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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Weird behavior, creativity linked |
| 2005-09-18 |
| By Melanie Moran/Vanderbilt University and World Science staff People called âweirdâ by their peers may have a leg up in life, at least in one respect. Researchers have found that a quirky or socially awkward approach to life, often considered a hindrance, may be a key to becoming a great artist, composer or inventor. The researchers studied people with âschizotypalâ personalitiesâwho act oddly, but arenât mentally illâand found theyâre more creative than either normal or fully schizophrenic people. To access their creativity, these people rely heavily on the right sides of their brains. The work, by psychologists Brad Folley and Sohee Park of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., was published online last week by the journal Schizophrenia Research. Psychologists believe a number of creative luminaries had schizotypal personalities, including Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Emily Dickinson and Isaac Newton. âThe idea that schizotypes have enhanced creativity has been out there for a long time,â but no one has studied how their brains work, Folley said. He and Park conducted two tests to compare the creative thinking processes of schizotypes, schizophrenics and ânormalâ people. In the first test, participants were shown pictures of various household objects and asked to make up new functions for them. Schizotypes were found to be most creative in suggesting new uses. Schizophrenics and average subjects performed similarly to one another. Schizophrenia has also often been linked to creativity, but many schizophrenics have disorganized thoughts âalmost to the point where they canât really be creative because they cannot get all of their thoughts coherent enough to do that,â Folley said. âSchizotypes, on the other hand, are free from the severe, debilitating symptoms surrounding schizophrenia and also have an enhanced creative ability.â In the second test, the three groups again were asked to identify new uses for everyday objects, as well as to perform a non-creative task, for comparison. During all tasks, their brain activity was monitored using a brain scanning technique called near-infrared optical spectroscopy. The results showed all groups used both sides of the brain for creative tasks. But activation of the right sides of the schizotype brains was dramatically greater than that of the schizophrenic and average subjects. âIn the scientific community, the popular idea that creativity exists in the right side of the brain is thought to be ridiculous,â since both halves of the brain are needed to make new associations and perform other creative tasks, Folley said. But he found something slightly different. âAll three groups, schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal controls, did use both hemispheres when performing creative tasks. But the brain scans of the schizotypes showed a hugely increased activation of the right hemisphere compared to the schizophrenics and the normal controls.â The researchers said the results suggest schizotypes and other psychoses-prone populations draw on the left and right sides of their brains differently than the average population. This use of the brain for a variety of tasks may be related to enhanced creativity. Folley cited work by Swiss neuroscientist Peter Brugger, who found that the left side of the brain controls everyday associations, such as recognizing the car key on your keychain, and verbal abilities; whereas the right side controls new associations, such as finding a new use for a object or navigating a new place. Brugger speculated that schizotypes should make new associations faster because they are better at accessing both sides of the brain â a prediction verified in a subsequent study, Folley said. The theory, Folley added, can also explain research showing that a disproportional number of schizotypes and schizophrenics are neither right- nor left-handed. They instead use both hands for a variety of tasks, suggesting that they recruit both sides of their brains for an array of tasks, more than the average person. âThe lack of specialization for certain tasks in brain hemispheres [halves] could be seen as a liability, but the increased communication between the hemispheres actually could provide added creativity,â Folley said. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #17 SRI is still around. Part of McGraw-Hill now. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2005-09-18 20:42 |
| #16 PD: I wonder whatever happened to SRI. I still remember a lot of those modules. "I'm on red." "That's nothing. I'm on blue-green." I think the problem was that a lot of the teachers were just using them to sham, instead of to teach. Hex! I dont't think that there was a processor or a bus wider than 8 bits when you were in school. ;-) OP: I see a movie plot in there somewhere! |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2005-09-18 19:36 |
| #15 I went to school from 1952 through 1964 in a "rural" Louisiana school that, until the year after we graduated, included children of all 12 grades (no kindergarten). The school principal believed in "segregating" groups by their performance, although as far as I know, no one was ever prevented from asking for a class they wanted to take, regardless of past performance. We had some outstanding teachers, and a bunch of klutzes. We also had some teachers that had been "dismissed" from other schools for various reasons. Our principal was a very forgiving type of person, which is why we ended up with a deaf band instructor - who had once been the director of the Philadelphia Philharmonic - and a music director who was once a show-girl (and who won the State music awards so regularly they ended up naming them after her). I never did well in school - "B"s and "C"s, mostly. My parents bought the American People's Encyclopedia when I started first grade. I became interested in it about 1956, and read the entire 20 volumes before I graduated from high school. I was tolerated by all the "groups" in school, but never truly belonged to any of them. Being among the poorest of the school's students didn't help. My graduating class of 133 students sent 46 to college on full scholarships, and 84 have at least a Bachelor's degree today. And yes, we were ALL a bit 'weird'! Most of us still are... |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2005-09-18 18:33 |
| #14 sometimes weird is just weird? I'm Sooooooo tired of hearing that :-) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-18 18:15 |
| #13 Sometimes weird is just weird. I'd no more buy art such as a drawing by a person acting weird than if that person could name the top 5 NCAA football teams last week by drawing it in beer stained pics in crayon of the last game he saw before he passed out Saturday. Did I mention, sometimes weird is just weird? |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-09-18 18:03 |
| #12 Posting pix is weird? Lol, BR. It is a dangerous thing, since you get flamed if the width blows the RB formatting or the size makes it too slow for those on garden hose connections. But linky-links always be fine... Such as this totally gratuitous image posing as social commentary: look very carefully |
| Posted by: .com 2005-09-18 17:36 |
| #11 I wish I was weird enough to know how to post a picture. http://www.despair.com/potential.html Sez it all.... |
| Posted by: BrerRabbit 2005-09-18 16:55 |
| #10 I very much support the idea of abolishing "grades", per se, as anything more than a social grouping - and mainly because emotional levels do adhere more closely to age. We had the SRI block instruction modules - only in the vocabulary and reading comprehension areas - introduced when I was in the 3rd grade in my little suburban Texas school. They were a hoot - "learn" at your own pace, although it did not feel like learning - it felt like being given the keys to the library. Zipping through the program also earned you bennies, such as being offered inclusion in other programs of "advanced" instruction. For example, I was offered a chance to take a block on math that was a real killer for most: the binary and octal number systems. They did not cover hex, unfortunately, but for the 4th grade it was really something. I loved every minute of it - and ended up a programmer, lol, go figure. If all topics were modularized and self-teach at your own speed - with no limits to how far you could go in a particular subject area - it would be a stupendous boost, IMHO. Of course, way the hell back then, we had teachers who were extremely competent in their area... I'm not certain the same can be said today, given my experiences as a parent. Low pay cripples the profession and leads to mediocrity, I'm afraid. I had the good fortune to jump a grade, as did my daughter. There were trade-offs - but those were entirely social - ostracism and jealousy. If the social aspects were separated from the educational aspects, as I mentioned above, individual progress would be dramatically altered - for the better. I also agree 100% that learning occurs in fits and starts. I don't recall it, as such, but saw it clearly as a parent. So many biological changes occurring during the schooling age period that it's remarkable how many can concentrate, lol. On the classroom topics, I mean, heh. It would be a massive undertaking to create the system for all topics. It would be even more problematic to gain adoption by any but private schools, I'd wager. The NEA, currently completely infiltrated by idiotarians and self-serving cretins, would never allow it in the public system, unless they could see some means of controlling the content - which would probably doom the entire idea, given their political advocacy and dumb-down activism. Sad. Huge potential wasted for the usual reasons, the politics of personal gain. Still, a great topic. One would presume we were all there, more or less - lol, so the idea pool should be huge. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-09-18 16:15 |
| #9 I'm not buying it. While Muammar Khaddafi and Kim Jong-Il take win and place at the Wierd Olympics, Saddam has written more novels than both combined. |
| Posted by: Zpaz 2005-09-18 15:34 |
| #8 That is what I call the "gravest offense" of a school: wasting a student's time. Especially in the elementary grades, students should have available to them the maximum possible learning density. For example, in the lowest grades, students should be trained for "3D memorization", so that they will be able to take vast amounts of data and memorize it relationally, not just as uncollated linear information to be haphazardly organized in their heads later, if ever. And memorization is the lowest form of education. Other levels of learning should also be intensified. Students should be able to (brutally) analyze in their early years and intellectually discriminate between good and poor data. Planning, organizing, optimizing, the scientific method, decision making, etc., all should be instilled as tools the students should have ready access to the rest of their lives. Take an "optimized" block of instruction. Say, a 4th grader learning about the first Moon landing. He sees and hears a multimedia presentation, that is interactive with him. It is presented in both English and German, to teach him German at the same time. The program stops periodically and asks him questions in several formats, and not all focused on just history. It may quiz him on word usage, technical data, ask him to speculate, or otherwise challenge him based on his previous responses. Then, he may follow linked paths in the main body for additional information far beyond his grade level, even as advanced as college level. This is so students can deeply digress from their main study when they really find a topic that interests them. These digressions are also "for credit". This recognizes that students learn in fits and starts, and as long as they manage the basic lesson, with stimulation and motivation provided by the computer, they should be free to go as far as they can when they are on a roll. It also cuts them slack for a while when they are in a slump in some topic. The student should know where he stands on each and every subject. These multimedia blocks could be selected ahead of time to emphasize what the parents think is important. For example, parents who want their kids to have a more-intense exposure to science would get blocks that continually reference the math and science aspects of what is being taught. Blocks could be available for download to school districts, and students could have personal data and curriculum thumbdrives, so they could move from school to school and not lose a day in continuity. Teachers would be just as busy, but at a far higher level of performance. As a class, they would no longer be "blue collar" in unions, but "white collar" in professional organizations. They would have to be trained in recognizing and dealing with all sorts of problems that inhibit student performance, such as dyslexia and other sensory problems, medical and nutritional problems, and personal problems. Students would have to have thorough medical entrance exams each year. Teachers would also have to perform subjective evaluations, explain paradoxes, and instruct controversial subjects the old fashioned way. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-09-18 15:24 |
| #7 yep nothing changed. Well, not exactly true. As soon as possible (16) I took the GED test, passed, and got out of there. Went to our local Vocational School, did very nicely (Consider it a jump of three grades) and never looked back. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2005-09-18 14:09 |
| #6 Been there too Mrs. D? Sounds like the voice of experience, yep nothing changed. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2005-09-18 13:57 |
| #5 it was the Skool, not the pupil. Wrong, genius. You still don't understand how skools work. The teacher's always right. Don't bother to bring the facts into it. They just confuse things. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-09-18 13:45 |
| #4 #3: When my father was a boy in school, he stood out by exhibiting intelligence. Today he would be called "schizotypal", Hey, I resemble that remark (Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck,) Seriously the "Skool" couldnt figure out if I was a moron or Genius, so I got tested, whadya know, a 141 IQ, That answered that question, it was the Skool, not the pupil. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2005-09-18 13:26 |
| #3 When my father was a boy in school, he stood out by exhibiting intelligence. Today he would be called "schizotypal", not because he was different or unusual from the students of today, but because he was not like his mostly stupid, and some very stupid, peers back then. What was abnormal back then is far more normal today. So what is "creativity"? That is, a lot of the current system of education, with roots going back to the middle ages, is designed to supress creativity in favor of uniformity, or uniform mediocrity. Its modern mirror image, used in some "progressive" schools, tries to "force" creativity without any foundation in learned skills. It does little good to paint magnificant paintings in your head if you have never touched brush to canvas. The solution to this problem is to change how children are educated. Basic learned skills and low level skills, like memorization, should be taught on a self-paced multimedia computer. By having teaching, evaluation, and review for each student at their own pace, weeks or months could be saved, and content could be multiplied by perhaps five times current curriculum. Subjects could even be taught in tandem, such as teaching a foreign language at the same time as typing and history. Human teachers would still be needed to optimize student learning of higher skills, such as evaluation, subjectivity, discrimination, analysis, and synthesis. And this is where "learned creativity" comes into play. Before the student is asked to create, they are given a foundation of how to create, models and examples of other peoples' creativity, and ways of describing or explaining what has been created. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-09-18 12:57 |
| #2 Bakk off, man, I ried teh shotr buss. Wi rool. |
| Posted by: .speshul guy 2005-09-18 12:07 |
| #1 In aircraft design there is also a trade off between maneuverability and stability. |
| Posted by: GK 2005-09-18 10:47 |
