Older adults with lower education are at greater risk for dementia. It is unclear which brain changes lead to these outcomes. Longitudinal imaging-based measures of brain structure and function were examined in adult individuals (baseline age, 45–86 years; two to five visits per participant over 1–9 years). College degree completion differentiates individual-based and neighborhood-based measures of socioeconomic status and disadvantage. Older adults (~65 years and over) without a college degree exhibit a pattern of declining large-scale functional brain network organization (resting-state system segregation) that is less evident in their college-educated peers. Declining brain system segregation predicts impending changes in dementia severity, measured up to 10 years past the last scan date. The prognostic value of brain network change is independent of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-related genetic risk (APOE status), the presence of AD-associated pathology (cerebrospinal fluid phosphorylated tau, cortical amyloid) and cortical thinning. These results demonstrate that the trajectory of an individual’s brain network organization varies in relation to their educational attainment and, more broadly, is a unique indicator of individual brain health during older age.

To expand the tools available to arts researchers in psychology, we present the Open Gallery for Arts Research (OGAR), a free, open-source tool for studying visitor behavior within an online gallery environment. OGAR is highly extensible, allowing researchers to modify the environment to test different hypotheses, and it affords assessing a wide range of outcome variables. After describing the tool and its development, we present a proof-of-concept study that evaluates OGAR’s usability and performance and illustrates some ways that it can be used to study the psychology of virtual visits. With a sample of 44 adults from an online participant panel who freely explored OGAR, we observed that OGAR had good usability based on high scores on the System Usability Scale and rare instances of self-reported nausea, among other usability markers. Furthermore, using position and viewing data provided by OGAR, we found that participants navigated the gallery and interacted with the artwork in predictable and coherent ways that resembled visitor behavior in real-world art museums. OGAR appears to be a promising tool for researchers and art professionals interested in how people navigate and experience virtual and real art spaces.

Research on everyday creativity-the "little c" creative activities people do in their everyday lives-commonly uses self-report scales to assess people's engagement in different activities. The present research presents a detailed psychometric analysis of the Biographical Inventory of Creative Behaviors (BICB), a 34-item yes/no checklist of common creative activities that has become one of the most popular self-report measures of everyday creative behaviors. Based on a sample of 2,359 adults, the reliability, dimensionality, item fit, item difficulty, and test information were evaluated from a Rasch model perspective. Overall, the BICB shows good evidence for score reliability and appears essentially unidimensional; a small cluster of misfitting and locally dependent items were flagged for impairing unidimensionality. The items' difficulty level was generally moderate and suitable for the scale's intended populations and purposes. Differential item functioning (DIF) based on gender and age, estimated via Rasch tree recursive partitioning methods, found notable gender-based DIF (generally reflecting culturally gendered qualities of some creative activities) but little age-based DIF. Taken together, the BICB has many psychometric strengths. Some opportunities for future scale refinement are discussed.

Throughout history, visual art has helped people feel connected to each other, experience a deep sense of belonging to their communities, and enhance their own well-being. In recent years, many museums have increased their digital presence to engage with the public in new ways, including curating unique virtual experiences. The present research examines the well-being effects of a virtual art gallery visit and the role of immersion in facilitating these well-being effects. Participants were 155 adults from the United States recruited via Prolific. Participants completed a 15-minute virtual gallery experience and were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) To spend 5 minutes selecting one work and then spend 10 minutes engaging in mindful looking; (2) To spend 5 minutes selecting one work and then spend 10 minutes engaging in curious looking; or (3) To spend 15 minutes viewing the art however they wished. Participants completed measures of well-being and emotional state before and after their gallery experience. Although the three conditions did not differ in their levels of immersion or in their well-being and emotional experiences, participants did experience a range of well-being increases following their virtual art experience. Further, the level of immersion participants reported during the visit, regardless of condition, predicted post-visit well-being and emotional state. This suggests that virtual art engagement, like in-person art engagement, may hold well-being benefits for those who engage in these experiences.

To expand the tools available to arts researchers in psychology, we present the Open Gallery for Arts Research (OGAR), a free, open-source tool for studying visitor behavior within an online gallery environment. OGAR is highly extensible, allowing researchers to modify the environment to test different hypotheses, and it affords assessing a wide range of outcome variables. After describing the tool and its development, we present a proof-of-concept study that evaluates OGAR’s usability and performance and illustrates some ways that it can be used to study the psychology of virtual visits. With a sample of 44 adults from an online participant panel who freely explored OGAR, we observed that OGAR had good usability based on high scores on the System Usability Scale and rare instances of self-reported nausea, among other usability markers. Furthermore, using position and viewing data provided by OGAR, we found that participants navigated the gallery and interacted with the artwork in predictable and coherent ways that resembled visitor behavior in real-world art museums. OGAR appears to be a useful tool for researchers and art professionals interested in how people navigate and experience virtual and real art spaces.