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An underexplored aspect of the relationship between analogical reasoning and creativity is its phenomenology; in particular, the notion that analogical reasoning is related to insight and its associated "aha!" experience. However, the relationship between these phenomena has never been directly investigated. We adapted a set of verbal analogy stimuli for use as an insight task. Across the two experiments, participants reported stronger aha moments and greater representational change when reasoning about analogies with greater internal semantic distance, relative to those with greater internal semantic consistency. Aha strength increased linearly with changes in participants' verbal descriptions of the analogy over the course of each trial, indicating that aha experiences accompany changes in mental representation. The relationship between subjective difficulty and aha strength followed an inverted U-shaped function, with aha strength increasing with greater difficulty but dropping at the highest levels. A similar pattern was observed for the relationship between confidence and aha strength. Furthermore, participants in a more positive mood rated aha experiences as stronger. These findings provide evidence that analogical reasoning can give rise to the phenomenology of insight by triggering representational change and suggest that the affective consequences of relational reasoning may play an important role in promoting creative cognition.

Some theories of abstract word representation posit a role for affective information; however, little has been done to delineate how this holds for the class of emotion concepts relative to other types of abstract concepts. Work using distributional semantic models has shown that emotion words tend to co-occur with other highly affective words, complicating the picture of how affective information contributes to the grounding of abstract concepts generally and emotion concepts specifically. Here, a novel set of data from 180 participants collected using a feature generation paradigm with emotion, non-emotion-related abstract, and concrete stimuli is leveraged to test how the distributional properties of emotion concepts and their associated features differs from those of other abstract concepts. Using co-occurrence statistics and normative ratings for affect, results show the importance of affect differs between emotion and non-emotion-related abstract words.

Although work on conceptual knowledge has recently begun addressing the nature of abstract semantic representations,relatively little remains known about the structure of our knowledge of emotion concepts, an important subset of abstractconcepts. Property generationa common paradigm used to elaborate the featural representations of concepts that arecomponents of many models of semantic memoryhas been used extensively with concrete nouns, but in a limited numberof studies investigating abstract concepts. No prior work, to our knowledge, has systematically investigated the process ofproperty generation specifically for emotion concepts. In the present study, participants performed a property generationtask in which they listed features of emotion concepts and a matching number of concrete and abstract, non-emotionconcepts. Our results are interpreted with an emphasis on the distinction between emotion concepts and other abstractconcepts, which differ in the distribution of features generated.

Recent findings suggest that when solving problems involving cognitive flexibility (CF), individuals who approach alearning task using reinforcement learning (RL), outperform those who approach the task using supervised learning (SL).Based on these data, we hypothesized that CF is a function of individual differences in learning preference and taskdemands. Healthy native English speakers were administered three CF tasks that incorporated (i) shifting, (ii) divergentthinking, or (iii) both shifting and divergent thinking elements. Participants response selection history on a reward-basedlearning task, which could be approached either through SL or RL, was used to determine each participants learning styleand predict CF performance. Results showed that different CF task components (i.e., whether the task involved divergentthinking) interacted with participants learning preferences as measured by the independent learning task. We discuss howlearning preferences might capture individual differences in CF.

Cognitive neuroscience studies of creativity typically employ divergent thinking tasks that prioritize bottom-up processesto generate novel responses. However, real-world creative problem solving is guided by top-down thinking that puts anemphasis on the goal to be achieved. Here, we introduce the Alternative Objects Task (AOT)a novel task that incorpo-rates both bottom-up and down-down thought during problem solving. Guided by functional neuroimaging findings, weemployed transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over frontopolar cortex to investigate causally the impact of tran-sient changes in activity in this region for problem solving performance on the AOT. Participants were presented with aseries of goals and generated either a common or an uncommon object that could satisfy each, while undergoing eitherexcitatory (anodal) or sham tDCS. Analyses of accuracy, reaction times, and semantic distance highlight the importanceof goal-orientation during creative problem solving and its reliance on prefrontal cortex.

Theories of embodied cognition have suggested that motor activity may influence the consolidation of conceptual knowl-edge. In line with this prediction, behavioral studies have shown retrieval interference effects of a manual motor task formanipulable object concepts. On the other hand, research investigating such effects for abstract concepts is limited. Here,we examined in a behavioral experiment potential effects of the recruitment of the motor system for the consolidation ofdifferent kinds of abstract concepts. Participants were presented auditorily and asked to memorize abstract concepts withmovement referents (e.g., fluidity), abstract concepts without movement referents (e.g., theory), and concrete concepts(e.g., microscope) while engaging in a full-body motor task. All concepts were specific to Science Technology Engineer-ing and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Analysis of free recall and recognition performance suggests influence of motorengagement for certain types of STEM concepts during memory encoding and subsequent retrieval.

Behavioral, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological studies have shown that certain aspects of object knowledge (e.g., theobjects function or mode of manipulation) can be accessed independently of more abstract properties (e.g., the objectsname) and faster when participants are presented with three-dimensional relative to two-dimensional objects. Here weexamined whether visual and manual exposure to three-dimensional objects, relative to two-dimensional pictures of theseobjects, would allow for differential access to semantic memory under conditions of impromptu relative to canonical goalachievement (i.e., when a participant has to come up with an unusual, relative to a typical, use for a common object).Our results showed that the combination of visual and manual exposure to three-dimensional objects interfered with thegeneration of uncommon uses, liked due to the facilitated access to sensorimotor object properties associated with theobjects canonical use. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of object knowledge retrieval.

The design of age-friendly homes benefits vulnerable groups, such as frail people and older adults. Advances in smart home technologies, including robots, have important synergies with homes designed for health needs. Yet, focus on environmental and sustainable housing design and improvements misses important opportunities for collective impact. Stronger involvement of disciplines, such as those from the built environment for technological integration within homes and effects on space and the community, is needed. There is a need for a unified framework integrating the needs and factors of the resident, smart home technologies and robots, and the built environment, and that includes the concept of a "home". With the remodeling of housing towards sustainable and environmental targets, as well as advances in smart home technologies such as robots, the timeliness of shared input for the benefit of residents now and in the future is of the essence. This would help target future research into effective and optimized cohabitation with technology within homes for the purpose of improving the wellbeing of residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior work suggests that differences in brain morphology and task-evoked neural activity may underlie extraordinary creative achievement. Here, we extend these findings by focusing on resting blood oxygen level–dependent (rsBOLD) functional connectivity differences between eminent creators from diverse fields of expertise and a "smart" comparison group of age- and education-matched non-eminent thinkers. Participants underwent rsBOLD imaging, along with a high-resolution structural brain scan, and completed a series of demographic and behavioral measures. The results revealed significant differences in rsBOLD connectivity between the eminent and noneminent thinkers. Eminent thinkers showed increased connectivity between (a) the right central operculum and the bilateral parietal operculum, right supramarginal gyrus, and left precentral gyrus; (b) the right precentral gyrus and the right postcentral gyrus; (c) the left parietal operculum and the right central operculum and the right sensorimotor cortex; and (d) the posterior cingulate gyrus and the right precentral gyrus. In contrast, they showed decreased connectivity between (a) the posterior cingulate gyrus and the left supracalcarine cortex and (b) between the left occipital fusiform gyrus and the left frontal operculum. These results suggest that extraordinary creativity may be associated with measurable differences in functional connectivity, particularly in areas that support creative functions. This study examined functional connectivity as measured by resting blood oxygen level–dependent MRI in individuals with exceptionally high creativity. Eminent creators from diverse fields were compared to an age- and education-matched control group. Eminence was assessed based on their Creative Achievement Questionnaire scores. Extraordinarily creative individuals showed increased functional connectivity between the left and right hemispheres and between frontoparietal and sensorimotor regions. These findings help elucidate the neurophysiological mechanisms of exceptionally high creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word learning is a lifelong activity constrained by cognitive biases that people possess at particular points in development. Age of acquisition (AoA) is a psycholinguistic variable that may prove useful toward gauging the relative weighting of different phonological, semantic, and morphological factors at different phases of language acquisition and development. Our aim here was to evaluate AoA as a statistical tool for taking "snapshots" of cognitive development. We examined a large corpus of English nouns ("n" = 1,381) with AoA as the outcome variable in three separate multivariate regressions, encompassing different age ranges (early-middle-late). Predictors included perceptual (e.g., imagery), phonological (e.g., phonological neighborhood density), and lexical (e.g., word length) factors. Different combinations of predictors accounted for significant proportions of the variance for different AoA ranges (i.e., early-middle-late). For example, imageability and frequency are stronger predictors of early relative to late word learning. These corpus analyses support a hybrid model of word learning in which multiple perceptual and linguistic factors are differentially weighted over time. This statistical approach may provide independent corroboration of and motivation for experimental studies in language learning and cognitive development.

Renewed focus on mental health has put the spotlight on the 'black box' that is the acute mental health facility. Drawing on a larger programme of research, key issues relevant to the planning and design of mental health units were identified from in-depth interviews with those using the facilities. Contemporary issues included visibility from the outside and wayfinding, the need to accommodate cultural needs extending to the family and community, safety and violence, the need for access to nature and fresh air, and facilitating meaningful activities. Stigma and its spatial expression were a crosscutting theme throughout. Trial registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry; identifier: ACTRN12617001469303. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most frequent symptoms of unilateral stroke is aphasia, the impairment or loss of language functions. Over the past few years, behavioral and neuroimaging studies have shown that rehabilitation interventions can promote neuroplastic changes in aphasic patients that may be associated with the improvement of language functions. Following left hemisphere strokes, the functional reorganization of language in aphasic patients has been proposed to involve both intrahemispheric interactions between damaged left hemisphere and perilesional sites and transcallosal interhemispheric interactions between the lesioned left hemisphere language areas and homotopic regions in the right hemisphere. A growing body of evidence for such reorganization comes from studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), two safe and noninvasive procedures that can be applied clinically to modulate cortical excitability during post-stroke language recovery. We discuss a hierarchical model for the plastic changes in language representation that occur in the setting of dominant hemisphere stroke and aphasia. We further argue that TMS and tDCS are potentially promising tools for enhancing functional recovery of language and for further elucidating mechanisms of plasticity in patients with aphasia. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

Problem-solving theories have not examined how solvers navigate their knowledge to interpret problem situations or to plan strategies toward goals. In this article, the author argues that success in problem solving depends on the solver's ability to construct goal-derived categories, namely categories that are formed ad hoc to serve goals during the instantiation of problem frames. Experiment 1 (N = 140) showed improved problem-solving performance after training to construct goal-derived categories. Experiment 2 (N = 80) demonstrated that effects of training in category construction can be obtained without participants being explicitly informed regarding the relevance of training to problem solving. These studies suggest that problem solving is a dynamic expression of goal-directed cognition and provide evidence for the involvement of categorization in problem-solving processes.