Relationship between schizotypal personality traits and creativity in college students： mediating role of cognitive flexibility / 四川精神卫生

ObjectiveTo explore the relationship between schizotypal personality traits and creativity in college students and the mediating role of cognitive flexibility. MethodsSchizotypal Personality Questionnaire （SPQ）， Cognitive Flexibility Inventory （CFI） and Williams Creative Aptitude Test （WCAT） were used to assess 471 college students. Thereafter， Spearman correlation analysis was used to explore the relationship among the variables and the Bootstrap methodology was used to estimate the mediating role of cognitive flexibility. ResultsThe total SPQ， positive and disorganized schizotypal traits scores， and CFI score were all positively correlated with WCAT score （r=0.241~0.313， P<0.01）. The total SPQ， positive and disorganized schizotypal traits scores were also positively correlated with CFI score （r=0.111~0.128， P<0.05）. Cognitive flexibility mediated the relationship between positive schizotypal traits and creativity ［indirect effect=0.052 （95% CI： 0.016~0.112， P<0.01）， accounting for 11.93% of the total effect］. Cognitive flexibility mediated the relationship between disorganized schizotypal traits and creativity ［indirect effect=0.075 （95% CI： 0.020~0.161， P<0.01）， accounting for 11.50% of the total effect］. ConclusionSchizotypal personality has a direct impact on the creativity of medical students and also cause an indirect impact on their creativity through the mediating role of cognitive flexibility.

Changes of 16 personality factors and gender differences of medical freshmen from 2010 to 2019 / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

Objective:To explore the changes of personality in medical college freshmen from 2010 to 2019 and the difference of gender.Methods:The cross-temporal meta-analysis and independent sample t-test were used to explore the change of medical college freshmen’s scores on 16 personality factor questionnaire (16PF) in the past 10 years (2010~2019) and the gender difference.A total of 17 395 samples of medical college freshmen were enrolled in the present study. Results:(1)The score of Warmth(A), Reasoning (B), Emotional Stability(C), Dominance(E), Liveliness(F), Rule-Consciousness(G), Social Boldness(H) and Perfectionism (Q3) were negatively correlated with year ( β=-0.93, -0.64, -0.85, -0.48, -0.80, -0.65, -0.92, -0.91, all P<0.01), while Sensitivity(I), Vigilance(L), Abstractness (M), Privateness (N), Apprehension (O), Openness to change (Q1), Self-Reliance (Q2), and Tension (Q4) were positively correlated with years ( β=0.72, 0.88, 0.81, 0.65, 0.86, 0.95, 0.90, 0.88, all P<0.01). (2)The scores in female freshman were higher than those in male freshman in Warmth, Sensitivity, Abstractness, Privateness, Apprehension, and Tension ( t=22.51, 18.15, 21.15, 5.89, 12.35, 5.46, all P<0.01), while the scores in female freshman were lower than those in male freshman in emotional stability, dominance, rule-consciousness, social boldness, and vigilance ( t=-18.25, -16.54, -9.75, -5.05, -9.97; all P<0.01). Conclusion:The warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule-consciousness, social boldness and perfectionism present a decreasing tendency, while sensitivity, vigilance, abstractness, privateness, apprehension, openness to change, self-reliance, and tension present a rising tendency. The change tendency in both male and female are consistent with the overall trends and the significant gender differences are found in some personality traits.

Effect of resilience on job burnout and subject well-being in prison staffs / 中国职业医学

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship among resilience,job burnout and subject well-being( SWB) in prison staffs. METHODS: A cluster random sampling method was used to select 226 prison staffs in a city of Shandong Province as the study subjects. Chinese Adults Resilience Scale,Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey and General Well-Being Segment Scale were used for investigating resilience,job burnout and SWB in these subjects. RESULTS: The total score of job burnout was negatively correlated with total SWB score( P < 0. 01). The total score of resilience was positively correlated with total score of SWB( P < 0. 05). Psychological resilience,job burnout and demographic factors could explain 51. 6% of the variation of SWB. Psychological resilience plays a moderating role between job burnout and SWB( indirect effect values were-6. 27,-5. 03 and-3. 79 in the low-,medium-and high-resilience groups,respectively). CONCLUSION: Psychological resilience is helpful to reduce the occurrence of job burnout,and has a positive impact on SWB. Resilience plays a moderating role between job burnout and SWB.

Brain activity in using heuristic prototype to solve insightful problems.

When confronted with a real-world problem, heuristic knowledge and experience can guide the solution of a specific technical problem as the key step toward innovation. In particular, a heuristic prototype must be used correctly to cue the technical problem that exists in a particular situation. The present study selected an innovative paradigm and scientific innovation materials to investigate the neural basis of insight induced by heuristic prototypes using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The day prior to undergoing fMRI scanning, participants were asked to solve 42 difficult technical problems that scientists might have already encountered but were unknown to the participants. In the subsequent fMRI experiment, the same participants were randomly presented with 84 prototypes classified into two types: related prototypes (RPs), which were useful for solving previously encountered problems, and unrelated prototypes (UPs), which sometimes did not contribute to problem solving. While being scanned, participants were asked to assess whether a prototype is relevant to any of the technical problems. This study comprised two conditions: solving technical problems when presented with a related heuristic prototype and failing to solve technical problems using unrelated heuristic prototypes. The authors assumed that the regions significantly activated by the RP condition, compared with the UP condition, reflected brain activity related to the role of heuristic prototypes in scientific insight. fMRI data showed that the left dorsolateral prefrontal gyrus (left DLFPC, BA9) and the left angular gyrus (left AG, BA39) were more significantly activated when presented with RPs than with UPs. The results suggest that the DLPFC may be involved in the automatic retrieval of technical problems and breaking of mental sets. Moreover, the left AG may be involved in forming novel associations between technical problems and related prototypes.

Brain mechanisms of valuable scientific problem finding inspired by heuristic knowledge.

Heuristics through the application of heuristic knowledge to the creation of imitation devices may be one of the most common processes in scientific innovation. In particular, heuristics suggests that innovation includes the automatic activation of heuristic knowledge and formation of novel associations between heuristic knowledge and problem situations. In this study, 76 scientific innovation problem situations were selected as materials. Among these, 36 contain related heuristic knowledge and 40 have no such information. Through functional magnetic resonance imaging, the learning-testing paradigm was used to explore the brain mechanisms of scientific problem finding inspired by heuristic knowledge. Participants were asked to find a problem on the basis of a given innovation problem situation. Two scenarios were presented: finding scientific problems with related heuristic knowledge and finding conventional problems without related heuristic knowledge. The authors assumed that the regions in the brain significantly activated by the finding scientific problems with related heuristic knowledge condition compared with the finding normal problems without related heuristic knowledge condition are relevant to the brain mechanisms of scientific problem finding inspired by heuristic knowledge. The first scenario more significantly activated the left precuneus and left angular gyrus than did the second scenario. These findings suggest that the precuneus is relevant to the successful storage and retrieval of heuristic knowledge and that the left angular gyrus is involved in the formation of novel associations between heuristic knowledge and problem situations for finding scientific problems.