The effects over time of written divergent and convergent models on subjects' creative responses to Guilford's Alternate Uses and Consequences were examined, using forty-eight undergraduate students at the University of Arizona. Subjects were divided equally into divergent model, convergent model, and control groups, and were tested and retested one week later. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) subjects' scores for flexibility, fluency, and originality, was found to be significant. Univariate F tests, discriminant function analysis, and Tukey's tests were performed to clarify the nature of significant effects. Results were found for scores on flexibility and originality, but only for the convergent group. Convergent modeling significantly increased the number of convergent responses given by subjects, and the convergent group gave significantly more original responses than the other two groups. The effects of modeling on the convergent group persisted over time, and a significant practice effect was noted.

It is well established that older adults show a deficit in episodic memory. The associative deficit hypothesis (ADH) (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000) suggests that an age-related reduced ability to create links between units of information is a major contributor to the episodic deficit. It has been a robust finding that older adults show a disproportionate decline in associative memory relative to item memory when compared to young adults. Previous researchers have investigated the role of the frontal lobes (FL) by studying the effect of reduced attentional resources in the associative deficit. However, they have not found that divided attention in young adults produces the disproportionate associative decline seen in aging and it is thought that some cognitive process other than the allocation of attentional resources may contribute to the associative deficit. The present study intended to use a divided attention (DA) task that also engages medial temporal brain regions (MTL) in order to tax additional parts of the network involved in creating associations and provide indirect support for the role of the MTL in the associative deficit. However, the associative memory deficit in older adults was not replicated due to unique poor associative memory performance of some young adults in the study. Analyses excluding these participants show support for the role of the MTL in the associative deficit. However, the young poor performers may provide support for the role of FL function in the associative deficit and show that poor associative memory may not be limited to the older adult cohort.

Although several studies have characterized common and unique neural circuitry associated with social and non-social emotions, none to date have attempted to differentiate between social emotions that occur in very different contexts. Grieving the death of a loved one and being a target of perceived discrimination may implicate potentially distinct social processes (e.g., attachment versus affiliation). When examined separately, prior neuroimaging research has shown that both grief and perceived discrimination involved diffuse brain regions implicated variously in social stress processing and emotion, however no studies to date have directly compared these experiences. In the present study, we examined neural correlates of grief and perceived discrimination among South Asian women (n = 10), using an idiographic emotional imagery task. Grief-related imagery elicited activation in the precuneus, midbrain, dorsal striatum, and thalamocingulate regions, consistent with previous neuroimaging studies of grief and attachment. Participants showed greater activation in the anterior cingulate, hippocampus, occipital cortex, and cerebellum during Grief relative to Discrimination. We observed dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) activation in Discrimination>Neutral, which may reflect greater self-regulatory effort involved in coping with discrimination experiences. Greater temporal pole and amygdala activation in the Discrimination condition were associated with greater lifetime perceived discrimination, poorer self-reported physical health, and more depressive symptoms. Results of this pilot study suggest that there are observable differences in the brain response to these two types of social stressors, suggesting future directions for a more fine-grained view of the mechanisms through which the social environment may influence health and well-being.