Anna Abraham

Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Clinical Psychology, Faculty Member

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Papers by Anna Abraham

Gender and creativity: an overview of psychological and neuroscientific literature

Brain imaging and behavior, Jan 9, 2015

The topic of gender differences in creativity is one that generates substantial scientific and pu... more The topic of gender differences in creativity is one that generates substantial scientific and public interest, but also courts considerable controversy. Owing to the heterogeneous nature of the findings associated with this line of research, the general picture often appears puzzling or obscure. This article presents a selective overview of psychological and neuroscientific literature that has a relevant bearing on the theme of gender and creativity. Topics that are explored include the definition and methods of assessing creativity, a summary of behavioral investigations on gender in relation to creativity, postulations that have been put forward to understand gender differences in creative achievement, gender-based differences in the structure and function of the brain, gender-related differences in behavioral performance on tasks of normative cognition, and neuroscientific studies of gender and creativity. The article ends with a detailed discussion of the idea that differences ...

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Surveying the Imagination Landscape

The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination

Ich glaube, dass Du denkst, dass ich hoffe, dass es stimmt

Other Minds

Predictors of Creativity in Young People: The Importance of Openness to Experience

The development of creativity in young children has been studied extensively, but relatively few ... more The development of creativity in young children has been studied extensively, but relatively few studies have examined the period of adolescence and emerging adulthood in relation to creative potential. The present study employs a combination of frequentist and Bayesian analyses to evaluate the impact of individual factors (e.g., IQ) and contextual factors (e.g., pursuit of creative hobbies) on creative ideation in three cohorts of young people aged 14-20 years. Measures of divergent thinking, specifically the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) and the Overcoming Knowledge Constraints Task, were used to this end. Openness to experience was the strongest predictor of creative potential for the three AUT measures. Moreover, Bayesian hypothesis testing revealed that the best predictive model for AUT ideational fluency and AUT overall originality was one that included only Openness, whereas the best predictive model for AUT peak originality, or the propensity to generate highly original response...

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Comparing the Efficacy of Four Brief Inductions in Boosting Short-Term Creativity

Journal of Cognitive Enhancement

Augmenting creative performance has the potential to benefit both the individual and our society.... more Augmenting creative performance has the potential to benefit both the individual and our society. Several studies have evaluated the impact of different behavioral training or induction methods on creativity. However, the findings are mixed and sometimes contradictory. Four different short-term induction methods which differed along two information processing dimensionsmodality and demand-were compared within a single experimental paradigm alongside a non-induction control group to determine which was the most effective at improving creativity. A comparison on the experimental inductions revealed that low-demand induction methods boosted creativity more than high-demand induction methods. However, this pattern was not maintained when comparisons included the non-induction control. These findings provide insights on important factors and control variables that need to be taken into account at the level of experimental design in order to be able to evaluate the efficacy of different induction and training methods on creativity.

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The neuropsychology of creativity

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

The neuropsychological approach has been instrumental in delivering key insights that have enable... more The neuropsychological approach has been instrumental in delivering key insights that have enabled a clearer understanding of the human mind and its workings. Despite the unique promise of this approach and the perspective it affords, it has only been limited utilized when exploring creative cognition. This papers an overview of three methodologies-single case studies, case series investigations on neurological populations, and case series investigations on psychiatric populationsthat have been employed within the neuropsychology of creativity and highlights some of the important revelations that each direction of study has delivered. In doing so, the aim is to make a case for the unique utility of the neuropsychological approach in allowing for a better understanding of the creative mind. Highlights: ! The neuropsychological approach is limitedly employed in the study of creativity ! An important focus of single case studies is the phenomenon of 'de novo' creativity ! Case series investigations in creativity cover neurological and psychiatric groups

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Using a shoe as a plant pot: Neural correlates of passive conceptual expansion

Brain Research, Oct 20, 2011

Conceptual expansion is a key process that underlies our ability to think creatively. In the pres... more Conceptual expansion is a key process that underlies our ability to think creatively. In the present event-related fMRI study, a modified Alternate Uses Task was used to identify brain regions involved during passive conceptual expansion and thereby separately assess the effects of the two defining elements of creative output: Originality (unusualness) and Relevance (appropriateness). Participants viewed word pairs consisting of an object and a use and indicated whether the given use was unusual and/or appropriate for the given object. Trials with object-use combinations judged as unusual and appropriate (HUHA) were contrasted against trials judged as just unusual but inappropriate (HULA) or just appropriate but not unusual (LUHA). As hypothesized, conceptual expansion related activation (HUHA) was found in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45, 47), left temporal pole (BA 38) and left frontopolar cortex (BA 10). We discuss the specific contributions of these regions with reference to semantic cognition.

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Commentary: Creativity and Memory: Effects of an Episodic-Specificity Induction on Divergent Thinking

Frontiers in psychology, 2016

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Intentionality and the brain: Unraveling the theory-of-mind network

The neural response when telling apart reality from fiction

Relating creative cognition to prefrontal function

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Biases in probabilistic category learning in relation to social anxiety

Frontiers in Psychology, 2015

Instrumental learning paradigms are rarely employed to investigate the mechanisms underlying acqu... more Instrumental learning paradigms are rarely employed to investigate the mechanisms underlying acquired fear responses in social anxiety. Here, we adapted a probabilistic category learning paradigm to assess information processing biases as a function of the degree of social anxiety traits in a sample of healthy individuals without a diagnosis of social phobia. Participants were presented with three pairs of neutral faces with differing probabilistic accuracy contingencies (A/B: 80/20, C/D: 70/30, E/F: 60/40). Upon making their choice, negative and positive feedback was conveyed using angry and happy faces, respectively. The highly socially anxious group showed a strong tendency to be more accurate at learning the probability contingency associated with the most ambiguous stimulus pair (E/F: 60/40). Moreover, when pairing the most positively reinforced stimulus or the most negatively reinforced stimulus with all the other stimuli in a test phase, the highly socially anxious group avoided the most negatively reinforced stimulus significantly more than the control group. The results are discussed with reference to avoidance learning and hypersensitivity to negative socially evaluative information associated with social anxiety.

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Editorial: Madness and creativityâ€”yes, no or maybe?

Frontiers in Psychology, 2015

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How Social Dynamics Shape Our Understanding of Reality

International and Cultural Psychology, 2015

Semantic memory as the root of imagination

Frontiers in psychology, 2015

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Neurocognitive bases of future oriented cognition

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Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying creative thinking: indications from studies of mental illness

Creativity and Mental Illness, 2014

Enhanced avoidance behavior in social anxiety: Evidence from a probabilistic learning task

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 2014

Background and objectives: Social phobia is characterized by avoidance of feared social situation... more Background and objectives: Social phobia is characterized by avoidance of feared social situations. Although avoidance is a central feature of social anxiety, few studies have examined avoidance learning. Methods: We used a probabilistic instrumental learning paradigm where participants had to learn by trial and error which response led to the disappearance of a neutral or angry face. 20 high socially anxious and 20 non-socially anxious individuals with an average level of social anxiety learned to avoid an angry or a neutral face by choosing one of two cues. Each of the cues led to the disappearance of the face either with high or low reinforcement probability. Results: Groups learned to choose the more effective cue across trials and did not differ with regard to self-report valence, arousal for the faces or the a posteriori estimated reinforcement probability for both cues. High socially anxious individuals as compared to the controls chose the high probability cue significantly more often and were slower particularly when the neutral face could be avoided. Notably, HSA engaged in more avoidance responding to the neutral as compared to the angry face early on during the experiment. Limitations: Due to the experimental design, the observed avoidance behavior most likely reflects the motivation for avoidance rather than contingency learning per se. Conclusions: In social anxiety, neutral faces might be processed as ambiguous social cues and strongly motivate avoidance behavior.

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The neuroscience of creativity: a promising or perilous enterprise?

… y neurociencia cognitiva= Creativity and cognitive …, 2012

... The neuroscience of creativity: a promising or perilous enterprise? Autores: Anna Abraham; Lo... more

An ERP study of passive creative conceptual expansion using a modified alternate uses task

Brain Research, 2013

A novel ERP paradigm was employed to investigate conceptual expansion, a central component of cre... more A novel ERP paradigm was employed to investigate conceptual expansion, a central component of creative thinking. Participants were presented with word pairs, consisting of everyday objects and uses for these objects, which had to be judged based on the two defining criteria of creative products: unusualness and appropriateness. Three subjectdetermined trial types resulted from this judgement: high unusual and low appropriate (nonsensical uses), low unusual and high appropriate (common uses), and high unusual and high appropriate (creative uses). Word pairs of the creative uses type are held to passively induce conceptual expansion. The N400 component was not specifically modulated by conceptual expansion but was, instead, generally responsive as a function of unusualness or novelty of the stimuli (nonsense ¼creative4common). Explorative analyses in a later time window (500-900 ms) revealed that ERP activity in this phase indexes appropriateness (nonsense4creative ¼common). In the discussion of these findings with reference to the literature on semantic cognition, both components are proposed as indexing processes relevant to conceptual expansion as they are selectively involved in the encoding and integration of a newly established semantic connection between two previously unrelated concepts.

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