. Such a signal detection view of the presence/absence of judgments for loose semantic relations may help to elucidate the commonalities between creative thinking, paranormal belief and delusional ideation.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Dec
pubmed:issn
1323-1316
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
55
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
595-603
pubmed:dateRevised
2008-11-21
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2001
pubmed:articleTitle
Associative processing and paranormal belief.
pubmed:affiliation
The KEY Institute for Brain-Mind Research, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Zurich, Switzerland. lgianotti@key.unizh.ch
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't