Cognitive stimulation in brainstorming

Smoking cessation strategies used by former menthol cigarette smokers after a menthol ban

INTRODUCTION

Menthol cigarettes were banned in Ontario, Canada on January 1st, 2017. We used concept mapping, a mixed-method approach, to describe how menthol cigarette smokers quit smoking after the Ontario menthol ban.

METHODS

Pre-ban daily and non-daily menthol cigarette smokers who reported smoking abstinence 24 months after the ban (n = 62; 53.2% women; mean age = 43.6, SD = 12.5) generated statements describing reasons and strategies for smoking cessation/reduction after the menthol ban. Participants sorted a final list of 57 statements into groups of similar content and rated statements on how true each statement was for them and multidimensional scaling analysis identified thematic clusters.

RESULTS

Six clusters were identified: Mental and Environment Changes, Direct Ban Impacts, Health Reasons, Cues to Action, Family and Friends, and Cessation Strategies. The highest rated statements (i.e., most true) suggested many participants were motivated to quit smoking before or after the ban and 30.7% of participants believed the menthol ban helped with smoking cessation. Some of the lowest rated statements included using nicotine replacement therapy products, medication (i.e., Champix), or other tobacco products suggesting these strategies were less common. Statement ratings suggested many smokers quit without using replacement products or medication, but modifying cognitions and avoiding smoking cues were common.

CONCLUSIONS

The menthol ban aided some menthol smokers to quit, while others reported the ban did not play a role in smoking cessation. These data suggest the menthol ban had direct and indirect effects on smoking reduction behavior. Campaigns supporting similar bans that target both types of effects will likely be most effective for smoking reduction.

How bad is the mere presence of a phone? A replication of Przybylski and Weinstein (2013) and an extension to creativity

A 2013 article reported two experiments suggesting that the mere presence of a cellphone (vs. a notebook) can impair the relationship quality between strangers. The purpose of the present research is twofold: (1) closely replicate this article's findings, and (2) examine whether there may be an impact of the mere presence of a phone on creativity, whether at a group- or an individual- level. In two experiments (N = 356 participants, 136 groups), we followed the original procedure in the 2013 article. In particular, groups of participants who had never seen each other before the study had a conversation in the mere presence of either a smartphone or a notebook. The participants then carried out creative tasks, in groups (Studies 1 and 2) or alone (Study 1). In both studies, we failed to replicate the original results on relationship quality. We also failed to find any effect of the mere presence of a phone on creativity. We discuss possible reasons which may have caused differences between our results and the original ones. Our main conclusion is an effect of the mere presence of a phone on relationship quality and creativity is at minimum harder to find than what was previously assumed in the literature. More generally, this research contributes to qualify the view that smartphones are harmful.

Impacts of COVID-19 on Electronic Cigarette Purchasing, Use and Related Behaviors

Background: COVID-19 has caused health impacts and disruptions globally. Electronic cigarette (ECIG) users may face additional impacts. This study examined impacts of COVID-19 on ECIG users. Methods: Concept mapping, a mixed-methods approach, was used to identify COVID-19 impacts on adult ECIG users. ECIG users (n = 93) provided statements completing a prompt: "A specific way Coronavirus/COVID-19 has affected my vaping/e-cigarette use, my vaping/e-cigarette related purchasing, or other vaping/e-cigarette related behaviors or issues is…". Participants generated 85 unique statements, sorted statements into groups of similar content and rated each statement on how true they were. Multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis identified thematic clusters. Mean cluster ratings were compared between sample subgroups. Results: Ten clusters were identified: Stocking up and Bulk Purchasing, Challenges in Obtaining ECIG Supplies, Alternative Purchasing Procedures, Increased ECIG use, Disruption of Routine and ECIG Use, Efforts to Decrease ECIG Use, Improving ECIG Skills, COVID-19 Health Concerns, Perceptions of ECIG Use and COVID-19, and COVID-19 Protection. More dependent ECIG users and dual users of ECIGs and cigarettes rated clusters higher than less dependent ECIG users and non-dual users. Conclusions: ECIG users may experience or perceive they face additional COVID-19 impacts, such as increased exposure, financial burdens, stress, and health risks.

Creativity training in organizations: a ready-to-implement concept

This article—published in the Journal Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation.—provides a ready-to-implement creativity training concept with elements of Design Thinking. Although organizations have expressed an increasing interest in creativity training to help their employees become more creative and innovative, recent research indicates effective creativity training is still lacking. The training course described in this report fills this organizational human resource development requirement for practical, effective idea generation techniques. It focuses on increasing the creativity performance during the Design Thinking idea generation phase. The training concept is designed for a one day onsite workshop with up to 40 participants.

Stimulated by Novelty? The Role of Psychological Needs and Perceived Creativity

In the current research, we aimed to address the inconsistent finding in the brainstorming literature that cognitive stimulation sometimes results from novel input, yet other times from non-novel input. We expected and found, in three experiments, that the strength and valence of this relationship are moderated by people's psychological needs for structure and autonomy. Specifically, the effect of novel input (vs. non-novel input), through perceived creativity, on cognitive stimulation was stronger for people who were either low in need for structure or high in need for autonomy. Also, when the input people received did not fit their needs, they experienced less psychological cognitive stimulation from this input (i.e., less task enjoyment and feeling more blocked) compared with when they did not receive any input. Hence, to create the ideal circumstances for people to achieve cognitive stimulation when brainstorming, input novelty should be aligned with their psychological needs.

Training of verbal creativity modulates brain activity in regions associated with language- and memory-related demands

This functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) study was designed to investigate changes in functional patterns of brain activity during creative ideation as a result of a computerized, 3-week verbal creativity training. The training was composed of various verbal divergent thinking exercises requiring participants to train approximately 20 min per day. Fifty-three participants were tested three times (psychometric tests and fMRI assessment) with an intertest-interval of 4 weeks each. Participants were randomly assigned to two different training groups, which received the training time-delayed: The first training group was trained between the first and the second test, while the second group accomplished the training between the second and the third test session. At the behavioral level, only one training group showed improvements in different facets of verbal creativity right after the training. Yet, functional patterns of brain activity during creative ideation were strikingly similar across both training groups. Whole-brain voxel-wise analyses (along with supplementary region of interest analyses) revealed that the training was associated with activity changes in well-known creativity-related brain regions such as the left inferior parietal cortex and the left middle temporal gyrus, which have been shown as being particularly sensitive to the originality facet of creativity in previous research. Taken together, this study demonstrates that continuous engagement in a specific complex cognitive task like divergent thinking is associated with reliable changes of activity patterns in relevant brain areas, suggesting more effective search, retrieval, and integration from internal memory representations as a result of the training.

Goal Instructions, Response Format, and Idea Generation in Groups

This study examined the separate and joint impact of two standard, but seemingly conflicting brainstorming rules on idea generation in interacting and nominal groups: the free-wheeeling rule, which calls for the production of dissimilar ideas, and the build-on rule, which encourages idea combination and improvement. We also tested whether the superior performance of interacting groups found in several previous studies using a brainwriting technique may have been due to the different response formats employed by groups and individuals. Interacting groups and individuals generated ideas for improving their university under one of three sets of instructions. In one condition, participants were given the build-on rule, but not the free-wheeling rule, and in another condition, the reverse was true. In the third condition, both rules were provided. When the two rules were presented separately, interacting and nominal groups responded similarly, generating ideas from more semantic categories in response to the free-wheeling rule, and generating more practical ideas in response to the build-on rule. But when those rules were presented simultaneously, interacting groups generated ideas from fewer semantic categories than did nominal groups. In addition, interacting groups produced more ideas overall than nominal groups, but only when the two used different response formats.

Stimulating creativity via the exposure to other people's ideas

As it is the case in brainstorming, each single idea a person generates to a specific problem may stimulate new ideas or solutions in others. In this fMRI study, we investigate the effects of cognitive stimulation via the exposure to other people's ideas on the originality of generated ideas. Participants are requested to generate alternative uses of conventional everyday objects subsequent to a short cognitive stimulation intervention in which they are exposed to other ideas, which were either common or highly original. In a control condition, meaningless pseudowords are shown. Results suggest that cognitive stimulation via common or moderately creative ideas was effective in improving creativity. At the neurophysiological level, temporo-parietal brain regions (primarily right-hemispheric) turned out to be particularly sensitive to cognitive stimulation, possibly indicating that cognitive stimulation via relevant memory cues results in a state of heightened focused attention to memory that facilitates efficient retrieval and recombination of existing knowledge.