Remotely Close Associations: Openness to Experience and Semantic Memory Structure

Christensen, Alexander P.; Kenett, Yoed N.; Cotter, Katherine N.; Beaty, Roger E.; Silvia, Paul J.

doi:10.1002/per.2157

Cited by 87 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 139 publications

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“…Openness to experience appears to be the Big Five personality trait most closely linked to cognitive ability in general (Ackerman & Heggestad, ; DeYoung, Peterson, & Higgins, ). It has also been found to relate to more flexible performance on the WCST (Murdock, Oddi, & Bridgett, ) and a verbal fluency task (Christensen, Kenett, Cotter, Beaty, & Silvia, ) as well as to higher scores on the CFI (Odacı & Cikrikci, ). However, the moderate size of reported correlations between openness and cognitive flexibility ( r = .19, Murdock et al, , to r = .36, Odacı & Cikrikci, ) and the lack of generalization to other measures of cognitive flexibility (e.g.…”

Section: Cognitive Flexibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Flexibility and Pro–Environmental Behaviour: A Multimethod Approach

Lange

Dewitte

2019

Eur J Pers

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While cognitive flexibility has been hypothesized to relate to adaptive, long‐term‐oriented behaviour, empirical support for such a relationship is scarce. In the present article, we examine the role of cognitive flexibility as a correlate of long‐term‐oriented behaviour in the domain of environmental conservation. In a first study (N = 143), we explored potential associations between multiple self‐report scales and performance‐based measures of cognitive flexibility and pro‐environmental behaviour. Based on its results, we conducted a pre‐registered confirmatory study (N = 264) focusing on the most promising correlations found in our exploratory study. This study generated conclusive support for a positive medium‐sized correlation between cognitive flexibility and pro‐environmental behaviour. Exploratory hierarchical regression analyses further revealed that cognitive flexibility accounted for a small portion of variance in pro‐environmental behaviour above and beyond the Big Five. While appearing robust on the level of self‐reports, the relationship between cognitive flexibility and pro‐environmental behaviour did not reliably extend to the level of performance tasks, possibly because of their relatively specific scope. These results illustrate the contribution of cognitive flexibility to understanding individual differences in long‐term‐oriented, pro‐environmental behaviour. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology

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Section: Cognitive Flexibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Flexibility and Pro–Environmental Behaviour: A Multimethod Approach

Lange

Dewitte

2019

Eur J Pers

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“…Network science is based on mathematical graph theory and allows quantification of complex systems as networks. The application of network science to study cognitive phenomena is steadily developing, providing quantitative means to study the structure and dynamics of cognitive systems [11] and the interplay between cognition and language in terms of modelling word learning [12], picture naming [13], semantic relatedness [14], stance detection [15], and personality traits [16]. Recently, computational methods to study knowledge and memory structure in creativity are paving the way to uniquely examine their role in the creative process [17][18][19][20] and examine the associative theory of creativity [5,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Viability in Multiplex Lexical Networks and Machine Learning Characterizes Human Creativity

Stella¹,

Kenett

2019

BDCC

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Previous studies have shown how individual differences in creativity relate to differences in the structure of semantic memory. However, the latter is only one aspect of the whole mental lexicon, a repository of conceptual knowledge that is considered to simultaneously include multiple types of conceptual similarities. In the current study, we apply a multiplex network approach to compute a representation of the mental lexicon combining semantics and phonology and examine how it relates to individual differences in creativity. This multiplex combination of 150,000 phonological and semantic associations identifies a core of words in the mental lexicon known as viable cluster, a kernel containing simpler to parse, more general, concrete words acquired early during language learning. We focus on low (N = 47) and high (N = 47) creative individuals’ performance in generating animal names during a semantic fluency task. We model this performance as the outcome of a mental navigation on the multiplex lexical network, going within, outside, and in-between the viable cluster. We find that low and high creative individuals differ substantially in their access to the viable cluster during the semantic fluency task. Higher creative individuals tend to access the viable cluster less frequently, with a lower uncertainty/entropy, reaching out to more peripheral words and covering longer multiplex network distances between concepts in comparison to lower creative individuals. We use these differences for constructing a machine learning classifier of creativity levels, which leads to an accuracy of 65 . 0 ± 0 . 9 % and an area under the curve of 68 . 0 ± 0 . 8 % , which are both higher than the random expectation of 50%. These results highlight the potential relevance of combining psycholinguistic measures with multiplex network models of the mental lexicon for modelling mental navigation and, consequently, classifying people automatically according to their creativity levels.

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“…A forma mentis network consists of words as nodes, each with a valence attribute, and free associations as links. Rather than being based on automatic natural language processing, these networks directly access the mental lexicon of human participants, addressing the orthogonal influences of semantic knowledge and emotional affect that drive the processing of information Vitevitch, 2008;Vitevitch et al, 2018) and its consequent reactions (Adelman & Estes, 2013;Christensen et al, 2018;Gaillard et al, 2006;Zurn & Bassett, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that the associative structure of the mental lexicon influences language processes such as word learning (Hills & Siew, 2018;Stella, 2019;Stella, Beckage, & Brede, 2017) and processing (De Deyne, Navarro, & Storms, 2013;De Deyne, Navarro, Perfors, Brysbaert, & Storms, 2018;Kenett, Levi, Anaki, & Faust, 2017;Steyvers & Tenenbaum, 2005). This strong link between mental lexicon structure and language usage promoted the use of network models for a variety of processes such as the discovery of writing styles from word co-occurrences in texts (Amancio, 2015) or predicting the creativity of individuals (Kenett, Anaki, & Faust, 2014;Kenett et al, 2018), their curiosity (Zurn & Bassett, 2018), their openness to new experience (Christensen, Kenett, Cotter, Beaty, & Silvia, 2018), their expertise in a given domain (Siew, 2018;Valenzuela Castellanos, Pérez Villalobos, Bustos, & Salcedo Lagos, 2018) and their perceived anxiety toward a topic (Siew, McCartney, & FORMA MENTIS NETWORKS IN STEM 6 Vitevitch, 2019). Forma mentis networks rely on the framework of cognitive network science to represent the associative and emotional structure of concepts in the mental lexicon.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forma mentis networks quantify crucial differences in STEM perception between students and experts

Stella¹,

Nigris²,

Alorić³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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In order to investigate the stances of high school students and researchers toward STEM subjects, we introduce the methodology of forma mentis networks -- free association networks enriched with affective attributes that represent how people conceptually perceive and structure their stance toward a given topic. In this paper, we constructed separate forma mentis networks for ($N_s=159$) Italian high school students and ($N_r=59$) interdisciplinary professionals and researchers in order to investigate how these groups differed in their mental associations and emotional perceptions of STEM subjects. At the global scale, STEM concepts occupied central positions in students' forma mentis network, suggesting that students understood the general importance of such topics in science. At a microscopic scale, although the concept of "science'' was positively perceived in both the students' and professionals' forma mentis networks, students not only perceived STEM concepts such as "physics'' and "mathematics'' as negative but also associated them with other negative STEM-related concepts. This aura of negative emotional associations towards quantitative STEM subjects was absent in professionals. Cross-validation with external datasets suggested that the negative emotional aura in the forma mentis network of students might be attributed to science anxiety. Further consideration of the semantic associates of maths and physics indicated that their negative aura may originate from a negative, dry perception of the technical methodology and quantitative tools frequently taught in these subjects (e.g., "function'', "integral'').Whereas students associated mathematics and physics with quantitative tools, professionals linked the same disciplines to more general and creative aspects of science and displayed a positive stance towards these concepts. Overall, our results underline the crucial importance of emphasising nontechnical and applied aspects in the teaching of quantitative disciplines, highlighting the necessity of establishing interdisciplinary links between science, the complexity of the real-world and creativity in order to enhance the impact of STEM education and outreach activities.

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Remotely Close Associations: Openness to Experience and Semantic Memory Structure

Cited by 87 publications

References 139 publications

Cognitive Flexibility and Pro–Environmental Behaviour: A Multimethod Approach

Cognitive Flexibility and Pro–Environmental Behaviour: A Multimethod Approach

Viability in Multiplex Lexical Networks and Machine Learning Characterizes Human Creativity

Forma mentis networks quantify crucial differences in STEM perception between students and experts

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