Wilma Koutstaal - The Agile Mind-Oxford University Press, USA (2011) PDF

The Agile Mind
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The Agile Mind
W I L M A K O U T S TA A L
1
1
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
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© Wilma Koutstaal 2012
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Koutstaal, Wilma.
The agile mind / Wilma Koutstaal.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-536718-8 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Thought and thinking. 2. Creative thinking.
3. Divergent thinking. 4. Adaptability (Psychology) I. Title.
BF441.K586 2011
155.2’4—dc23
2011030843
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset in Chaparral Pro

Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in the United States of America
This material is not intended to be, and should not be considered, a substitute for medical or other
professional advice. Treatment for the conditions described in this material is highly dependent on the
individual circumstances. And, while this material is designed to offer accurate information with respect
to the subject matter covered and to be current as of the time it was written, research and knowledge
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Contents
Preface xvii
Acknowledgments xix
1. Agility of Mind and the Integrated Controlled-Automatic,

Specific-Abstract (iCASA) Framework 3
Part One: MEMORY, CATEGORIZATION, AND CONCEPTS

2. Flexibly Using Memory and Categorical Knowledge, Part 1:
Levels of Representational Specificity and Thinking 53

Levels of Control, Representational Specificity, and Thinking 90
4. Thinking with Our Senses 125
Part Two: MOTIVATION AND EMOTION

5. Action and Motivation: The Impetus for, and Enactment
of, Agile Thinking 179
6. Emotion, Self, Personality: Thought Personified 238
7. Thoughts about Thoughts: The Control versus

Noncontrol of Thinking 282
v
vi CONTENTS
Part Three: BRAIN AND ENVIRONMENT

8. Brain Bases of Levels of Specificity and Levels of Control,
Part 1: The Frontal Cortex, and Beyond 337

Part 2: Concepts and Intuition, Resilience,
Novelty, and Exploration 387
10. Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 1:

Correlational and Longitudinal Evidence 462

Direct Experimental Evidence 526
12. Implications and Applications of the

iCASA Framework for Fostering Agile Thinking 573
Notes 613
References 639
Index 739
Detailed Contents
Preface xvii
Acknowledgments xix
1. Agility of Mind and the Integrated Controlled-Automatic,

Specific-Abstract (iCASA) Framework 3
T H E I N T E G R AT E D C ON T R OL L E D - AU T O M AT IC , S PE C I F IC -
ABS T R ACT (iC A S A) F R A MEWOR K 8
A B S T R AC T A N D S PE C I F IC R EPR E SE N TAT IONA L C ON T E N T 11
L EV E L S OF CON T ROL A ND R E PR E SE N TAT IONA L PRO C E S SE S 15
R E L AT ION S B E T W E E N R EPR E SE N TAT IONA L S PE C I F IC I T Y A N D C ON T R OL 23
O S C IL L ATORY R A N G E 25
S UPPORT ING A ND F ORM AT I V E E NVIRONME N TA L A ND
P S YC HOBIOL O G IC A L C ON DI T ION S 26
DI S T INGUI SHING AGIL E T HINK ING 27
FUNCT IONA L A ND CONNECT I VI T Y M A PPING OF T HE BR A IN:
L EV E L S OF S PE C I F IC I T Y A N D L EV E L S OF C ON T R OL 30
CONV ERGE N T T HEOR E T IC A L PE R SPE CT I V E S ON AU TOM AT IC I T Y A ND
M U LT IP L E G R A DAT ION S OF L EV E L S OF S PE C I F IC I T Y 35
E MPHA SI S , L IMI TAT ION S , A ND OMI S SION S 41
S T RUCTUR E , TONE , A ND S UC H 42
PR E V I E W S Y N OP SI S OF T H E C H A P T E R S 43
E X C U R S ION 1 : A D UA L DI A L O G A N D O S C IL L ATORY R A N G E :
W I L L I A M JA M E S ON L E V E L S OF S PE C I F IC I T Y A ND
G E RT RU DE S T E I N ON L EV E L S OF C ON T R OL 49
Part One: MEMORY, CATEGORIZATION, AND CONCEPTS

Levels of Representational Specificity and Thinking 53
vii
viii D E TA I L E D C O N T E N T S
WHE N ME MORY I S TO O SPEC IFIC: T HE PO S SIBL E CO S T S OF S UPE R IOR

ME MORY TO ME N TA L AGIL I T Y A ND PROBL E M S OLVING 54
POSSIBLE MECHANISMS 57
T HE CON T R A RY EXT R E ME: EXC E S SI V E R E L I A NC E ON ABS T R ACT

C AT E GOR IC A L T HOUGHT IN CL INIC A L DEPR E S SION A ND C HRONIC
WOR RY A R E A S S O C I AT E D W I T H I M PA IR E D PROBL E M S OLV I N G 60
Overreliance on Abstract Category Information in
Clinical Depression 60
Reduced Concreteness of Representations in Chronic Worry 68
E NG AG I N G I N A C O G N I T I V E F L U E N C Y TA S K T H AT R EQ U I R E S B O T H
I T E M - S PE C I F IC A N D C AT E G ORY - B A SE D K NO W L E D G E E NH A N C E S
S U B S E Q U E N T “ON - T H E - S P O T ” PROBL E M S OLV I N G 71
I N C R E A S E D FAC IL I T Y AT F L E X I B LY R E M E M B E R I N G R E C E N T E V E N T S AT
DI F F E R I N G L E V E L S OF S PE C I F IC I T Y P O S I T I V E LY C OR R E L AT E S W I T H
FL EXIBL E T HINK ING A ND FLUID R E A S ONING 75
A DA P T I V E C AT E GOR IZAT ION A ND PROBL E M S OLVING R EQ UIR E

F L E X I B L E U S E OF B O T H H IG H LY DE TA I L E D S PE C I F IC I N S TA NC E S
A N D A B S T R ACT, RUL E - , OR C AT E G ORY - B A SE D K NO W L E D G E 79
The Key Role of Physical Embodiment 81
Individuals Do Often Spontaneously Reason Using
Abstract Relations and Concepts 81
Surface Information Is Often “Validly Informative” and
May Help to “Bootstrap” Abstraction; Experts Also May
Rely on Surface Information 83
Individual Differences in Emphasis on Abstract
versus Specific Information 87

Levels of Control, Representational Specificity,
and Thinking 90
AU TOM AT IC T HOUGHT S A ND L EV E L S OF SPEC IFIC I T Y: MINDFULNE S S
T R A I N I N G A S DI S L O D G I N G E X C E S S I V E A B S T R ACT ION A N D R E D U C I N G
HABI T-B A SED AU TOM AT IC T HINK ING 91
R E T R I E V I N G R E C E N T LY E X PE R I E N C E D E V E N T S AT A S PE C I F IC
V E R S U S A B S T R AC T L EV E L H A S C A R RYOV E R C ON S E Q U E N C E S
F OR L AT E R R E C OL L E C T ION — A N D F OR T H I N K I N G 98
UNCON S C IOUS , UNR EFL ECT I V E , A ND AU TOM AT IC A LT E R AT ION S

I N T H E E A S E W I T H W H IC H OB J E C T S A N D E V E N T S A R E
C ON S T RU E D AT DI F F E R E N T L EV E L S OF S PE C I F IC I T Y 101
Environmental and Contextual Determinants of
Action Identification 101
Psychological or Temporal Distance Effects on “Construal Level” 103
The Effects of Emotion, Especially Mild Positive Affect,
on Categorization 105
De t ail e d C on t e n t s ix
T HE BE NEFI T S OF USING B O T H PRO C E S SING MODE S: EXPL IC I T

IN S T RUCT ION S TO USE BOT H CON T ROL L ED A ND AU TOM AT IC
R E S P ON DI N G C A N E NH A N C E C L A S S I F IC AT ION PE R F OR M A N C E 107
A NA L O G I E S , S I M I L A R I T I E S , A N D S UC H : N O T S O C ON T R OL L E D
(OR AU TOM AT IC) CON T R IBU TOR S TO A DA P T I V E LY CR E AT I V E
A NA L O G IC A L A N D C AT E G OR IC A L PROBL E M S OLV I N G 112
UNF O CUSED AT T E N T ION , CR E AT I VI T Y, A ND “MIND POPPING ” 117
L O OK I N G B AC K 122
E X C U R S ION 2 : L EV E L S OF S PE C I F IC I T Y I N D OU G L A S HOF S TA D T E R ’S
S U B C O G N I T I V E M E C H A N I S M S OF F L U I D T HO U G H T 123
4. Thinking with Our Senses 125
T H E C E N T R A L I T Y OF PE R C E P T UA L A N D AC T ION - R E L AT E D
INF OR M AT ION IN T HINK ING 127
Seeing with the Mind’s Eye: When 5-Year-Olds

Out-Smart (Out-See?) 7-Year-Olds 127
Supplementing and Complicating the Design
Stance Account 131
The Sensory-Perceptual Grounding of Concepts:
Cognitive-Behavioral Evidence 134
The Sensory-Perceptual Grounding of Concepts:
Further Evidence and the Issue of Controlled
versus Automatic Access 139
Perception, Perceptual Simulation, and Hypothesis Generation 141
Enacting Thinking: The Benefits of Perception and Action
in Analogical Thought 144
C U R R E N T PE R C E P T ION A N D ACT ION A S G U I DI N G — OR
PR E C E DI N G — T HO U G H T 147
Where the Eyes Go, the Mind Also (Sometimes
Belatedly) Goes 147
Many Pathways to Rigid Thinking: Not One But
Several Cues May Lead Us Astray 152
Not an Epiphenomenon: Gestures as Representational
Actors within—and Sometimes Prescient
Precursors to—Thinking 154
M AK I N G N E W C ON C E P T S 161
T HINK ING IN A PHYSIC A L WORLD 163

Epistemic Objects and Actions: Bringing the World
and Our Bodies into Thought 163
Words, Too, Are Physical Things—and So Are Physical
and Not Only Symbolic Shapers of Thought 166
x D E TA I L E D C O N T E N T S
E X C U R S ION 3 : A H Y P O T H E T IC A L T R A I N OF T HO U G H T:
PE R C E P T UA L S I M U L AT ION I N A RT H U R C ON A N D OY L E ’S
T H E HO U N D OF T H E B A S K E RV I L L E S 174
E X C U R S ION 4 : S PE C U L AT I N G F R E E LY : G E RT RU DE S T E I N
A N D T H E L E T T E R “ M ” 175
Part Two: MOTIVATION AND EMOTION

5. Action and Motivation: The Impetus for, and
Enactment of, Agile Thinking 179
H I E R A RC HIC A L M O DE L S OF ACT ION C ON T R OL A N D M O T I VAT ION 180
The Benefits and Costs of Higher Level Action Construals 180

Construal Theory, Motivation, and Self-Regulation 184
Flexibly Postponing and Resuming Intentions: Levels
of Specificity in Remembering and Acting on Intentions 185
Remembering Intentions and Control: Sharing the
Load of Remembering by Recruiting Automatic Processes 187
MODER AT E A ND C H A NGING L EV E L S OF CON T ROL: NOT TO O
C ON T R OL L E D N OR N ON C ON T R OL L E D 190
Ego Control and Ego Resiliency 191
Effortful Control and Reactive Control 194
Levels of Control, Spontaneity, and Openness
to Experience 198
“Self-Regulatory Depletion”—Is Effortful Self-Control
a Limited Resource? 201
F OR M S OF M O T I VAT ION 2 1 4
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Are Often Conjoined—
Rather Than Opposed—Aids to Agile Thinking 214
Beyond a Bipolar Contrast, and Differentiations
within Extrinsic Motivation 215
Rewarding Creativity 218
L E A R NING TO VA RY V E R S US L E A R NING TO R EPE AT: T HE S OURC E S
A ND ROL E OF BEHAVIOR A L VA R I AT ION IN INNOVAT ION 220
Training in Variability: Empirical Demonstrations 221
Beyond the Trained Behavior: Implications for
Problem Solving 224
Controlling (and Not Controlling) Behavioral Variation: Extinction
and the Imminent Presence of Reward 227
Integrating Variability and Stability: Toward a
Grounded Agility 229
De t ail e d C on t e n t s xi
EXCUR SION 5: A N EXA MPL E OF DUA L MOT I VAT ION GONE AW RY ? 234
6. Emotion, Self, Personality: Thought Personified 238
P O S I T I V E E MO T ION S 239
What Is the Functional Role of Positive Emotions? 239

Effects of Positive Mood on Flexible Thinking and
Cognition: The Positive Case 243
Effects of Positive Mood on Flexible Thinking and
Cognition: The Negative Case 248
Positive Emotion, Psychological Resilience, and
the “Granularity” of Emotions 251
S E L F - A F F I R M AT ION A N D F L E X I B L E T H I N K I N G 257
OPE N N E S S T O E X PE R I E N C E , C R E AT I V I T Y, A N D A DA P TA B I L I T Y 269
Openness to Experience, Creativity, Divergent Thinking,
and Orienting Sensitivity 270
Openness to Experience and Adaptive Learning 275
I N T E R E S T, C U R IO S I T Y, A N D VA R IE T Y S E E K I N G 278
7. Thoughts about Thoughts: The Control

versus Noncontrol of Thinking 282
E P I S T E M OL O G IC A L B E L I E F S , L E A R N I N G T O L E A R N ,
A ND FL EXIBL E T HINK ING 283
JUMPING TO CONCLUSION S A ND IN TOL E R A NC E OF

U N C E RTA I N T Y V E R S U S I N T OL E R A N C E OF A M B IG U I T Y 285
OP T I M I S M V E R S U S PE S S I M I S M , OV E R C ON F I DE NC E
V E R S U S U N DE R C ON F I DE NC E 291
T RY I N G N O T: I N T E N T IONA L F OR G E T T I N G ,
DE L IBER AT E T HOUGHT S UPPR E S SION , A ND FL EXIBL E
T HINK ING 298
A B S OR P T ION , F L O W, A N D “ H Y P O E G O IC ” S E L F - R E G U L AT ION:
T H E C ON T R OL L E D L O S I N G OF C ON T R OL A N D T H E M E L DI N G
OF T HO U G H T - E M O T ION - AC T ION 307
WOR K I N G W E L L W I T H T H E U N C ON S C IO U S :
INCUB AT ION A ND COMPL EX MULT ICOMPONE N T I A L
DE C I SION M AK ING 313
M OV E M E N T S B E T W E E N H IG H E R L EV E L A N D L O W E R
L EV E L GOA L S: OPPORTUNI S T IC DE SIGN 323
E NC O U N T E R I N G DI V E R SI T Y I N T H E T HO U G H T S A ND
V I E W S OF O T H E R S 327
xii D E TA I L E D C O N T E N T S
E X C U R S ION 6 : U N C E RTA I N T Y V E R S U S E Q U I VO C A L I T Y 331
EXCUR SION 7: GOA L S , M AK ING A ND FINDING , A ND

O S C IL L ATORY L EV E L S OF CON T ROL 332
Part Three: BRAIN AND ENVIRONMENT

Part 1: The Frontal Cortex, and Beyond 337
ABS T R ACT ION A ND FL EXIBIL I T Y, A DA P TABIL I T Y A ND CON T ROL:
T HE ROL E OF T HE PR EF RON TA L A ND F RON TA L CORT EX 338
SINGL E NEURON S A ND FL EXIBL E ABS T R ACT R E PR E SE N TAT ION

OF C AT E GOR IE S A ND RUL E S 344
NEUROIM AGING EVIDE NC E F OR HIER A RC HIC A L A ND

F U N C T IONA L DI S T I N C T ION S W I T H I N F RON TA L A ND
PR EF RON TA L CORT EX 352
NEURO C HE MIC A L A ND NEUROA NATOMIC A L CON T R IBU T ION S

TO T HR E E F ORMS OF COGNI T I V E FL EXIBIL I T Y: SE T SHIF T ING ,
R E V E R S A L L E A R NING , A ND TA SK SWI TC HING 359
Set Shifting and Reversal Learning 359
Task Switching 366
S P ON TA N E O U S F L E X I B I L I T Y: N E U R OP S YC HOL O G IC A L
A ND L E SION EVIDE NC E 370
G OA L N E G L E C T, F L U I D I N T E L L IG E NC E , A N D WOR K I N G
ME MORY: BEYOND PR EF RON TA L CORT EX TO DY NA MIC A N T E R IOR-
P O S T E R IOR A N D ACR O S S - S Y S T E M I N T E R AC T ION S 374

Part 2: Concepts and Intuition, Resilience,
Novelty, and Exploration 387
T HINK ING WI T H OUR SE N SE S: T HE CONCR E T E A ND MULT IMODA L—
A N D A B S T R AC T A N D A MO DA L — B R A I N B A S E S OF C ON C E P T UA L
R EPR E SE N TAT ION 389
A NA L O G IC A L A N D R E L AT IONA L T HO U G H T: B R A I N C OR R E L AT E S
OF FLUID R E A S ONING 410
ACC E S SING R E MOT E A LT E RNAT I V E S: T HE ROL E OF

NOR A DR E NA L INE/NOR EPINEPHR INE 414
I N T U I T I V E PRO C E S S I N G : PA RT I A L LY I N F OR M E D G U E S S I N G ,
PR E DICT ION , A N D G I S T 417
B R A I N C OR R E L AT E S OF I N S IG H T PROBL E M S OLV I N G 420
B E T W E E N TA S K S : T H I N K I N G A B O U T T H E PA S T, I M AG I N I N G
T H E F U T U R E , A N D O U R E V E R - AC T I V E , S A L IE NC E - DE T E C T I N G
A N D N E T WOR K - C H A N G I N G M I N D S 428
De t ail e d C on t e n t s xiii
BOUNC ING B ACK : BR A IN B A SE S OF R E SIL IE NC E 439
N OV E LT Y, R EWA R D, A N D E X P L OR AT ION : T H E L O C U S
C O E RU L E U S – N OR EP I N E P H R I N E S Y S T E M A N D A DA P T I V E
R E SPONDING TO NOV E LT Y 445
A PPROAC H V E R S US AVOIDA NC E: CON T ROL , CON T ROL L ING CON T ROL ,

A N D T H E DY N A M IC I N T E R PL AY OF C O G N I T ION A N D E MO T ION 451

Correlational and Longitudinal Evidence 462
PL A S T IC I T Y IN HUM A N BR A IN S—A ND AGIL E T HOUGHT 463
Plasticity of Cortical Maps in Response to Alterations

in Sensory-Motor Input: Brain Changes Linked
to Functional Behavioral Changes 463
Brain Changes with Other Forms of Long-Term
Complex Experiential Input 468
Brain Reserve, Cognitive Reserve, and “Compensation” 471
L ON G I T U DI N A L A N D E P I DE MIOL O G IC R E S E A RC H ON T HE
BE NEFI T S OF E NVIRONME N TA L S T IMUL AT ION 486
Education 487
Social Interactions 494
Occupational Factors 496
Leisure Activities and Age-Related Cognitive Decline 499
E NG AG E M E N T I N C O G N I T I V E LY S T I M U L AT I N G L E I S U R E
ACT I VI T IE S A ND DE ME N T I A R I SK 504
S E C ON D - OR M U LT IP L E - L A N G UAG E U S E ( B I L I N G UA L I S M
A ND MULT IL INGUA L I SM) 507
PHYSIC A L EXERC I SE , C A R DIOVA S CUL A R FI TNE S S ,

A N D C O G N I T I V E AG I L I T Y 512
S O C IO E C ON O M IC S TATU S , S T R E S S , A N D B R A I N PAT HS
TO AGIL E T HINK ING 513
MULT IDIME N SIONA L IN T E RV E N T ION S IN T HE

COMMUNI T Y: PROMI SING BEGINNINGS 521

Direct Experimental Evidence 526
E S TA B L I S H I N G C AU S A L C ON N E C T ION S : E NR IC HE D
E NVIRONME N T S , BR A IN S , A ND FL EXIBIL I T Y
IN NONHUM A N A NIM A L S 527
E X PE R I M E N TA L I N T E R V E N T ION S A N D M E N TA L AG I L I T Y
IN HUM A N S 539
Recently Acquired (“Experimentally Assigned”) Expertise

and Brain Plasticity in Humans 539
xiv D E TA I L E D C O N T E N T S
Exercising Our Bodies to Enhance Our Minds: Experimental Evidence

Linking Physical and Cardiovascular Fitness to Cognitive Performance 546
Practicing Agile Thinking? 549
Training in Recollection: An Intervention with Transfer
Benefits to Thinking 551
Training Attentional Control: Dual-Task Variable-Priority Training,
and Real-Time Video Gaming 554
Attention Restoration Theory and Experiences
of the Natural Environment 559
Training of Attention—in Young Children—Also Improves
Flexible Thinking 562
Novel Activities, Playful Practice, and Improving Agile Thinking 567
12. Implications and Applications of the iCASA Framework

for Fostering Agile Thinking 573
O S C IL L ATORY R A N G E I N L EV E L S OF S PE C I F IC I T Y A ND
L E V E L S OF C ON T ROL 574
How Can Individuals Be Encouraged to More Fully Optimize

the Use of Varying Levels of Representational Specificity (LoS)
and Varying Levels of Control (LoC)? 574
What Are the Neural Mechanisms Involved in Transitioning
between Top-Down Executive Control and the “Default Mode”
and How Do These Networks Dynamically Interact in
Creative Thought? 577
What Are the Relations between the Several Different
Gradients of “Representational Specificity” That Have
Been Identified in the Brain, and How Do They Dynamically
Contribute to Thought? 580
What Are the Sources and Limitations of Interventions
That May Counteract Self-Regulatory Resource Depletion? 582
How Should the Day-to-Day Schedules of Individuals and Groups
Be Structured to Best Allow for Differing Levels of Processing
Control so as to Maximize Creativity and Learning? 584
What Are the Relations between Direct Effortful
“Attention Training” Interventions and Less Directed
Interventions such as Meditation, Mindfulness Training,
and Attention Restoration? 592
E NVIRONME N TA L E NR IC HME N T A ND S T IMUL AT ION 594
How Can Individuals throughout the Life Span Be Encouraged

to Engage in Diverse Cognitive and Social Activities that
Continuously Aid Plasticity and Growth? 594
De t ail e d C on t e n t s xv
What Fosters Individualism and “Useful Variation”

in Our Habits of Thought and Action? 597
T H E I N T E R PE NE T R AT ION OF C ON C E P T S W I T H PE R C E P T ION ,
ACT ION / M O T I VAT ION , A N D E MO T ION 598
How Can We Use Our Understanding of the Intimately
Intermeshed Nature of Representations in the Mind, the
World, and Our Bodies, So That We Optimally “Think with
Our Environment”? 598
How Can We Better Understand the Origins of Repetitive
Automatic Thoughts and Overly Verbal-Linguistic Processing
and Their Effects on Flexibly Creative Problem Solving? 601
B R OA DE R E D U C AT IONA L , P OL IC Y, A N D E T H IC A L I M P L IC AT ION S 606
How Can We Draw on Our Understanding of the
Powerful Influence of Metacognitive Assumptions
about the Nature of Learning and Intelligence to
Best Inform Our Formal and Informal Mentoring? 606
Are There Organizational and Group “Structural” Guides
and Safeguards That Might Be Adopted to Encourage
Greater Adaptive Oscillatory Range in LoS and LoC? 608
How Can the iCASA Framework Help to Inform Our Thinking
about Ethics and Values? 609
Notes 613
References 639
Index 739
Preface
Minds do not exist in a vacuum, nor do brains. We know this, but we as often forget it.
Or it becomes lost in the keenness of our pursuit of more focused questions.
This book attempts to keep mind, brain, body, and environment together.
Listing four things is easy. Consistently respecting their pair-wise and higher order
interrelations is not so easy. But here I have tried, because we must.
We must if we are to fully scientifically understand how agility of mind is possible
and thereby protect and promote the conditions that enable it.
My own aspirations toward such an understanding, as expressed here, have diverse
origins. There are many individuals, some known, others anonymous, including
reviewers of earlier drafts of portions of the manuscript, who have provided encour-
agement, suggestions, and resilient optimism about the worth of the endeavor.
Thanking everyone, colleagues, family, and friends, individually here is not possible.
But there are a few who cannot go unnamed. At Oxford University Press, my original
editor, Catharine Carlin, who from the first recognized the conceptual scope that was
needed and saw how to quietly but surely enable it; also Joan Bossert and Tracy O’Hara
at Oxford University Press, for their help in shepherding through the transition to the
production phase, and Leslie Anglin, Kavitha Ashok, and Emily Perry for their deft attun-
ement to both the small details and the bigger picture in the many stages en route from
an initial manuscript to a printed book. There are also those who indirectly, rather than
directly, helped to make this possible, through their example and support. I am grateful
to my earlier mentors and colleagues at Harvard for uniquely exemplifying grounded pio-
neering intellectual reach: Roger Brown, Randy Buckner, Brendan Maher, Hilary Putnam,
Don Rubin, Dan Schacter, and Anthony Wagner, and to more recent exemplars of intel-
lectual generosity: Steve Engel, Jan Estep, Sheng He, Yuhong Jiang, and Dan Kersten.
I also must thank the students, both undergraduate and graduate, in my classes
and my labs, and my postdoctoral fellows, for their probing questions, their relentless-
ness, and their abiding commitment to inquiry, learning, and teaching. Universities,
research universities in particular, are very special places, and saying so is something
that we need to do more often, lest they become taken for granted and no longer be
environments that allow us all to grow, share, learn, and make “fruitful” (useful,
beneficial, or grounding) newness in the world.
But it is to Jonathan Binks—my lifelong creative partner—that I dedicate this
work. Without his faith, it would not be.
xvii
Acknowledgments
Selections from “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” (p. 387) and from “Thirteen Ways
of Looking at a Blackbird” (p. 573) reprinted from The Collected Poems of Wallace
Stevens by Wallace Stevens, copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982
by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random
House, Inc.
xix
The Agile Mind
1
Agility of Mind and the Integrated
Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract
(iCASA) Framework
In the end I abandoned any attempt at forward planning,
deciding that the best way to operate was to go into the
studio with no preconceived ideas and to take each session
as it came, as freely and spontaneously as possible.
—Oscar Peterson (2002, p. 264)
Having the concrete mind of the poet, I am unhappy when

I find myself among abstract things, and yet I need them
to set my experience in order.
—W. B. Yeats (1925/2008, p. 104)
This is a book about bridges—bridges within, and to, thinking. The material for
the bridges is experimental and observational evidence, from psychology, cognitive
neuroscience, and allied disciplines, regarding the factors that are most likely to foster
what I shall call agility of mind, agile thinking, or mental agility.
Physical agility is characterized by nimbleness, flexibility, and a capacity to rapidly
and aptly alter the position or directional movement of one’s body without losing
one’s balance. Similarly, mental agility entails a readiness and capacity to change our
manner of thinking, or of approaching a situation, endeavor, or problem, without
losing our “balance” in terms of our broader goals and aims. Agility in the physical
sense is especially called upon in circumstances involving unexpected obstacles or
dynamically changing situations. Yet agility is only one of several essential compo-
nents in physical fitness. One also needs endurance and aerobic capacity, and many
factors such as strength, coordination, and learning contribute to physical agility.
All this is also true of mental agility.
Agile thinking involves ways of representing and processing (using) information
and knowledge that is flexibly, creatively, and adaptively attuned to changing circum-
stances and goals. It is thinking that is able to promote and sustain both long-term
and provisional plans and projects in the face of dynamic and more stable environ-
ments, in the midst of uncertainty and ambiguity, and for real-life risks and rewards.
3
4 THE AGILE MIND
Although agility of mind involves many different contributors both internal and
external to the individual, which operate at multiple levels of analysis and multiple
time scales, it can be broadly and fundamentally characterized as reflecting appropri-
ate and adaptive variability of responding on two dimensions. One dimension
corresponds to the processes involved in thought, that is, the “how” of thought, the
ways in which thinking occurs or proceeds. This is the dimension of levels of cognitive
control. The second dimension corresponds to the content of thought, or the “what” of
thought, the “that” to which thinking is directed toward or is about. This is the dimen-
sion of levels of representational specificity.
When we are mentally agile, we are able to draw upon, and to “aptly use,” the full
continuum of cognitive control—ranging from highly deliberate and controlled respond-
ing, thinking, and judgment, on one side, to spontaneous or improvisational, to
automatic or habitual responding, on the other side. Across the many dynamically
changing tasks, situations, and problem spaces that we confront, no one place on the
continuum of cognitive control is invariably ideal: the “right” (optimal, best, most
appropriate) level of control, from highly deliberate and controlled to rapidly inter-
mixed spontaneity and improvisation, to automatic or habitual responding, will
depend on the (unfolding) specifics of the situation. Equally important, when we are
mentally agile we are also able to draw upon, and to “aptly use,” the full continuum of
levels of specificity of mental representations—ranging from the highly abstract (e.g.,
categorical, gist-like, schematic, superordinate) to the exceedingly specific (e.g., item
specific, concrete, episodic, subordinate), as well as any of the numerous “basic-level”
midpoints in between. Inducements and impediments to variation on both of these
dimensions, and how such variation may be realized in the brain, are thus recurrent
themes of the following chapters. Notably, as we will see, apt and wide variation across
these two dimensions is not confined to strictly conceptual content but may apply to
multiple domains of experience: Concepts and memories, yes, but also to diverse aspects
of emotion, perception, motivation, and action.
We already have several concepts in cognitive neuroscience and psychology that
refer to various aspects of flexibly adaptive thinking. Prominent examples here include
executive function, self-regulatory capacity, fluid intelligence, creativity, and resil-
ience. Why propose yet another concept: Do we need another construct? To what end?
As will be developed more fully in the section “Distinguishing Mental Agility,” each of
these example concepts, and associated treatments of thinking, reasoning, and judg-
ment, predominantly emphasizes particularly one side of the representational
content or representational process pairings, and frequently focuses on the benefits
of one of the pair (usually abstraction in the case of representational content, and
controlled processing in the case of representational process). This book attempts to
take a more even-handed and democratic approach, equally often stressing the bene-
fits and the potential hazards and costs of reliance on either controlled or automatic
processing, and either abstract or specific representations. It also centrally draws
attention to the factors that enable—versus impede—our appropriate and adaptive
movement between varying levels of cognitive control and varying levels of specificity
across different domains of experience.
So one answer to the question of why we need another construct is that mental
agility is a broader, more encompassing construct that emphasizes the important but less
Ag il ity of Mind and t h e iC ASA F ram e w ork 5
Self-
Executive regulatory
function capacity
Mental agility
Fluid
Creativity intelligence
Resilience
Figure 1.1. Distinguishing Mental Agility. The construct of mental agility is

more encompassing or broader than several related constructs.
examined questions of how, when, and why we move between different levels of cognitive
control and between differing levels of representational specificity. Figure 1.1 provides a
simple schematic of this way of “distinguishing mental agility”; a more formal treat-
ment of these related but narrower concepts is provided later in this chapter.
A second answer to the question of why we need a construct of mental agility might
itself be couched in examples, illustrating the referential domain of the more abstract
concept with particular instances. Let’s here bring to mind some examples—examples
that are exaggerated and rather simplified for the sake of demonstrative clarity, but
not nonsensical. Imagine a person who is inveterately creative—someone who is
always generating novel ideas and new possible approaches to situations, seeing
alternative ways to construe a situation; she is an endless source of innovations in
thought and action. Would such endlessly creative cognitive processes prove uniformly
beneficial? What if the old, conventional or habitual method of approach in a given
context was, all things considered, the best approach, even though it had been used on
numerous occasions previously? We have likely encountered individuals who are
somewhat like this—or persons of the opposing predisposition: those who ever stick
closely to the “tried and true,” varying little, relying on habitual or proceduralized
approaches to most of the projects they pursue, and who are distinctly uncomfortable
with variations or change. This “habit-bound” person may well demonstrate judg-
ments and behaviors in some situations that we evaluate as more appropriate (more
fitting) than those shown by the inveterately creative individual. Nonetheless, we also
would recognize that the habit-bound person (perhaps of the “good fences make good
neighbors” sort, gently or perhaps not-so-gently critiqued by the poet Robert Frost in
the poem, “Mending Wall”) is neither fully realizing his possible potential for experi-
ential growth and learning nor approaching even mundane and apparently inconse-
quential activities in ways that are optimal.
Now imagine three other persons: One person can never “let go” but must
always be “in control,” explicitly aware of all the plans for the day and for the next five
minutes as well as all the steps to be taken to get there, and who is decidedly uncom-
fortable with spontaneity or experiment; a second person, who never seems to really
get the “big picture” but is always lost in a dense tangle of details and specifics and
6 THE AGILE MIND
questions of how, precisely, to do this and how to do that, never stopping to articulate
what the larger goal is; last, a third person of the opposite tenor—one who
never seems to attend to anything but the “big picture,” who seems to entirely miss the
concrete and detailed goings-on and “hands-on how-to” that surround him, perhaps
modeled on the chronic worrier who continually ruminates about such abstract and
underspecified questions as “What if I fail?”
Clearly, each of these persons is a caricature, but the caricatures point to different
predominant predispositions that we can have both for adopting particular levels of
cognitive control (e.g., highly deliberate and planned vs. spontaneous and improvisa-
tional vs. habit-bound and automatic) and also for adopting particular levels of
representational focus, construal, or specificity (e.g., detailed and specific vs. basic
level vs. general and abstract). The caricatures also emphasize that getting stuck at any
one of the points of either the level of control or the level of specificity continuum can
prove problematic, interfering with flexibly adaptive thinking and judgment.
There is no existing concept that captures such a capability for flexibly adaptive
thinking and responding, involving the ability to adeptly move across both varying
levels of specificity and varying levels of control as circumstances require; as devel-
oped later, even comparatively broad concepts such as that of resilience, or executive
function, denote narrower aspects or subsets of this broader more encompassing sort
of “adroitly adaptive” flexibility. A person who is mentally agile is one who is able to
avoid the hazards and costs of each of these caricatures: He or she is able to draw on
habitual or repeated responses when this is appropriate, and to move up, or down, in
level of action identification (e.g., focusing on how vs. why) as external circumstances
demand. He or she is also able to move into states of defocused receptive attention
and cognitive/perceptual processing that allow mainly associative, intuitive connec-
tions and pattern recognition to emerge, either when “stuck” due to having reached an
impasse when using deliberately controlled processes, or when broader associative
search in a problem space is needed, yet can also resume deliberate and/or analytical,
feature-based problem-solving efforts at multiple points. In brief, he or she is neither
excessively or too unremittingly overcontrolled nor unremittingly undercontrolled; he
or she is neither an unrelenting skeptic of intuition and spontaneous judgments nor
an uncritical acceptor of its products or process.
Although representational content and representational processes may be
construed and categorized in different ways, as noted, they have very often been
characterized in terms of the extremes of the abstract versus the specific in the case of
representational content, and of controlled versus automatic in the case of representa-
tional process. Many other pairs of terms also have been used, with differing connota-
tions and purposes, but broadly mapping to generally similar territory. In the case of
representational content, other terms include category versus exemplar, gist versus
verbatim, and structural versus surface; in the case of representational process, other
terms are analytic versus experiential, reasoning versus intuitive, and System 2 versus
System 1. These terms and distinctions among them, and also the manner in which
they tend to explicitly or implicitly conflate levels of control and levels of specificity, are
more formally considered in later sections of this chapter.
Thus, one way that this is a book about bridges in, and to, thinking is that it brings
together, in one conceptual space, several more discrete and narrower concepts, each
of which treats aspects of adaptively creative thought and judgment, but that
are typically considered separately or singly (e.g., creativity and resilience, or creativity
and executive function). Notably, however, this is undertaken in an emergent or
bottom-up manner. The chapters typically begin not with constructs but with
concrete examples of conditions under which agile thinking is, or is not, observed in
relation to each of the four interpenetrating domains of representations: memory
and concepts, perception, action and motivation, and emotion. This rich and varied
database, gathered and probed in Parts I and II of the book, then provides grounding
for the four chapters of Part III, which focus on the multiple contributing brain
systems and possible mechanisms within the brain that contribute to our capacity
for mental agility. The possible substrates and correlates of mental agility in the brain
are explored in a more focused, “paradigm-specific” manner in the initial half of
Part III (Chapters 8 and 9); these chapters concentrate on controlled experimental
findings from neurophysiology (e.g., single-cell recordings), brain imaging (e.g., func-
tional magnetic resonance imaging), neuropsychology (e.g., findings from patients
with semantic dementia, and patients with lesions to distinct areas of prefrontal
cortex), and some related neurochemical explorations that have informed our under-
standing of the brain bases of levels of control, levels of specificity, and adaptive
modulation of both levels of control and levels of specificity. The ways in which our
broader (often messier, more complex, multimodal, and dynamic) experiential
environment modifies the function, structure, and connectivity networks of the brain
across time is taken up in the latter half of Part III. In these later chapters, we first
concentrate on evidence from indirect observational and longitudinal studies (Chapter
10) and then turn to consider direct experimental investigations (Chapter 11) that
illuminate how the environments we create, choose, or find ourselves within, can
either make, and sometimes also unmake, “brain paths” to agile thinking.
A second, related way that this is a book about bridges, then, is in terms of the
domains of evidence taken into its purview: Some of the bridges are across scientific
and academic content areas, particularly across the many varied specializations and
subspecializations of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and allied disciplines that
systematically explore cognition and behavior, with corresponding differences in
methodologies and conceptual approaches. These “data-rich” bridges also substan-
tially connect the more narrowly construed cognitive and conceptual aspects of think-
ing, such as might be emphasized in a typical research treatment of thinking and
problem solving, to the much broader aspects of ourselves as situated “minded” beings,
temporally, materially, and motivationally interfacing with the world around us. On
the relatively “interior side” those aspects include not only domains of what we may
prototypically think of as involving thinking or mental representations and mental
processes—particularly memory, categorization, and concepts—but also perception,
emotion, and motivation, as well as several interrelated dimensions of personality or
temperament. On the relatively “exterior side,” those broader aspects also include
actions, which emerge at the immediate interface between our mental and motiva-
tional world and the physical world, and a vast and continually changing array of
environmental contexts, not only physical but also symbolic, social, and cultural,
which may either encourage and support, or block and undermine, creatively adaptive
thinking. And in the middle of all this—neither entirely on the interior nor on the
8 THE AGILE MIND
exterior side but itself the substrate and “home” of thought and the self—is that
biologically complex, amazingly powerful, tremendously versatile computational and
representational processing entity that we know as “the brain.”
Given that we, and our brains, are “home” to both varying levels of specificity of
representational content, and varying levels of control with regard to representational
process, we need to find ways to pragmatically, conceptually, and empirically integrate
them in our treatments of cognition so as to maximize our potential capacity for agile
thinking. As developed later, the framework proposed here seeks to begin to do just
that. Drawing on the Spanish and Italian word casa, meaning variously house or home,
mansion, cottage, or dwelling, it is called the integrated Controlled-Automatic,
Specific-Abstract framework, or “iCASA” framework.
The Integrated Controlled-Automatic,

Specific-Abstract (iCASA) Framework
The central claim of this book can be simply stated: Optimal agility of mind requires the
capacity to both move between varying levels of control (representational process) and
varying levels of specificity (representational content). Additional basic principles of
what I shall term the integrated Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract (iCASA)
framework, to be supported in the following chapters, are as follows:
◊ Agile thinking always occurs within a representational processing space that is

(relatively more) controlled or (relatively more) automatic.
◊ Agile thinking also always occurs within a representational content space that is
(relatively more) specific or (relatively more) abstract.
◊ No one point on either continuum alone, or combination of continua, is always ideal
for fostering agile thinking. The ideal location will vary depending on past and pres-
ent conditions and hoped-for outcomes. The ability to occupy and move between
varying levels of representational specificity and varying levels of control, or to show
“oscillatory range,” is essential to optimally creative and adaptive thinking.
◊ Agile thinking often closely intersects with acting, emotion, and perception because
past and planned actions, remembered, perceived, and predicted emotions, and
current and anticipated perceptions similarly exist in a representational content
and process space that varies in degree of specificity and level of control.
◊ Although there are clear and unambiguous examples of action, emotion, perception,
and thought, these realms, taken as a whole, have somewhat indeterminate or per-
meable boundaries given, for instance, evidence that mental concepts themselves
depend on sensory-perceptual and action-related experience, and evidence that emo-
tion and motivation almost continually dynamically influence mind and behavior.
◊ There is no one “center” where agile thinking “happens”—but multiple overlapping
and dynamically changing “centers” with boundaries that include not only the self/
personality but also varying levels of interpersonal-social and ideational-cultural
embeddedness, and changing dynamics within the brain, including both top-down
and bottom-up processes that contribute to attentional and regulatory control, and
to the level of representational specificity that is predominantly used.
◊ Our environment can both externally support, and internally enter into, our
representational interface with objects, events, and ideas so that portions of think-
ing are situated “in the world” as well as “in the head.” Our environment, broadly
construed, including the activities and interests that we pursue on a day-to-day
basis and across our lifetimes, continuously and reciprocally influences the
representational processing/representational content space that we are in, and the
representational and processing networks and interconnectivities of our brain.
Environmental enrichment and diversity provide both impetus and essential
matter (grounds or substance) for agile mind/brains and agile thinking.
A schematic of several of these principles is provided in Figure 1.2.

According to the iCASA framework, the reason we can be (and sometimes though
not always are) agile thinkers is that we have a wide range of capacities both for repre-
senting information at multiple levels of specificity, and multiple levels of control.
Levels of specificity (LoS) can vary from the highly concrete and specific to the highly
abstract and general, with multiple degrees of intermediate levels of abstraction in
Content (LoS)
Abstract
Emotion
Perceiving
Process
(LoC) Controlled Automatic
Concepts Acting
Representational
Specific
accessibility
Brain substrates
Experiential environment
Figure 1.2. The Integrated Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract

(iCASA) Framework. The horizontal axis represents varying levels of control
(LoC) from highly controlled to highly automatic processes, with states such as
spontaneity, flow, and improvisation in the middle region. The vertical axis
represents varying levels of specificity (LoS) from highly abstract to highly specific
content, with basic-level representations in the middle region. Representational
accessibility in each of the interrelated domains of concepts, perceiving, emotion,
and acting is embedded within both the wider experiential environment and
dynamic brain substrates supporting mental representations and processes.
10 THE AGILE MIND
between. Levels of control (LoC) can vary from the extremely controlled (deliberate,
systematic, intentional, conscious) to the automatic (nondeliberate, habit-based,
nonintentional, nonconscious, or preconscious), with an intermediate zone that might
be designated as the spontaneous, and involving receptively attuned, diffuse attention
that may nonetheless be broadly constrained by one’s goals and aims.
An essential clarification: Although, in Figure 1.2, there is one axis for LoS and one
axis for LoC, bounded at the extremes by “abstract” versus “specific” and “controlled”
versus “automatic,” this is a conceptual simplification in two important respects. First,
the neurobiological and cognitive processes that support automatic versus controlled
processing are not “one and the same” and so aspects of both automatic and controlled
cognitive-computational functions can occur in parallel, or simultaneously (though
what is within conscious awareness at a given moment may predominantly reflect
controlled or automatic/spontaneous “outputs” into thought). Second, and relatedly,
both differing levels of control and differing levels of specificity may be present simul-
taneously, or in parallel, particularly with respect to the different “domains” of memory
and concepts, perception, action and motivation, and emotion. Figure 1.2 attempts to
convey this possibility through the only partially overlapping spheres for these
various domains, with the dashed or broken lines in the spheres also denoting
the somewhat permeable and indistinct boundaries of the domains. Additionally,
as schematized in Figure 1.3, both our predominant processing approach (controlled
vs. automatic) and our predominant level of representational specificity (specific vs.
abstract) in each of the domains may dynamically change across time.
Acting
LoS Emotion
Perceiving
Concepts
Concepts
Acting
LoC
Perceiving
Emotion
Emotion
Perceiving
e
Tim
Concepts Acting
Figure 1.3. Changing Levels of Control and Levels of Specificity

Across Time. Both our predominant processing approach, or level of control (LoC),
ranging from highly controlled to highly automatic, and our predominant level of
representational specificity (LoS), ranging from highly specific to highly abstract, can
dynamically change across time in each of the interrelated domains: concepts,
perceiving, emotion, and acting.
For example, an individual might be directing highly controlled analytic attentional

effort toward what he or she is seeing and interpreting at a given moment (e.g., when
examining newly obtained data regarding the results of an important project or
undertaking) but simultaneously have only a quite general impressionistic sense that
he or she is in a mildly positive emotional state (with little subtle differentiation of
the precise nature of that positive state, reflecting low “granularity” of emotional
concepts). Similarly, an individual might be systematically and carefully working
through a complex problem, while simultaneously largely automatically engaging in
any of a number of other well-learned and habitual but complex sensory-motor
actions, such as typing, walking, or driving an automobile.
Nonetheless, although there is thus some degree of independence in the determi-
nants of levels of control and levels of specificity across domains, they also can influ-
ence and modulate, and in some cases strongly constrain, one another. For example,
motivational or emotional factors relating to the extent to which we are in an
“approach” versus “avoidance” orientation, or in a positive affective state, may subtly
shape the predominant level of specificity that we adopt with respect to categorizing
objects. Similarly, although we may continue to attempt to conceptually work through
a thorny intellectual problem as we’re driving, if the weather or traffic conditions
become suddenly especially unpredictable, or difficult to negotiate, then the problem
may be put aside for later, less divided, reflection.
According to the iCASA framework, a fundamental parameter of both the capacity
for varying levels of specificity and varying levels of control is what I term our oscilla-
tory range—the range of levels of specificity and levels of control that we have avail-
able to us, across different contexts and domains. As developed further later, oscillatory
range involves quantitative, temporal, and qualitative aspects. These capacities also
depend on a number of essential (supporting and formative) factors, including envi-
ronmental and psychobiological conditions. However, before turning to a consideration
of oscillatory range and the formative conditions for this capacity we will first expand
on what is meant by abstract-specific representational content, and then levels of con-
trol and representational process.
Abstract and Specific Representational Content

A central and well-documented observation about human memory and knowledge is
that humans can represent and access information at varying levels of specificity or
grain. We may choose (or find ourselves operating with) representations at any of a
number of levels of abstraction, with differing degrees of tight, strict, or verbatim
“correspondence” to the original perceptual or conceptual content of our experiences.
This is perhaps most readily seen to be true for general facts and knowledge such as that
relating to objects and places (semantic memory, e.g., G. L. Murphy & Smith, 1982;
Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976; Tanaka & Taylor, 1991;
see G. Cohen, 2000 and G. L. Murphy, 2002, for reviews) and for individual spatio-
temporal events (episodic and autobiographical memory, e.g., S. J. Anderson & Conway,
1993; Brainerd & Reyna, 1998; M. A. Conway, 1992, 2005, 2009; Goldsmith, Koriat, &
Weinberg-Eliezer, 2002). However—as suggested later, and as detailed in subsequent
12 THE AGILE MIND
chapters—similar differences in the specificity or “granularity” of our representations

also may apply to concepts regarding action and motivation, as well as emotion.
The end points of the specificity continuum have been described with various (not
necessarily entirely interchangeable) terms, with the more specific end often denoted
as item specific, exemplar based, or verbatim, and the more abstract end as category
based, gist based, or meaning based (e.g., Brainerd & Reyna, 1990; Koutstaal &
Schacter, 1997a; G. L. Murphy, 2002). Our cognitive-perceptual position on this spec-
ificity continuum for any given task or situation often is a key factor in the types of
decisions, judgments, and errors we may make (Ewa, 2002; Koutstaal, 2003; Koutstaal
et al., 1999; Pansky & Koriat, 2004; Reyna, 2004, 2008; Soto & Wasserman, 2010;
L. Yaniv & Foster, 1995) and has been found to be influenced by such diverse factors
as age (Aizpurua & Koutstaal, 2010; Brainerd & Gordon, 1994; Koutstaal & Schacter,
1997a; Koutstaal et al., 2003; Luo & Craik, 2009; Micco & Masson, 1992; Tun et al.,
1998), time since encoding (Brainerd & Reyna, 1990; J. Dorfman & Mandler, 1994),
an orientation toward the avoidance of particular types of errors (Koriat & Goldsmith,
1996; L. Yaniv & Foster, 1995), level of expertise or training (K. E. Johnson & Mervis,
1997; Kulatunga-Moruzi, Brooks, & Norman, 2001; Tanaka & Taylor, 1991), and affec-
tive state (e.g., J. M. G. Williams & Dritschel, 1992; Raes, Williams, & Hermans, 2009;
Watkins, Baeyens, & Read, 2009).
The content of more abstract versus more specific representations is partially deter-
mined by the realm or domain of application: memory and categorization, perception,
motivation and action, or emotion all of which (as argued in the following chapters)
are essential contributors to agile minds. Within the realms of memory, categoriza-
tion, and perception, specific representations might refer to individual or unique
instances or cases or subordinate classes or features; in contrast, abstract representa-
tions might refer to grouped, aggregate, or (relatively) superordinate classes. Increasing
levels of abstraction are suggested as one considers, for example, a particular oak tree
planted to celebrate the birth of one’s nephew versus all oak trees or all trees or all
vegetation in general; or (to take another example) a walk in the forest on a particular
autumn afternoon with one’s friend versus all of one’s walks, or all of the times one has
met that friend or all meetings with friends, or all one’s social interactions.
As suggested by these examples, the nature of abstract representations partially
involves differential attention to features that similarly characterize several events or
objects (invariant features) versus features that individuate or differentiate any one
event or object from others that appear to be similar. More specific representations
represent occasions or objects that (relatively speaking) are more differentiated and
also may be contextually unique. With respect to more conceptual content such as that
involved in reasoning or problem solving in science, medicine, or law, abstraction
might involve the identification of “deeper” (structural) aspects or underlying princi-
ples or causes rather than noticing “surface” (superficial) incidental features that are
not essential in determining the appropriate response or classification of the case. The
idea that there are hierarchies of gist, or fuzzy-to-verbatim continua, in categoriza-
tion and reasoning is further explored in a later section of this chapter (“Convergent
Theoretical Perspectives on Automaticity and Multiple Gradations of Levels of
Specificity”). In other instances, and in literature and the arts, abstraction might
involve the singling out of significant parallels or analogies in how a given subject
matter is treated, despite the absence of any clear and direct cross-referential
identities at the “literal” level of objects or forms.
Within the realm of motivation and action, more specific representational content
might involve greater emphasis on the mechanics or implementation of our goals or
intended actions (the “how”), whereas more abstract content stresses our purpose, the
implications, or the consequences of the action (the “why”) (e.g., Freitas, Gollwitzer, &
Trope, 2004; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987, 1989). Specific representational content might
also be more perceptually immediate, temporally and spatially near or present rather
than distant in time or space (e.g., Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2003,
2010). In contrast, abstract representations in action and motivation might involve
temporally and spatially distal content, cross-situational relevance, longer term and
less immediately “salient” interests or values. Similarly, representational content of
emotions might vary between very impressionistic/global assessments of value or
potency—good/bad, to-be-approached/to-be-avoided, strong/weak (e.g., Barrett et al.,
2001; Feldman, 1995)—to highly differentiated and subtle characterizations involv-
ing multiple layers of complex intimations of responsibility and desire and fear and
hope (e.g., the emotions of Maggie Verver in Henry James’ novel, The Golden Bowl).
The notion of representational specificity can be alternatively construed through
what Mercado (2008) has termed “representational resolving power.” In a proposed
broad account of neural and cognitive plasticity, Mercado assumes that “neural plastic-
ity contributes to cognitive plasticity and intelligence but only to the extent that reorga-
nization increases the brain’s capacity to resolve stimulus representations.” More specifically,
developing both the notion of what comprises a stimulus representation and why
representational resolution is so critical, he states that:
The term stimulus representation is used here to refer to neural activity evoked
either by sensory receptors or by the initiation of movements and thoughts.
Stimulus representations indicate that particular environmental and inter-
nal states have occurred (or are about to occur), and they thus represent
those states. […] an organism’s representational resolving power constrains
what that organism can learn about events. In particular, an individual that
cannot distinguish two stimulus representations cannot learn to respond
differentially to the events that are associated with those representations.
Consequently, an organism’s cognitive plasticity is limited by the capacity of
its brain to resolve stimulus representations […] referred to as representa-
tional resolution. (Mercado, 2008, p. 111)
Evidence to be reviewed here will suggest that individuals may possess multiple
coexisting (often partial) representations of a given stimulus or relation that may
complement but also sometimes compete with one another. Although not necessarily
endorsing all of the assumptions of the position known as “neuroconstructionism,”
the argument made from that position regarding the developmentally unfolding,
successively constructed and continually modified, and context-dependent nature of our
mental representations is very much in line with, and broadly meshes with, the views
developed here. A central tenet of that perspective is the context dependence of the
emergence of representations.
14 THE AGILE MIND
Whether it be at the level of individual neurons acquiring their eventual

functions during early development, at the level of functional brain systems,
at the level of the whole brain embedded within a physical body, or whether
it was at the level of the individual child [or person] situated within a physi-
cal and social environment, development does not occur in a vacuum. The con-
text within which an entity exists, and its interactions with its neighbors, are
fundamental in determining the kinds of functions that it will take on and
the kinds of representations that will develop. This is true at all levels of
investigation. (Mareschal, Sirois, et al., 2007, p. 2, original emphasis)
Additionally, a natural outcome of context dependence is what this perspective

terms “partial representations,” according to which, instead of a single detailed repre-
sentation of, for example, an object or construct, “the brain contains multiple frag-
mentary partial representations that are just sufficient to allow successful behavior.”
On this account, partial representations “are minimal representations that comple-
ment information in the environment and in other systems within the brain”
(Mareschal, Johnson, et al., 2007, p. 16). In part, this is because, for a given complex
multidimensional sensory-perceptual input, involving, for instance, in the case of an
object, its color, shape, identity, and motor affordances (that is, what actions we could
perform on and with the object), these various different dimensions may be abstracted
and separately represented in the brain. Such division and distributed representation
across neural systems is argued to “allow neural circuits to specialize in a more efficient
way”—with the relevant information reactivated and reconjoined or “brought together
as necessary to drive specific behaviors” (Mareschal, Johnson, et al., 2007, p. 211).
Alternatively, depending on the contextual demands, only particular subsets of all of
the information that is represented within the whole system will be called upon, or
actively used and recruited for a given task (cf. Kouider et al., 2010).
One of the most well developed theoretical treatments of the role of levels of
representational specificity throughout cognition is fuzzy trace theory (e.g., Brainerd &
Kingma, 1984; Reyna, 2004; Reyna & Brainerd, 1991, 1995). This dual-process
theoretical account is explicitly considered in a later section of this chapter, dealing
with convergent theoretical perspectives on automaticity and multiple gradations of
levels of specificity. Here, however, with regard to the role of partial representations,
it might be noted that a number of the phenomena that are considered in the
following chapters may be framed in terms of reliance on partial representations, or
constrained recruitment of subsets of information. Two examples are the highly verbal
and abstract nature of much of the “thought content” in chronic worry and clinical
depression—with consequent impairments in problem solving (treated in Chapters 2
and 3), and the phenomenon designated by the term “functional fixedness”—reflect-
ing excessive reliance on abstract functional information regarding objects, particu-
larly their intended or designed use, and a frequent impediment to problem solving
when objects must be utilized in ways other than their intended, or currently empha-
sized, function (considered in Chapter 4). Similarly, the many ways in which we may
representationally use motor actions, such as our own and others’ gestures, and the
ways in which we structure the environments in which we think and act to reduce
working memory and other cognitive control demands (also considered in Chapter 4),
likewise assume that we can flexibly and adaptively adjust the extent to which we rely
on fuller, versus more partial, internal representations for thought and action.
Levels of Control and Representational Processes

In contrast to the widespread acceptance of a continuum of levels of representational
specificity, that allows for multiple intermediate levels of “grain” reflecting mental
representations that are neither highly abstract nor highly specific, treatments
of levels of control, particularly as exemplified in dual-process theories of cognition,
have often taken a dichotomous approach. Dual-process theories typically contrast
automatic versus deliberate cognitive modes and devote less attention to modes of
processing that may not be well described by either of these extremes, that involve
more intermediate, or extremely rapidly intermixed or interdigitated, sorts of
processing. Yet both fairly and precisely situating dual-process accounts in relation
to the iCASA framework—with its opposing proposal of a gradated continuum of
levels of control (cf. Cleeremans & Jiménez, 2002; Dunwoody et al., 2000; Hammond,
1996; Hammond et al., 1987)—is complicated by three interrelated factors. Notably,
each of these three factors can also be viewed as pointing to strengths of the iCASA
framework.
First, as will be further developed later, dual-process accounts frequently have not
focally differentiated between levels of control and levels of specificity and, instead,
implicitly or explicitly couple or “pair” a given level of control (e.g., automatic or
habitual responding) with reliance on a particular level of representational specificity
(e.g., gist-based or heuristic processing). Second, dual-process accounts often further
bundle or group certain sorts of content (e.g., emotions or affect) with a particular
level of control (e.g., automatic or intuitive responding). Third, dual-process accounts
typically have further “bundled” several additional—often similarly dichotomized—
attributes or characteristics, such as flexibility versus inflexibility, and fast versus slow
speed of acquisition, with a particular mode of control. Each of these three aspects of
dual-process theories has been the subject of criticism, and a number of alternative
accounts have been proposed. I will here first broadly and briefly characterize the
somewhat diverse “family” of dual-process accounts, and then expand upon each of
these three factors.
Dual-process theories of cognition (e.g., Brainerd & Reyna, 2001; Kahneman, 2003;
Sloman, 1996; Stanovich & West, 2000; T. D. Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000) and
memory (e.g., Jacoby, 1991, 1996; E. R. Smith & DeCoster, 2000) have long contrasted
modes of processing that are relatively more controlled (e.g., intentional, deliberate,
conscious) versus more automatic (e.g., nonintentional, nondeliberate, nonconscious),
though they have not necessarily agreed on the best terminology to use for the differ-
ent processing modes nor the precise conjunction of features or characteristics that
best or necessarily differentiate them (for extended conceptual analysis and review,
see Moors & De Houwer, 2006; Osman, 2004; Saling & Phillips; 2007; W. Schneider &
Chein, 2003; also cf. Osman & Stavy, 2006). Representative contrasting terms
here are Epstein’s Intuitive-Experiential versus Analytical-Rational thinking styles
(e.g., S. Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996), Stanovich and West’s (2000)
16 THE AGILE MIND
System 1 versus System 2, Kahneman’s (2003) Intuition versus Reasoning systems,

and E. R. Smith and DeCoster’s (2000) Associative versus Rule-based processing
(see S. Epstein et al., 1996 for a more extensive listing and discussion). Although the
proponents of such dual-system accounts are not in complete agreement with one
another, certain characteristics are commonly attributed to the two systems. For
example, Kahneman summarized some of the distinctions between them as follows:
The operations of System 1 are typically fast, automatic, effortless, associa-

tive, implicit (not available to introspection), and often emotionally charged;
they are also governed by habit and are therefore difficult to control or
modify. The operations of System 2 are slower, serial, effortful, more likely to
be consciously monitored and deliberately controlled; they are also relatively
flexible and potentially rule-governed. (Kahneman, 2003, p. 698)
Similarly, offering a broad-brush characterization of the distinction between the

Experiential versus Rational subsystems, proposed within Epstein’s cognitive-experi-
ential self-theory which posits that people process information by two parallel, inter-
active systems, Epstein et al. (1996) emphasize that the rational system “operates
primarily at the conscious level and is intentional, analytic, primarily verbal and rela-
tively affect free.” In contrast, the experiential system is “assumed to be automatic,
preconscious, holistic, associationistic, primarily nonverbal, and intimately associated
with affect.1 Heuristic processing represents the natural mode of the experiential
system” (S. Epstein et al., 1996, p. 391).2
Partially overlapping but also additional features of the two systems or processing
modes were underscored by E. R. Smith and DeCoster (2000), who align the two pro-
cessing modes with different memory systems that must meet two conflicting demands
(McClelland et al., 1995; Sherry & Schacter, 1987). On the one hand, one requirement
(need!) is for stability, to “record information slowly and incrementally so that the
total configuration in memory reflects a large sample of experiences,” thereby enabling
the formation of general expectancies and schematic knowledge that reflect the aver-
age and typical properties of the experienced environment. On the other hand,
another requirement (need!) is for plasticity: for the capacity for rapid learning of
novel information even on the basis of a single occurrence. This demand necessitates
a “fast binding system” that “can store episodic records of the details of specific
experiences, including the context” (E. R. Smith & DeCoster, 2000, p. 109). Not only
does associative processing occur quickly, automatically, and preconsciously (e.g.,
Bargh, 1994; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999), but it is “reproductive rather than produc-
tive” in that “it uses currently available cues to retrieve representations that were
stored on past occasions when similar cues were present,” and it uses “general, overall
similarity between the cues and stored representations to guide retrieval” such that
“past knowledge may be retrieved and used based on superficial or irrelevant similari-
ties to current ones, rather than only for structurally important or logical reasons”
(E. R. Smith & DeCoster, 2000, p. 111). In contrast, rule-based processes involve
symbolic knowledge that “can be used as rules to guide inferences and judgments,”
such that “the processing uses or follows rules, rather than merely conforms to them.”
Additionally, rule-based processing “also tends to be analytic, rather than based on
overall or global similarity” such that, for example, a symbolic rule might “single out
one or two specific features of an object to be used in categorization, based on concep-
tual knowledge of the category,” whereas associative processing “categorizes objects
nonanalytically, on the basis of their overall similarity to category prototypes or
known exemplars” (E. R. Smith & DeCoster, 2000, p. 112).
From this overview of dual-process accounts, it is clear that dual-process accounts
frequently have not differentiated between levels of control and levels of specificity
and, instead, implicitly or explicitly couple or “pair” a given level of control (e.g., auto-
matic or habitual responding) with reliance on a particular level of representational
specificity (e.g., gist-based or heuristic processing). This is problematic in that it does
not accommodate perhaps less salient but still often observed alternative “pairings”
such as automatic responding that is based on highly specific exemplars, instances, or
episodes. An excellent example here involves intuitive processing. (Another example
is provided by the notion of “event files” proposed by Hommel, 1998, 2004, 2009, and
recent findings—such as those reported by Horner and Henson, 2009; Race, Badre,
and Wagner, 2010; Waszak, Hommel, and Allport, 2003—demonstrating that the
perceptual, conceptual, and/or response features present during any given moment
of task performance may automatically be integrated into “event files” and that,
depending on circumstances, matches or “partial matches” of such specific episodic
features may either facilitate, or impede, performance. Event files are considered in
the later section of this chapter on “Convergent Theoretical Perspectives on
Automaticity and Multiple Gradations of Levels of Specificity”).
Although intuition is frequently grouped with reliance on general simplifying
heuristics or rules of thumb (such as “take the best,” e.g., Gigerenzer & Goldstein,
1996), not all intuitive judgments rely on such broad heuristics: Intuitive processing
may also draw upon particular (specific) exemplars or instances from memory and be
based on extensive learning or expertise. The distinction between intuition that is
grounded in “simplifying” heuristics, versus intuition grounded in the memory-based
retrieval of similar individual cases derived from extensive experience, is proposed by
Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein (2009) as an important factor differentiating two
contrasting approaches to intuition. On the one hand, and perhaps most well known,
there is the “heuristics and biases” approach to judgment and decision making, with
its corresponding emphasis on the many errors to which intuitive or automatic
judgments are prone (e.g., Kahneman, 2003; Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982). On
the other hand, there is the expertise-based approach to intuition, typified by the
naturalistic decision-making approach of Klein and colleagues (e.g., G. A. Klein, 1993,
2008; Kaempf, Klein, Thordsen, & Wolf, 1996). The latter more often emphasizes,
instead, the highly skilled intuitive accuracy of trained professionals in certain com-
plex domains such as firefighter commanders in the field or experienced nurses in a
neonatal intensive care unit.
The exemplar-based approach to skilled intuition is close to that described by
Herbert A. Simon (1992, p. 155), according to which intuition commonly describes a
problem-solving or question-answering performance that is rapid and for which “the
expert is unable to describe in detail the reasoning or other process that produced the
answer.” Simon describes this process as essentially one of pattern-based recognition:
“The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information
18 THE AGILE MIND
stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more
and nothing less than recognition.” As stated by Kahneman and Klein, the naturalistic
decision making and heuristics and biases approaches:
… share the assumption that intuitive judgments and preferences have the
characteristics of System 1 activity: They are automatic, arise effortlessly,
and often come to mind without immediate justification. However, the two
approaches focus on different classes of intuition. Intuitive judgments that
arise from experience and manifest skill are the province of [naturalistic
decision making], which explores the cues that guided such judgments and
the conditions for the acquisition of skill. In contrast, [heuristics and biases]
researchers have been mainly concerned with intuitive judgments that arise
from simplifying heuristics, not from specific experience. These intuitive judg-
ments are less likely to be accurate and are prone to systematic biases.
(Kahneman & Klein, 2009, p. 519, emphasis added)
These approaches further agree that genuinely skilled intuitive judgments (rather
than, for example, simply “lucky” intuitive judgments that turn out to be correct) rely
on a number of essential preconditions. Most notably, genuinely skilled intuitive judg-
ments require, first, the presence of an environment with sufficient regularity that it pro-
vides “adequately valid cues to the nature of the situation”—that is, cues to the causal and
statistical structure of the relevant environment, even if the individual cannot explic-
itly articulate those cues or their interrelations. Second, genuinely skilled intuitive
judgment also requires extensive practice, and multiple related factors, such as adequate
opportunities for feedback and for learning from mistakes (see Fadde, 2009, for applica-
tions to the domain of education and sports training, such as rapidly recognizing base-
ball pitches). According to the recognition-primed decision model, people use their
experience in the form of a “repertoire of patterns” to select a specific possible course
of action, that they also then mentally simulate to see how that particular action would
play out in their current specific situation (modifying or revising it only as necessary):
These patterns describe the primary causal factors operating in the situation.
The patterns highlight the most relevant cues, provide expectancies, identify
plausible goals, and suggest typical types of reactions in that type of situa-
tion. When people need to make a decision they can quickly match the situ-
ation to the patterns they have learned. If they find a clear match, they can
carry out the most typical course of action. In that way, people can success-
fully make extremely rapid decisions. The [recognition-primed decision-
making] model explains how people can make good decisions without
comparing options. (G. A. Klein, 2008, p. 457)
In terms of the iCASA framework, whereas “exemplar-based” intuitive judgments,

derived from extensive experience in a given domain, would be situated somewhere in
the lower right quadrant of Figure 1.2 (reflecting automatic reliance on comparatively
more specific representations), intuitions based on simplifying heuristics would be
situated in the upper right quadrant of Figure 1.2 (reflecting automatic reliance on
comparatively more abstract or generalized representations). Recognition-primed

decision making is further briefly discussed in Chapter 2 with regard to the ideas of
highly contextually situated cognition and judgment, and the notion that surface
features may sometimes validly cue “deeper” structural features.3 Intuition as mea-
sured on laboratory tasks such as the remote associates task (discussed, for example,
in Chapter 9, in the section on “Brain Correlates of Insight Problem Solving”), in which
individuals are asked to identify a connecting word for three disparate or unrelated
words, may be closer to “pattern-based recognition” particularly given that it involves
a structured domain (semantic cognition and language processing) with which
individuals have extensive experience.
The second aspect of dual-process accounts—that these accounts further tend to
bundle or group certain sorts of content (e.g., emotions or affect) with a particular
level of control (e.g., automatic or intuitive responding)—also poses difficulties. The
grouping of affect with automatic or intuitive responding, in particular, appears to
selectively emphasize emotion as an “input” to cognition, especially an unrecognized
input to judgment or evaluation, as, for instance, in the “affect heuristic,” where
one’s basic affective reactions to a stimulus or situation may be used to “stand in” for
various more complex attributes (e.g., Slovic et al., 2002; see Kahneman, 2003 for
discussion). However, clearly emotion may also be the object of deliberate controlled
processing, as in our efforts to intentionally engage in emotional regulation or
emotional suppression (e.g., Barrett et al., 2001; Gross, 2002; Ochsner et al., 2002;
Ochsner & Gross, 2005). Additionally, we can represent emotion in more or less
specific terms, reflecting differences in the “granularity” or level of precision with
which we represent emotion (e.g., Barrett et al., 2001; Feldman, 1995; Tugade et al.,
2004), and this may further influence cognitive processing (see Chapter 6).
Equally important, whether or how often one might entirely separate out “cogni-
tion” from “emotion” (or motivation) in ongoing processing and behavior is question-
able. Rather, as in the recent evidence summarized by Phelps (2006) and Pessoa (2008,
2009; see also the final section of Chapter 9), cognition and emotion may be exten-
sively integrated in the brain, with many brain regions helping to perform computa-
tions for both “cognitive” and “affective” aspects of behaviors, and emotion and
motivation either enhancing, or impairing, behavioral performance depending on
how they interact with important executive control functions such as inhibition, shift-
ing, and updating (Miyake et al., 2000). As depicted in Figure 1.4, across changing
contexts and demands, particular brain areas may become connected to multiple dif-
ferent networks (designated by ellipses in the figure) and certain brain regions, such
as the amygdala, that are highly interconnected with others (hubs) that are critical for
regulating both the flow and integration of information between regions, may be
essential for integrating emotion and cognition (see also, for example, the last four
sections of Chapter 9).
Even in the more restricted domain of how, specifically, affect relates to intuition,
there may be multiple directions of influence relating both to the “input” and “output”
of affect to the intuitive process. Although it is designated with a single term, the
nature of intuition may differ on multiple dimensions. A recent proposal suggests
differentiating between four interrelated sorts of intuition, classified according to
their predominant underlying cognitive processes, and also differing in the role that
20 THE AGILE MIND
Behaviors
e
tiv
ec
Aff
Cognitive
Neural NC1 NC2 NC3 NC4

computations
Brain
areas A1 A2 A3 A4
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3
Figure 1.4. The Dynamic Interrelations of Cognition and Affect.

In this conceptual proposal of the relationship between anatomical sites, neural
computations, and cognitive and affective behaviors, a given brain area (e.g., A1, A2)
may be involved in multiple neural computations (NC1, NC2), in a many-to-many
mapping that depends on the context (cf. Mesulam, 1990). Notably, the axes that
describe the space of affective and cognitive behaviors are not orthogonal, such
that “a behavior that is changed along the affective dimension compared to a
different behavior will also be changed along the cognitive dimension. In other
words, behavior cannot be cleanly separated into cognitive or emotional categories”
(Pessoa, 2008, p. 154). Reprinted from: Pessoa, L. (2008, p. 154), On the relationship
between emotion and cognition, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9, 148–158,
with permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Copyright 2008, Macmillan
Publishers Ltd.
affect or emotion may play as an input and/or output to the process (Glöckner &
Witteman, 2010). The proposed classification includes associative intuition, which is
based on simple learning-retrieval processes, such as classical conditioning, social
learning, or implicit recording of frequencies and values; matching intuition, which
is based on comparisons with prototypes/exemplars; accumulative intuition, which is
based on automatic evidence accumulation in which an overall cognitive and affective
evaluation is compared with a threshold; and constructive intuition, which is based on
the construction of consistent mental representations, and involving processes such
as accentuation of evidence, and coherence shifts (see Glöckner & Witteman, 2010,
for additional discussion especially with respect to dual-process accounts of cognition
and the contributions of affect to intuition).
Third, dual-process accounts often have further “bundled” additional characteris-

tics of processing modes, such as flexibility and speed of learning and speed of pro-
cessing, with a particular level of control. Such bundling has proven problematic when
the various characteristics fail to show entirely parallel patterns in relation to experi-
mental manipulations (e.g., Bargh, 1989; Logan, 1989; see Moors & De Houwer, 2006,
for in-depth discussion). Even the widely held characterization of automatic processes
as rigid or inflexible has been challenged: Hassin, Bargh, and Zimerman (2009; also
see Bargh & Morsella, 2008; L. E. Williams, Bargh, et al., 2009) report evidence that,
compared with a neutral priming condition, implicitly priming an achievement goal
(thereby creating an automatically pursued goal to achieve) led to significantly
enhanced performance on two different tasks that specifically require flexibility of
processing in response to “unannounced” changing environmental contingencies.
These researchers found that, compared with neutrally primed participants, achieve-
ment-primed participants showed significantly fewer perseverative errors on a task in
which individuals must flexibly and adaptively determine the categorical basis or rule
used to sort stimuli that differ on a number of dimensions (the Wisconsin Card Sorting
Task) and also greater flexibility in adapting to changing reward contingencies in a
variation of the Iowa Gambling Task. As outlined later in this chapter, in the section
on “Convergent Theoretical Perspectives on Automaticity and Multiple Gradations of
Levels of Specificity,” more detailed efforts to model aspects of automaticity, such as
in recent extensions of the ACT-R model (J. R. Anderson et al., 2004, 2008; Taatgen
et al., 2008), also have explicitly attempted to avoid strictly hierarchical task repre-
sentations, seeking to incorporate multiple changing levels of control so as to allow
maximal flexibility—and also challenging a necessary coupling of automaticity with
inflexibility.
Deliberate, intentional, controlled processing has many well-known benefits, some
of the empirical demonstrations for which are detailed in Chapter 5, but several of
which were concisely summarized in the title of a paper by Tangney and colleagues
(2004), that “High self-control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades,
and interpersonal success.” However, Chapter 5 also points to research findings that
pose a strong challenge to an overly simplistic notion that more control is always or
uniformly better. For instance, an increasing body of evidence suggests that effortful
controlled processing—even when exercised sequentially in time, rather than
concurrently—is limited and can be temporarily “depleted” through the requirement
to exercise sustained self-control (e.g., Baumeister, 2003; Baumeister, Bratslavsky,
Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Baumeister, Muraven, & Tice, 2000; Vohs & Heatherton,
2000; also see Chapter 5 and Chapter 12 for caveats). Thus, moving between auto-
matic and controlled processing may be an efficient way to “replenish” a necessary
cognitive and self-regulatory resource, increasing the likelihood that sufficient
resources will be on hand when needed for subsequent challenging or control-inten-
sive situations (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Lieberman, 2007). Reliance on more auto-
matic stimulus processing or response routines may also be faster—leading to greater
efficiency (e.g., G. D. Logan, 1988, 2002). In addition, as will be shown, reliance on less
controlled modes of processing may enable the emergence of new ideas or connections
between ideas into consciousness that would not be possible if we remained strictly
within the purviews of intentional, directed thought.
22 THE AGILE MIND
Although inappropriate reliance on more automatic, heuristic modes of processing

has frequently been shown to lead to errors and biases, it is essential, indeed vital,
that we refrain from any temptation to unilaterally characterize less directed,
more intuitive, spontaneous, or nondeliberative modes of processing as inherently
pernicious. Context here is extremely important, and both the extreme of too enthusi-
astically and unequivocally endorsing the virtues of directed deliberate thought, and
the extreme of too strongly endorsing the benefits of undirected and “undeliberate”
thought must be avoided. Rather than dividing thinking into “directed deliberate”
versus “undirected undeliberate” camps, we need to more fully understand how they
work with and complement one another, in dynamic and ongoing moment-to-moment
interchange and mutual support.
A further, more general, distinction that may be particularly useful to make (and to
remain cognizant of), with regard to intuitive processing in relation to our ability for
agile thinking is that between the “context of discovery” versus the “context of justifi-
cation.” (This distinction also relates to the System 1 vs. System 2 distinction, with
System 2 involved in processes such as conscious evaluation of decisions reached on a
more intuitive basis.) As developed in Chapter 4, the American philosopher Charles
Sanders Peirce was acutely aware of this distinction, and at several points he sought to
characterize a further mode of reasoning, termed “abduction,” that was particularly
important in the realm of discovery and served the function of “ampliative reason.”
The importance of remaining mindful of this distinction was also underscored with
regard to the intuition, in the seminal experimental research by Bowers and colleagues
(K. S. Bowers et al., 1990). As noted by these investigators, the tarnished reputation
of intuition has largely arisen from experimental contexts in which intuition is asked
to generate final solutions, rather than the processes of generating hypotheses or
hunches, which could then later be more systematically examined.
Given a model of intuition that fully recognizes the role of memory and experience
in judgment and problem solving, Bowers and colleagues seek to defend the central
and essential role of intuition, not only in exceptional cases but, rather, throughout the
warp and woof of human cognitive endeavor.4 This position is worth quoting here, as
signaling an early turning (or returning) toward the value of nondirected and nonde-
liberative thought:
In contrast to recent research on judgment, we will argue that intuition

involves informed judgment in the context of discovery […] In particular, we
propose that clues to coherence activate relevant mnemonic networks—
thereby guiding thought to some hypothesis or insight about the nature of
the coherence in question. Human cognition is thus by its very nature intui-
tive, because it inevitably involves the activation of mnemonic networks
by relevant information […]. What differs from one person to another is the
nature and amount of information that has already been mnemonically
encoded, as well as the complexity, gradient, and speed of the inter-
associative connections. […] When a productive hunch or insight goes con-
siderably beyond the information given […], it is often described honorifically
as intuitive, and people who are especially adept at generating productive
hunches are often deemed intuitive in this honorific sense. But strictly
speaking, everyone is intuitive insofar as clues to coherence activate

relevant mnemonic networks. We define intuition as a preliminary percep-
tion of coherence (pattern, meaning, structure) that is at first not consciously
represented, but which nevertheless guides thought and inquiry toward
a hunch or hypothesis about the nature of the coherence in question. […]
The methodological and procedural attempts to validate a hunch (the con-
text of justification) are typically more analytic, explicit, and accessible to
independent observation than the implicit cognitive processes by which the
hunch was generated (the context of discovery). (K. S. Bowers et al., 1990,
pp. 73–75)
The important contributions of intuitive processing to agile thinking are consid-

ered at several points throughout the book, including the later portion of Chapter 3
(e.g., the sections on “The Benefits of Using Both Processing Modes” and “Unfocused
Attention, Creativity, and ‘Mind Popping’”), in Chapter 7 (the section on “Working
Well with the Unconscious” that focuses on incubation and complex multicom-
ponential decision making), and in Chapter 9 (e.g., the sections on “Accessing Remote
Alternatives: The Role of Noradrenaline/Norepinephrine” and the section on “Brain
Correlates of Insight Problem Solving”).
Relations between Representational

Specificity and Control
The many changing and sometimes surprising relations between levels of repre-
sentational specificity and control in either helping or hindering agile thinking will be
demonstrated in multiple contexts and domains throughout the following chapters.
However, it may be helpful to provide an example as an illustration here—in this case
from the realm of developmental psychology.
The Cognitive Complexity and Control Theory proposed by Zelazo and Frye (1998;
also see Frye, Zelazo, & Palfai, 1995; Zelazo, 2004) suggests that developmental
age-related changes in the flexible control of behavior are due to the acquisition of
increasingly complex rules, and particularly, the ability to think about rules at one
level but subordinate them to rules at a higher level (higher order rules). According to
this account, a child’s ability to flexibly use different sorting or classification rules
for the same objects is made possible through the child’s increasing awareness of the
rules that he or she knows, that then allows him or her to organize those rules into a
hierarchical structure that also clearly indicates when to use each rule. Young
preschoolers under some circumstances may show a behavior that is similar to that
shown by patients with frontal lesions, described in Chapter 8, in which they seem to
know (and can explicitly say) that they should follow a certain rule yet they do not do
so. For example, in the dimensional card sort game, in which the stimulus dimension
for sorting the provided cards changes from shape to color or vice versa, a 3-year-old
preschooler may correctly indicate the answer when asked, “Where do the cars go in
the shape game?” and “Where do the flowers go in the color game?” However, when
actually required to flexibly shift between using the two rules in the game, the child
24 THE AGILE MIND
may perseverate—acting in accordance with the once relevant but no longer

relevant rule—or otherwise respond incorrectly.
According to Cognitive Complexity and Control Theory, these sorts of “abulic
dissociations, that is, dissociations between having knowledge and actually using that
knowledge, occur until incompatible pieces of knowledge are integrated into a single
rule system via their subordination to a new higher order structure”:
Three-year-olds know the first pair of rules, and they know the second pair of
rules, but they have difficulty “stepping back” from their knowledge and
reflecting on the rule pairs and their relation. […] As a result, the pair that
they select is determined by relatively narrow considerations, such as the
way in which the question is asked or the way in they have approached the
situation in the past. […] What these children fail to do is distance them-
selves sufficiently from a particular way of conceptualizing a card so that
they can select the right conceptualization when the time comes. […] Just as
physical distance provides a panorama, psychological distance allows
children to put each perspective into a larger context. (Zelazo & Frye, 1998,
pp. 123–125)
This position suggests that greater (deliberate, explicit) cognitive control may be
achieved through the development of an abstraction over the lower level rules that
the individual knows and understands. However, as also in the case of flexible rule use
in adults, there are also additional factors that may be at play in determining when,
and if, a child may flexibly change between different categorization rules in response to
changed instructions or goals, such as the comparative strength (vs. weakness) of the
representations that are called upon by the task (e.g., Munakata, 2001; cf. Cleeremans
& Jiménez, 2002; Farah et al., 1993; Kinsbourne, 1988), and the ease with which nec-
essary representations can be activated. For example, using a newly developed switch-
ing task, Chevalier and Blaye (2008) showed that at least some of the preschooler’s
errors that appear to be “perseverative errors” may instead reflect a difficulty in activat-
ing a representation that was previously ignored. If the stimuli have multiple dimen-
sions, to effectively sort by one dimension, such as color, then the not-currently-relevant
shape-sorting rule must be suppressed or inhibited. However, this suppression may
later need to be “undone” if the rule again changes to “shape,” and reactivation of the
shape rule may not succeed. This is consistent with a revised version of the Cognitive
Complexity and Control Theory (CCC-r; Zelazo et al., 2003) that proposes that
“children experience switching difficulties both because they ‘are unable to unselect
the previously relevant rules’ and because they are unable to ‘redirect their attention to
the rules that they previously ignored’” (Chevalier & Blaye, 2008, p. 351).
Additional contributors to whether children will demonstrate cognitive flexibility
in a context requiring contextually determined access to different rules also must be
taken into account—for instance, broader social-interactional factors, including social
support, such as reminders to “think about” the current rule before responding in
cases where the rule has switched. Intriguingly such reminding was not helpful, and
indeed detrimental to children’s performance in cases where the rule did not switch.
It is as though reminders to follow a rule when one is already doing so comprises a sort
of “reminder overkill” (Deák, Ray, & Pick, 2004, p. 398) that can detract from one’s
performance—perhaps because such reminders normally signal that one should
increase one’s vigilance or attention to the situation at hand, when doing so in this
case is not necessary and may, paradoxically, lead to second guessing and changing
one’s initially correct response to an incorrect response.
Oscillatory Range
A fundamental feature that enables agile thinking is our “oscillatory range” on the two
dimensions of representational specificity (abstract-specific) and representational
processing (controlled-spontaneous-automatic). Oscillatory range clearly involves a
quantitative aspect—we can move between highly specific to highly abstract modes of
thinking and reasoning, and various intermediate levels of abstraction in between.
Yet, under certain conditions, such as in the cases of clinical depression or chronic
worry, individuals may become “stuck” at a relatively abstract and predominantly
verbal level of processing. There are also important learning-related, emotional, and
individual differences factors, for example, that may make adoption of a given level of
abstraction more likely.
Equally important is that oscillatory range essentially involves a temporal compo-
nent. Oscillation implies movement in time. Our “placement” on the two dimensions
of representational specificity and representational processing is not fixed or static:
We are continuously moving on both of these dimensions, increasing or relaxing
effortful control, increasing or decreasing the level of detail or abstraction with which
we represent (re-present) our thoughts and actions. Oscillation may occur both at a
relatively momentary or transient temporal scale (e.g., briefly looking up from a
demanding period of writing to look out of the window) and in relatively more
prolonged extensions of time (e.g., phases of half an hour or more, when one takes a
walk, gardens, or engages in routine activities such as taking a shower or meeting
one’s household responsibilities). These might be referred to as micro- and macro-
oscillations, respectively. As characterized later in the chapter, especially with respect
to Figure 1.6 in the introductory overview section on functional and connectivity
mapping of the brain, and as further outlined in Chapter 9, these oscillations may
both reflect, and be based upon, corresponding changes in the predominant brain
networks that are active at varying times—reflecting dynamic interactions between
central executive or “task-active” networks, and what have been termed the “default
mode” and “salience-detecting” networks of the brain.
A perhaps less immediately obvious but also equally important component of
oscillatory range involves the domains in which it operates. Although our movements
between varying levels of representational specificity (abstract-specific) and of repre-
sentational process (controlled-spontaneous-automatic) clearly involve movements
in the realms of concepts, ideas, and memory, both of these dimensions of represen-
tational process and of representational control also apply to the domains or modali-
ties of perception, action and motivation, and emotion. We can categorize perceived
objects and events at many different levels of specificity and in highly automatic or
much more attention-demanding and effortful ways. Likewise, we can construe our
26 THE AGILE MIND
actions or “what we are doing” in very concrete, “how”-oriented terms (e.g., I am now
pressing keys on the keyboard) or very abstract, “why”-oriented terms (e.g., I am now
attempting to extend your notions of the ways in which abstraction-specificity play
out, not just in the realm of thinking and reflection, but in experienced realms of
action-motivation, emotion, and perception).
There is growing convergent evidence, several key portions of which are examined
in the following chapters, that our movements along the dimensions of representa-
tional specificity (abstract-specific) and of representational process (controlled-spon-
taneous-automatic) in any one of these domains—memory and categorization,
perception, motivation and action, or emotion—may have clear and significant influ-
ences on our performance in other domains. The domains themselves are conceptually
distinct but, in practice, highly interconnected (cf. Figure 1.4). For instance, we will
see that mild increases in positive affect can lead individuals to adopt broader, more
inclusive, conceptual categorizations, and that movement from a deliberative state
regarding whether or not to perform a given action to an implementation state leads
to increased focus on detailed, specific aspects relating to the to-be-implemented
action. And the level of specificity with which we identify “what we are doing”
(concrete vs. abstract) may alter the degree to which we are likely to be distracted by
intervening events or stimuli, and the likelihood that we will return to an activity after
a disruption or upon encountering obstacles.
Supporting and Formative Environmental

and Psychobiological Conditions
Yet agile minds could not exist without equally and exquisitely flexible and adap-
tively modifiable brains—nor could either flourish without stimulating and sup-
porting social, emotional, cognitive, and perceptual environments. Just as concepts
and ideas are not sealed off and separate from the domains of perception, motivation-
action, and emotion, so too, are none of these sealed off from influences of brain
and body, and the experienced environment.
In Chapters 10 and 11, “Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 1 and Part 2,”
a wide range of evidence is marshaled to support the argument that our mental agility
is significantly shaped both by what, and how, we explore, including the situations and
ideas and problems with which we engage, struggle, and play, and the environments
that we shape and sustain for ourselves through our momentary and cumulative
(long-term) choices and actions. Such explorations too—that is, how eager and in
what ways and to what extent we are keen to explore the physical, social-cultural, and
intellectual worlds that surround us—are themselves partially shaped by a complex
nexus of temperamental, personality, and neurobiological functions.
Some persons have stronger and readier proclivities to explore in behavior, thought,
and values (potentially related to differences in dopaminergic function), whereas
others are more restrained and cautious. Furthermore, both longitudinal and experi-
mental work suggests that recent and longer term ongoing activities may enhance or
decrease the mental flexibility with which we respond to ongoing and novel challenges
and opportunities.
A very broad characterization of how environmental enrichment proves to be

beneficial might emphasize that diversity of experience increases the variety and number
of exemplars that we have in particular categories (e.g., one’s concept of what can be
visual art, or what a musical instrument can be, or what forms and modes of actions
are possible in a given domain, such as dance, or golf, or diving, or mathematics).
Richly diverse experiences, including wide reading, travel, and cultural experience,
may also make available entirely new categories or possible modes of expression and
characterizations of behavior. Environmental enrichment appears to be most effective
if it combines social, cognitive, and physical components. Although this may possibly
comprise a “power in multiples effect” (synergy of convergent factors), it might also
relate to such combinations more frequently and extensively drawing on both varying
and wider oscillations in levels of control, and varying and wider oscillations in levels
of representational specificity.
Distinguishing Agile Thinking

Agile thinking is closely related to a number of concepts and terms commonly used in
the cognitive and brain sciences, including, especially, executive function and execu-
tive control, self-regulatory capacity, resilience, creativity, and fluid intelligence.
However, as will be seen from a consideration of the similarities and differences
between these concepts, agile thinking is a broader, more encompassing term, which
resides at a somewhat higher level of abstraction.5
The cognitive behaviors and processes that are covered by the term executive
function or executive control are inclusive, varied, and reflect several types of adaptively
flexible responding. Nonetheless, they do not cover all of the essential ground that
contributes to an agile mind and agile thinking, because the construal of executive
functioning predominantly and perhaps nearly exclusively emphasizes controlled,
deliberate thinking. Take, for example, the following definition of executive function-
ing offered by Robbins and colleagues:
The term “executive functioning” refers to those processes by which an

individual optimizes his [or her] performance in multi-component tasks.
These different processes include the ability to respond flexibly and appro-
priately in altered circumstances, efficient scheduling of behavior and atten-
tional resources, as well as the suppression of inappropriate responding, the
use of strategies to enhance mnemonic function, and the formulation of
new plans of action. (Robbins et al., 1998, p. 474)
Other investigators, such as Shimamura (2000) and Miyake et al. (2000) focus on
similar functional components of executive capacity and executive control. In his
dynamic filtering model, Shimamura (2000) proposes that four executive control
processes support the self-regulation of behavior: selecting—that is, focusing
attention on particular aspects of the mental or physical environment; maintaining—
that is, sustaining goals or other relevant information in an activated state; updating
involving the manipulation of information in working memory, and rerouting
28 THE AGILE MIND
involving switching from one task or mental set to another. The factor analytic
work by Miyake et al. (2000) supports three moderately distinct executive control
functions: inhibiting prepotent responses, updating working memory, and set shifting or
rerouting (cf. note 5).
The notion of self-regulatory capacity has some overlap with that of executive
capacity and executive control, particularly the aspect relating to the suppression of
inappropriate responding. Self-regulatory capacity denotes the ability to override and
alter undesirable responses (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1998; Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister,
1998) across a broad range of behavioral and interaction contexts, ranging from
regulating one’s diet or drinking, or one’s study and writing behaviors, to engaging in
regular exercise, showing financial prudence, and appropriately restraining sexual or
other impulses. More formally, in their review of different ways of subdividing atten-
tional processes, Raz and Buhle (2006) defined self-regulation as “the ability to manip-
ulate one’s own emotions, thoughts or actions on direction from the self or another
person” and the more specific process of emotional regulation as “the reduction,
increase or maintenance of an emotional response (for example, fear, anger, or plea-
sure) on the basis of the actions of the self or others” (Raz & Buhle, 2006, p. 368).
In each of these characterizations, there is a strong emphasis on the “top-down”
application of strategies and processes to work toward and define specific
aims—where top-down effects themselves are defined as “controlling, regulating, or
overriding a stimulus-driven or other bottom-up process by such factors as attention
or expectation” (Raz & Buhle, 2006, p. 369). In contrast, there is relatively less room
for, and little explicit consideration of, modes of processing that are more “broadly
receptive” and open to information and input that is not directly relevant to such
“top-down” goals. Yet, in the longer term, and from a broad perspective, individuals
who are not able to also at times adopt modes of processing that are less controlled
and less deliberate, will not maximally capitalize on cognitive and neural-network
resources. There is no agreed-upon term in common use that encompasses the notion
that we need a facility in both controlled and less controlled modes of processing,
and the capability to move between these in response to changing contexts and
constraints.
As developed particularly in Chapter 5, perhaps one of the closest concepts to
mental agility is the developmental construct of resilience or ego-resilience. For exam-
ple, according to J. Block and Kremen:
… ego-resiliency refers to the dynamic capacity of an individual to modify a

characteristic level of ego-control, in either direction, as a function of the
demand characteristics of the environmental context, so as to preserve or
enhance system equilibration. Depending upon the impinging psychological
presses, ego-resilience implies the ability to change from and also to return
to the individual’s characteristic level of ego-control after the temporary,
accommodation-requiring stressing influence is no longer acutely present.
[…] The idea of ‘resilience’ implies a generalized, characterological quality
of an individual and does not simply apply to a highly specific, one-time
behavior. (J. Block & Kremen, 1996, p. 351, emphasis added)
In the memorable phrasing of J. Block and Kremen (1996, p. 351): “It can be said
that the human goal is to be as under-controlled as possible and as over-controlled as
necessary. When one is more under-controlled than is adaptively effective or
more over-controlled than is adaptively required, one is not resilient.” Likewise,
earlier J. H. Block and J. Block (1980, p. 44) observed that, “extreme placement at either
end of the ego-control continuum implies a constancy in mode of behavior that, given
a varying world, can be expected to be adaptively dysfunctional.” However, this framing of
resilience focuses exclusively on levels of control, whereas agility of mind also entails
the adaptive traversing of varying levels of specificity of mental representations, as
needed. As will be argued throughout this book, to fully understand creatively
adaptive thinking we need to consider the continual interplay between both levels of
representational control and levels of representational specificity.
Another closely related construct is that of “creativity.” Creativity often has
been broadly defined as “the ability to produce original and appropriate problem
solutions,” but in the problem-solving domain, it has been conceptualized particularly
as involving “cognitive flexibility”:
By flexibility we mean the ability to test multiple hypotheses or integrate

numerous ideas, while filtering out unsuitable solutions, in order to arrive at
an appropriate problem outcome. […] Flexibility has also been conceptual-
ized in terms of the ability to approach a problem in multiple ways, to develop
new problem representations […], and to come up with problem solving
strategies that circumvent the impact of one’s previous experience or
tendency to see a problem in a particular way. (DeCaro, Wieth, & Beilock,
2007, p. 58)
Such flexibility in approaching and reapproaching problems is a central aspect of

mental agility. However, the sources of such cognitive flexibility, with respect to mod-
ulating and adjusting both levels of representational specificity and levels of represen-
tation control remain unclear in many treatments of creativity, which also often too
exclusively emphasize intuitive and spontaneous processing, with less emphasis on
deliberate structuring and abstract formulations of an approach to a problematic
situation or problem.6 Equally important, although creativity and innovative thought
are clearly often central aspects of flexibly adaptive thinking, agile thinking is not
synonymous with creative thinking. Sometimes, depending on circumstances, flexibly
adaptive thinking may entail selective reliance on well-learned and even habitual modes
of processing rather than innovative or novel approaches and, as will be argued, agile
thinking centrally involves the ability to capitalize both on phases or components of
automatic actions and responses, interspersed with phases of deliberate control. From
the perspective of agile thinking, neither one nor the other is more important. This
point was forcefully made by Shiff (1986), who also articulates the important distinc-
tion between components of an artist’s process that involve “finding,” based on an
exquisite receptivity to the possibilities suggested by the sensory-perceptual material
and current state of the unfolding work as it exists “out there” in the world, versus
“making,” based on the vision and conception that the artist has formed and that she
30 THE AGILE MIND
or he dynamically sustains throughout the unfolding, ever-changing interchange of

minded action with the physical materials of expression:
Surely artists cannot predict the full form that their works will take anymore
than competent speakers can control all the implications and meanings of
their words; any process of representation will hold surprises. But to glorify
the degree of surprise and unconsciousness within an act of signification, at
the expense of the element of control and deliberation, seems somewhat
perverse. (Shiff, 1986, p. 219)
A further broad concept that is closely related to agile thinking is “fluid intelli-
gence.” Fluid intelligence specifically refers to the ability to reason about and to solve
particularly new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge. Cattell
defined it as the ability to discriminate relations, and it is often seen as influencing
novel problem solving and adaptation to novel situations, or so-called on-the-spot
reasoning (J. R. Gray & Thompson, 2004, p. 471). Thus, the Cattell Culture Fair test
was developed to measure “individual intelligence in a manner designed to reduce, as
much as possible, the influence of verbal fluency, cultural climate and educational level”
(R. B. Cattell & Cattell, 1960, p. 5). In contrast, “agile thinking” might apply both to
highly familiar, well-learned, and even mundane contents and contexts (both verbal and
nonverbal) as well as novel never-before-experienced elements of situations. Additionally,
fluid intelligence is often strongly positively correlated with several measures of
controlled processing, particularly working memory and executive processing,7 whereas
the term “agile thinking” is intended to capture not only controlled but also adaptive
movements between varying levels of control—and noncontrol—in our thought.
There also is a more communicatively or socially responsive reason to focus on
“agile thinking” rather than “fluid intelligence.” The term “intelligence” for many
people likely immediately evokes notions of “testing” in a fairly narrow or literal
(school-related) sense, and it also may be associatively linked to possibly negative
and/or emotionally volatile issues of inherited ability, and so on. By contrast, the
concept of “agile thinking” is less likely to be prejudged as uninteresting or unhelpful;
it may be more widely appealing and seems more broadly applicable than does “fluid
intelligence” or “executive function.” Indeed, this book will aim to make the case that
we do need a new, more integrative and overarching term to help us think in novel
ways about what may enable us to—more often and more successfully—engage in
creative (innovative, adaptive, flexible) thinking.
Functional and Connectivity Mapping of the Brain:

Levels of Specificity and Levels of Control
Although clearly no one diagram of the functional areas of the brain can be
exhaustive, and each will have both advantages and disadvantages, a particularly
helpful orientation is an illustration provided by Fuster (2006; see also Fuster, 2001,
2004, 2009), to demonstrate both the general hierarchical nature of the representa-
tion of memory and knowledge in frontal and posterior cortex and also the general
principle that such knowledge is represented in widely distributed neuronal maps
or networks that extend beyond the confines of particular anatomically defined

areas (e.g., Mesulam, 1990). The illustration is reproduced in the interior color insert
(Fig. 1.5). The upper portion of the figure is a schematic diagram of the hierarchical
ordering of different types of knowledge and memory relating to sensation and
perception, on the one hand, and to actions (behavior, language), on the other hand.
The lower portion of the figure is a schematic depiction of the cortical surface of the
left hemisphere of the brain, with the numbered areas corresponding to Brodmann’s
cytoarchitectonic map. Also superimposed on the cortical surface, using the same
color code as in the upper figure, is a broad indication of the brain regions that are
involved in representing the different types of knowledge at corresponding levels of
representational specificity.
The figure summarizes an extensive array of evidence, including anatomical,
electrophysiological, and neuropsychological evidence (e.g., Fuster, 2001, 2004, 2009),
showing that posterior regions of the cortex (behind the Rolandic fissure) act
as the substrate for functions that might be inclusively classed as what Fuster
terms “perceptual memory”—though that might more inclusively, if less concisely, be
termed “sensory/perceptual representation and association networks.” In contrast,
anterior regions predominantly provide the substrate for what in the diagram is
termed “executive memory” (or “executive/motor representation networks”), includ-
ing language and behavior. On the sensory/perceptual side, the different sense modal-
ities (smell, taste, touch, audition, vision) are represented at the bottom of the figure,
in comparatively narrow-angled triangular “focal points,” to designate that primary
sensory processing is relatively modular in nature. In contrast, the figural depiction
for more complex conjunctions of perceptions and knowledge—involving polysen-
sory, episodic, semantic, and conceptual memory—become increasingly wider, repre-
senting the increasingly distributed neural representations associated with these
more complex modes of thinking, knowing, and remembering. Similarly, in the dia-
gram, basic motor acts also are represented as comparatively narrow “focal points,”
whereas more complex action-related cognition, such as programs, plans, and concep-
tual knowledge about actions and goals, is depicted in wider figural swathes that
denote the increasingly distributed neural representations on which they depend.
As a conflux of new sensory-perceptual information enters the cortical processing
stream (say, as one walks down a seldom-traveled street), the incoming multimodal
information interacts with already existing networks of knowledge, networks that
Fuster (2006, p. 129) aptly terms “cognits”: “By associations of similarity, the new
inputs will activate some of those pre-existing cognits, which in turn will provide
the new arrivals with active neurons to synaptically latch on to, thus allowing the
new stimuli to become part of their networks.” The preexisting networks also help to
interpret and make sense of the new incoming stimuli, and the “reading” of the affec-
tive and motivational significance of the stimuli provided by the limbic system (includ-
ing the amygdala, hippocampus, cingulate gyrus, and other structures) will either
“reinforce or detract from the formation of a new cognit.”
Because the new stimuli revive old networks and become associated with
them, the new cognits become the extension of old ones. Thus, there is no
such thing as the genesis of a completely new percept or memory, either in
the brain or in the phenomenic world of consciousness. In their formation,
Executive memory Perceptual memory
Conceptual Conceptual
Plans Semantic
Programs Episodic
Acts Polysensory
Phyletic Phyletic
motor sensory
Sm
Tas
Tou
Aud
Visi
Actions
ell
te
ch
on
ition
(behavior, language)
RF
31
2
6
5
8
9 7
4
9
46 40
39
10 6
45 44
43 19
41 18
42
11 47 22
37 17
38 21
20
Figure 1.5. The Distribution of Perceptual and Executive/Action

Representations, at Differing Levels of Specificity, in the Brain. The
cortical surface of the left cerebral hemisphere is shown; the numbered regions
correspond to Brodmann’s cytoarchitectonic map. The color coding in the lower
panel corresponds to that shown in the upper panel, such that brain regions involved
in representing perceptual information (behind the Rolandic fissure, or “RF”) are
coded in darker blue, pale blue, or white, with comparatively more primary, concrete
perceptual information shown in darker blue and increasingly abstract conceptual
aspects shown in pale blue and white. A similar gradated color coding scheme is used
for the representation of executive/action representations in brain regions anterior
to the Rolandic fissure, such that cortical regions involved in representing concrete
motor actions are shown in dark red, whereas regions representing increasingly
abstract conceptual aspects of executive/action memory are shown in pale red and
white. Reprinted from: Fuster, J. M. (2006, p. 128), The cognit: A network model
of cortical representation, International Journal of Psychophysiology, 60, 125–132,
with permission from Elsevier. Copyright 2006, Elsevier. Note: See the insert for a
full-color version of this image.
32
new cognits retrieve old ones and become part of them, in a continuous
dynamic process of interaction between history and new experience that
takes place in the neuronal networks of the posterior cortex of association as
in the course of life the organism interacts with its environment. (Fuster,
2006, p. 129)
Precisely where, and how widely distributed in the brain, a newly formed cognit
will be depends on many factors, including the sensory qualities involved in the expe-
rience (e.g., visual vs. auditory information), and also the complexity and generality of
the experience and the associations it evokes. Whereas more concrete sensory cognits
will predominantly reside in sensory and parasensory association areas (e.g., inferior
temporal cortex in the case of vision, superior temporal cortex for audition, and
anterior parietal cortex for touch), polysensory and more complex cognits will be
distributed more broadly, in higher association cortical regions.
At the highest level, in the upper reaches of the posterior cortex, that is, in
the broad confluence of the occipital, parietal, and temporal regions, lie dis-
tributed the most general and abstract cognits, the semantic memories and
knowledge of facts and concepts that derive from sensory experience.
Because such memories and knowledge derive from multiple experiences,
and are largely generalizations of those experiences, their networks are the
most widely distributed, with multiple associative anchors in cognits below.
In global functional terms, therefore, cognits of ever-higher rank and gener-
ality develop from the bottom up mainly in divergent—though also to some
extent convergent—fashion. (Fuster, 2006, p. 129)
Although in general organized hierarchically, individual items of memory and

knowledge do not necessarily fall strictly within one level of the hierarchy but may
instead be “heterarchical.” For instance, an individual’s autobiographical memory
(aspects of which are considered in Chapters 2 and 3) includes semantic, episodic, and
sensory elements, and any one autobiographical memory may be represented in a net-
work of distributed cortical regions. As will be particularly reviewed in Chapter 8, hier-
archical organization is also present in the executive/procedural memory of the frontal
cortex, such that regions that are more posterior, and closer to primary motor cortex
(BA 4), represent relatively more simple stimulus-response actions, whereas regions
that are more anterior, represent increasingly abstract “actions” or “action concepts”
such as schemas (e.g., your general notion of the sequencing of events when you go to
a restaurant or travel by airplane), plans, and intentions. However, again, the organi-
zation is not strictly and uniformly entirely hierarchical.
In addition, both short-term and long-term interactions may occur as a function of
particular experiences. For example, the representations of actions may change as a
consequence of extensive learning or practice, such that subcortical structures deep
within the brain, especially the basal ganglia (e.g., the caudate and putamen) become
more activated for well-learned or automatic behaviors. Nonetheless, these changes in
the locus of activation from prefrontal cortex to subcortical regions as a consequence
of extensive learning are not complete, such that “the more abstract and schematic
34 THE AGILE MIND
representations of sequential action, as well as the general rules and contingencies

of motor tasks, appear to remain represented in prefrontal networks” (Fuster, 2001,
p. 322).
Dynamic and rapidly changing interactions between regions continuously occur in
relation to ongoing perception, attention, thinking, use of language, and so on, and
they may be especially pronounced as we engage in novel and complex behaviors. The
ways in which more complex, temporally extended, and abstract representations in the
brain might support intentions and goals is taken up in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9,
which also consider the possible brain correlates of less deliberate, more receptive,
“gist-like” and intuitive modes of processing. The relation between our ongoing day-to-
day and longer term, even lifelong, environments in promoting (or failing to promote)
agility of mind and cognitive neural functioning is the focus of Chapters 10 and 11.
The need to take into account the conditions under which, and the mechanisms by
which, we move between different levels of control has been directly underscored in
recent proposals, such as that of Bressler and Menon (2010; see also Eckert, Menon,
et al., 2009; Seeley et al., 2007; Sridharan et al., 2008), that posit a large-scale “salience”
network that monitors the salience of external inputs and internal brain events, and
that may mediate between different modes of cognitive control. As further developed
in Chapter 9, several methodologies aimed at identifying intrinsic connectivity
networks have converged in identifying three major functional networks in the human
brain (and multiple subnetworks): a central executive network, with major nodes in the
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex, that is primarily recruited
during cognitively demanding mental activity (e.g., working memory, or novel on-
the-spot fluid reasoning) and that is largely exogenously driven; a default mode
network, with major nodes in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and posterior
cingulate cortex, that is especially active during self-referential mental activity and
during the simulation of perspectives that are different from the present and that is
largely endogenously mediated; and a salience network, with major nodes in the ante-
rior insula and anterior cingulate cortex, and additional subcortical areas such as the
amygdala. The salience network has been explicitly proposed to respond on the basis
of the “personal salience” of information, uniting “conflict monitoring, interoceptive-
autonomic, and reward-processing centers” (Seeley et al., 2007, p. 2352), and causality
analyses have suggested that anterior insula may generate the signals that trigger or
engage cognitive control systems (Sridharan et al., 2008).
Figure 1.6 graphically summarizes this account, involving multinetwork switching
initiated by the salience network. Specifically, on this view, “It is hypothesized that the
salience network initiates dynamic switching between the central-executive and
default-mode networks, and mediates between attention to endogenous and exoge-
nous events. In this model, sensory and limbic inputs are processed by the [anterior
insula], which detects salient events and initiates appropriate control signals to
regulate behavior via the [anterior cingulate cortex] and homeostatic state via the mid
and posterior insular cortex” (Bressler & Menon, 2010, p. 285). Intriguingly, as also
further developed in Chapter 9, the insula’s extremely diverse and virtually omnipres-
ent role in a very wide range of conditions involving awareness has recently led to
the proposal that this region, based on the combination and integration of multiple
forms of “saliency” maps, is involved in the representation of the “now” that crucially
contributes to a sentient self (Craig, 2009a, 2009b).
Sensory and limbic

inputs
Default mode network Salience network Central-executive network
VMPFC AI DLPFC
PCC ACC PPC
Endogenously mediated/ Dynamic Exogenously driven/

self-referential mental switching cognitively demanding mental
activity activity
Figure 1.6. The Interrelations between Three Large-Scale Neuronal

Networks. The salience network is proposed to initiate dynamic switching
between the exogenously driven central executive network and the endogenously
mediated default mode network. On this account, sensory and limbic inputs are
processed by the anterior insula (AI), “which detects salient events and initiates
appropriate control signals to regulate behavior via the [anterior cingulate cortex,
or ACC] and homeostatic state via the mid and posterior insular cortex”
(Bressler & Menon, 2010, p. 285). Major nodes in the central executive network,
involved in cognitively demanding mental activity, include the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Major nodes of the
default mode network, involved in self-referential mental activity and during the
simulation of perspectives that are different from the present, and often active
during nondemanding experimental tasks as well as tasks such as autobiographical
memory and the imaginary construction of scenes, include the ventromedial
prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Reprinted from:
Bressler, S. L., & Menon, V. (2010, p. 285), Large-scale brain networks in cognition:
Emerging methods and principles, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14, 277–290, with
permission from Elsevier. Copyright 2010, Elsevier. Note: See the insert for a
Convergent Theoretical Perspectives on Automaticity

and Multiple Gradations of Levels of Specificity
Two highly general theoretical accounts of the development of skills and increasing
automaticity in performing cognitive tasks such as categorization or solving arithme-
tic or algebra problems are the “instance” theory of automaticity (G. D. Logan, 1988,
2002) and the notions of “productions” and “production compilation” used in
36 THE AGILE MIND
cognitive architecture models such as the Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational”

(ACT-R) model of J. R. Anderson and colleagues (Anderson, 2007; Anderson et al.,
2004). Recent developments and applications of these theoretical accounts provide
broad conceptual support for a number of the central claims of the iCASA framework
relating to both levels of control and levels of specificity. An additional broadly conver-
gent theoretical perspective is that provided by some of the central tenets of “fuzzy
trace theory” developed by Brainerd and Reyna (e.g., Brainerd & Kingma, 1984; Brainerd
& Reyna, 2001; Reyna & Brainerd, 1995). To help more broadly situate the principles of
the iCASA framework relating to multiple, varied, and continually changing levels of
representational specificity and levels of control, we here briefly consider each of these
accounts, and a newer related development (Hommel’s theory of “event files”).
A fundamental beginning point for G. D. Logan’s (1988, 2002) instance theory
(and many related accounts) is that it assumes “instance representation” according to
which “each encounter with an object is represented separately as an individual exam-
ple, or instance.” Each such instance “is encoded into memory separately, stored sepa-
rately, and retrieved separately” (G. D. Logan, 2002, p. 389). Instances may involve
individual spatiotemporal events (episodes) and also members of categories. Instance
theory assumes that individuals who are new to a given task (novices) begin with a
“general purpose” algorithm to perform the task. With experience, specific problems
and specific solutions are increasingly stored as instances in memory. For each new
problem, there are then two potential routes to finding the solution: The initial but
generally slower algorithmic route, and an often faster route, involving the retrieval of
a relevant (similar) instance from memory. These two methods “race” with one
another, in parallel, and whichever produces the answer first “wins” and determines
the action. At some point, with increasing learning in a domain, individuals may have
sufficient experience that they can nearly always respond with a solution from memory
and “abandon the algorithm entirely.” According to this account, “automatization
reflects a transition from algorithm-based performance to memory-based perfor-
mance” (G. D. Logan, 1988, p. 493).
More recently, Hommel (1998, 2004, 2009) has developed and provided evidence
for a conceptually related theory of event coding in which the perceptual and response
features present during any given moment of performing a task are automatically
integrated into “event files.” Whatever occurs during a given brief period of time or
“integration window,” including stimuli-plus-responses, and responses-plus-conse-
quences, is bound together into an event file, thereby allowing for both stimulus-
response and response-effect (response-stimulus) learning. In addition, the explicit
instructions that are provided for a task and the individual’s deliberate preparation for
the task invoke a process of “intentional weighting” such that task-relevant features
(e.g., color or shape, or perhaps also higher order perceptual or semantic features)
are primed. This “top-down” priming of relevant feature dimensions increases the
influence that features in those dimensions exert on the processes of object selection
and performance. On this theory, after sufficient experiences in which stimulus-
response links are strengthened through repeatedly co-occurring together, the stimuli
may come to automatically evoke responses. Nonetheless, “bottlenecks” in processing
may arise if the to-be-performed action is complex and requires global integration
across widely distributed regions in the brain.
Notably, there is recent evidence suggesting that the “instances” or “event files”
themselves may involve representations at multiple levels of specificity, not only for
stimuli, or responses, but for their associations with one another, and that matches
or “partial matches” of stimuli, responses, or of stimulus-response relations may
both facilitate, or impede, performance depending on circumstances (e.g., Horner &
Henson, 2009; Waszak, Hommel, & Allport, 2003; Race, Badre, & Wagner, 2010). For
example, responses may be transferred at the level of the motor output (e.g., the
specific finger used, such as a left key press), or the comparatively abstract meaning
of the key press (e.g., an affirmative or “yes” response vs. a negative or “no” response),
or at the level of the particular semantic or other classification judgment involved
(e.g., “larger” vs. “smaller”). Additionally, in work from our lab (Denkinger & Koutstaal,
2009) we have shown that the binding of responses (e.g., “yes”) to stimuli may trans-
fer both across different exemplars of an object (e.g., different pictures of umbrellas
or cats), suggesting some degree of abstraction with regard to the stimulus represen-
tation, and also across different and uncorrelated semantic judgments (e.g., deciding
if the object contains metal, and then, later, in a different block of trials, if the same
object, or a categorically related object, is associated with a particular sound). After
only one exposure to a stimulus, we observed significant positive facilitation
(positive priming) across a change in exemplar and a change in task—provided that
the same response (e.g., “yes”) was required for both presentations. In contrast, this
facilitation was eliminated when the response differed (“yes,” then “no,” or vice versa),
again even though the semantic classifications were not related to one another, and
occurred in separate blocks of trials. In broad terms, these and related findings
(e.g., Waszak et al., 2003) suggest that there is parallel encoding of details of stimuli,
responses, and their associations, at multiple levels of representational specificity,
and across multiple domains of perception, cognition, and action. (The event-file
account is briefly discussed in Chapter 8, at the beginning of the section on “Task
Switching.”)
In the ACT-R account, there are two sorts of long-term memory: declarative
memory, which stores facts and experiences, and is basically passive, and procedural
memory or skilled knowledge. Procedural or skilled knowledge is represented in the
form of productions—that is, knowledge structures involving “if-then” or “condition-
action” pairs that map goals, the results of memory retrieval, and perceptual input
onto actions. Productions can also combine, such that any two productions that are
used in sequence may themselves be conjoined (compiled) into a new production.
Although ACT-R was initially developed to account for “higher level cognition,” an
exclusive focus on cognition without also considering action and perception has been
increasingly recognized as both detrimental and undesirable. As stated succinctly by
Anderson and colleagues, such a “division of labor”
… tends to lead to a treatment of cognition that is totally abstracted from

the perceptual-motor systems, and there is reason to suppose that the nature
of cognition is strongly determined by its perceptual and motor processes, as
the proponents of embodied and situated cognition have argued. In particu-
lar, the external world can provide much of the connective tissue that
integrates cognition. (J. R. Anderson et al., 2004, p. 1038)
38 THE AGILE MIND
Two recent developments in relation to ACT–R are especially notable here.

First, there have been several efforts to map between “modules” in the cognitive
architecture model to findings from neuroimaging, and to use findings from neuroim-
aging to inform and constrain the model. For example, a recent account (J. R. Anderson
et al., 2008; J. R. Anderson et al., 2004) posits separate modules and “buffers” for the
controlled retrieval of information (lateral inferior prefrontal cortex) from declarative
memory, for constructing imagined representations of a problem (posterior parietal
region), and for setting control goals (anterior cingulate cortex). Information from
these buffers is integrated by regions in the basal ganglia (e.g., the head of the caudate
nucleus), where the information is used to match, select, and execute productions
(procedural execution). The separate modules are construed as each “doing their own
things,” in parallel; and the processes within different modules can go on in parallel
and asynchronously, with subsymbolic (massively parallel) declarative mechanisms
working “to bring the right memories to mind,” and subsymbolic procedural mecha-
nisms working “to bring the right rules to bear” (J. R. Anderson et al., 2004, p. 1057).
Nonetheless, some of these modules serve “important place-keeping functions,” and
there still are some “serial bottlenecks” in the system.
One such bottleneck relates to the firing of productions. In the model, a central
production system detects patterns in the buffers and takes coordinated action.
Processing in the system is thought to occur in cycles, between the cortex and basal
ganglia via cortico-striatal-thalamic loops (compare with Fig. 2.1). In each cycle, the
buffers (for example, in parietal and lateral inferior prefrontal cortex) hold represen-
tations that are determined by input both from the external world and from internal
modules; the patterns in these buffers are recognized; and a production fires; thereaf-
ter the buffers are updated for another cycle. Each such cycle is thought to require
about 50 ms to complete—and during each cycle only a single production can fire.
Second, as noted, more recent treatments have attempted to modify the ACT-R
model so as to avoid strictly hierarchical task representations that enforce “pure
top-down control” (Taatgen, 2005, p. 422) and to provide greater opportunity for
specific changing inputs from the environment and task context to influence process-
ing. A central guiding point in this effort to incorporate both bottom-up and top-down
control of behavior and learning is called the “minimal control principle” (Taatgen,
2005). According to this principle: “control is derived from the environment, or
bottom-up, as much as possible” whereas “top-down control, derived from an internal
state or representation, is used only when necessary” (Taatgen et al., 2008, p. 550). As
noted, in this model, task knowledge is encoded in terms of precondition-action-
outcome triples, in which the preconditions of an operator can be matched to both
internal states (“in the head”) and to what is perceived in the world, thereby allowing
maximal flexibility. In this theory of skills acquisition, there are three main compo-
nents. First, the “operator representation of task knowledge, in which recall of the
relevant knowledge is mainly driven by perceptual input,” second, the principle of
minimal control, that “specifies that the task representation should have a control
structure that is as small as possible,” and third, the production compilation mecha-
nism, that “gradually transforms memory retrieval of task knowledge into direct
perception-action mappings” (Taatgen et al., 2008, p. 550). In direct perception-action
mappings, the code of a percept (e.g., a target on the screen moves to the left) can
stimulate a code for an action directly (e.g., responding by moving the hand to the
left), without the need for memory retrieval.8
Each of these accounts thus attempts to accommodate aspects of detailed ongoing
perceptual input from the world and aspects of motor processing, and incorporates
multiple changing levels of specificity and multiple levels of control. Fuzzy trace theory
similarly emphasizes our ongoing reliance on varying levels of mental representa-
tions—and particularly underscores our predilection to use representations that are
less specific.
Fuzzy trace theory is a dual-process account of cognition that was initially largely
developed in response to puzzling observations in several related domains of investi-
gation—each of which involved considerations of the level of specificity of the repre-
sentations that individuals appeared to use in different sorts of reasoning and memory
tasks. One such observation concerned the performance of children on various rea-
soning tasks, including transitive inference, class inclusion, and probability judgment,
in relation to the children’s memory for the information presented in the problems.
The surprising outcome was that there was essentially no benefit from knowing
whether the children were able to accurately remember the details of the problem (say,
for a transitive inference problem, to remember that the “red stick is longer than the
white stick” and “the white stick is longer than the blue stick”) and being able to pre-
dict whether they answered the reasoning problem correctly (i.e., correctly inferring
the relation between two nonadjacent items, such as whether the red or blue stick is
longer). In what has come to be termed the “memory-independence effect,” it was
found that the conditional probability that a child would answer the reasoning
problem correctly, given that he or she had remembered the problem details correctly,
was essentially no different than the unconditional probability (with memory
accuracy never taken into account). To account for this surprising finding, which was
subsequently replicated in several studies, Brainerd and Kingma (1984, p. 334) pro-
posed that the children encoded “degraded, schematic representations about the
series as a whole as well as precise representations of particular relationships.”9 These
“fuzzy traces” were proposed to “contain simplified information about the overall ‘pat-
tern’ of the series rather than precise information about specific relationships,” such
as, for the sticks problem presented earlier, “things get bigger to the right.”
Additional research suggested that similar processes might also explain the perfor-
mance of adults on various reasoning tasks. Reyna and Brainerd (1991) proposed that
apparently paradoxical effects in probability judgments, such as the failure to take
into account the ratio between targets and nontargets, could likewise be explained by
individuals’ reliance on different sorts of representations, of differing levels of speci-
ficity, regarding the problem at hand, and by assuming that processing was (in some
cases) nonquantitative. They proposed not only that “reasoners encode representa-
tions at varying levels of precision” and that “those representations can be ordered
with respect to precision” but also that “reasoning gravitates to the lowest, least
precise, level in this ‘hierarchy of gist’ ” (Reyna & Brainerd, 1995, p. 10) that the
response requirements of the task will allow. In the case of numerical problems, for
example, the most precise representations might involve “ratio” representations,
whereas less precise representations might involve only “ordinal” information that
captures relative magnitude, and even less precise representations might capture only
40 THE AGILE MIND
“nominal” or “categorical” information regarding the presence or absence of quantity

(for instance, whether some lives are saved or no lives are saved).
There are several principles in fuzzy trace theory but, in addition to the principle
of fuzzy-to-verbatim continua, or hierarchies of gist, and that gist and verbatim
representations are extracted roughly in parallel and independently, particularly
relevant from the perspective of the iCASA framework, is the principle that people
generally have a preference to operate on the “crudest” gist representation that they
can in order to make judgments or decisions. This principle is known as the “fuzzy
processing preference.” (As will be developed in Chapters 3 and 5, a similar proposal
has been made by Vallacher and Wegner, 1987, 1989, with respect to how individuals
tend to construe their actions, such that when both a lower and higher level of
representation of their actions is available, there is a tendency for the higher level
“action identity” to emerge as more dominant.)
The principle that people generally have a preference to operate on the “crudest”
gist representation that they can in order to make judgments or decisions, that is, the
“fuzzy processing preference,” is closely related to the dual-system aspect of fuzzy
trace theory. However, fuzzy trace theory takes a different perspective than many
dual-system accounts, in viewing intuition and gist-based processing during reason-
ing and decision making as not only “efficient” (e.g., more quickly accessed, and cost-
ing little effort), and as providing a route to “good-enough” or “satisficing” outcomes,10
but also as frequently desirable and even ideal. In fuzzy trace theory, intuition is viewed
as an advanced form of reasoning that is shown increasingly with development and with
growing expertise in a domain, as individuals learn to focus on the dimensions and
core meanings that are most central to the decision or judgment that must be made.
On this view, although gist representations may clearly sometimes lead reasoners
astray, producing inconsistencies and irrational biases, the route to more “rational”
decisions is not necessarily through more precise (verbatim) representations, but
often through more appropriate capturing of gist. To take the well-known example of
the framing problem (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981), a more appropriate capturing of
gist would be such that “the gist of the risk of surgery is the same whether it is
described in terms of survival or mortality rates.” As summarized by Reyna (2004):
Traditional theories of reasoning are modeled on logic or computation; rea-

soning is said to occur in a series of ordered steps (e.g., premises are first
understood and then integrated to draw conclusions), and precision is con-
sidered a hallmark of good reasoning. In contrast, according to fuzzy-trace
theory, reasoning processes unfold in parallel rather than in series, often
operating on the barest senses of ideas (the gist of a problem), and are fuzzy
or qualitative rather than precise. Thus, a person presented with a reasoning
problem encodes multiple representations of the same problem facts,
retrieves reasoning principles from his or her stored knowledge (e.g., the
principle that probability depends on the number of wins out of the total
number of plays), and applies the reasoning principles to the mental repre-
sentations of the problem facts. In this view, human reasoning is a messy
process: Multiple perceptions of the problem are encoded, the right reason-
ing principle might or might not be retrieved, and the execution of processing
(applying principles to problem representations) is unreliable. […] Intuitions

in reasoning come about as a result of parallel processing of multiple repre-
sentations, uncertain retrieval of reasoning principles, and an overarching
preference for gist representations (as opposed to verbatim representations).
(Reyna, 2004, p. 61)
Given that we encode both verbatim and gist information, we can, if circumstances
require, focus on either or both. For example, when looking at a line graph showing a
clear upward trend with time, we can extract the gist that “X is increasing.” However,
we can also compensate for this impression if, when we direct our attention to the
values shown on the Y-axis, we see that the actual numerical increases are very small
(and perhaps, depending on the measure involved, not at all “meaningful”), leading to
a “bottom-line” conclusion that the variable is remaining largely constant across the
time period considered. On the other hand, if circumstances are such that they require
verbatim and precise calculation, such that the solution is valid only if the correct
operations are performed, in the correct order, and the precise values of the problem
are accurately combined (for example, in mathematical calculations) then that also is
often (within capacity and other limits) possible. As suggested by the iCASA frame-
work, the “optimal” level of specificity for viewing and construing a problem or situa-
tion cannot be unilaterally dictated in advance, but rather depends on the particular
problem and the problem constraints at hand. “Optimal” performance will sometimes
require reliance on representations at greater or lesser degrees of abstraction and
precision, and often making progress in difficult multidimensional problems may
require multiple levels of representational specificity at different times.
Emphasis, Limitations, and Omissions

As will be clear from the following overview of the chapters, a large portion of the
empirical research that is here considered involves adult humans. Nonetheless, there
are several explicit treatments of contributors to, or barriers to, agile thinking in
children and older adults, and in a number of pivotal places the argument draws on
research with nonhuman animals. Similarly, the predominant emphasis here is on the
individual, though the importance of social, organizational, and cultural factors in
sustaining and promoting agile thinking is explicitly noted at multiple points. Each of
these areas could be tremendously expanded, and might themselves merit book-length
treatments. For example, examining the implications of the iCASA framework in
collective contexts is an important direction for future work.
It is primarily in the four later chapters (Chapters 8 through 11) that the brain
bases of agility of mind are explicitly and directly taken up. However, references to the
possible brain systems and neural interactions contributing to different conditions
that either foster or block flexible thinking also appear at various places throughout
the earlier chapters.
Given the wide range of territory considered, treatments of a given issue have
necessarily had to be selective, rather than exhaustive. I apologize, in advance, for the
omission of research that is deemed directly pertinent that I missed or omitted: Given
42 THE AGILE MIND
the wide range of territory considered, the number of cases with just cause for offense
is likely to be high. In general, consistent with the broadly integrative aims of the
iCASA framework, I have chosen to highlight wider and more diverse forms of
evidence relating to agile thinking than would typically be considered under the vari-
ous related but generally more specific concepts differentiated earlier (e.g., executive
or self-regulatory control, or creativity), on the basis that readers could refer to
extended treatments of those topics elsewhere. With regard to types of sources of
evidence, I have in the majority of cases, though not always, opted to emphasize
empirical research articles, rather than monographs, or book chapters, assuming that
journal articles are also likely to be more broadly and easily accessed by others.
Three further points. First, there is no individual chapter explicitly devoted to the
topic of “attention,” because attention is an integral part of movements between both
levels of control and levels of specificity, and thus considerations of attention are
relevant throughout the chapters. Second, there are few explicit references to genetic or
behavioral genetic contributions, in part because relevant research in these areas
remains in a state of dynamic flux, but more directly due to my lack of expertise in this
domain. Third, although the notion of “mental representations” itself has invited
extensive critical dialog both within cognitive science and philosophy, the grounds for
assuming mental representations are not explicitly defended here, though in several
places our ongoing reliance on objects and also actions in the world to support
knowledge, memory, and thinking (epistemic objects and actions) are underscored.
Structure, Tone, and Such

A few words about the structure and tone of the chapters may be helpful. Although the
chapters do sometimes cross-reference one another, and, taken together, make an
“ever-broadening” case for the central claims of the book, relating to the need for
oscillatory range, and both the capacity for varying our level of specificity and our level
of control, in enabling agility of mind, the chapters could be read in a different order,
or independently of one another. Also, although in many places somewhat technical
terms are used, upon introducing new concepts either definitions or brief paraphrases
are generally given. Abbreviations, in particular, have been kept to a minimum, includ-
ing in quotations, where in most cases the abbreviations in the original text have been
spelled out. Figures and diagrams are typically explicitly “walked through” in the text,
and—except for those that require color plates—are printed within the same chapter
as they are discussed. Citations are provided directly in the text, whereas footnotes
concern more substantive additional points or evidence. Footnotes typically expand
on, or qualify, the argument, but were better placed separately so as not to detract
from the overall structure and flow of the main text.
Some of the chapters in Part I and in Part II (including this one) also include one
or two separate brief appended sections that I have called “excursions.” These are
sometimes speculative, sometimes playful or more personal explorations of themes or
issues related to the chapter, though they also may include references to additional
research or viewpoints. For example, the “excursion” for this chapter focuses on
two quotations, the first from William James, in The Meaning of Truth, relating to the
cognitive-epistemological necessity for both abstraction and reimmersion in concrete
particulars, and the second relating to something that the American writer Sherwood
Anderson said with respect to the writing of Gertrude Stein, who had earlier been at
the Psychological Laboratory at Harvard University, and, together with Leon Solomons,
had completed experiments on “automatic writing.”11
Preview Synopsis of the Chapters

PA R T I
The three chapters in Part I—Chapters 2, 3, and 4—focus on memory, categorization,
and concepts. Chapter 2 highlights the effects of constrained versus free movements
between levels of specificity in memory and categorization on agile thinking, Chapter 3
outlines how movement between levels of specificity in these domains may be facili-
tated or impeded by differing levels of control, and Chapter 4, entitled “Thinking with
Our Senses,” systematically argues for multiple-level and multiple-source contribu-
tions of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor information both to concepts and to
mental agility.
Chapter 2 begins by considering several cases of individuals with superior memory,
who have shown sometimes astonishingly vivid, detailed, and accurate memory for
certain kinds of experiences. Despite the allure of such exceptionally precise memory
abilities, anecdotal and neuropsychological findings suggest that richly verbatim
memory of these forms is often accompanied by weaknesses or deficits in other
important areas of thinking that draw on comparatively abstract, categorical, or
gist-like forms of memory and categorization, such as understanding figurative lan-
guage, using analogical reasoning, or educing rules or principles. Thereafter, we turn
to psychopathology to discover the converse difficulty—of apparently remaining
“stuck” at an overly abstract, categorical, and often highly verbal mode of processing—
in the case of clinical depression and also in chronic worry, together with several
sources of evidence that such overly abstract processing impedes adaptive problem
solving. Evidence from cognitive-behavioral experiments that even relatively briefly
engaging in tasks that require using and accessing knowledge at both abstract
and specific levels can significantly boost performance both on insight problem-
solving tasks and on a visual spatial fluid reasoning task requiring novel, on-the-spot
reasoning is then presented, followed by additional findings demonstrating that there
is a substantial correlation between the ability to flexibly move between levels of
specificity in one’s memory for recently experienced events, and measures of flexible
thinking such as the Cattell Culture Fair test of fluid intelligence. The final more
broadly integrative portion of Chapter 2 seeks to explicitly make the case that
adaptive categorization and problem-solving require the flexible use of both highly
detailed (episodic) individual examples, and abstract, rule-, or category-based knowl-
edge by, for example, outlining the advantages of concrete versus idealized represen-
tations in learning, and the potential benefits of manipulations such as “concreteness
fading.”
Chapter 3 initially returns to the topic of overly abstract categorical memory in
cases of depression and rumination, but now from the perspective of how excessively
abstract and automatic thinking may be counteracted through the technique of
44 THE AGILE MIND
mindfulness training—a technique that, through the training of attentional control,

has the explicit aim of encouraging a more specific and present-time focused orienta-
tion to the experienced world. Convergent benefits of forms of mindfulness training
in healthy individuals are also then briefly surveyed, emphasizing particularly
enhanced ability to overcome habitual responding and improvements in executive or
controlled attention. Evidence that predominant reliance on a given level of represen-
tational specificity may also be induced through comparatively brief laboratory-based
interventions, and that a given level of specificity can be “carried over”—sometimes
inappropriately—to subsequent memory and cognitive tasks, is then considered. The
chapter then turns to a portrayal of three particularly powerful factors, especially
demonstrated in experimental social psychology, that may operate indirectly so as to
alter our level of representational specificity, and that markedly influence memory
retrieval and categorization. These include environmental or contextual determinants
of the level of specificity at which we identify our actions, psychological and temporal
distance effects on our construal level, and the effects of mild positive affect on
categorization and classification. Thereafter, key promising experimental evidence
demonstrating improved perceptual diagnostic classification by individuals who are
instructed to adopt both controlled and automatic processing modes rather than only
one or the other is detailed. Two final sections consider the contributions of automatic
categorization processes and the priming of relations (“relational priming”) to ana-
logical thinking. These sections also provide an initial exploration of the roles of
unfocused or receptive attention in fostering creativity and insight, including George
Mandler’s (1994) provocative notion of “mind popping.”
Chapter 4 outlines the important but underrecognized multiple contributions of
sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor information to concepts and to thinking. This
is a wide-ranging chapter, encompassing research and findings from developmental
psychology, cognitive psychology, philosophical psychology, naturalistic experiments
in economics, and other areas to argue for the essential role that “thinking with our
senses” assumes in enabling agility of mind. At an abstract level, the chapter is broadly
grouped into four sections, concentrating on: the integral contribution of perceptual
and action-related information to mental concepts or representations; the ways in
which both current perception and current actions (e.g., gestures) may guide and sup-
port thinking and insight; the key importance of the “embodied” and “grounded”
nature of mental representations in enabling innovative, and even completely novel,
uses of language; and the role of so-called epistemic objects in thinking, including the
pervasive and sometimes illicit effects of the specifically physical nature of language
(the sensory-perceptual aspects of words as objects in the world, that can be heard
and/or seen) on the nature and direction of thought.
PA R T I I
The chapters in Part II—Chapters 5, 6, and 7—all broaden our scope to explore more
fully additional aspects of the “entire person” as potential sources of both flexibility
and rigidity of thinking. The focus of these three chapters is, respectively, action
and motivation, emotion and aspects of the self and personality, and “higher order”
characteristics of thinking such as beliefs about knowledge and attempts to control

our own thinking (controlling control).
Chapter 5 draws on multiple streams of research and inquiry relating to action and
motivation. It begins by considering the potential benefits and also the possible costs
of construing our actions at a high level of abstraction, and the ways in which we can
flexibly postpone and resume intentions, including the possibility of recruiting auto-
matic processes to help “share the load” of prospective control and remembering.
Thereafter, drawing on seminal work in developmental and personality psychology,
the interrelations between ego control, ego resiliency, and effortful control versus
reactive control are explored. This section asks the questions of whether, and in what
sense, individuals can be too controlled, and it emphasizes the pivotal importance of
the “flexible adaptation of control”—involving both the ability to exercise and sustain
highly controlled processing, and the ability (when circumstances warrant) also to
relax control. This carries us into a broader treatment of levels of control, spontaneity,
and openness to experience (for example, evidence that we may experience “virtue
regrets” as well as “indulgence regrets”), and into explorations of the notion of
“self-regulatory depletion” and the practically and theoretically pregnant question of
whether effortful self-control is a limited resource. The final sections of the chapter
turn to considerations of the effects of different forms of motivation and incentives
on agile thinking, for example, evidence that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are
often conjoined, rather than opposed, aids to mental agility, and that these are best
viewed as two separate unipolar dimensions, each ranging from high to low, rather
than a single bipolar one. A key final section draws attention to extensive research
findings demonstrating that “learning to vary” may provide a powerful companion to
creatively adaptive behavior and thought: A greatly overlooked aid to mental agility
may be reinforcement of variability of behavior, both in ourselves and in others.
Chapter 6 provides a treatment of some of the most important ways in which
aspects of emotion, self, and personality intersect with—both facilitating and imped-
ing—agile thinking. It begins with a consideration of positive emotions, including the
fundamental question of what is the functional role of positive emotions. This leads
into an outline of the “broaden and build” theory of positive emotional experiences,
according to which the modification and extension of our understanding and skills is
most likely to occur when we are in mildly positive emotional states such as interest or
contentment. Subsequent sections examine both the evidence for, and against, the
effects of positive mood on flexible thinking. The broader role of the self and personal-
ity in mental agility is then explored through, first, an examination of the effects of an
apparently modest but quite potent social-motivational and cognitive intervention
known as “self affirmation” and, second, a consideration of the role of the personality
characteristic of “openness to experience” (alternatively described as “motivated cog-
nitive flexibility” by one researcher) in enabling agile thinking and adaptive learning.
Chapter 7 can perhaps be viewed as a “meta” chapter (or, to change metaphors, a
“hinge” chapter), both in that it looks backward to more fully treat several issues
explored in the earlier chapters, and in that it explicitly takes up several themes relat-
ing to the “control of control” and movements between levels of specificity in fostering
or precluding agile thinking. Throughout the chapter the “whole person” nature of
46 THE AGILE MIND
flexible thinking is both directly and indirectly underscored. Several different domains
are considered beginning, for example, with the effects of our beliefs about knowledge,
learning, and memory on thinking, and also including aspects relating to temperament
and emotion (e.g., intolerance of uncertainty; optimism vs. pessimism); and motiva-
tion. We here also focus on those desirable forms of spontaneity and comparatively
“effortless attention” that we experience during states of absorption and flow, and the
nature of the conditions—including a more concrete rather than abstract focus—
that are conducive to what has been dubbed as “hypoegoic self-regulation.” Evidence
relating to some of the potential beneficial contributions of unconscious processing to
agile thinking is then critically assessed, focusing on theoretical and methodological
factors relevant to evaluating the effects of “unconscious processing” on the quality of
decisions and judgments. This section is followed by a depiction of some of the con-
crete dynamic interactions between person and environment in shaping and pursuing
higher versus lower level goals or subgoals, and “opportunistic divergences” that may
occur during a complex multistep reasoning task. The chapter closes with a brief
consideration of the complex roles of diversity of membership in the groups and
organizations to which we belong in shaping creatively adaptive thinking and problem
solving.
PA R T I I I
The third and final part of the book focuses on the brain bases of agile thinking.
The first two of the four chapters in Part III (Chapters 8 and 9) are paired in that they
consider neuroimaging, neuropsychological, neurophysiological, and neurochemical
sources of evidence regarding the conditions that foster or impede agility of mind,
both in terms of changing or sustaining levels of representational control and chang-
ing or sustaining levels of representational specificity. Similarly, Chapters 10 and 11
are paired, but in this case on the basis of the nature of the evidence reviewed. Chapter
10 focuses first on indirect (longitudinal, epidemiological) evidence for the role of
environmental stimulation in fostering and maintaining cognitive function, whereas
Chapter 11 turns to the relatively smaller but nonetheless increasingly persuasive
body of direct (experimental) evidence for a functional relation between diverse forms
of cognitive and sensory-motor stimulation and agile thinking.
Chapter 8 begins with an overview of the ways in which the frontal cortex is
uniquely situated to enable both abstraction and flexibility, and adaptability and con-
trol. The central role of neurons in prefrontal cortex in enabling the flexible and
abstract representation of categories and rules is then underscored by first, evidence
from single-cell recordings in the awake behaving (classifying and thinking!) monkey,
and second, two analytical neuroimaging studies examining the hierarchical ordering
of control processes and/or representations within the frontal cortex. Two subsequent
sections consider the neurochemical and neuroanatomical contributions to three
different forms of cognitive flexibility, including set shifting, reversal learning, and
task switching, and neuropsychological and lesion evidence regarding forms of spon-
taneous flexibility, such as fluency and divergent thinking. Lesion and neuroimaging
studies, psychopharmacological manipulations (e.g., effects on reversal learning
through manipulation of the neurotransmitter serotonin through dietary tryptophan
depletion), and behavioral manipulations are among the sources of evidence consid-
ered. However, the necessity to go beyond an overly narrow, and too exclusive, focus
on frontal function, to consider dynamic anterior-to-posterior and across-system
interactions is then demonstrated by an in-depth treatment of two related topics.
First, our consideration of the neural correlates of fluid intelligence highlights the
central role of frontal-parietal interactions in providing the essential capability for
integration and control that is necessary for optimally recruiting internal resources in
the pursuit of goal-directed behavior in dynamically changing environments. Second,
our consideration of the multiple neural systems that enable working memory, includ-
ing not only prefrontal control systems but also parietal attentional systems, poste-
rior high-level and low-level perceptual systems, and medial-temporal binding
systems, further underscores the highly dynamic anterior-to-posterior and across-
system interactions that together subserve our ability to actively hold, manipulate,
and update the information we “have in mind” as we seek to accomplish our goals and
concurrently continuously encounter new information.
Chapter 9 turns to look at the brain bases of our knowledge about concepts
(semantic cognition) and of more intuitive forms of processing such as insight
and accessing remote alternatives, as well as intersections between cognition and
emotion and motivation. The first section is closely linked to the earlier chapter,
Chapter 4, entitled “Thinking with Our Senses,” and outlines evidence relating to both
concrete and multimodal representation, and also abstract and amodal, representa-
tion in the brain. The neural bases of relational and analogical processing, and of intu-
itive processing, including partially informed guessing, gist-based predictions, and
insight are then considered. These topics lead into a section that explores the continu-
ally changing dynamic interrelations between networks and subnetworks of the brain
that are most active when we are performing a specific structured and cognitively
demanding task versus when either we do not have an explicit task to perform, or we
are performing a less-than-fully-demanding task during which various sorts of spon-
taneous cognitions emerge. This section also highlights the potential “network-
switching” role assumed by “salience” networks, briefly introduced earlier and in
Figure 1.6, with particular attention on the possible role of the anterior insula.
Explored here is the proposal that the extremely diverse and virtually omnipresent
role of the anterior insula in a very wide range of conditions involving awareness may
be based on the combination and integration of multiple forms of “saliency” maps,
such that this region may comprise a representation of the “now” that further
centrally contributes to a “sentient self.” The chapter ends with a brief treatment of
the possible neurobiological contributors to resilience in the face of stress and trauma,
followed by sections on the bases of reactive control in the behavioral activation and
behavioral inhibition systems, and functional neuroimaging evidence for not only
separate but also integrated effects of emotion and cognition on working memory and
cognitive control tasks.
Chapter 10 begins by considering demonstrations of cortical plasticity in the
face of changing sensory-motor stimulation, and evidence specifically addressed
toward establishing the functional relevance of such changes. We then consider
evidence for such plasticity provided by studies on the acquisition of specialized skills
such as spatial-navigational learning. A conceptual and empirical orientation to three
48 THE AGILE MIND
key concepts relating to brain plasticity in aging and across the life span—involving
the ideas of brain or cerebral reserve, of cognitive reserve, and of compensation—
then provides background for a consideration of longitudinal and epidemiologic
research on the longer term benefits of various sorts of environmental stimulation.
Research on environmental stimulation is somewhat artificially separated into treat-
ments relating to the effects of education, social interactions, occupational factors,
and leisure activities. Additional sections consider longitudinal evidence relating to
the potential benefits for longer term cognitive capabilities derived from second- or
multiple-language use, and physical exercise and cardiovascular fitness. A separate—
less positively focused but crucial section—then documents some of the evidence
on the substantial adverse consequences of chronic or acute stress on adaptive cogni-
tion, including the multiple forms of stress associated with poverty and deprivation.
The final section turns our attention to initial promising outcomes derived from
multidimensional interventions in the community to foster greater cognitive and
socioemotional involvement that may promote or help to preserve mental agility and
provides a bridge to the next chapter on direct experimental interventions.
Chapter 11 first explores the extensive experimental work on “environmental
enrichment” with nonhuman animals, which has been fundamental in establishing
causal connections between stimulating environments, behavioral flexibility, and
corresponding brain changes. The chapter then turns to the multiple, often highly
innovative and creative, approaches that have been adopted in the effort to examine
plasticity of brain function in humans, in relation to experimentally assigned
sensory-motor and cognitive interventions. Included here are physical and cardiovas-
cular fitness interventions, training in deliberate recollection in older individuals
and of working memory in younger and older adults, and training of attention in
young children. Two additional sections consider the benefits for flexible cognition
that may be derived from, on the one hand, playing certain forms of real-time
video games and, on the other hand, certain forms of experiences with the
natural environment. An experimental intervention with older individuals based
on multimodal engagement in novel activities designed to invite playful and imagina-
tive participation points toward further promising approaches. This chapter also
considers a recent speculative theoretical proposal regarding the linkages between
stimulating physical activity and the generation of new neurons (neurogenesis),
particularly in the hippocampal dentate gyrus. Here I also suggest that, broadly speak-
ing, diverse forms of cognitive and other stimulation may be seen as extending
our “exemplar space” of objects, events, people, qualities, and so on, thereby increas-
ing the range of instances and sets of instances that we can draw upon in thinking,
reasoning, and acting.
Chapter 12 is the final chapter and is organized in the form of broad questions that
are then expanded by selected reminders of key findings, additional evidence regard-
ing possible applications or implications, and more specific questions and research
directions. The questions are very broadly grouped into four sections, concerning
(a) oscillatory range in levels of specificity and levels of control, (b) environmental
enrichment and stimulation, (c) the interpenetration of concepts with perception,
action/motivation, and emotion, and (d) broader educational, policy, and ethical
implications.
Excursion 1: A Dual Dialog and Oscillatory Range:

William James on Levels of Specificity and Gertrude
Stein on Levels of Control
Without abstract concepts to handle our perceptual particulars by, we are
like men hopping on one foot. Using concepts along with the particulars, we
become bipedal. We throw our concept forward, get a foothold on the conse-
quence, hitch our line to this, and draw our percept up, traveling thus with a
hop, skip and jump over the surface of life at a vastly rapider rate than if we
merely waded through the thickness of the particulars as accident rained
them down upon our heads. (William James, 1909/1978, p. 300, The
Meaning of Truth, in Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth, F. T. Bowers and
I. K. Skrupskelis (Eds). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press)
All good writing is, in a sense, automatic. It is and it isn’t. (Sherwood

Anderson, quoted in Sherwood Anderson/Gertrude Stein: Correspondence and
Personal Essays, ed. Ray Lewis White (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1972), p. 82 and p. 85; Anderson’s defense of Stein’s writing
was first published in April 1934 in The American Spectator)
In this passage, William James offers us a powerful image of the twin necessity of
“abstract concepts” and “perceptual particulars” in flexibly adaptive thought. Lacking
abstract concepts, we could, nonetheless, move about in the world, but our movement
would be that of the slightly awkward, tentative, and never entirely stable hopping of
a person newly restricted to the use of one leg. Or (shamelessly changing metaphors),
we would be like slow waders, moving laboriously against the heavy deeps of an
endless sea and downpour of particulars that assail us from all sides. Elsewhere James
elaborated on the advantages of concepts in dealing with the endless flux and variety
of particulars:
An immediate experience, as yet unnamed or classed, is a mere that that we

undergo, a thing that asks, “What am I?” When we name and class it, we say
for the first time what it is, and all these whats are abstract names or
concepts. Each concept means a particular kind of thing, and as things seem
once for all to have been created in kinds, a far more efficient handling of a
given bit of experience begins as soon as we have classed the various parts of
it. Once classed, a thing can be treated by the law of its class, and the advan-
tages are endless. (Pluralistic Universe, 1907/1975, pp. 224–225)
With the help of both abstraction and particularity—using concepts along with the
particulars—we have the wherewithal to move with greater power and also wider
vision, in an iterative bootstrapping (a recurrent anchoring and forward motion) of
concept to percept, percept to concept, concept to percept. With our concepts, formed
from and based upon our past experiences with other instances of a given sort, we
anticipate (predict) what is most likely to ensue from our actions and choices. Then we
50 THE AGILE MIND
take note of (observe, evaluate) the particular consequences that did, in fact, arise in
the world as a result of that action or choice, reimmersing ourselves in the particular
particulars of the world. But we do not remain there. Instead, newly versed in
particulars, we move back again to our concepts, and to new anticipations and new
predictions, the actual outcomes of which are in turn again evaluated as particulars, in
an ever-interchanging movement, up-down, up-down, flexibly and fluidly across
and within the thick of experience.
In agreement with William James, a prominent and recurrent theme of this
book is that the movement between levels of specificity—abstract to particular—
is a crucial contributor to flexibly adaptive thought, and to agile minds. But the
abstract-specific dimension concerns the “what” of thought—the representational
content of thought, rather than the processes by which thought occurs. What about the
manner of thinking—the way of thinking, rather than the what?
The processes of agile thought also involve an ever-interchanging movement,
but with extremes or end points of a different sort. Adaptive thought requires move-
ment between highly controlled (deliberate, intentional, goal-guided, systematic)
thinking, and less controlled or automatic (nondeliberate, nonintentional, habit-
guided, intuitive) thinking, and often occurs in a broad, not sufficiently understood
intermediate zone, near and straddling the center point, that involves spontaneous
fluidity, improvisation, and creative “practice beyond the rules.” This intermediate zone,
and movements within and across it, from relatively more controlled to relatively
more automatic phases, of sometimes longer, sometimes shorter durations, is
succinctly and powerfully pointed to by the second quotation, offered by Sherwood
Anderson in his defense of Gertrude Stein:
All good writing is, in a sense, automatic. It is and it isn’t.
It is, and it isn’t. All good writing (and also other good kinds of thinking and
making) is neither exclusively automatic, nor exclusively nonautomatic.
This is the second prominent theme of this book that closely intersects with the
first theme. We frequently have the capacity to respond to situations and information
in different ways: highly controlled, intentional, effortful, and deliberate on the one
side, versus less controlled, more automatic, with little effort or explicit deliberation
on the other side. These two functional-behavioral extremes—together with an inter-
mediate zone characterized by relatively greater spontaneity and improvisation and
increased receptive attention—provide complementary advantages and disadvan-
tages, and so they may supplement and compensate for specific weaknesses in either
extreme alone.
Part One
MEMORY, CATEGORIZATION,
AND CONCEPTS
2
Flexibly Using Memory and
Categorical Knowledge, Part 1
Levels of Representational Specificity and Thinking
The mind can always intend, and know when it

intends, to think of the Same.
—William James (1890/1981, p. 434)
I knew a long time ago I had an exceptional memory …

I don’t think I would never want to have this, but it’s a burden.
—AJ quoted in Parker, Cahill, and McGaugh (2006, p. 35)
We all sometimes forget things. After a particularly embarrassing or painful

experience of events gone awry because of our forgetfulness, we may fervently wish
for a perfect memory that recorded all that has happened to us—including all that
we have planned or promised to do—in complete and fully accurate detail, forever
resistant to the onslaughts of time and change. But would such a literal and exhaus-
tively retentive memory really form an unadulterated blessing?
To be able to remember who said and did what, and exactly where, when, and how
they did so, without recourse to written or external forms of reproduction, seems like
it would be a “dream come true.” And, in some circumstances, it would perhaps be
close to this. But if such complete and detailed recollection was always at work, ever-
present in an individual’s day-to-day life, it would bring with it costs to many other
highly valued and important capacities that are fundamental to our ability to think in
creatively adaptive ways.
Although detailed recollection is important, we also need to be able to bring to
mind past experiences in less literal ways that enable us to transfer our learning to
new situations. Beyond remembering the details, we also need to understand the
“general gist” of what we read and experience, and to see significant parallels between
different events or ideas at the level of general principles and deeper, more abstract
similarities. New situations and events, by their very nature, do not exactly repeat the
past, even if some or many components are similar to earlier events. The ability to
recall knowledge in a more abstract or gist-like manner thus can be crucial in allowing
53
54 M E M O R Y , C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N , A N D C O N C E P T S
us to transfer what we have learned to new contexts that “echo” or “mirror” the past
only partially and in some rather than all respects. More abstract, categorical,
or gist-based retention also is crucial to many complex and adaptively significant
forms of thought such as creating and understanding analogies and metaphors, and
drawing inferences based on the classification of events and objects.
Thus, this chapter argues that agile thinking requires the retention and use of
both specific and abstract memory and knowledge—and the ability to flexibly and
adaptively move between them as needed. The research evidence leading to this
conclusion is diverse, and it includes empirical findings from a number of areas of
psychology that are not “standard fare” in treatments of creativity or thinking and
problem solving, such as case studies of superior memory, and theoretical consider-
ations of the nature of the cognitive and affective information processes that contri-
bute to impaired thinking and problem solving in conditions such as clinical depression
and chronic worry. Rather than beginning with a consideration of the results from
prototypical cognitive psychology experiments, this chapter will begin with these
more “peripheral” findings, moving toward central studies. We will first consider the
hazards of an overly extreme form of memory at either end of the specific-to-abstract
continuum—either predominantly, and too consistently, specific or predominantly
too categorical and abstract. Then we will consider several converging sources of
evidence supporting the importance of movement between levels of specificity in
enabling adaptive thinking.
As will be seen, particular conditions that involve changes in an individual’s
capacity to flexibly access mental representations at differing levels of specificity,
such as memory and information processing in clinical depression or normal
aging, frequently also involve disruptions in aspects of intentional control (control vs.
automaticity). Nonetheless, conceptual and empirical clarity will be enhanced
if we initially consider these two dimensions and their relation to the iCASA
(integrated Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract) framework separately. This
chapter focuses on factors that shape flexible thinking that predominantly involve
the content of representations, relating to where representations fall on the level of
specificity continuum from abstract to specific. The following (companion) chapter
focuses on levels of representation as contributing to flexible thinking predominantly
from the perspective of representational process with regard to the controlled-automatic
distinction.
When Memory Is Too Specific: The Possible

Costs of Superior Memory to Mental Agility
and Problem Solving
Intriguingly, the point that an extremely literal and exhaustively retentive
memory might not form an unadulterated blessing is perhaps most strongly made by
a consideration of the few individuals who have been the nearest to possessing such
“super-normal” memory. Let’s begin with the very unusual case of AJ, a woman in her
early forties when she first came to the attention of researchers, by her own initiative,
F lexi bl y U sing Memor y and Categ or ic al K n owl e dg e, Part 1 55
in an e-mail to memory researchers James McGaugh and Larry Cahill. In that e-mail
she wrote:
… since I was eleven I have had this unbelievable ability to recall my past.
[…] Whenever I see a date flash on the television (or anywhere else for that
matter) I automatically go back to that day and remember where I was, what
I was doing, what day it fell on, and on and on and on. It is non-stop, uncon-
trollable and totally exhausting. […] Most have called it a gift, but I call it a
burden. (Parker et al., 2006, p. 35)
Extensive testing demonstrated that what AJ then first reported of her own
memory abilities is, indeed, true. She has remarkably detailed and specific memory for
her own personal experiences, particularly those after the age of 13 and also for world
events that have become associated with her experiences. She has extremely vivid
autobiographical memories, filled with emotion, that come to her automatically,
without her conscious control. When, without warning, she was given a date such as
“July 1, 1986” or “April 3, 1980,” AJ promptly and with little effort, related where she
was that day, the day of the week it was, what she was doing, and the people she was
with. She also remembers world events that occurred on the day, such as political
events, and natural or human disasters. Her recollections are very reliable. Asked on
different occasions about a given date, her answers are highly consistent with one
another, and cross-checking between the diary entries that she has made and her
reported recollections likewise reveal incredible accuracy. Not surprisingly, AJ spends
a great deal of her time remembering and talking about her memories, and, as we saw,
describes her memory as “nonstop, uncontrollable, and automatic.”
But, despite her vivid and detailed autobiographical memory, AJ does not perform
well on all tests of recently learned material. For instance, although she performed
perfectly, or almost perfectly, not only on tests of autobiographical memory but also
on tests of word recognition and a test of memory for new associations (visual paired
associates between shapes and colors), her recall of semantically related lists of words
(16 words belonging to the four semantic categories of fruits, tools, spices, and clothing)
was significantly below normal, as also was her ability to recall a complex novel visual
figure after a delay. The latter two memory tasks rely heavily on a person’s ability to
organize material, by grouping items together based on their categorical similarity
(e.g., grouping together all of the clothing items on the to-be-remembered word list)
or by identifying more global versus local structural patterns in a complex line draw-
ing. AJ’s difficulties in performing these tasks suggest that she may have difficulties in
abstracting out commonalities or overall structure in newly learned information.
Consistent with this possibility, AJ showed marked deficits on tasks requiring the
abstraction of rules or principles. For instance, she was impaired at attempts to flexi-
bly determine the categorical basis or “rule” that another person was using to sort
stimuli that differed on a number of dimensions (e.g., in color, shape, and number).
She showed a high level of repetitive (perseverative) errors on this task—the Wisconsin
Card Sorting Task—reflecting a tendency to “get stuck” in using a category rule that,
although once correct, was no longer correct (38 perseverative responses, correspond-
ing to an error rate that was nearly 2 standard deviations higher than average).
She also had considerable difficulty performing another widely used neuropsycho-
logical test of abstraction and concept formation (the Halstead Category Test) that
similarly requires both concept formation and the ability to flexibly shift one’s mental
set. She made 78 errors on this test, obtaining a total correct score that was 2.3
standard deviations below the average for the test—a remarkably low score particu-
larly in the context of her intact, or even superior, scores on several other tests.
Tasks involving analogical reasoning likewise posed a challenge for AJ. Her score on
the Similarities subtest from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised, in which a
person is shown pairs of apparently dissimilar words and asked to say how the words
in each pair are related, was more than 1.5 standard deviations below average
(Z = –1.67). AJ’s answers to the similarities problems also showed a strong tendency
toward concrete rather than abstract answers.
These patterns of deficits, involving weaknesses in analogical reasoning and
a tendency toward excessive concreteness, are surprisingly consistent with deficits
that have been noted in some other individuals with “super-normal” memory. For
instance, in his descriptions of case “S,” another individual with superior memory, the
neuropsychologist Alexander Luria (1968) observed that, despite his outstanding
ability to remember recently encountered materials, S was viewed by others as disor-
ganized and not very bright, and he often had trouble with abstraction. S himself was
acutely aware of his proclivity for becoming side-tracked in detailed sensory associa-
tions and memories. Such side-tracking arose both as a consequence of his vivid imag-
ery abilities and as a result of S’s synaesthesia: that is, an involuntary conjoining of
information from one physically experienced sense modality (e.g., color) with infor-
mation in another sensory modality that is subjectively experienced as also real
(e.g., sound), but that emerges from within the individual’s own sensory-perceptual
mental representations (e.g., Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001; J. Ward et al., 2008;
see also A. L. Murray, 2010 and Simner et al., 2009). S’s synaesthesia often involved
colors and tastes, as well as sounds. In combination, the imagery and synaesthesia
made it difficult for him to extract and follow the gist of a story or explanation:
All this makes it impossible for me to stick to the subject we’re discussing.
[…] Say you ask me about a horse. There’s also its color and taste I have to
consider. And this produces such a mass of impressions that if ‘I’ don’t get
the situation in hand, we won’t get anywhere with the discussion. […] I have
to deal not only with the word horse but with its taste, the yard it’s penned
in—which I can’t seem to get away from myself. (Luria, 1968, p. 156)
In their reflections on the curiously mixed pattern of extraordinary talents, and

marked deficits, demonstrated by AJ, Parker and colleagues explicitly remark upon the
seemingly counterintuitive observation that superior memory does not necessarily
facilitate other aspects of everyday life. They ask:
Who would expect that VP [another individual with superior memory], who
could play seven simultaneous chess games blindfolded, and had an estimated
IQ of 136, would be employed as a store clerk? […] How paradoxical that
Luria’s case S, who could recall seemingly unlimited amounts of materials for
years, had trouble capturing the meaning of what he read and moved from
one job to another, eventually becoming a professional mnemonist. (Parker
et al., 2006, p. 48)
Other individuals with superior memory similarly have been reported to have
difficulty with forms of abstraction. TM, a man with a remarkable memory studied by
Wilding and Valentine, showed pronounced difficulty recalling a complex story that
required “constant inference and interpretation” (Wilding & Valentine, 1994, p. 508).
Anecdotal comments from TM’s friends suggested that “he sometimes had problems
understanding social conventions which are transparently obvious to most adults, due
to his tendency to concentrate on physical aspects of events rather than meanings”
(p. 508).1 Similarly, the savant Kim Peek has an astonishing ability to remember text
(and also music) verbatim; to date, he has learned approximately 9,000 books “by heart”
on a diverse range of topics. In contrast with many savants, he does understand much
of what he remembers, and he has also increasingly moved from rote memory into a
form of associative, and sometimes creative, thought. Nonetheless, he has a limited
capacity for abstract, conceptual thinking. For instance, he cannot explain the meaning
of many commonplace proverbs, and sometimes he responds to questions in a very
concrete and literal manner (Treffert & Christensen, 2005; see also A. Snyder, 2009).
Jerome Bruner, in his foreword to the first edition of Luria’s book about S,
The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory, wrote:
For the mnemonist, S, whose case is studied in such exquisite detail in these
pages, is a man whose memory is a memory of particulars, particulars that are
rich in imagery, thematic elaboration, and affect. But it is a memory that is
peculiarly lacking in one important feature: the capacity to convert encounters
with the particular into instances of the general, enabling one to form general
concepts even though the particulars are lost. (Bruner, in Luria, 1968, p. xxii)
The strikingly simple but important message is clear enough. Although highly
specific memory is critical in many contexts in which the precise retention and retrieval
of information is essential, on its own, and when present to the exclusion of more
abstract or gist-based memory and categorization, it can impede the flexible adaptive
use of information in less literal, less narrowly reduplicative ways.2 Beyond remember-
ing the details, we also need to understand the general gist of our experiences, and we
need to be able to identify patterns and parallels between different events or ideas at
the level of general principles and deeper, more abstract similarities.
Possible Mechanisms
Here we will focus on the more recent and, to date, apparently unique case of AJ,
involving AJ’s supra-normal retention and recall of information from her personal
past. Parker and colleagues (2006) suggested that this condition might be termed
“hyperthymestic syndrome” involving two defining features. First, the individual
devotes an unusually large proportion of time to thinking about his or her personal
past, and second, the individual has “an extraordinary capacity” to recall specific
events from his or her personal past. Based on the neuropsychological findings pre-
sented earlier, a clear candidate cognitive mechanism that may contribute to this
syndrome includes deficits in executive functions, particularly those involving
abstraction, self-generated organization, and mental control. However, besides impair-
ments in abstraction, AJ also showed a pattern of problems in naming objects that
might reflect deficits in anterior left hemisphere function. On the Boston Naming
Test (Lezak, 1995), a test that requires the individual to name pictures (line drawings)
of objects, AJ demonstrated a tendency to provide incorrect names, such as calling
dominoes “dice,” a palette “paint,” and an abacus, “Chinese checkers,” leading her to
obtain a naming score that was 2.7 standard deviations below average. AJ also some-
times shows difficulty producing appropriately precise terms in spontaneous speech.
The full neuropsychological assessment also yielded some evidence of atypical brain
lateralization. Although a standard questionnaire measure of handedness indicated
that she is entirely right-handed or “right dominant,” a photograph of her at 35
months of age showed her using her left hand, and she worked right to left on several
different tasks, such as the complex figure task. Her “mental calendars” also go from
the right to the left. Additionally, AJ showed impairments in face recognition (with
intact face perception), and a self-reported long-standing abnormal insistence on
order in her external environment: She refers to herself as a “neat freak” and, as a
child, would keep her toys in a “very precise and complicated order” becoming
distraught if things were moved—reflecting obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
On the basis of these combined neuropsychological and cognitive performance
assessments, Parker and colleagues (2006) propose that AJ may have a variant of a
neurodevelopmental frontostriatal disorder. (See Simner et al., 2009, for an alterna-
tive account, emphasizing that the combination of AJ’s time-space synaesthesia and
her obsessive tendencies may have led to her savant-like autobiographical memory
abilities.)3 This complex group of neurodevelopmental disorders also includes condi-
tions such as autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, depression, and schizophrenia. A commonality across
these disorders is that they all involve impairments in executive functioning as
a consequence of impairments to the frontostriatal system. This system includes
regions of the frontal cortex (dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbitofrontal cortex),
anterior cingulate, the supplementary motor area, and associated deep brain basal-
ganglia structures, including the caudate, putamen, and globus pallidus (Bradshaw &
Sheppard, 2000; Chudasama & Robbins, 2006). Stated both broadly and succinctly,
the frontostriatal system is “responsible for our adaptive responses (initiation,
execution, or withholding) to environmental situations” (Bradshaw & Sheppard, 2000,
p. 297; for recent review, see Kehagia, Murray & Robbins, 2010).
A schematic diagram, illustrating the role of the prefrontal cortex—with connec-
tions to the basal ganglia,4 and also sensory cortex and motor cortex—in flexibly
adaptive cognitive control is provided in Figure 2.1. In the figure, interactions between
the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the basal ganglia are shown as basal ganglia loops
(BG loops), that are influenced by reward signals involving dopamine (DA), particu-
larly with respect to learned associations between various possible contextual and
other “cues” to behavior (here designated as C1, C2, C3), such as sensory cues, current
DA reward
BG loops PFC
“Context”
C1
C2
R1
C3
“Cue” Sensory
cortex Motor R2
cortex
Active
Figure 2.1. Schematic Diagram Illustrating the Role of the Prefrontal

Cortex (PFC) with Connections to the Basal Ganglia (BG), and also
Sensory and Motor Cortex, in Flexibly Adaptive Cognitive Control. DA,
dopamine. See text for details. Reprinted from Miller, E. K. & Buschman, T. J. (2008,
p. 423, as adapted from E. K. Miller & Cohen, 2001), Rules through recursion: How
interactions between the frontal cortex and basal ganglia may build abstract, complex
rules from concrete, simple ones, in S. A. Bunge & J. D. Wallis, Eds. (pp. 419–440),
Neuroscience of rule-guided behavior, New York: Oxford University Press, with
permission from Oxford University Press. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.
motivational states, and memories, and also possible voluntary responses (here
designated as R1 and R2). Also shown are internal, or “hidden,” units that represent
more central stages of processing. The dark (solid) circles in the figure indicate active
units or pathways, and thick lines indicate well-established pathways that mediate
well-established (habitual or prepotent) responses.
The PFC is not heavily connected with primary sensory or motor cortices, but
instead is connected with higher-level “association” and premotor cortices.
Via interactions with the basal ganglia […], dopaminergic (DA) reward
signals foster the formation of a task model, a neural representation that
reflects the learned associations between task-relevant information (as shown
by the recursive arrow). A subset of the information (e.g., C1 and C2) can then
evoke the entire model, including information about the appropriate response
(e.g., R1). Thus, the PFC can coordinate processing throughout the brain and
steer processing away from a prepotent (reflexive) response (C3 to R2) toward
a weakly established, but more goal-relevant, response (C3 to R1). Excitatory
signals from the PFC feed back to other brain systems to enable task-relevant
neural pathways. (E. K. Miller & Buschman, 2008, p. 423)
Once a particular complex rule or task mapping between cues to responses has
been learned, the rule or “task model” may later be elicited in response to only a subset
of the original cues (e.g., here, the cues of only C1 and C3 may elicit the appropriate
response of R1). Frontal-striatal interactions of this form may thereby “coordinate
processing throughout the brain and steer processing away from a prepotent (reflex-
ive) response [. . .] toward a more weakly established but more goal-relevant, response”
(E. K. Miller & Buschman, 2008, p. 423). This is here illustrated in the strong connec-
tions (dark thick lines) between C3 and R2, yet, despite this prepotent response,
this strong response is not made: Note that R2 is not indicated as active, whereas
R1 is, together with the connections between R1 and sensory and motor association
cortex and representations in prefrontal cortex. The frontostriatal system is, there-
fore, a central contributor to adaptive and flexible thinking.
The Contrary Extreme: Excessive Reliance on Abstract

Categorical Thought in Clinical Depression and Chronic
Worry Are Associated with Impaired Problem Solving
Although a too-exclusive dependence on detailed item-specific information is clearly
detrimental to flexibly adaptive thinking, other findings concerning the patterns of
thought demonstrated in clinical depression and chronic worry suggest that the con-
trary extreme—an excessive reliance on abstract schemata, or very general categorical
information—can be similarly detrimental. In both of these conditions, a tendency to
retrieve memories in an overly abstract categorical manner, and/or to maintain a
mode of thinking that is predominantly verbal and abstract, is directly implicated in a
reduced ability to adaptively address important ongoing problems or concerns.
We will consider each in turn.
O V E R R E L I A N C E O N A B S T R A C T C AT E G O R Y I N F O R M AT I O N
IN CLINICAL DEPRESSION
Some individuals with depression show a marked increase in the recall of very general
memories concerning their personal past and a decrease in more specific autobio-
graphical memories. These reductions in the specificity of memory retrieval for
personal events are, in turn, associated with reduced effectiveness and flexibility in
problem solving. When asked to recall events from their life in response to particular
cue words or probes (e.g., surprised, happy, sorry, angry), individuals who are depressed
often provide categorical memories such as (in response to the cue “happy”), “when I
go dancing” or (in response to the cue, “leisure”), “playing squash on Mondays.” These
are memories that refer to a repeated class or general type of event, and to something
that has happened several or many times, rather than to a single specific event that
occurred in a particular place and time.5
Memories of this sort fall at an intermediate level of specificity in a hierarchical
structure of autobiographical memory that has been proposed and developed by
Martin Conway (1996, 2005, Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; see also Conway, 2009).
The model is schematically shown in Figure 2.2. As can be seen in the figure, according
to this hierarchical view of our self-related memories, there are several broad types
of memories, at differing levels of abstraction versus specificity. At the top of the
Life story
Themes
Relationship
Work theme
theme
Lifetime
periods
The Working at Friends with
conceptual University X: ‘Y’
self
Others Others
Activities Activities
Locations Locations
Projects Projects
General Goals Goals
events
Prof.
Smith
Psych.
Dept. Dept.
talks
Grant
‘Z’
Promotion
Episodic
memories
Figure 2.2. Schematic Rendering of the Hierarchical Structure of the

Autobiographical Memory Knowledge Base. Autobiographical memory
involves multiple hierarchical levels, ranging from event-specific knowledge or
episodic memories (the most specific), to general events, to lifetime periods, and
themes. Reprinted from: Conway, M. A. (2005, p. 609), Memory and the self,
Journal of Memory and Language, 53, 594–628, with permission from Elsevier.
Copyright 2005, Elsevier.
hierarchy are very broad and abstract or overarching themes, such as our overall “life
story,” or themes relating to our work and relationships. Connected to these themes
are somewhat more specific groups of memories, concerning phases of our lives or
lifetime periods and also general events. Each of these general events is, in turn, con-
nected to several more specific occurrences or episodes (“episodic memories”),
involving knowledge about particular events that we have experienced, with such
details as exactly where and when and how something happened, or how we felt, or
particular sensory-perceptual details, and so on.
The categories of repeated life events that individuals with depression tend to recall
are of the “general event” sort. These memories are less closely anchored to concrete
sensory-perceptual and other details than are memories of individual, temporally and
spatially unique events (episodic memories or “event-specific knowledge”). Such
memories are, however, more specific than knowledge about extended “lifetime
periods” that involve longer phases of an individual’s life history.
Evidence that individuals experiencing a major depressive episode show an
enhanced rate of overgeneral (categorical) autobiographical memory retrieval has
been provided by a large number of studies. A meta-analysis by J. M. G. Williams and
colleagues (2007; also see van Vreeswijk & de Wilde, 2004) reported an average
effect size (Cohen’s d) of 1.12 across 11 studies of depressed patients versus controls;
that is, on average, the mean level of overgeneral categorical memories in depressed
individuals was 1.12 standard deviations higher than that provided by individuals in
the control conditions. Besides major depression, overgeneral autobiographical
memory retrieval has been observed in several other related affective disorders, such
as postnatal depression, manic-depressive disorder, and in individuals who are
dysphoric but who do not meet clinical criteria for major depression (average effect
size d of 0.94 across a total of 28 studies; Williams et al., 2007). Two other, often
related, conditions that have been associated with overgeneral memory are a history
of trauma or abuse, and suicidality. Indeed, the first instances of reported overgeneral
memory arose in the context of studying suicidal patients (J. M. G. Williams &
Broadbent, 1986), and several subsequent studies have likewise reported increased
overgenerality of autobiographical memory in suicidal compared with nonsuicidal
individuals (J. Evans et al., 1992; Pollock & Williams, 2001; J. M. G. Williams &
Dritschel, 1988; J. M. G. Williams, Ellis, et al., 1996).
The observation of overly general autobiographical memory retrieval in these con-
ditions shows some generality across different methods that can be used to prompt, or
cue, the retrieval of self-related memories. Although autobiographical memory over-
generality is most frequently reported for memory prompts involving single words,
and typically emotion words, such as “happy” or “angry,” overgeneral memory also has
been found when the recall prompts were brief descriptions of scenarios that were
emotionally positive or emotionally negative. When the cues concerned the provision
of reassurance or help, or the occurrence of criticism or difficulties, in relation to a
partner, friend, sibling, or neighbor (e.g., “Recall a time when a neighbor helped you
with a practical problem,” R. G. Moore et al., 1988), depressed individuals produced
twice as many categorical memories in response to these sentence cue prompts than
did nondepressed age-matched controls. Consistent with both earlier and subsequent
studies, these findings suggest that “the cognition of depressed people is likely to be
dominated by relatively abstract representations of the past rather than specific
instances” (R. G. Moore et al., 1988, p. 276). Increased overgeneral memory also has
been observed in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; relative to
trauma survivors without PTSD) in response to emotional pictorial stimuli that were
thematically unrelated to the traumatic events (Schönfeld & Ehlers, 2006).
The importance of overgeneral memory from a clinical perspective partially

derives from evidence showing that overgeneral memory is associated with an
increased likelihood of later disturbances in mood or affect, such as further recur-
rences of severe depression (see J. M. G. Williams et al., 2007; for meta-analytical
review see Sumner et al., 2010). Most relevant from the perspective of understanding
factors that may enhance versus impede flexible thinking, however, are the findings
that overgeneral autobiographical memory retrieval is linked to impaired abilities in
problem solving and also to reduced specificity in the ability to imagine the future
(e.g., Dalgleish et al., 2007; J. M. G. Williams, Ellis, et al., 1996).
Several studies have shown that depressed individuals (and also individuals
who have recently attempted suicide) show a reduced ability to generate ideas that
might help to address a socially problematic situation (e.g., Arie et al., 2008; J. Evans
et al., 1992; Goddard, Dritschel, & Burton, 1996; Raes et al., 2005; see Scott et al.,
2000, and Sutherland & Bryant, 2008, for similar outcomes with patients with bipolar
disorder and PTSD, respectively). In the Means-Ends Problem-Solving Task (MEPS;
Platt & Spivack, 1975), individuals are given brief descriptions (“vignettes”) of
a hypothetical problematic social situation and of a happy ending to the situation.
They are asked to describe actions that need to be taken so as to move from the initial
problematic situation to the stated successful resolution of the problem. For instance,
in the “falling out with friends” scenario, the participant is asked to imagine the
following situation: “You notice that your friends seem to be avoiding you. You want to
have friends and be liked. The story ends when your friends like you again. You begin where
you first notice your friends avoiding you” (Goddard, Dritschel, & Burton, 1996, p. 611).
Participants are encouraged to take a few minutes to think about the actions they
would take to best solve the problem.
Raters who are trained in evaluating the Means-Ends Problem Solving test later
score the solutions given by the participant (typically blind to participant condition).
One aspect that the trained raters evaluate is the number of relevant approaches
(i.e., means) that might be used to reach the desired end that the person provides. The
raters can also evaluate the overall effectiveness of the proposed solutions (e.g., on a
7-point scale). Individuals who are depressed, and individuals who have recently
attempted suicide, often show a reduced number of suggested steps to solving the
problems, and the steps that they suggest also are rated as lower in effectiveness than
are the solutions proposed by controls, including matched patients residing on medi-
cal wards and nonpatient controls (e.g., J. Evans et al., 1992; Goddard et al., 1996;
Raes et al., 2005; Sidley et al., 1997). The magnitude of such impairments in problem
solving also has been found to correlate with overgeneral autobiographical memory
recall. For instance, even after taking into account group differences in the latency to
retrieve memories, J. Evans et al. (1992) found a correlation of 0.67 between overgen-
eral memory recall and effectiveness of problem-solving strategies in a group of 12
individuals who had attempted suicide. Similarly, in a larger sample of 35 patients,
Sidley and colleagues (1997) reported a correlation of 0.38 between effectiveness of
problem solving and the specificity of autobiographical memory.
It also has been found that overgenerality in recollecting or reconstructing the
past correlates with similar overgenerality in imagining the future—itself potentially
relevant to real-life problem solving and problem anticipation (Dalgleish et al., 2007;
Dickson & Bates, 2006; J. M. G., Williams et al., 1996; cf. Suddendorf & Corballis,
1997, 2007). As will be seen in Chapter 9, there is considerable commonality in the
brain regions that are activated during thinking of (“re-experiencing”) the past and
imagining (“pre-experiencing”) the future (e.g., Addis, Wong, & Schacter, 2007;
Schacter & Addis, 2007a); furthermore, in various populations, deficits in the retrieval
of specific details from the past have been found to be associated with a similar
sparseness of detail in relation to the hypothetical construction of future events
(see Rosenbaum et al., 2009, and Buckner, 2010, for recent review and discussion).
One proposed explanation of the observed impairments in problem solving is that
depressed individuals are drawing on a reduced fund of particular world experiences due
to impairments in autobiographical memory. The ability to recall related past events
that are highly detailed and elaborated might provide a strong “case-based” database
that could aid in cuing new ideas or alternative approaches that could be used to
address the current difficulty: “In a problem-solving situation specific memories can
function as a rich and detailed database offering a large number of cues from which to
develop potential solutions” (Pollock & Williams, 2001, p. 387). However, given that
depression also is associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in rumination,
involving repetitive, largely linguistic, passive thinking about one’s symptoms of
depression, and the possible causes and consequences of those symptoms (Nolen-
Hoeksema, 1991; Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008), an alternative account is that the
impairments in problem solving arise because of increased rumination.
As will be seen later, rumination does seem to play an important role in maintain-
ing and exacerbating impaired problem solving of depressed individuals (e.g., Watkins
& Baracaia, 2002; see Watkins, 2008, for broad conceptual review). Yet it does not
appear that this factor, on its own, provides an entirely sufficient account. Raes and
colleagues (2005) found that overgeneral memory was itself an important contributor
to the deficits in problem solving, rather than only a covarying factor of rumination.
More cogently, experimental manipulations of the level of retrieval specificity
suggest that overgeneral memory retrieval is an important determinant of the
decrements in problem-solving performance. In one experiment (J. M. G. Williams
et al., 2006, Expt. 5), nondepressed students were assigned to one of two groups,
in which they were directly encouraged to retrieve either specific events (that is,
“an event that lasted less than a day and occurred at a particular time and place”) or
categorical events (here, participants were asked to write a description of the type of
event that the cue reminded them of, that is, “the sort of event that happens or
has happened in the past”). As expected, the two randomly assigned groups of nonde-
pressed students did not differ in problem-solving performance on an initial
pretest measure. However, individuals who received the generic memory induction
instructions showed a significant decline in performance from pre- to posttest,
whereas those completing the specific induction showed no change in problem-
solving performance (Williams et al., 2006, Expt. 5).
Another experiment used a more indirect method to elicit either specific event or
categorical event retrieval, and likewise demonstrated beneficial effects on problem
solving arising from more specific retrieval. This experiment (Williams et al., 2006,
Expt. 4) involved a manipulation of the imageability of the retrieval cue words, using
either words that were associated with low levels of imagery, and are known to elicit
primarily more general memories (J. M. G. Williams, Healy, & Ellis, 1999), or words
that evoked high levels of imagery. Mirroring the effects obtained with the more direct
manipulation of participants’ level of specificity of event retrieval, cue words that were
low in imageability led to reductions in successful problem solving compared with cue
words that were high in imageability. Although the two groups did not differ in the
number of relevant methods (means) that they suggested to the problems, the indi-
viduals given the high imageable cues provided significantly more specific solutions than
were provided by participants given the low imageable cues. Additionally, the proposed
solutions offered by the high imageability group were independently rated as signifi-
cantly more effective than those proposed by individuals given the low imagery cues.
Further experimental evidence directly pointing to the causal role of the level of
specificity of memory retrieval in the deficits in problem solving that are shown by
individuals with depression is provided by a study that explicitly manipulated whether
depressed and nondepressed control participants engaged in an “abstract self-focus”
versus “concrete self-focus” before they were asked to engage in a problem-solving
task. Adopting a manipulation involving ruminative focus that had been used in
earlier research (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1993; Watkins & Teasdale, 2001, 2004),
Watkins and Moulds (2005) asked participants to work at their own pace through a list
of 28 items, each of which focused the individual’s attention on her or his self and
depressive symptoms, such as “the physical sensations in your body.” However, whereas
participants in the concrete self-focus condition were asked to use their imagination
and concentration to focus their mind on how each symptom was actually experienced,
participants in the abstract self-focus condition were encouraged to think more
abstractly about the causes, meanings, and consequences of the symptoms.
For individuals who were depressed, the concrete self-focus led to significantly more
concrete problem descriptions on the Means-Ends problem-solving task than did the
abstract self-focus. Compared with the abstract self-focus, the concrete self-focus also
led to significantly improved social problem solving, both as assessed by the number of
means provided and by ratings of the effectiveness of those suggested means. In con-
trast, looking at measures of mood, compared to initial measures, the self-focus manip-
ulation led to an increase in negative mood for both depressed patient groups (thus
replicating known detrimental effects of self-focus on mood in depressed persons);
equally important, this increase in negative mood was equivalent for the two depressed
groups. For control participants who were not depressed, the self-focus manipulation
had no effects on either their mood or their problem-solving performance.
These outcomes argue that it is not symptom-focus per se, but rather the tendency
to maintain an overly abstract conceptual manner of thinking and recollection that
impedes problem solving in depression. This conclusion was further strongly sup-
ported through a formal statistical mediational analysis, using the criteria proposed
by R. M. Baron and Kenny (1986) to establish mediation effects.6 Change in the level
of concreteness of problem descriptions was a significant mediator of the effect of
mode of ruminative self-focus on problem solving. More recently, Raes, Williams, and
Hermans (2009) reported promising results in a preliminary investigation of a memory
specificity training intervention in inpatients with depression. Likewise, Watkins,
Baeyens, and Read (2009) found decreases in depressive symptoms, and increases in
concrete thinking, following a “concreteness training” intervention in individuals
with dysphoria compared to both a waiting list control group and another closely
matched control group.
Taken together, these and similar findings strongly argue, as J. M. G. Williams et al.
(2007, p. 142) conclude, that “lack of specificity in memory, however it comes about,
can play a causal role in reducing problem-solving capacity”—particularly for the
forms of complex and ill-structured problem-solving tasks such as the MEPS included
in these studies, and that are also likely to be encountered in an individual’s daily
interactions and endeavors. Notably, recent work has further shown that decreased
specificity of autobiographical memory retrieval predicted the generation of fewer
relevant means on this complex social task also for older and younger adults who
were not depressed (Beaman et al., 2007).
Nonetheless, while the evidence does argue for a causal role of overgeneral,
categorical memory retrieval in the thinking deficits that are observed, as noted
earlier, such overgeneral retrieval is not necessarily the only contributor. Other
factors, such as increased rumination and decreased cognitive executive resources,
might also play an important role in leading to both the increased likelihood of
overgeneral memories and reduced problem-solving capacity in depression. On the
whole, the evidence also points to these factors as assuming a contributory role in the
complex interactions that lead to the deficits. Based on their extensive review of find-
ings, J. M. G. Williams et al. (2007) propose that the diverse aspects and correlates of
overly general autobiographical memory retrieval might be best accounted for by a
combination of three factors: the “capture” of retrieval by abstract-conceptual (rumina-
tive) structures, reduced cognitive executive resources, and functional avoidance.
Functional avoidance is particularly important for the initial instigation of overly
general autobiographical memory retrieval. Simply stated, functional avoidance refers
to the idea that memory retrieval becomes more general because more specific retrieval
is associated with the recollection of painful and traumatic events which, in turn, leads
individuals to try to avoid such recollection both because it is painful and because it is
potentially highly disruptive to their ongoing pursuits and goals. However, the pro-
cesses involved in functional avoidance may not themselves be simple, and (though
still not well understood) they likely involve an interactive interchange between
relatively more highly controlled versus more automatic processes. On the one hand,
it has been argued that controlled processes are invoked in an individual’s efforts to
suppress or to curtail memory retrieval of traumatic events. On the other hand,
automatic processes, particularly the highly associative (and not always highly con-
trollable or predictable) nature of human memory may be partially responsible for the
need for a global curtailment rather than selective curtailment of more richly specific
memory retrieval (e.g., Brewin, 2006; Dalgleish, 2004). The associative nature of
memory is such that even initially very positive cues might become associatively
linked (at the time of retrieval) to traumatic events. Thus, to avoid unwanted retrieval
of such events, all retrieval searches may be truncated at a more abstract “intermedi-
ate” level of specificity.
The second, and for our purposes, especially important aspect of the model
proposed by Williams and colleagues, involves “capture” of retrieval by abstract-
conceptual (ruminative) structures. As noted, rumination has been defined as
passively focusing one’s attention on a negative emotional state, its symptoms, and
thinking repetitively about the causes, meanings, and consequences of that state
(Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991; Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). With frequent retrieval and
elaboration, these particular modes of thinking (chronic themes or concerns) become
highly dominant and associatively linked to many other concepts. Once activated,
then, the themes tend to rapidly capture attention, inviting continued activation and
rumination in a self-perpetuating circle. This, in turn, makes it increasingly difficult to
move beyond intermediate, categorical memory descriptions of events—a state called
“mnemonic-interlock” by J. M. G. Williams (1996) or “dysfacilitation of the retrieval
process” by M. A. Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000).
The third and last factor in the model of Williams et al. is a deficit in cognitive
executive processes. (Note that a deficit in executive processes was also proposed in
the case of AJ, but here, rather than overly specific retrieval, it is overly abstract or
categorical memory retrieval that ensues.) Executive processes are central to all
aspects of generative memory retrieval, beginning with the initial processes of inter-
preting information or cues with regard to a retrieval goal, and continuing through the
phases of monitoring and checking any associations and memories that emerge and,
if necessary, inhibiting irrelevant associations, to finally organizing and expressing
the outcome of the search (e.g., M. A. Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Whitten &
Leonard, 1981; D. M. Williams & Hollan, 1981).7 For example, reduced executive con-
trol was shown to be linked to overgeneral memory retrieval in an extensive series of
studies reported by Dalgleish et al. (2007), with reduced specificity in autobiographi-
cal memory associated with several tasks requiring executive control, such as verbal
fluency, block design, and fluid intelligence, and also linked with increased errors on
tasks such as design fluency and the Alternative Uses Task. The proposed interactions
between these three mechanisms—capture and rumination, functional avoidance,
and reduced executive processes—are diagrammed in Figure 2.3.
Capture &
rumination
Functional Nonspecific Consequences

avoidance autobiographical e.g., Impaired
memory problem solving
Executive
capacity
and control
Figure 2.3. Determinants of Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory

and Impaired Problem Solving. According to the model proposed by
Williams et al. (2007), three factors interactively and independently contribute
to overgeneral memory and to the further consequence of impaired problem
solving: capture and rumination (involving repetitive abstract categorical
processing), functional avoidance, and reductions in executive capacity and control.
Reprinted from Williams, J. M. G., Barnhofer, T., Crane, C., Hermans, D., Raes, F.,
Watkins, E., & Dagleish, T. (2007, p. 141), Autobiographical memory specificity and
emotional disorder, Psychological Bulletin, 133, 122–148, with permission from the
American Psychological Association. Copyright 2007, American Psychological
Association.
A clear implication of this model is that interventions aimed at reducing overly

abstract memory retrieval and thinking in depression should yield improvements in
problem solving. Broadly consistent with this notion, there is growing evidence that
therapeutic methods, such as mindfulness meditation, or attention-control therapy,
that seek to counteract the excessively abstract and conceptual processing of chroni-
cally depressed individuals, may lead to improvements in depression, problem solving,
and rumination (see also Raes et al., 2009; Watkins et al., 2009). These approaches
explicitly encourage depressed individuals to more closely attend to (become attuned
to) their ongoing sensory-perceptual experiences, rather than their highly verbal and
abstract thought patterns, and also to focus attention on the present and their current
circumstances, rather than their often much more abstract ruminations on the past
or future. These interventions, which are aimed at overcoming highly habitual,
automatic, and excessively abstract modes of thinking, will be considered in the first
section of Chapter 3.
R E D U C E D C O N C R E T E N E S S O F R E P R E S E N TAT I O N S
IN CHRONIC WORRY
Although less extensively researched than is overgeneral memory in clinical
depression, there is increasing evidence that broadly similar processes may be at work
in the maintenance of chronic worry. Excessive reliance on overly abstract and verbal
representations during worrying may substantially interfere with more adaptive
problem solving with respect to precisely those issues and possibilities that are the
target of the worry.
According to the avoidance theory of worry (Borkovec, Ray, & Stöber, 1998;
see Behar et al., 2009, for conceptual overview), worry acts as a cognitive avoidance
strategy, enabling the individual to avoid confrontation with, and emotional and
cognitive processing of, a threatening situation or stimulus. This theory is grounded
in the conjunction of several findings. First, there is evidence that worry predomi-
nantly entails verbal thought, or conceptual verbal linguistic activity, unlike obsessive
intrusive thoughts, which tend to be experienced more as images. Individuals’ self-
reports suggest that worrying is composed predominantly of thoughts rather than
images (e.g., Freeston, Dugas, & Ladouceur, 1996; Langlois, Freeston, & Ladouceur,
2000). More persuasively, based on experimental interventions designed to engage
different aspects of working memory, Rapee (1993) concluded that worry is basically
a verbal process. Worry was attenuated only on tasks that engaged the phonological or
articulatory loop (important in processing and storing verbal information), together
with the component of central executive control concerned with the phonological
loop8 (cf. Baddeley, 1990). Second, physiological findings suggest that verbal thought,
in turn, is associated with an attenuated cardiovascular fear response compared with
that evoked if individuals instead engage in imagery-related thinking involving the
same stimuli (Roemer & Borkovec, 1993; Vrana, Cuthbert, & Lang, 1986). Compared
with “ordinary” worriers, “excessive” worriers show both a greater predominance of
thoughts rather than images, and significantly attenuated autonomic hyperactivity
symptoms, including cardiovascular symptoms (Freeston et al., 1996). Third, there is
evidence that people may use verbalization as a way to functionally modulate and
reduce affect- or worry-related arousal (D. M. Tucker & Newman, 1981; see also
Mathews, 2004). That is, “people spontaneously use verbalization as a strategy for
abstraction, disengagement, and inhibition of emotional arousal associated with
arousing stimulus material” (Stöber & Borkovec, 2002, p. 89; see Holmes & Mathews,
2010, for review).
Consistent with this avoidance account of worry, in studies in which individuals
were instructed to either worry, or to relax, the instruction to worry was associated
with reduced mental imagery (e.g., Borkovec & Inz, 1990). In addition, individuals
with generalized anxiety disorder, who showed high levels of worry, also demonstrated
reduced levels of imagery overall (and also when instructed to relax), but this
difference was reduced following successful therapy.
One account of the mechanisms that lead to these reductions in mental imagery is
provided by the reduced concreteness theory of worry (Stöber, 1998). According to
this account, the verbal processing characteristic of worrying involves highly abstract
concerns, words and sentences, that act to prevent or minimize imagery, which is
much more readily, and more vividly elicited through concrete words and expressions
(e.g., Paivio, 1991; Rubin, 1995). Worry then leads to self-perpetuating, highly abstract
processing. Although processing of the relevant threat (both cognitively and emotion-
ally) is thereby minimized, like many avoidance responses, this offers little opportu-
nity for more focused problem solving. Continued avoidance also prevents the
individual from experiencing any corrective learning because he or she is unlikely to
encounter any counterevidence regarding the appropriateness of the worry.
Evidence in line with this reduced concreteness account is provided by qualitative
evaluations of the descriptions that people provide of their worries and the possible
origins and consequences of the problems about which they worry. Independent
raters were asked to evaluate the problem descriptions provided by participants for
how “concrete” they were, that is, “distinct, situationally specific, unequivocal, clear,
singular,” and how abstract, that is, “indistinct, cross-situational, equivocal, unclear,
aggregated.” There was an inverse relation between the degree to which healthy young
adults worried about a given topic and the concreteness of their problem elaborations:
The more they worried about something, the less concrete was the content of their
elaborations concerning it (Stöber, Tepperwien, & Staak, 2000). Individuals who
worried a lot about a given topic (e.g., running out of money; losing close friends)
provided possible antecedents and possible negative consequences of those problems
that were rated (by three raters, blind to condition) as less concrete and more abstract
than were the descriptions provided by individuals who did not often worry about the
topic. Similar outcomes were observed when individuals were asked to successively
state what it was that worried them the most about a given problem, in what is termed
a “catastrophizing interview” rather than providing problem elaborations.
The importance of reduced concreteness in the maintenance of worry and
rumination also was supported by a study that examined the nature and level of
specificity of individuals’ responses to a low-mood eliciting video (Cribb, Moulds, &
Carter, 2006). Participants first watched a brief sad film that depicted the release
of an elderly man from jail, followed by his failure to reintegrate with society and his
eventual suicide. They were then were asked to provide descriptions of the video. The
less concrete the participants’ description of the film, the greater was their tendency
toward ruminative thinking and toward what has been termed “experiential
avoidance”—involving a tendency to resist remaining in contact with particular
private experiences such as bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories,
and images.9 In addition, there were significant correlations between rumination
and several forms of avoidance (cognitive, behavioral, and experiential).
More recently, C. Stokes and Hirsch (2010) adopted the novel intervention of first
training individuals who were high worriers to use detailed concrete sensory imagery
when thinking about neutral topics, and then asking them to worry about one of their
recurrent everyday worries using imagery (versus verbally). For participants in the
imagery condition, imagery was defined as “generating an image of the situation and
tuning in to what you can see, feel, smell, hear and taste in the image as though you
are actually there right now.” Participants were also helped through a particular exam-
ple in which they were asked to imagine that they were cutting a lemon (cf. Holmes &
Mathews, 2005). Compared with individuals who were first encouraged to think about
neutral topics and then one of their everyday worries in a highly verbal manner (i.e.,
“in words, sentences, and questions, as though you are talking to yourself”), those
who adopted an imagery-based approach to their worry showed significantly fewer
negative cognitive intrusions during a later baseline breathing focus task. (Notably,
consistent with the notion that engaging in imagery about a worry topic is a difficult
and unpracticed task for habitual worriers, several of the high worriers reported that
they were unable to follow the imagery instructions, whereas few reported that they
were unable to follow the instructions to worry verbally.)
The finding that worrying in images, rather than words, led to a decrease in nega-
tive cognitive intrusions is consistent with the notion that the verbal nature of worry
may, in part, be responsible for its maintenance and perhaps also its uncontrollability.
Considering the possible reasons why inducing worrying with imagery was associated
with a decrease in negative intrusions of the thoughts, the investigators point not
only to the highly abstract content of verbal worry but also to the frequently frag-
mented nature of worry, with the worry topics remaining largely unintegrated with
the individual’s broader knowledge and emotions:
Many worrisome thoughts are of the ‘‘what if…?’’ type, relating to uncertain
outcomes […] and thus it is plausible that they lack a specific context as
well as being rather fragmented. The abstract and fragmented nature of the
worrisome thoughts may allow the worrier to jump from one topic to another,
and reach catastrophic outcomes [that] exacerbate further worry intrusions.
In contrast, generating imagery may be a more helpful process. Imagery
appears to have strong links with memory; for example, Dewhurst and
Conway (1994) suggest that knowledge stored in long-term memory needs
to be accessed and searched in order to generate images. Thus generating
imagery may draw on autobiographical memories and the individual’s
knowledge of the world, facilitating a more specific and concrete mental
representation of the worry topic. (C. Stokes & Hirsch, 2010, p. 422)
The intervention may have been one of the first times that participants had
considered their worry topics using imagery, and the imagery that they evoked “may
have acted as an on-line test of their negative catastrophic ideas, leading to changes in
appraisals of the situation, either because the image did not correspond with their
previous catastrophic ideas, or because the catastrophic image generated seemed
unrealistic in light of their knowledge of the real world” (C. Stokes & Hirsch, 2010,
p. 422). Exposure to the feared topic in the presence of corrective information may
also have promoted the extinction of fear (Foa & Kozak, 1986).
Taken together, the evidence suggests that chronic worry or rumination, like
depression, may impede flexibly adaptive problem solving because it gives rise to an
excessive reliance on overly verbal and abstract thinking. Such thinking is too
extremely divorced from particular events and contexts, in all their sensory, motor,
cognitive, and emotional richness. Given that concrete problem elaborations are
important in enabling us to counteract or prevent perceived risks to our well-being,
then worry, like the overgenerality of memory in depression, may substantially impede
effective problem solving, and thereby perpetuate the worrisome problem focus
itself.10 From the point of view of the iCASA framework, both worry and depression
appear to limit an individual’s “oscillatory range” with respect to levels of representa-
tional specificity. Mental agility is impaired by being constrained to either end of the
levels of representational specificity continuum. Becoming caught up in abstract
and categorical thinking, as in chronic worry and depressive rumination, or, to the
contrary, being too closely wedded to concrete particulars, as we saw earlier in the case
of individuals with superior memory, are similarly detrimental to creatively adaptive
thought and problem solving.
Engaging in a Cognitive Fluency Task That Requires

Both Item-Specific and Category-Based Knowledge
Enhances Subsequent “On-the-Spot” Problem Solving
As noted, one important experimental probe of the bases for overgeneral memory
retrieval involved altering the retrieval style of participants so as to bias them toward
either general or specific autobiographical memory retrieval, and then examining the
effects of this retrieval set on problem-solving performance. A recent investigation in
healthy young adults adopted a similar initial “training period” followed by measures
of performance on several problem-solving tasks often thought to require “insight”
rather than more systematic or algorithmic problem-solving approaches. This investi-
gation (Chrysikou, 2006) was motivated from a broader perspective regarding the
role of categorization in problem solving—but, as argued later in this chapter, it also
provides a new form of support for the importance of flexible movement between
different levels of specificity of representations in enabling agile thinking.
Individuals often rely on well-learned taxonomic categories of everyday objects
and events (e.g., fruit, clothes, furniture). However, categories may also be formed in a
more contextually sensitive ad hoc manner, to meet an individual’s current goals,
needs, or other requirements. Such goal-derived categorization may rely on prior
experience (e.g., things to pack in a suitcase on a visit to X) or may be newly formed to
address a current situation, using effortful, top-down procedures, and/or the dynamic
processes of conceptual combination (e.g., Wisniewski, 1997; Wisniewski & Love,

1998). From this broad perspective, Chrysikou (2006) conceptualized problem
solving as involving a process of “frame instantiation”—that is, retrieval of a relevant
knowledge schema—based on one’s goals, and various constraints (e.g., Barsalou,
1991). However, given that many problem-solving situations do not have clear or
well-defined goals (a characteristic frequently true of so-called insight problems), it is
often quite difficult to generate appropriate ad hoc goals. In ill-defined situations, and
particularly in insight problems:
The generation of ad hoc categorizations—which are critical for the

achievement of the correct solution—does not appear to occur with the
effortlessness and spontaneity that may be observed in well-defined
tasks. Consequently, it has been hypothesized that if the construction of
goal-derived and, particularly, ad hoc categorizations are critical for problem
solving but difficult to execute, then training in goal-derived concept genera-
tion may enhance participants’ instantiations of problem frames and,
ultimately, improve their performance on insight problems. (Chrysikou,
2006, p. 936)
Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that participants

who received training in the process of ad hoc categorization would show improved
performance on insight problem tasks. The training task involved a variation of the
Alternative Uses Task (termed the “Alternative Categories Task” by Chrysikou, 2006)
in which participants were asked to consider several different common objects (e.g., a
shoe or dinner fork) and to provide alternative uses for those objects, other than their
standard or usual use (e.g., a dinner fork might be used to help support a small house
plant). Participants performed this task for about 15 minutes, providing up to six
alternative uses for each of 12 common objects. Two other comparison groups were
included: A group asked to search for embedded figures in a series of diagrams in
which a smaller, simpler figure was hidden in a larger, more complex figure, and a word
association task, in which individuals were provided 100 stimulus words and were
asked to provide the first word that came to mind in response to each word. Each
group was then given a series of seven insight problems (e.g., the Candle Problem, the
Prisoner and Rope problem, and the Fake Coin problem).
As predicted, training in the Alternative Uses Task significantly improved subse-
quent performance on the insight problems, with individuals given the Alternative
Uses training outperforming those in both the Embedded Figures and the Word
Association comparison groups. This outcome held both for an experimental group for
whom the Alternative Uses Task included objects that were relevant to the insight
problems, as well as for a group where all of the objects in the Alternative Uses Task
were different from those relevant to the insight problems. Additionally, this finding
was replicated in a follow-up study in which there was no direct instruction to partici-
pants that the Alternative Uses Task might be relevant to the insight problem-solving
task. More recently, in our lab, we also have observed facilitated insight problem
solving following engagement in a more standard version of the Alternative Uses Task,
both in younger adults and in older adults (Wen, Butler, & Koutstaal, in preparation),
again with no direct instructions to participants that the preinsight task might be
relevant to their problem-solving endeavors.
Thus, engagement in the Alternative Uses Task did not seem to fall prey to the
“inert knowledge” problem (e.g., Gentner et al., 2003; discussed later in this
chapter) that has often been reported in studies of transfer of problem solving, in
which individuals have knowledge but do not access or retrieve that information when
needed, and so fail to apply it to the problem at hand. Rather, training in the Alternative
Uses Task here facilitated later problem-solving performance even without the
provision of any overt guidance or hints that the cognitive processes used during the
initial task might be helpful in solving the new problems. In addition, the training
benefits were not confined to only those items that were used during training but
appeared to occur for objects that were not themselves directly involved in the train-
ing procedure.
Although the results of Chrysikou (2006) are consistent with an account according
to which the Alternative Uses Task intervention leads to greater adeptness at “goal-
derived categorization,” that then procedurally transfers to the subsequent ill-defined
insight problems, four other observations concerning the tasks and the comparison
groups, and also additional data from our own lab, point to plausible alternative,
although not necessarily mutually exclusive, interpretations. First, performance of
the Alternative Uses Task also involves training in variability of responding: Participants
were required to provide multiple, different, nonstandard uses for each object. This is
important in that the two comparison conditions (Simple Word Association and the
Embedded Figures Task) did not require such variability and, instead, participants
were asked only for a single response (the first word associate that came to mind, or
the one matching instance of an embedded figure). As argued in Chapter 5, there
is strong evidence that training in variability may itself be an important factor in
encouraging a more adaptively flexible problem-solving approach (e.g., Neuringer,
2002, 2004). Indeed, based on several early explorations of “training in originality,”
requiring participants to give new word associations to repeatedly presented items,
Maltzman (1960) concluded that there was a puzzling (but important) general
transfer of training effect from one task to another. That is, training in variability
generalized to different contexts.11
Second, the word association comparison task may have encouraged reliance on
readily available or highly accessible information, perhaps inducing a more automatic,
habit-based mode of processing or cognitive orientation. Continued adherence to this
“automatic” cognitive processing orientation would then be disadvantageous on
the insight problem-solving tasks, where the first or most readily accessible alterna-
tives are unlikely to be fruitful for reaching a solution to the problem. The initial
encouragement of reliance on readily accessible associations may have worked to
impede appropriate editing and persistent search in the insight problem-solving tasks,
where following such an automatic “path of least resistance” approach (T. B. Ward
et al., 2002) would preclude the discovery of precisely those solution alternatives
that do not readily come to mind. In contrast, the Alternative Uses Task may itself
have indirectly primed a broader “think different” mindset that might also “operate by
reducing the automatic activation of associations” (Sassenberg & Moskovitz, 2005,
p. 508). Indirect inducement of an increased (detrimental) reliance on automatic
associational processes in the word association condition, or a decrease in the extent of

such reliance via performing the Alternative Uses Task, or both, might lead to the
pattern of enhanced insight-problem solving that was observed following the
Alternative Uses Task training (see note 11).
Third, the Alternative Uses training procedure also encourages attention to
sensory-perceptual information—and this contrasts with the word association
task, which may have encouraged more associative, lexical, or abstract retrieval.12
The successful identification of new possible nonstandard uses of an object depends
on considering the particular material and structural characteristics of the object, and
whether a given use is feasible given those characteristics. The procedure may thus
have encouraged more concrete, embodied orientations to objects and object uses.
These more concrete orientations may have taken the form of what have been termed
“perceptual simulations” (Barsalou, 2003). In perceptual simulation, we imaginatively
or subconsciously act out interactions with objects and problem situations, thereby
gaining a clearer, more integrated, and multimodal embodied understanding of
the situation (the role of such simulations in fostering new ideas and hypotheses is
considered more fully in Chapter 4).
In addition, or alternatively, the procedure may have heightened participants’
cognitive flexibility in a more general way that enabled more contextually appropriate
and thorough exploration of possible problem solutions, and encouraged multiple
and varied shifts within and between object categories, and between considering the
sensory-perceptual features versus more abstract functional properties of the objects.
Gilhooly, Fioratou et al. (2007) found that participants use a variety of strategies,
differing in level of specificity, during Alternative Uses Task performance, such as
concrete “disassembly” of the objects (e.g., removing the laces from a shoe), and
thinking of broad abstract categories of possible object uses (e.g., “transportation”).
Performance of the Alternative Uses Task also relies on varying levels of control.
Gilhooly, Fioratou, et al. (2007) asked participants to reevaluate the responses they
had generated on the Alternative Uses Task, separately designating those uses that
they had newly generated during the experimental session versus those that they had
retrieved from memory. The results showed that individuals initially mainly relied on
memory-based automatic processes in generating potential responses—first drawing
on personal and vicarious experiences of remembered alternative uses with the stimu-
lus objects—and then used effortful “online” generation of “truly novel” responses
later on in the task. Neuropsychological and aging-related findings from letter- and
category-fluency tasks likewise have shown that such tasks draw both on automatic
processes (especially for within-category or within-cluster response generation) and
strategic/controlled processes (especially recruited for switches between categories;
Hughes & Bryan, 2002; Troyer et al., 1997; Troyer, 2000).
If the task more generally enhances cognitive flexibility, that then transfers to
subsequent tasks, it might be expected that benefits from engaging in the Alternative
Uses Task would be observed on other sorts of problem-solving or reasoning tasks
that require cognitive flexibility but that—unlike the insight problems—are compara-
tively well defined, such as novel, on-the-spot visual-spatial or analogical fluid reason-
ing tasks. Recent work from our lab (Wen, Butler, & Koutstaal, in preparation) has
provided support for this latter view. We found that performance of the Alternative
Uses Task for a brief period of only 10 minutes not only lead to significantly enhanced
insight problem solving compared to that observed in control conditions but that this
intervention also significantly enhanced performance on a well-accepted measure of
fluid, visual-spatial analogical reasoning—the Cattell Culture Fair test (Cattell &
Cattell, 1960). In this test, for example, participants are shown incomplete progres-
sive series of abstract shapes and are asked to select the alternative, out of several
options, that best completes the series, or to select which, of several abstract figures,
does not belong with the others.
Whereas improved goal-derived categorization might be particularly important for
ill-defined problems, such as the insight problems, it is less clear that this process is
essential for approaching visual-spatial analogical problems in which the stated goals
and aims are clear. Thus, it appears that the Alternative Uses Task intervention may be
increasing cognitive flexibility more generally, and that an account strictly in terms of
facilitated “goal-derived categorization” may be too narrow. These findings are consis-
tent with the iCASA framework in that they suggest that interventions, such as the
Alternative Uses Task, that encourage movements between specific and abstract
processing, and/or between different levels of cognitive control, may enable more flex-
ibly adaptive problem solving, not only for insight problems that are often peculiarly
difficult and resistant to ready solution (e.g., Kershaw & Ohlsson, 2004; MacGregor,
Ormerod, & Chronicle, 2001) but also multicomponent tasks requiring novel, on-
the-spot relational reasoning.
Increased Facility at Flexibly Remembering

Recent Events at Differing Levels of Specificity
Positively Correlates with Flexible Thinking
and Fluid Reasoning
From the evidence considered thus far, several key questions arise: First, the training
in Alternative Uses Task just considered suggests that flexibility in how one accesses
semantic knowledge and concepts can enhance problem-solving ability. But is there any
parallel evidence relating to the flexible use of episodic memory—that is, our memory
for recently experienced events? Can we, in fact, readily and rapidly move between
highly specific and more categorical retrieval of recently experienced events? If so, is
this capability related to a person’s versatility in approaching novel problem-solving
situations or to his or her ability to fluently and adaptively access and query long-term
knowledge of objects and concepts (semantic memory) in new problem-relevant
ways?
Initial observations relevant to these questions were obtained in the context of
research on the effects of healthy aging on levels of specificity of memory. A large
number of studies, using several sorts of stimuli, suggest that normal aging may lead
to an increased preference for category-based or gist-based memory processing. Thus,
older adults often show an increased tendency to mistakenly say they have previously
encountered objects, words, or other stimuli if those stimuli are perceptually or
conceptually similar to items that they have experienced (e.g., Koutstaal & Schacter,
1997a; Tun et al., 1998) and may “overweight” semantic information in making
memory decisions (e.g., K. J. Mitchell, Johnson, & Mather, 2003). Yet, notably, not all
older adults show this pattern. For instance, K. M. Butler and colleagues (2004) found
that it was particularly older adults who also showed comparatively lower scores across
several different measures of frontal lobe functioning and executive processes that
demonstrated higher rates of errors related to gist-based memory processing. In their
study, older individuals with higher frontal lobe function showed levels of false recall
that were very similar to those of younger adults.
In work in our lab, we attempted to evaluate the extent to which both older and
younger adults can intentionally alter the level of specificity with which they recog-
nize recently encountered objects and words (Koutstaal, 2006). To evaluate such
intentional control of retrieval specificity, we first presented older and younger adults
with a large number of pictures of common objects (e.g., an umbrella or a house key).
To help ensure attentive processing of the pictures, participants were asked to
perform a simple size judgment on each of the objects; participants were not told
that we would later probe their memory for the objects (that is, encoding was inciden-
tal). After this task, and a brief intervening task interposed as a short memory delay,
participants were given a test of their ability to recognize the objects that they had
been shown during the size judgment task.
Like many such recognition tests, the test consisted of three sorts of items: objects
that were exactly like those shown in the size judgment task (called “same” exem-
plars), objects that were not shown in the size judgment task but that were categori-
cally similar to one of those items (e.g., a different umbrella than the one shown in the
size judgment task, called “different exemplars”), and objects that were unrelated to
the objects shown in the size judgment task (e.g., a giraffe, called “novel” or unrelated
items; items in these three conditions were counterbalanced). However, rather than
asking participants to make simple yes/no decisions regarding whether the objects
were old (shown during the size judgment task) or new (not shown in the size
judgment task), we asked participants to make one of two different sorts of recognition
judgments for a given item. In one judgment, the “identical” or “item-specific”
judgment, participants were told to call an item old only if it was identical to one they
had seen during the size judgment task. In another judgment, the “conceptual” or
“category-based” judgment, participants were instructed to call an item old both if it
was identical to one that they had encountered earlier and if it was similar to, or
categorically related to, an item they had been shown. (See, for example, L. M. Reder,
Wible, & Martin, 1986, and Reyna & Kiernan, 1994, for other work using variants of
the identical vs. meaning-based recognition instructions.)
There were two further important aspects of the procedure. First, each participant
was asked to make some recognition judgments that were “identical” and some that
were “category based.” Second, and most important, we provided the instructions as
to which of the two types of memory judgments they were to make immediately before
each test item—and these instruction cues to participants to query their memory in
an item-specific manner or, instead, in a category-based manner themselves changed
in an unpredictable and intermixed way. Thus, for some objects participants needed to
query their memory for detailed item-specific knowledge to make the item-specific
recognition judgment, and for others they needed to make only a more general
category-based recognition decision.
We found that, overall, both younger and older adults were able—to some degree—
to flexibly and appropriately move between making the item-specific versus category-
based recognition judgments (Koutstaal, 2006; cf. Ecker & Zimmer, 2009). In addi-
tion, older adults showed no deficits in the ability to make the category-based
recognition judgments: They performed on this task as well as the younger adults (see
L. M. Reder et al., 1986, and Koutstaal, 2003, for similar evidence of age equivalence
on tests of category-based recognition). However, overall, older adults showed a sig-
nificantly reduced ability to rapidly and appropriately change the extent to which they
responded on the basis of category information versus item-specific information in
response to instructions that required them to make either category-based or
item-specific memory decisions. That is, compared with younger adults, older adults
were less able to appropriately modulate the extent to which they relied on category
information, more often continuing to rely on categorical information when the
judgment required retrieval of highly detailed item-specific memory. Nonetheless,
conceptually consistent with the outcomes of K. M. Butler and colleagues (2004) that
had shown that not all older adults were equally susceptible to false recall, some older
adults demonstrated levels of “specificity modulation” that were equivalent to those
shown by younger adults.
Equally important, in further analyses, we found that specificity modulation in
episodic recognition in older adults was significantly positively correlated with other
measures of the ability to access and use other types of knowledge in flexible ways. For
instance, one common but quite straightforward measure to evaluate the efficiency
and flexibility with which a person can retrieve well-known information is to give him
or her a verbal fluency task. In the letter fluency task, participants are asked to state
as many words as they can that begin within a given letter (e.g., the letter “F” or “S”)
within a specified period of time (e.g., 1 minute). Similarly, in the category fluency
task, participants are asked to name as many different objects or items of a given sort
(e.g., “fruits” or “animals”) as they can within the allotted time period. Often, partici-
pants also are asked to avoid giving words of a particular sort (e.g., words that have
fewer than three letters, and proper names). Performance on both the letter fluency
and category fluency tasks has been found to be impaired by damage to the frontal
lobes (e.g., Troyer et al., 1998), and it is believed to rely on executive function
processes such as strategic search, and flexible thinking or “set shifting.” For instance,
in order to continue to generate new examples of animals on the category fluency
task, one might switch from giving instances of domestic animals to thinking of dif-
ferent instances of wild animals, or of animals typically found in a different country.
We found that there was a significant positive correlation between older adults’
ability to appropriately and flexibly use, or to avoid using, gist information in response
to changing recognition instructions (“specificity modulation” of episodic memory)
and how many words that older adults were able to provide on the letter fluency task
(Koutstaal, 2006). There was also a significant positive correlation between specificity
modulation and the number of words that older adults provided during a semantic
category fluency task.
These findings show that the ability to alternate between item-specific detailed
memory and category-based abstract memory for recently experienced events
is significantly and positively related to the ability to adaptively and flexibly access
information from semantic memory—and potentially also with frontal or executive
function. This points to a possible connection between “flexible remembering” of
recent episodes and some forms of agile thinking.
A further recent study from our lab (Aizpurua & Koutstaal, 2010), likewise
using the flexible remembering task in older and younger adults but now also incorpo-
rating measures of novel, on-the-spot thinking, together with a more extensive set of
measures of frontal function and also a measure of semantic short-term memory,
provided additional support for such a connection. In this study, replicating the earlier
result, we again found that younger adults showed significantly greater appropriate
specificity modulation on the flexible remembering task than did older adults. In this
work, we used as our measure of specificity modulation, a measure based on fuzzy
trace theory known as “recollection rejection” (e.g., Brainerd & Reyna, 2002), which
provides an estimate of the likelihood that individuals will retrieve verbatim informa-
tion about the studied items (e.g., “sofa”) when presented categorically or semanti-
cally related lure items (e.g., “couch”). The mean recollection rejection score of
older adults (M = 0.38, SD = 0.18) was significantly lower than that of younger adults
(M = 0.58, SD = 0.16). This measure of specificity modulation was significantly
positively correlated (r(69) = .66) with a combined measure of fluid thinking, includ-
ing the Cattell Culture Fair test of fluid intelligence (Cattell & Cattell, 1960) and the
Block Design subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Revised (Wechsler,
1981), and also with a measure of semantic short-term memory or “conceptual span,”
r(69) = .47. Verbatim recollection was also modestly but significantly correlated with
a composite measure of frontal functioning, r(69) = .30. However, when we included
each of these factors (age, conceptual span, fluid intelligence, and frontal function) in
a simultaneous multiple regression, we found that the strongest and only significant
predictor of specificity modulation on the flexible remembering task was fluid
intelligence. After accounting for the effects of fluid intelligence on specificity modula-
tion, there was no longer a significant effect of age, suggesting that the age effect on
the ability to appropriately and adeptly move between different levels of grain (item
specific vs. categorical) in episodic memory retrieval was largely due to the strong
association of age with fluid intelligence, r(69) =–.40.
Based on these findings, two further questions naturally arise: First, is it possible
to somehow enable older adults to reduce their task-inappropriate reliance on cate-
gory-based memory through training in the more flexible use of memory, and particu-
larly in specific memory retrieval? Second, especially in view of the theoretical account
of overly categorical memory retrieval in depression, are there conditions under
which healthy young adults also may show similar overreliance on category-based
memory—especially through manipulations that (like aging or clinical depression)
might lead to sustained changes in their “default” level of retrieval specificity?
The answer to both of these questions is yes. However, because evidence relating to
each of these questions also is very closely related to the important issues of the
representational processes of automaticity versus control, discussion of these findings
is deferred until Chapter 3.
Adaptive Categorization and Problem Solving

Require Flexible Use of Both Highly Detailed
Specific Instances and Abstract, Rule-,
or Category-Based Knowledge
In marked contrast to the difficulties arising from overly abstract processing that we
have considered in relation to clinical depression and chronic worry, experimental
research focused on the problem-solving performance of healthy individuals seems
(at least at first blush) to almost overwhelmingly point to obstacles to flexibly adap-
tive thinking arising from an excess of specificity with which people tend to represent
and retrieve prior problem-relevant experiences. This “excess of specificity” in normal,
nonexpert learners takes one of two broad forms.
First, the problem-solving efforts of nonexperts frequently show an overreliance
on incidental and often superficial features of the initial problems or problem
examples that they encounter, that is, those aspects, that, when changed, do not affect
the solution procedure (Catrambone, 1998). This is accompanied by too little initial
processing, retention, and application of the deeper, more abstract, structural aspects
of the problem. Many studies suggest that the mental representations that nonex-
perts form of a problem predominantly contain information about the specific objects
and terms that are mentioned in the problem. In contrast, although this surface
information is also incorporated in the mental representations that experts form, the
representations of experts also include more abstract, structural, “solution-relevant”
features (e.g., Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981).
Second, the problem-solving performance of nonexperts often shows an apparent
overdependence on contextual reminding, such that knowledge may be overly bound
to the particular spatiotemporal context (episode) in which it was initially acquired,
rather than flexibly and adaptively accessed in different contexts.13 Stated differently,
healthy individuals who are not experts in a given domain often seem to form repre-
sentations of problems that are too “surface-like” (too tied to the original and literal
content of any examples that they have encountered), and too context bound (too tied
to the particular situations in which examples were encountered). For instance, a large-
scale investigation of third-grade students explicitly aimed at “teaching for transfer” in
mathematical problem solving provided the following definition of abstraction:
To abstract a principle is to identify a generic quality or pattern across

instances of the principle. In formulating an abstraction, an individual
deletes details across exemplars, which are irrelevant to the abstract category
(e.g., ignoring that an airplane is metal and that a bird has feathers to formu-
late the abstraction of ‘flying things’). These abstractions are represented in
symbolic form and avoid contextual specificity so they can be applied to
other instances or across situations. Because abstractions, or schemas, sub-
sume related cases, they promote transfer. (L. S. Fuchs et al., 2003, p. 294)
A misguided sensitivity to inconsequential surface features (both perceptual and

semantic) has been identified, in numerous research studies, as a strong impediment
to the effective transfer of knowledge to new situations. These studies have used a
diverse array of stimulus materials, populations, and types of thinking ranging from
analogies (e.g., Gick & Holyoak, 1980; 1983) to simple and complex forms of arithme-
tic and algebra problems (e.g., Bassok, Ling-Ling, & Olseth, 1995), to statistics and
physics problems (e.g., Bassok & Holyoak, 1989; Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981; B. H.
Ross, 1987), to various more applied topics, such as learning computer programming
languages (e.g., Adelson, 1981). Such inappropriate sensitivity to the surface details of
information in learning situations is assumed to play a prominent role in generating
what has been called the “inert knowledge problem.” As the term suggests, this expres-
sion refers to situations in which a learner has acquired and retained relevant knowl-
edge, but nonetheless this knowledge remains “inert”—not activated or successfully
accessed—under conditions where it is needed or would enable the solution of a prob-
lem (see, e.g., S. M. Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Bransford & Schwartz, 1999; Reeves &
Weisberg, 1994; for reviews). Such inappropriate reliance on surface information also
is difficult to circumvent: It is often only modestly overcome even by very direct and
deliberate means, such as explicit instructions to the learner to compare across differ-
ent examples or cases that they encounter, or direct reminders to the learner, before
the presentation of a new problem, that thinking about an earlier related problem may
prove useful for solving the current one.
But—granted the pervasiveness of the apparently “misguided” sensitivity of non-
experts to surface information—might there not be something positive and beneficial
in this proclivity? Is the retention of such details perhaps sometimes adaptive? And is
the apparent constriction and inflexibility of retention of surface details really as
broadly encompassing as it appears?
Here we will consider four points that strongly argue against an overly simplistic
view of impediments to flexible problem solving as arising from an excessive reliance
on surface details in learning situations. As developed later, the divide between rela-
tively more surface aspects and more abstract, structural aspects is neither as clear,
nor as sharp, as it has sometimes been characterized to be. First, such a divide largely
ignores the key role of physical embodiment (e.g., in language and other symbols) in
enabling and supporting abstract thinking. Abstract thinking does not occur in an
ethereal immaterial realm that is divorced from our sensory-motor and perceptual
functions, but in conjunction with (and often based on) specific material objects and
contexts. Second, claims regarding learners’ excessive reliance on surface details them-
selves need to be appropriately contextualized. Stated too broadly they represent an
overgeneralization on the basis of experimental work with particular sorts of materi-
als, especially ones that are relatively unfamiliar to participants; for more complex and
familiar materials there are many cases where individuals do spontaneously draw upon
more abstract knowledge and inferences, and abstract relational reasoning. Third, a
simple dichotomy of “surface” versus “abstract” (structural) features does not fully
accommodate the observation that even experts sometimes appropriately rely on
surface details because surface details often correlate with deeper structural patterns.
Such a divide also does not allow for learning-related shifts in the relative degree of
emphasis on different forms of representations, the concurrent presence of multiple
levels of representations of a given problem or problem domain, and the “bootstrap-
ping” from more specific to more abstract representations. Fourth, any simple divide
does not readily account for findings showing that there are substantial individual
differences in the extent to which persons benefit from abstract (rule-based) versus
specific (example-based) approaches, and also differences in the optimal timing of
these approaches (e.g., earlier vs. later in learning).
THE KEY ROLE OF PHYSICAL EMBODIMENT

It is essential here to begin with an important caveat concerning the simplification
involved in categorizing particular elements or groups of elements as either “abstract”
(structural) or “concrete” (superficial). These terms are themselves “slippery”—to use
a term applied to them by J. P. Smith, diSessa & Roschelle (1993)—in that they
are highly contextually dependent, and both terms may simultaneously apply to
different aspects of an individual’s approach to a problem. For instance, although the
procedures and concepts involved in algebraic problem solving may be quite abstract,
the written expression of such problems, in the form of symbols, is highly concrete.
The often-central role of language and symbols as physically embodied perceptual
objects and of “epistemic actions” in enabling agile thinking is further considered
in Chapter 4. The potential beneficial role of imagined “perceptual simulations” in
helping individuals to develop a more integrated and multimodal understanding of
problem contexts and situations was alluded to earlier, and it also will be developed
further in Chapter 4.
I N D I V I D UA L S D O O F T E N S P O N TA N E O U S LY R E A S O N U S I N G
A B S T R A C T R E L AT I O N S A N D C O N C E P T S
A further objection to the suggestion that we have an inveterate proclivity to attend to
only “surface-based” or superficial information is that such a characterization appears
to be inconsistent with a broader view of how individuals generally and most often
seek to understand and interact with the world and others. Rather, the evidence for
such an orientation (which is not being questioned) is more likely to itself reflect a
form of contextually dependent behavior.
Focusing particularly on the example of problem solving in physics, J. P. Smith
and colleagues explicitly argue for such a contextually dependent interpretation. They
propose that, although not necessarily “abstract” in the same manner as construed by
experts, individuals with less experience in this domain nonetheless bring to bear
other sorts of more experientially based abstract representations:
The intuitive notions of physics novices contain both a sense of surface

structure and a sense of deep structure. The deep structures of intuitive
physics are in no obvious way less abstract than those of schooled physics.
They may be more familiar, but they do not relate to classifying problems by
the familiar objects (e.g., pulleys) they contain. The reasons novices appear
less abstract are largely methodological. The deeper structure that novices
perceive is not normally tapped in the assessments of expert-novice studies.
[…] People know that the world operates according to general principles and
that those principles apply sometimes in highly non-obvious ways. […]
If people had only concrete knowledge, everyday explanations would make

no sense as an activity. […] Thinking about support, clamping, tension,
pushes, and pulls are not surface descriptions of the physical world, no
matter how quickly we recognize them in physical situations. (J. P. Smith,
diSessa, & Roschelle, 1993, pp. 127–128)
This argument in some ways closely parallels that made more generally by
Nisbett and colleagues (1987) with regard to the feasibility of the very broad goal of
“teaching reasoning.” Countering a pessimistic view about the possibilities of teaching
reasoning in a way that can yield generalization from one domain to other domains,
these researchers provide evidence for generalized learning of inferential rules but
also demonstrate that both the extent and form of generalization depend on the
underlying abstraction that is required.
To consider one example, these researchers found that there was initially consi-
derable domain specificity (that is, limited generalization) in the extent to which
individuals applied the law of large numbers. Whereas individuals were very likely
to appropriately use the law of large numbers when reasoning about the behavior or
outcomes of various types of randomizing devices (e.g., slot machines), they were
much less likely to use it in other situations where it might also apply (e.g., when
considering a small sample of an athlete’s behavior, or a single instance of a person’s
social behavior, such as whether they acted in a friendly or unfriendly fashion on a
given occasion). Yet when the wording of the problems was altered to make it more
apparent that the problem might be construed as a sampling scenario to which the law
of large numbers was relevant, then more participants correctly used the law in their
reasoning. Furthermore, both the frequency and quality of individuals’ reasoning
involving the law of large numbers was enhanced if participants were explicitly
trained in applying the law through any one of three methods: rule training, involving
abstract instruction in concepts relating to the law (e.g., defining such notions as
sample, population, and parameter, and showing that as sample size increases, the
sample usually more closely resembles the population); examples training, involving
the provision of particular examples (e.g., ability testing in a ballet company via
auditions; assessing someone’s sense of humor based on a first impression); or both
rule and example training. Although abstract rule training improved performance
across all domains, training on examples also led to learning that readily generalized
to new domains. These outcomes argue that people do possess an abstract law of large
numbers—and that many failures to apply it may arise not from not knowing the rule,
but rather from not noticing that a given situation is one where it might apply.
There is also evidence that, at least under some conditions, individuals do show a
clear ability to access more remote abstract relations across different situations
(e.g., Bearman, Ball, & Ormerod, 2007). One investigation examined retrieval of social
and interpersonal analogies that shared similar abstract themes (e.g., taking appropri-
ate action too late; reconciliation and learning from experience) but none of which
shared any explicit surface overlap (that is, no similar objects, characters, or event
descriptions). Wharton and colleagues (1996) found that although participants were
considerably more likely to retrieve close analogs that were high in both situational
and thematic similarity than remote analogs that were low in situational similarity
but high in thematic similarity, nonetheless they were more likely to be reminded
of remote analogs that shared a theme than of remote “disanalogs” that involved
moderate situational similarity such as a failure by both characters to obtain a goal,
but that differed in their theme. This pattern was observed even under conditions
involving incidental encoding (imageability ratings) and even with as long as a 1-week
delay, at least for these sorts of materials that were highly familiar to the partici-
pants.14 These findings argue that individuals can be reminded of abstract relational
parallels between quite dissimilar situations, at least in domains for which they have
substantial background knowledge, and under conditions that directly encourage
them to notice such parallels (also see Blanchette & Dunbar, 2001; Dunbar, 1995).
In summary, then, despite the evidence for what Gentner et al. (1993) termed the
“primacy of the mundane”—that is, the observation that most retrievals are literally
similar to the probe, in that they share both surface and structural characteristics
(very often, retrieval of “chair-1” leads to retrieval of “chair-2” and “chair-3” rather
than anything more exotic or esoteric)—and also for the presence of a “surface supe-
riority effect” (the observation that many retrievals involve only surface similarity
without structural similarity), neither of these comprise the entire story of what
sorts of information we are likely to bring to mind during everyday or naturalistic
problem solving. Rather, more abstract instances of retrieval involving only structural
similarity can, and do, also occur, though relatively rarely.
S U R F A C E I N F O R M AT I O N I S O F T E N “ VA L I D LY I N F O R M AT I V E ”
A N D M AY H E L P TO “ B O OT S T R A P ” A B S T R A C T I O N ; E X P E R T S
A L S O M AY R E LY O N S U R F A C E I N F O R M AT I O N
A further reason to wonder if the retention of apparently “superficial” details might be
adaptive is that the divide between experts and novices in terms of their degree of
reliance on surface details is not entirely sharp and clear. For instance, Hinsley and
colleagues (1997) and Blessing and Ross (1996) provided evidence of sensitivity to
superficial features even in nonnovice problem solvers. More broadly, and also more
encouragingly, considerable evidence suggests that—if selectively used—surface details
may enhance problem-solving performance, even in individuals with high levels of
expertise. In part, this is because even if “remindings” (Ross, 1984, 1987) of earlier
similar problem instances are based on superficial similarities, such similarities in
many domains are themselves positively correlated with structural features (e.g.,
Bassok, Ling-Ling, & Olseth, 1995; M. W. Lewis & Anderson, 1985) and thus may
enable useful comparisons to be made. “People know that very often content and
structure are not merely correlated by chance and that such correlations might be well
justified” (Bassok et al., 1995, p. 365). As observed by Medin and Ortony (1989,
p. 182), this link “enables surface similarity to serve as a good heuristic for where to
look for deeper properties” and, may, indeed, function as a not-too-tight “constraint on
the predicates that compose our mental representations”—helping to support “a notion
of similarity that is flexible without being vacuous.” These researchers argue that:
… organisms have evolved in such a way that their perceptual (and concep-
tual) systems are sensitive to just those kinds of similarity that lead them
toward deeper and more central properties. Thus whales, as mammals

that look more like fish than other mammals, are the exception that proves
the rule: Appearances are usually not deceiving. This means that it is quite
adaptive for an organism to be tuned to readily accessible, surface proper-
ties. Such an organism will not be led far astray because many of these
surface properties are constrained by deeper properties. (Medin & Ortony,
1989, p. 186)
Simply stated: “Quick access on the basis of surface content, even if it is not
guaranteed to be correct, may be an attractive initial hypothesis given the longer time
required for determining the deep structure. [. . .] It would be a strange expert who
could not take advantage of the strong predictive relationship between content and
deep structure” (Blessing & Ross, 1996, p. 806).
Furthermore, as also observed by Medin and Ortony (1989, p. 182), “perceptual
similarity based on representations of what appear to be more accessible surface
properties provides an initial conceptual structure that will be integrated with and
differentiated into the deeper conceptual structure that is acquired later.” What
begins with surface similarity need not remain there.
Such superficial or surface-based remindings may lead to the abstraction of
problem-schemata in indirect ways. That is, repeatedly using earlier problems to solve
current problems may lead to incremental refinements in the earlier reminding-based
generalizations (Ross & Kennedy, 1990; Ross, Perkins, & Tenpenny, 1990), so that the
recognition of superficial similarities between two situations or instances helps to
“bootstrap the formation of more abstract similarities between them” (Goldstone &
Sakamoto, 2003, p. 455). For instance, 4-year-old children could more readily perceive
an abstract symmetry relation shared between two situations if they were first
given practice with literal similarity comparisons in which the situations shared both
superficial and abstract similarities (Kotovsky & Gentner, 1996). Even a concrete
comparison may promote the alignment of common relational structures; further-
more, this process of comparison may itself invite additional adjustments to promote
better alignments, making possible, in turn “even more abstract, or analogical, com-
parisons.” Thus, “this cycle can be seen as a kind of disembedding or decontextualizing
of relations from initially situated representations to representations that can be
matched across domains” (Kotovsky & Gentner, 1996, p. 2814).
More broadly, even if the ultimate objective is to convey abstract principles in a
given domain, it need not follow that the most effective means for conveying or for
instilling those abstract principles requires its presentation in a correspondingly
“abstract” form (e.g., via verbal propositions or mathematical statements). As will be
further developed in Chapter 4, there are many important advantages to presenting
information in a concrete, perceptually rich manner that enables sensory-perceptual
and perceptual-motor simulations (e.g., Barsalou, 2003) or that supports true infer-
ences from perceptual representations to abstract principles (e.g., Bassok, 1996).
Several important advantages of using relatively more concrete elements during learn-
ing are succinctly summarized in Table 2.1, reprinted from Goldstone and Son
(2005)—together with contrasting advantages that may result from the converse
approach, of using more idealized or abstract elements.
Table 2.1 Advantages of Concrete and Idealized Representations
Advantages of Concreteness Advantages of Idealization
Concrete information is easier to Idealizations are potentially more

remember than abstract information. transferable to dissimilar domains
because knowledge is not as tied to a
specific domain.
It is often easier to reason with concrete The critical essence of a phenomenon is
representations using mental models highlighted because distracting details
than abstract symbols. are eliminated.
Visual processes used for concrete objects There may be an active competition
can be co-opted for abstract reasoning. between treating an entity as a symbol
versus an object, and idealization makes
symbolic interpretations more likely.
Concrete details are not always Cognitive processing of less important
“superficial,” but rather provide critical but complex concrete elements is
information about likely behavior and conserved.
relevant principles.
Concrete materials are often more Idealizations facilitate interpretations of a
engaging and entertaining and less situation in terms of abstract relations
intimidating. rather than specific attributes.
Concretely grounded representations are
more obviously connected to real-world
situations.
Reprinted from: Goldstone, R. L., & Son, J. Y. (2005, p. 71), The transfer of scientific principles
using concrete and idealized simulations, Journal of the Learning Sciences, 14, 69–110, with permis-
sion from Taylor & Francis. Copyright 2005, Taylor & Francis.
Nonetheless, particularly in the early phases of learning, when individuals do not

have a clear understanding of which features are relevant and which are incidental,
the retention of detail may lead to conservative generalizations in which incidental
superficial features (as well as central ones) are preserved (Bernardo, 1994; Medin &
Ross, 1989). Notably, it is possible, therefore, that “if these same reminding-based
access and generalization processes operate on generalizations derived from earlier
remindings, learners may have knowledge about a principle represented at multiple levels
of abstraction” (Ross & Kennedy, 1990, p. 53, emphasis added), with some generaliza-
tions retaining more superficial details than others. Again, given at least some posi-
tive correlation between superficial and structural similarity, this might itself be
advantageous, if a relatively less highly abstract representation increases the ease with
which an appropriate generalization is both accessed and applied in a given instance
(e.g., Holyoak & Koh, 1987; Ross, 1984, 1987, 1989).
Closely related to the preceding observations, one might do well to ask what exactly
it is to “transfer” one’s knowledge (the term itself seems very passive, as though an
entity, such as a baton was being passed from one runner to another) and separates out
knowledge from context and situation. In a conceptual overview of research on trans-

fer titled, “transfer in pieces,” adopted from diSessa’s (1993) “knowledge-in-pieces”
epistemology, J. F. Wagner (2006) argues that such transfer is supported through
“the incremental refinement of knowledge resources that account for—rather than
overlook—contextual variation” (p. 1, emphasis added). He argues that we must:
… examine processes by which ideas once cued only in particular contexts

can be actively and flexibly developed, combined and coordinated such that
they are more likely to be used in an increasingly wider span of situations.
It is here, in the ever increasing contextual sensitivity of knowledge forged
by the sometimes painstaking refinement and systematization of many
types of knowledge elements, that the heart of transfer activity is identified.”
(J. F. Wagner, 2006, p. 6, emphasis added)
Although different in many ways, this approach is also reminiscent of what has
been termed a “recognition-primed” decision-making approach (briefly introduced
earlier in Chapter 1), which strongly emphasizes that expert decision makers in natu-
ral settings “use situated content-driven cognitive processes to solve domain-specific
problems by taking concrete actions” (Lipshitz, Klein, Orasanu, & Salas, 2001; Klein,
2008; see also Fadde, 2009, and Salas et al., 2010). Cognitive task analyses of the deci-
sions made by experts, such as firefighter commanders, under high time pressure and
in very challenging incidents, showed that the decision makers did very little compar-
ing of options, and often seemed to consider only one option. Most often, they carried
out the very first action that they had identified as possible. Several factors may con-
tribute to such “single-option” decision making. However, one central proposal is that,
based on their extensive experience with multiple incidents, these highly experienced
decision makers very rapidly categorize the new situation on the basis of prototypical
or functional categories, based on particular salient features of the situation, thereby
enabling them to determine which goals make sense, which cues are relevant, what to
expect, and which actions typically work. Although this categorization may involve
aspects of analogical reasoning, it is not, in essence, the same as retrieving an analog.
Across a wide range of naturalistic decision-making contexts, considering highly
experienced military commanders, design engineers, offshore oil installation manag-
ers, and commercial aviation pilots, the recognition primed decision-making strategy
has been found to be used in as many as 80% to 95% of instances, with reliance on the
strategy decreasing for much less experienced decision makers.15 For instance, in one
study, of how experienced naval officers made decisions in a complex, time-pressured
command and control setting, a recognition strategy was used to identify 95% of the
actions taken. The recognition strategies predominantly involved feature matching,
involving familiarity with a typical class of situation; for example, to judge the threat
potential of an unknown aircraft, decision makers relied on salient features such as
country of origin, type of aircraft, flight profile (altitude, speed, bearing) and so on
(Kaempf, Klein, Thordsen, & Wolf, 1996). More broadly, Rothrock and Kirlik (2006)
propose that such strategies can be described as relying on “a disjunctive collection of
conjunctive rules.” On the basis of their analyses, they propose that candidate rule
sets are evaluated on three dimensions, including completeness—“the inferred rule
base is consistent with all operator judgments,” specificity—“the rule base is maximally
concrete,” and parsimony—the rule base contains no unnecessary rules” (Rothrock &
Kirlik, 2006, p. 145). Such characterizations provide increasingly specific and princi-
pled guidance regarding the conditions under which reliance on concrete details is
likely to enhance problem-solving performance at varying levels of expertise.
I N D I V I D UA L D I F F E R E N C E S I N E M P H A S I S O N A B S T R A C T V E R S U S
S P E C I F I C I N F O R M AT I O N
Fourth, and finally, there may be substantial individual differences in the extent to
which persons benefit from abstract (rule-based) versus specific (example-based)
approaches, or differences in the optimal timing of these approaches (e.g., earlier vs.
later in learning). Although for some persons, at some times, superficial similarities
may help to emphasize abstract commonalities, for other persons, or at other times,
the superficial similarities may prove distracting, decreasing the salience of deeper
commonalities.
Two investigations by Goldstone and colleagues powerfully illustrate the impor-
tance of such individual differences. Using a complex dynamically adaptive computer
program, Goldstone and Sakamoto (2003) examined how perceptual similarities and
idealization influenced students’ transfer of an abstract scientific principle from one
domain to another. The students interacted with two computer simulations that were
governed by the same principle but that differed in the way in which the principle was
instantiated. For instance, students learned about an algorithm (simulated annealing)
for determining a good approximation to the global optimum for a given function in a
large search space, either in the context of balls falling on a hilly landscape or of finding
a route around several obstacles. Goldstone and Sakamoto (2003) found that students
who initially performed well on the computer simulation task (high-starters) were little
affected by the perceptual similarity of the analogous elements in the initial task versus
a transfer task using a similar principle: High-starters performed equally well under
the similar and dissimilar transfer conditions. In contrast, those who performed less
well initially (low-starters) showed far more accurate performance on a transfer quiz if
the analogous elements in the two simulations were dissimilar rather than similar.
This outcome was observed in three experiments, involving different measures and
manipulations of superficial similarity, and was further bolstered in a fourth experi-
ment, using a new task (competitive specialization), in which the initial simulation
contained either relatively concrete, or relatively idealized and abstract, elements.
Individuals who initially performed well on the simulation (high-starters) generally
showed a significant performance advantage with the concrete graphics during train-
ing, and they showed a higher percentage correct on a transfer quiz in the concrete
graphics condition than in the idealized condition. In contrast, persons who initially
performed less well were adversely affected by the additional detail; indeed, among
these students, only those in the idealized graphics condition showed significant
positive transfer.
In these experiments, participants themselves were often spontaneously
reminded of the relation between the earlier and the later simulations, so that super-
ficial-element “reminding” may not have been needed—and instead yielded costs,
particularly for those individuals for whom extracting the more abstract principles
was more difficult. This raises the possibility that, in some situations, concrete con-
struals may compete with abstract construals, and that individuals who are prone to
concrete construals may be particularly disadvantaged when concrete properties are
salient, or numerous, thereby “outweighing” abstract commonalities (Goldstone &
Sakamoto, 2003).
More recent work by Goldstone and Son (2005; see also Reisslein et al., 2010)
manipulated both the amount and the timing of the introduction of relatively more
abstract versus concrete elements as participants used computer simulations to learn
the algorithmic principle of “competitive specialization.” Notably, in this study the
researchers found clear learning benefits if the simulation was, at first, anchored in
concrete elements (e.g., the principle of competitive specialization was represented by
black ants competing for particular food sources such as an orange peach and red
apple) rather than more abstract idealized elements (e.g., less concrete depictions of
black dots and green patches that were, however, still explicitly described to the par-
ticipants as representing ants and food, respectively). Performance on a different
transfer task (involving pattern learning, but likewise using the competitive special-
ization algorithm) was greatest in what was termed a “concreteness fading” condition.
In this condition, participants were first introduced to the simulation with concrete
elements, but then these were replaced with more idealized elements halfway through
the first training phase. Transfer in this condition was higher than in any other condi-
tion, including conditions in which the elements were consistently concrete, consis-
tently idealized, or idealized and then concrete (termed the “concreteness introduction”
condition). Participants in the concreteness fading condition both made fewer errors
on a quiz querying their knowledge of the initial and transfer tasks (Experiment 1)
and showed faster solution times (Experiment 2) than in the other conditions. Also,
there was a significant interaction, such that although concrete elements in a simula-
tion produced better performance on the simulation itself compared to simulations
with idealized elements, the opposite occurred for the transfer simulation.
Concrete elements may be particularly useful early in learning because they reduce
the demands of mapping between different elements. Relatedly, as Schwartz and Black
have suggested (D. L. Schwartz, 1995; D. L. Schwartz & Black, 1996), concrete
elements may be beneficial because concreteness encourages people to reason about
the referent itself, and thus to use solution processes that have real-world analogs,
enabling what they term “strategic shuttling” between depictive models and abstract
rules. However, if only the concrete elements are used, then the individual’s construal
is likely to remain too contextually tied, with representations that cannot readily be
transferred from one situation (e.g., foraging ants competing for food sources) to a
superficially very different but abstractly analogous situation (e.g., pattern learning).
Other recent work, contrasting the use of more concrete (“grounded”) versus
abstract printed representations in the domain of early algebra in college students
showed that, for simple problems, there was a “verbal advantage.” However, for more
complex problems, a “symbolic advantage” emerged, such that for the complex
problems, the students performed better when solving equations than when given
the analogous problem in a story format (Koedinger, Alibali, & Nathan, 2008).
These researchers proposed that there are important tradeoffs in the computational
Table 2.2 Trade-offs in computational characteristics of more grounded

versus more abstract representations
Type of Representation and Level of Benefit
Benefit By Means of Property Grounded <–> Abstract

Ease of LTM Access Familiarity Higher Lower
Reliability Redundancy Higher Lower
WM support Externalizability Lower Higher
Efficiency Conciseness Lower Higher
Examples Stories Equations
Note: LTM = Long-term memory; WM = Working memory.
Reprinted from: Koedinger, K. R., Alibali, M. W., & Nathan, M. J. (2008, p. 369), Trade-offs between
grounded and abstract representations: Evidence from algebra problem solving, Cognitive Science, 32,
366–397, with permission from John Wiley and Sons. Copyright 2008, John Wiley and Sons.
characteristics of more grounded versus more abstract representations, related to four

potential benefits: the ease of access from long-term memory, reliability, the degree of
working memory support provided, and the degree of efficiency. These benefits were
proposed to affect computations through different properties, including, respectively,
familiarity, redundancy, externalizability, and conciseness. Table 2.2 summarizes
how these characteristics may lead to greater benefits for either grounded representa-
tions or abstract representations. For example, Koedinger and colleagues (2008,
pp. 368–369) note that grounded representations tend to be more reliable—in the
sense that when working with them students are less likely to make errors and are
more likely to detect and correct errors should they be made—because of the “redun-
dant semantic elaborations that are connected with grounded representations and
that can be used to support or check inferences [. . .] Abstract representations are
stripped of such semantic elaborations.” In contrast, abstract representations, “can be
fast and efficient because their concise form allows for quick reading, manipulating,
and writing.”
The combined potential costs and potential benefits of concrete versus more
abstract idealized elements argue that initial learning—and flexibly and adaptively
using what we learn in novel situations—may be best fostered by the combined use
of and exposure to both perceptually grounded and more abstract representations.
The key issue is to determine when and how more concrete versus more abstract
idealized elements are best employed, for a given individual, to both maximize initial
learning (and engagement with learning) and subsequent transfer. This question is
closely related to the issue of the ways in which individuals perceive and compare
stimuli, and the degree to which they rely on relatively more controlled versus more
automatic assessments and procedures, in noticing “similarity” versus “differences”
between and within categories of stimuli. It is these questions that are the primary
focus of the following chapter.
3
Flexibly Using Memory and
Categorical Knowledge, Part 2
Levels of Control, Representational Specificity, and Thinking
An event appreciated in all its detail occurs but once and so

affords no basis for expectancy. The past repeats only when it is
categorized, i.e., when some detail is disregarded.
—Roger Brown (1958/1967, pp. 373–374)
But as to all the detail, I think that’s almost something I have

to curb. I cannot tell a story without wanting to say what kind
of house people lived in, if it was brick, what color of brick,
what there was in the kitchen, and all sorts of things that
can become too much of a weight, and sometimes
I do consciously try to cut them down a bit.
—Alice Munro (2006, np)
As suggested by each of the opening quotations, this chapter is conceptually closely

paired with—and comprises a continuation of—Chapter 2. These two chapters share
a central connecting theme in that both directly focus on factors that influence our
ability to flexibly access memory and concepts or categorical knowledge at differing
levels of representational specificity, with consequent effects on mental agility.
However, whereas the earlier chapter predominantly emphasized the dimension of
levels of specificity, we now turn our attention to some of the important ways in which
levels of representational specificity intersect with, and are modulated by, varying
levels of control. Both unintentional, often automatic processes that may emerge
outside of awareness, and intentional, deliberate, processes aimed at altering our
predominant level of specificity in thinking, will be considered.
We will begin by revisiting the example of excessive reliance on overly categorical
memory in individuals with clinical depression—but now with an aim to understand
and evaluate evidence regarding the effectiveness of techniques that have been used
to explicitly counteract the excessive reliance on abstract categorical and overly auto-
matic thinking in such individuals. These techniques, involving what has been vari-
ously termed “attention training” or “mindfulness training,” have also been examined
in healthy individuals, so as to evaluate how they influence habitual or automatic
90
responding, and these studies have provided some initial intriguing outcomes
regarding whether certain aspects of our cognitive behavior are necessarily, or invari-
ably, automatic, or if they may, under the right conditions, be again brought under
intentional control. We then consider the effects of instructional sets that directly
encourage individuals to retrieve recently experienced events at a given level of
specificity on their ability to subsequently retrieve other events from the same time
and place, either at the same level of specificity or at a different (either more specific
or more abstract) level than they had initially adopted. Thereafter, we turn to several
further factors that may subtly alter, or shift, the level of representational specificity
that we use, potentially without our awareness of their doing so. Unconscious, unre-
flective, and automatic alterations in the ease with which objects and events are con-
strued at different levels of specificity are considered under three broad headings,
including environmental or contextual determinants of the level of specificity at which
we construe our own actions (“action identification”), psychological and temporal
distance effects on the “construal level” that we assume, and the effects of particularly
mild positive emotional or affective states on categorization and classification. Later
sections of the chapter consider, first, evidence that explicit instructions to use both
controlled analytical responding and also more automatic and familiarity-based
responding may improve performance on certain sorts of tasks, and then the possible
contributions of more automatic processes to adaptively creative analogical and
categorical problem solving. The penultimate section takes up the topic of the role of
unfocused attention and what has been termed “mind popping” in promoting agile
thinking. The chapter concludes with a broadly integrative overview of this and the
earlier companion chapter.
Automatic Thoughts and Levels of Specificity:

Mindfulness Training as Dislodging Excessive
Abstraction and Reducing Habit-Based
Automatic Thinking
In Chapter 2, excessive reliance on overly abstract categorical representations was
demonstrated to be a substantial contributor to clinical depression and to the impair-
ments in social problem solving that have been observed in depressed individuals.
Recent findings from a diverse set of studies converge in demonstrating that the forms
of ruminative, overly general, and schematic thinking that characterize clinical depres-
sion may often be substantially “undone” through attentional control training or
mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which aims to encourage a more perceptually
and conceptually specific orientation to one’s experienced world, rather than the
excessively abstract, linguistically based processing that typifies ruminative thought
(e.g., Teasdale, Segal, & Williams, 1995; Teasdale et al., 2000; also see Baer, 2003;
K. W. Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007, for broader review). Mindfulness involves a pro-
cess of focusing on present experiences, paying attention in a particular way, and has
been defined as “intentional and nonjudgmental awareness of moment-to-moment
experience” (e.g., S. L. Shapiro et al., 2008, p. 841).1
Training in mindfulness aims to help individuals interrupt highly habitual but

maladaptive modes of thought. It seeks to help the individual learn how to become
aware of, to observe, and to react less habitually and automatically to particular sensa-
tions, thoughts, and feelings. The primary immediate focus of the procedure is to train
the deployment of attention, to enable individuals to maintain awareness of a given
object, such as their breath or sensations of their body, without ignoring other aspects
of internal or external stimuli, and to focus on awareness of experience in the present
moment. Participants are instructed to simply notice thoughts that may arise, with-
out becoming absorbed in or distracted by them; with continued practice, this exercise
is meant to increase explicit awareness of the habitual and automatic patterns of the
mind and to encourage a more nonjudgmental perspective on one’s thoughts, emo-
tions, and sensations. For instance, individuals are encouraged to view thoughts as
thoughts rather than as necessarily veridical portrayals of reality.2
Notably, it has been argued by several investigators that mindfulness meditation
may prove beneficial to individuals with a history of depression because it is a system-
atic method of enhancing attentional awareness and allocation (cf. Slagter et al.,
2007), encouraging these individuals to identify dysfunctional, maladaptive attitudes
and ruminative tendencies at an early stage, and enabling them to meta-cognitively
process those ideas so as to allow greater choice and control. “This approach increases
flexibility over cognitive activities” (Ramel et al., 2004, p. 435), in part by helping to
free central executive resources that are devoted to ruminative thinking (Teasdale
et al., 1995). The aims of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy—also explicitly
described as such to patients—are to reduce automatic patterns of thought, and to
move not only toward more controlled processes but also toward a greater reliance on
specific, instance-based (individual, unique, noncategorical) representations of one’s
experiences:
A core feature of the program involves facilitation of an aware mode of being,

characterized by freedom and choice, in contrast to a mode dominated by
habitual, overlearned, automatic patterns of cognitive-affective processing.
[…] When one is mindful, the mind responds afresh to the unique pattern of
experience in each moment instead of reacting “mindlessly” to fragments of
a total experience with old, relatively stereotyped, habitual patterns of mind.
(Teasdale et al., 2000, p. 618)
A controlled trial that compared “treatment as usual” versus mindfulness-based

cognitive therapy in patients who had a history of recurrent depression (three or more
previous depressive episodes), and thus were most likely to have strongly entrenched
ruminative negative schemata, provided initial encouraging results (Teasdale et al.,
2000). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy nearly halved the rates of relapse and
recurrence of depression over the 60-week study period. These benefits were not
observed for individuals who were depressed but who had experienced two or fewer
previous depressive episodes. A replication and extension of this study (Ma & Teasdale,
2004; see Chiesa & Serretti, 2010, for meta-analytic review) further supported the dif-
ferential success of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for individuals with a recur-
rent history of three or more (compared to two or fewer) major depressive episodes.
In conjunction, these findings suggest that this form of attentional and cognitive
training is particularly effective for individuals with a strongly reinforced (often
repeated) pattern of ruminative and depressogenic thought. Consistent with this
suggestion, other aspects of the clinical histories seemed to differentiate the groups
who had experienced three or more, versus two or fewer, previous episodes. The first
depressive incident in the “three-plus” group occurred significantly earlier in the
individual’s life, and these individuals reported greater childhood adversity than did
the two-or-fewer group, for whom the first depressive episode occurred later in life,
and who reported less childhood adversity. In addition, the therapy was most success-
ful in reducing the likelihood of relapse in individuals who had a clear history of recur-
rent depression, but who also had not experienced a significant adverse life event
immediately before the current episode. This suggests that the treatment was particu-
larly effective at intervening in overlearned cognitive patterns that were internally
generated, and that, once activated, might otherwise “recapture” the patient in
the rumination-avoidance-reduced executive processing cycle that was proposed by
J. M. G. Williams et al. (2007; see Fig. 2.3 in Chapter 2). In contrast, the intervention
was not necessarily effective in reducing the likelihood of depression in response
to painful significant life events that were of an external origin, rather than arising
predominantly from the individual’s internally generated maladaptive cognitive
responses to mildly stressful events.
Recent work also has examined mindfulness training in healthy individuals
(e.g., Chambers, Lo, & Allen, 2008; Zeidan et al., 2010) and has shown alterations in
attentional processes, particularly differential effects on what have been described as
“concentrative” versus “receptive” attention. In the characterization provided by
Jha and colleagues (2007), in the concentrative mode, “attention is restricted to a
specific focus”—such as one’s breathing. In contrast, receptive attention:
… is instead “objectless” and the goal is simply to keep attention fully “read-
ied” in the present moment of experience without orienting, directing, or
limiting it in any way. That is, attention is receptive to the whole field of
awareness and remains in an open state so that it can be directed to currently
experienced sensations, thoughts, emotions, and memories. Whereas extra-
neous stimuli are considered distractors in concentrative attention, in recep-
tive attention no stimuli are extraneous because attention is open to the
entire field of experience. (Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007, p. 110)
These two forms of attention correspond to two commonly focused styles of medi-
tation, one of which, focused attention meditation, involves the voluntary focusing of
attention on a chosen object or thought, and the other, open monitoring meditation,
that involves “non-reactive monitoring of the content of experience from moment to
moment” (Lutz et al., 2008, p. 163). Nonetheless, some researchers suggest that, as
actually applied, most meditation techniques incorporate aspects of both types and
thus fall “somewhere along a continuum of mindfulness-concentration practice”
(Ivanovski & Malhi, 2007, p. 77).
In two experiments using a pretest/posttest design with undergraduates,
Wenk-Sormaz (2005) found that meditation participants showed significantly less
habitual responding than did the other groups. In one study, participants were
randomly assigned to one of three 20-minute conditions: a meditation condition, in
which participants followed audio-taped instructions for predominantly concentra-
tive meditation involving a breathing-focused stress-reduction technique, or to one of
two control conditions, including a rest condition, or a cognitive control condition.
On a color/word Stroop task, in which the names of colors or strings of Xs were
presented in different colors of ink, and participants were asked to name the ink
color, the meditation group showed significantly less interference from the conflicting
word (e.g., compared with the neutral X condition, meditation participants were
faster than were control participants to correctly say “red” in response to the word
“blue” printed in red ink). These outcomes suggest that there was a reduction in the
“automatic” reading of the conflicting words by the meditation participants compared
with the other groups. Stated differently, participants in the meditation condition
showed greater adaptive flexibility in how they processed the stimulus materials on
the Stroop task, in that they were more able to selectively focus on one particular
perceptual aspect of the stimuli as required by the task (the color of the ink), and less
likely to be “captured” by a currently irrelevant but highly practiced response to the
stimuli (reading the word).3 Although a psychophysiological measure of arousal (using
participants’ galvanic skin responses) further showed, consistent with other research,
that the participants in the meditation condition also had a significantly larger reduc-
tion in arousal from pre to post testing than did the resting and control conditions,
the beneficial effects of meditation in reducing interference on the Stroop task
remained even when including change in arousal (arousal percent difference) as a
covariate.
In a second study, meditation group participants also produced more atypical items
than did controls (Study 2) on a generation task that required them to attempt to
produce atypical exemplars within a given category (e.g., a sport, a kind of money, a
vehicle) but not when, instead, typical items were explicitly or implicitly requested.
Additional analyses showed that high scores on a questionnaire measure of absorp-
tion, assessed with the Tellegen Absorption Scale and reflecting a “disposition for
having episodes of ‘total’ attention that fully engage one’s representational (i.e., per-
ceptual, enactive, imaginative, and ideational) resources” (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974,
p. 268), also were related to the generation of atypical exemplars; however, the effects
of meditation remained significant even after taking into account the individual’s
ability to become absorbed in tasks by including absorption scores as a covariate.
Wenk-Sormaz (2005) concluded that, “across cognitive tasks, when participants
understood that the goal was to respond non-habitually, meditation reduced habitual
responding,” and that “meditation may result in honing the general skill of refocusing
attention on actions and cognitions that were previously habitual”:
It is likely that when this skill is used, the alteration of attention leads to
more flexible use of information through the encoding or retrieval of
information not typically used in that situation. This renewed information
availability supports less habitual responding by increasing the number of
response alternatives, thereby reducing the prominence of a habitual
response. (Wenk-Sormaz, 2005, p. 53)
The observation of reduced Stroop-task interference in individuals experienced in

mindfulness meditation compared to a meditation-naïve group has been replicated
(A. Moore & Malinowski, 2009). Similarly, Heeren, Van Broeck, and Philippot (2009)
found that, compared to matched controls, healthy individuals who took part in an
8-week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy program—targeted at improving
responding to stress—showed an enhanced capacity to inhibit prepotent cognitive
responses. Compared with controls, mindfulness-training individuals showed signifi-
cantly fewer errors on the “inhibition” part of the Hayling sentence completion task,
in which individuals must complete sentences with an unrelated nonsensical word as
quickly as possible, thereby requiring suppression of prepotent verbal responses. The
mindfulness-training group also demonstrated improved fluency on tests of category
fluency, phonemic word fluency, and verb word fluency, as well as increased specificity
in autobiographical memory retrieval.
Speculating as to how such interruption or circumventing of automatic responses
might be accounted for within theoretical accounts of automaticity, such as the
instance account of G. D. Logan (1988, 2002), and the condition-action productions in
the Adaptive Control of Thought models of J. R. Anderson and colleagues (e.g., J. R.
Anderson, 1992; 2007; see the section in Chapter 1 on “Convergent Theoretical
Perspectives on Automaticity and Multiple Gradations of Levels of Specificity”), Wenk-
Sormaz (2005) noted that in Logan’s account the transition from controlled to auto-
matic processing as a change from algorithmic-based processing to direct memory-based
processing allow for a deautomatization through the manipulation of input cues. “If an
individual reinvests attention into an action, the relevant information that is encoded
may change. It follows that memory retrieval processes would be altered, and there
would be the possibility of an interruption of the previously automatic behavior”
(p. 53). Likewise, in J. R. Anderson’s model, in which the transition from controlled
processing to automatic processing is conceived as a knowledge compilation process,
such that extensive practice with a particular series of steps or instructions can result
in performance based only on a single-step “production rule,” automatization might
be interrupted via the activation of other production rules for which the conditions
overlap with the target rule:
Within this framework, it is possible that reinvesting attention in an auto-

matic behavior might activate a number of overlapping (or highly similar)
production rules (due to the manipulation of input cues) that would serve to
interrupt the original automatic behavior. […] In general, the process of
deautomatization may involve the inhibition of automatic processes associ-
ated with the object of conscious attention, or the lack of retrieval of infor-
mation underlying the automatic process due to the manipulation of input
cues or retrieval of additional response alternatives based on newly encoded
information. (Wenk-Sormaz, 2005, p. 53)
Broadly consistent with this approach, S. L. Shapiro and colleagues (2006, 2008;
S. R. Bishop et al., 2004) have proposed that mindfulness practice leads to what they
call a “meta-mechanism” of “reperceiving,” and also four additional mechanisms
involving self-regulation, values clarification, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral
flexibility, and exposure. They note that reperceiving is similar to a number of

different concepts, such as decentering, detachment, and most relevant here,
deautomatization, defined by Deikman (1982, p. 137) as: “an undoing of the automatic
processes that control perception and cognition:”
By developing the capacity to stand back and witness emotional states such
as anxiety, we increase our “degrees of freedom” in response to such states,
effectively freeing ourselves from automatic behavioral patterns. Through
re-perceiving, we are no longer controlled by states such as anxiety or fear
but are instead able to use them as information. We are able to attend to the
emotion, and choose to self-regulate in ways that foster greater health and
well-being. Through consciously (intention) bringing awareness (attention)
and acceptance (attitude) to experience in the present moment, we will be
better able to use a wider, more adaptive range of coping skills. (S. L. Shapiro
et al., 2006, p. 380)
With regard especially to cognitive, emotional, and behavioral flexibility, S. L.

Shapiro et al. (2006) argue that, reperceiving may “facilitate more adaptive, flexible
responding to the environment in contrast to the more rigid, reflexive patterns of
reactivity that result from being overly identified with one’s current experience” in
that “if we are able to see a situation and our own internal reactions to it with greater
clarity, we will be able to respond with greater freedom of choice (i.e., in less condi-
tioned, automatic ways)” (p. 381).
Preliminary findings with undergraduate students presenting at the university
psychological counseling center with symptoms of mild to moderate depression, anxi-
ety, and/or high stress are broadly consistent with these suggestions (Frewen et al.,
2008). Following an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction and cognitive therapy
program, the participants reported a significant reduction in the level of frequency
with which they experienced negative thoughts to which they personally were prone
(from “often” at pretreatment to little more than “sometimes” at posttreatment). They
also reported that these thoughts, which at pretreatment were “very difficult” to let go
of, became only “slightly difficult” to let go of by posttreatment. (See also Breslin et al.,
2002 and Kavanagh et al., 2004, for related conceptual analyses with respect to relapse
prevention in substance abuse.)
A more direct attempt to explore whether changes in the four variables proposed
by S. L. Shapiro et al. (2006) may serve as mechanisms for the reduction of perceived
stress and psychological symptoms, and involving extensive pre- to postintervention
assessments of more than 300 adult participants in mindfulness-based stress reduc-
tion classes, provided partial, but not complete, support (Carmody, Baer, Lykins, &
Olendzki, 2009). As expected, measures of mindfulness and of reperceiving/decenter-
ing showed significant increases from preintervention to postintervention, together
with significant reductions in participants’ level of stress and symptoms. There were
also significant increases in each of the four variables proposed to act as mechanisms
for those effects, that is, self-regulation, values clarification, cognitive, behavioral and
emotional flexibility, and exposure. However, on its own, reperceiving/decentering
did not mediate the relation between mindfulness and the other measures. It was
found that two of these variables (values and flexibility) were significant predictors of
a composite measure of mindfulness and reperceiving or “decentering.” Yet these
variables did not explain all of the relationship between mindfulness/reperceiving
and symptoms/stress, suggesting that there is also a direct relationship between these
factors that is not accounted for by values and flexibility.
Taken together, Carmody and colleagues (2009, p. 622) suggested that the most
plausible interpretation of these findings is that “mindfulness and reperceiving
(decentering) are highly overlapping constructs and that both of these variables
change” as a result of mindfulness-based stress reduction interventions. More pro-
grammatically, they suggested (Carmody et al., 2009, pp. 623–624) that, from
a clinical perspective, it is important to continue research efforts to delineate “the
qualities of attending to experience that lead to well-being,” as shown by individuals
who take part in mindfulness training procedures, and to find “the most accessible
ways of cultivating those qualities, while at the same time keeping in view the possibil-
ity of more penetrating investigation into the underlying processes in consciousness.”
Equally important, but from the point of view of basic research, there is a real need for
additional studies involving fully randomized assignment to the meditation or mindful-
ness intervention versus the comparison or control conditions, and also for the inclu-
sion of comparison conditions that take into account the effects of motivational and
individual difference factors that may otherwise also differentiate the groups.
Notably, the final brief intervention study that we will consider in this section used
both randomized assignment and a more active comparison condition. Tang et al.
(2007; see also Tang et al., 2009) contrasted an integrative body-mind training inter-
vention given to undergraduate students with a body relaxation training control
group. Each group received 20 minutes of training for 5 days. The integrative body-
mind training intervention was distinguished by the effort to diminish the require-
ment for individuals to directly control their thoughts, and it combined several aspects
of body and mind techniques with features of meditation and mindfulness traditions.
As described by Tang and colleagues, the approach:
… achieves the desired state by first giving a brief instructional period on

the method (we call it initial mind setting and its goal is to induce a cognitive
or emotional set that will influence the training). The method stresses no
effort to control thoughts, but instead a state of restful alertness that allows
a high degree of awareness of body, breathing, and external instructions
from a compact disc. It stresses a balanced state of relaxation while focusing
attention. Thought control is achieved gradually through posture and relax-
ation, body-mind harmony, and balance with the help of the coach rather
than making the trainee attempt an internal struggle to control thoughts in
accordance with instruction. (Tang et al., 2007, p. 17152)
The dependent measures included a systematic assessment of different forms of

attention including executive, alerting, and orienting attention, using the Attention
Network Test, as well as measures of fluid reasoning, mood, and physiological
indices of stress responsiveness. Compared to the body relaxation training control
group, the integrative body-mind training group demonstrated significantly improved
performance on the executive attention component of the Attention Network Test

(shown by more efficient resolution of response conflict on trials with incongruent
flankers). In contrast, the two training interventions had no differential influence on
the alerting or orienting aspects of attention. There was also some evidence for
intervention-related enhancements on an assessment of visual-spatial fluid reasoning
(progressive matrices) together with significant improvements on several measures of
mood (lower anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, and higher vigor) and also physi-
ological indications of reduced stress responsiveness (e.g., a significant decrease in
stress-related cortisol to a mental arithmetic challenge).
Thus, collectively, the existing studies are quite consistent in showing that medita-
tion or related interventions such as integrative body-mind training can yield improve-
ments in executive or controlled attention (for further experimental evidence see
Jha et al., 2010; for broader review, see Xiong & Murali Doraiswami, 2009). In Chapter
11, we will consider other interventions that have likewise been found to improve
executive attention, including interventions that place high demands on deliberate
control (e.g., dual-task variable-priority training and real-time video gaming, and
computer-based training of executive attention in children), but also interventions,
such as immersion in nature, that, like the integrative body-mind training interven-
tion, deliberately seek to reduce demands on directed attention.
Retrieving Recently Experienced Events at a Specific

versus Abstract Level Has Carryover Consequences
for Later Recollection—and for Thinking
In Chapter 2, the tendency of many older adults to rely too heavily on more categorical
or gist-based processing and memory retrieval was noted. This pattern also is consis-
tent with a frequently documented age-related tendency to place greater reliance on a
general sense of familiarity, involving a match with the overall or general features of
an event, without accompanying reinstatement of particulars of the event such as
where, when, or who else was there. Such inappropriate, too-ready, or too-exclusive
dependence on familiarity-based memory, rather than detailed item-specific recollec-
tion, by at least a substantial subgroup of older individuals has been demonstrated
using a variety of experimental methods and materials (e.g., Aizpurua & Koutstaal,
2010; Jacoby, Bishara, Hessels, & Toth, 2005; Koutstaal, 2003; Koutstaal & Schacter,
1997a; Koutstaal et al., 1999; Tun et al., 1998).
Pioneering research by Larry Jacoby, Janine Jennings, and colleagues has demon-
strated that systematically training older adults to engage in more effortful recollection
rather than automatic familiarity-based processing, using a recollection-demanding
task in conjunction with positive feedback and an incremented difficulty procedure,
can yield significant improvements in the memory performance of older individuals,
particularly a reduction in familiarity-driven false-positive responses. Equally impor-
tant, this procedure may yield benefits on other cognitive tasks that were themselves
not directly trained. Jennings et al. (2005) showed that compared with a recognition-
testing comparison group, recollection training led to significant pre- to posttraining
improvements on four other tasks, each known to involve a substantial contribution

from prefrontal function: a working memory task (an n-back task), self-ordered
pointing, source monitoring, and digit-symbol substitution performance. This research,
demonstrating that direct training in the exercise of controlled recollection rather than
more automatic familiarity-based responding can yield generalized cognitive benefits,
is more fully considered in Chapter 11.
Findings from several experiments in our laboratory (Koutstaal & Cavendish,
2006; Schwer & Koutstaal, in preparation) demonstrate that movement toward a
more categorical or gist-based rather than item-specific mode of retrieval may also be
induced in younger adults—and that, once initiated, category-level retrieval may
impede individuals’ later ability to retrieve episodically related information at a more
item-specific level. In these studies, younger adults are first shown a number of objects
or words in an incidental encoding task, and then are given three successive recogni-
tion tests for the objects or words. Each test contains different items from the encod-
ing phase (that is, all objects and words are tested once only), with three types of items
presented at test: Same exemplars (items identical to those presented during the
encoding phase), different exemplars (alternative instances or examples of the objects
shown in the encoding phase), and new (unrelated or novel) objects. The primary
manipulation concerns the level of specificity with which participants are asked to
retrieve information on the first two tests: Some participants are asked to make item-
specific recognition decisions, thus designating as “old” only items that are identical to
ones that they had been shown earlier. Other participants are asked to make concep-
tual or category-based recognition decisions, thus designating as “old” both items that
are identical to ones that they had been shown earlier, and items that are categorically
related to ones that had been shown earlier. Then all participants are given a final test
(with additional, never-before-tested items from the study phase, together with
never-before tested different exemplars and novel items) in which they are asked to
make item-specific recognition judgments.
The central finding is that earlier category-based or gist-based retrieval has
a carryover harmful effect on later item-specific retrieval—even for stimuli that have
never yet been tested. This suggests that the level of specificity of retrieval we adopt
for some items within a given spatiotemporal episodic context also influences the
specificity with which we can retrieve other items encoded within the same context.
Individuals who had taken the initial category-based tests (CCI group) show signifi-
cantly reduced ability to differentiate between same- and different-exemplars com-
pared to those who had taken the initial item-specific tests (III group). This
“category-based retrieval cost” has now been demonstrated in three separate experi-
ments in our lab, involving both category-based instructions that emphasize making
conceptual recognition decisions on the basis of whether the to-be-recognized item
has the same name as a studied item (Cohen’s effect size d = 0.80 and d = 0.88 for
studies in the United Kingdom and United States, respectively), and instructions
that emphasize making category-based recognition decisions on the basis of whether
the to-be-recognized item has a similar shape or visual form as a studied item (effect
size d = 0.81). Once retrieval at a more abstract, gist-like level of specificity is under-
taken, subsequent retrieval of episodically related item-specific information is more
difficult to undertake.
Furthermore, in another experiment with younger adults, but using related word
pairs (synonyms or near-synonyms) rather than common objects, we found a signifi-
cant and task-inappropriate increase in sensitivity to gist information on the final
item-specific test in the CCI group relative to the III group. This suggests that initial
category-based retrieval elicited a cognitive set toward accessing gist-based informa-
tion that was difficult to reverse or “undo” when the task situation and task goals
changed, and retrieval of item-specific information was required instead. Notably,
these effects were all found on measures of sensitivity, rather than response bias; no
significant effects on response bias were observed.4
The conclusion to be drawn is simple, but it potentially has broad implications:
Once more abstract, categorical retrieval is initiated, it may be difficult to return to a
more specific, more perceptually grounded, or exemplar-based level of retrieval from
memory, at least for events encoded in a particular spatiotemporal context. This con-
clusion is particularly noteworthy in that several aspects of the recognition procedure
strongly reduce the likelihood of observing such effects, because they act to support
high levels of item-specific or verbatim memory (and the category-based retrieval cost
effect reflects an attenuation of item-specific memory). For instance: The tests involved
healthy young adults, a minimal retention interval between encoding and testing
(all phases occurred within a single experimental session of approximately 1 hour),
the stimuli were detailed color pictures (for which memory is typically very good), and
substantial cues to memory were provided during testing (that is, the tests involved
recognition rather than free or cued recall, and one-third of the items presented during
testing were exact re-presentations of items that were encountered at encoding). Thus,
the level of representational specificity intentionally adopted in an earlier cognitive
state may subtly shift the ease with which we can thereafter access even extremely
recent episodic memories.
The shifts in level of specificity in these experiments occurred as a consequence of
intentional episodic memory retrieval. Yet other evidence suggests both that engag-
ing in a different task before memory retrieval may help to offset the costs associated
with a category-based orientation (Shwer & Koutstaal, in preparation), and that
processing shifts in level of specificity may be induced in multiple ways that do not
necessarily call upon explicit memory retrieval. Processing shifts in level of specificity
have been observed after such diverse tasks as: describing photographs at a more
categorical versus detailed level (e.g., Rudoy, Weintraub, & Paller, 2009), placing items
into a few (broad) categories rather than many (differentiated) categories (Ülkümen,
Chakravarti, & Morwitz, 2010), focusing one’s attention on the global or overall shape
of stimuli rather than their individual features or parts (e.g., Macrae & Lewis, 2002),
engaging in a perceptual task (Finger, 2002), or even imagining oneself in the near
versus distant future (e.g., Hunt & Carroll, 2008). Collectively, these findings are con-
sistent with the proposal that tasks may induce either “transfer appropriate process-
ing” or “transfer inappropriate processing” (J. W. Schooler, 2002; Chin & Schooler,
2008) with regard to the predominant level of specificity they encourage. Such modes
of processing may then carry over to other stimuli and tasks that may be quite
unrelated to the initial impetus for such processing (e.g., C. Brown & Lloyd-Jones,
2003; Dodson, Johnson, & Schooler, 1997; Perfect, Dennis, & Snell, 2007; Westerman
& Larsen, 1997), facilitating—or impeding—performance on the subsequent tasks
F lexi b l y U sing Memor y and Categ or ica l K n owl e dg e, Part 2 101
depending on the “match” in the level of specificity of the processing demands for the
two tasks.
Unconscious, Unreflective, and Automatic

Alterations in the Ease with Which Objects and
Events Are Construed at Different Levels of Specificity
If one were asked to provide a “bottom line” one-sentence summary of the preceding
two sections, the summary might be simply that either habitual or recently sustained
prior retrieval at a given level of specificity has carryover effects for further retrieval
attempts, including retrieval of episodically or categorically related events or objects.
However, beyond habitual or recent retrieval, what factors determine or guide the
level of specificity or the grain of representation that an individual will use in any one
instance? Given that we can represent events and objects at varying, and multiple,
levels of specificity, is the level of specificity with which we construe objects and events
(be they either internally or externally generated) something that we deliberately
choose? Or is the level of specificity at which we typically function determined more
indirectly, as a consequence or perhaps indirect by-product of other aspects of our
cognitive, motivational, and emotional processing?
In this section, three particularly powerful sets of factors that may operate indi-
rectly—and potentially often outside of awareness—so as to alter an individual’s level
of representational specificity, and that exert marked effects on memory retrieval and
categorization, will be considered. Each of these factors also shape, and are shaped by,
aspects of an individual’s ongoing actions, and motivational and affective processes,
and so they will be further developed in later chapters. The three sets of factors are:
(1) environmental or contextual determinants of “action identification,” (2) psycho-
logical or temporal distance effects on “construal level,” and (3) the effects of emotional
state, particularly mild positive affect, on categorization and classification.
E N V I R O N M E N TA L A N D C O N T E X T UA L D E T E R M I N A N T S
O F A C T I O N I D E N T I F I C AT I O N
Any action can be identified in many different ways. Representations of actions range
from more low-level characterizations that concern how the action is performed (its
details or mechanics), to higher level construals that focus on the meaning or outcome
of the action, that is, why it is performed or with what effect (its consequences and
implications). Research suggests that individuals most often attempt to develop
higher level representations of their actions, but this propensity toward higher level
identification may prove problematic if the attempted actions cannot be enacted
automatically (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987, 1989).
In one study aimed to more systematically evaluate the simple but important
question, “What do people think they are doing?” Wegner and colleagues (1984,
Experiment 2) offered coffee drinkers coffee in one of two cups. One cup was a typical
cup; the other cup was unusually heavy and weighed approximately one and a half
pounds. Whereas those who drank coffee from a typical cup chose descriptions of
what they had done that were quite abstract, such as “promoting my caffeine habit” or
“getting energized,” this was not true for those who drank from the peculiarly heavy
cup. Participants who had attempted to drink from the heavy, unwieldy cup chose to
describe their activity in much lower level, less abstract, terms. They described what
they were doing as “drinking a liquid,” “lifting a cup to my lips,” and “swallowing.”
Note that all of these descriptions are accurate characterizations of the activity
that the participants had engaged in. Yet what might seem to be irrelevant or merely
contingent circumstances regarding that activity—arising from a simple difference in
the weight of the cup used—substantially and significantly altered the descriptive
terms that the participants used to characterize their behavior and actions.
How do individuals choose the level of representational specificity at which they
describe what they are doing? Vallacher and Wegner (1987) propose three principles
that guide such “action identification.” The principles are stated in terms of the pre-
dominant or default level at which an action is typically identified, termed its “prepo-
tent identity.” The first principle is that an action is “maintained with respect to its
prepotent identity”—such that this is the level of abstraction that is most readily and
most often adopted. Second, “when both a lower and higher level act identity are avail-
able, there is a tendency for the higher level identity to become prepotent.” Third, “when
an action cannot be maintained in terms of its prepotent identity, there is a tendency
for a lower level identity to become prepotent” (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987, pp. 4–5).
The tendency to identify actions at relatively high (abstract) levels of representa-
tional grain derives from an individual’s attempts to achieve comprehensive under-
standing—leading to an emphasis on the causal and other effects of his or her
activities, such as socially conveyed meanings and self-evaluative implications
(Vallacher & Wegner, 1989)5. However, such high-level identifications may be quite
remote from the mechanics of action, and so, under some circumstances, may prove
inadequate guides to action performance.
Research has shown that individuals are likely to move down from a higher to lower
level construal of an action under conditions in which the action is difficult, unfamil-
iar, or complex. Individuals also are likely to move down in their construals of an
action when their performance of the act is disrupted, or when they are given negative
feedback regarding their performance (see Vallacher & Wegner, 1989, for review).
Notably, each of these conditions—when performing an activity is difficult or unfa-
miliar, or when it is subjected to interruption or direct or indirect indications that an
error has occurred—also comprise conditions that tend to evoke more controlled forms
of processing (W. Schneider & Chein, 2003).
The interplay and operation of all three principles of action identification theory
might be illustrated by considering a simple activity such as returning home from
school or the office. Often, a fairly high-level representation of “what we are doing,”
such as “returning home,” is adequate and meets with no contrary resistance from the
world or our own actions in the world. Now, however, imagine that you are returning
home (perhaps driving) in the midst of a torrential downpour. Under these conditions,
one’s attention is likely to focus on smaller subcomponents of one’s behavior, such as
ensuring that one is staying in one’s own lane, allowing enough space between the car
ahead and one’s own to stop quickly, and so on. Yet, should the downpour suddenly
stop, we would tend to soon “move up again” in the hierarchy. Over time, we are
constantly moving up and down in multiple hierarchies of goal representations, until

we reach a level that matches our capacity to perform an action—avoiding levels that
are too high to provide an adequate guide for controlling actions in the circumstances,
or so low that they result in “unnecessary disintegration of an action” (Vallacher &
Wegner, 1989, p. 661).
Agile thinking very often hinges upon the ability to move between different levels
of action identification. Importantly, as will be further shown in Chapter 5, the level
of abstraction at which we identify “what we are doing” may also significantly
influence the extent to which we will persist in “doing what we are doing” in the face
of obstacles, and also how flexibly we can modify our actions.
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R T E M P O R A L D I S TA N C E
E F F E C T S O N “ C O N S T R UA L L E V E L ”
Construal theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003, 2010), like action identification theory,
proposes that the same event or object can be represented (that is, construed and
interpreted) at multiple levels. According to this approach, high-level construal entails
the construction of abstract conceptualizations of information about objects and
events. High-level construals “apply to a broad array of examples and selectively
include relevant and exclude irrelevant features of those objects and events.” Thus,
high-level construals “capture the superordinate, central features of an object or
event,” and abstraction of these “high-level immutable features conveys the general
meaning of the event.” By contrast, low-level construals involve the opposites of
each of these: According to this account, low-level construals consist of “subordinate,
incidental features;” at this level, “events and objects are unique and specific” (Fujita,
Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006, p. 352).6
There are multiple, and pervasive, effects of the activation of high-level, versus low-
level, construals on a wide range of cognitive and motivational behaviors. The key role
of level of construal in motivational regulation and self-regulation will be considered
in Chapter 5, which focuses on motivational contributors to flexible (and inflexible)
thinking. Here, however, it is important to note that alterations in an individual’s level
of construal—including alterations achieved quite indirectly, through a manipulation
of an individual’s believed psychological and/or temporal distance from a particular
event, or from directing an individual’s attention to the overarching goals of actions
(the “why” of an activity) rather than the methods used for implementing actions
(the “how” of an activity)—may have clear cognitive effects, influencing the breadth
of categories used in classification tasks.
For instance, whereas the activation of a high-level construal leads to categorization
in fewer, broader, and more abstract units, activation of a low-level construal has the
converse effect: Categorization in more numerous, narrower, and more concrete units.
Participants asked to imagine that they would engage in several activities in either the
near future or the more distant future (e.g., having a yard sale this upcoming weekend
vs. sometime next summer), categorized and grouped objects related to these potential
scenarios differently depending on the nearness of the event (Liberman, Sagristano, &
Trope, 2002, Study 1). When imagining temporally near events, individuals classified
objects (e.g., 38 items that might be included in a yard sale, such as chairs, sweaters, a
crib, a candy dish, a fish tank, board games, a blender, bikes, coats, etc.) into significantly
more categories (M = 7.06 across four different classification scenario tasks) than when
imaging temporally more distant events (M = 5.90 for the four scenarios).
At a motivational level, the activation of different levels of construal also may affect
the relative weightings that individuals place on more central, primary features of a
situation compared with relatively more peripheral, incidental, or secondary features.
More generally, aspects relating to the physical or psychological distance of an indi-
vidual from an event or object may affect level of construal: Events that are imagined
in the distant future are conceived in more abstract and generic terms than are events
that are imagined in the near future, and the level of construal induced through such
imagining of the future may itself influence current cognitive processing (Förster,
Friedman, & Liberman, 2004).
In a series of experiments, Förster and colleagues (2004) found that participants
who were asked to envision themselves engaging in a task 1 year later (distant future
perspective) subsequently showed more effective problem solving on certain types of
tasks than did participants who were asked to envision themselves engaging in the
task only 1 day later (near future perspective) or participants who were administered
no temporal perspective instructions. These researchers postulated that imagining
oneself 1 year later would induce a more abstract mental construal set than imagining
oneself only 1 day later, and that this more abstract construal should yield a “transfer
appropriate processing shift” that would facilitate problem solving on tasks that required
an ability to move beyond contextually salient interpretations or ideas to a more
abstract or noncontextually embedded perspective. In line with this prediction, com-
pared with individuals in the “1-day-later” condition, participants in the “1-year-later”
condition were found to more often correctly solve both classic verbal insight prob-
lems (e.g., the prisoner and rope problem, Experiment 1), and also two types of picto-
rial puzzles, including the snowy pictures task, requiring the identification of a
particular form from among a great deal of visual noise or “snow,” and the gestalt com-
pletion task, requiring the perceptual restructuring of a stimulus so as to identify
a given form from a highly fragmented depiction (Experiments 2 and 3, respectively).
In contrast, consistent with the notion that a higher level of abstraction is not
always beneficial for problem solving, but that the “best” level of specificity depends
on the task demands, the relatively distant future time perspective not only did not
help, but significantly impeded, performance on a task requiring analytical reasoning
(Förster et al., 2004, Experiment 6; see also the “missing element” picture completion
findings of Wakslak et al., 2006, for a similar outcome). Participants in the distant
future condition solved significantly fewer problems from the analytical reasoning
portion of the Graduate Record Examination than did individuals who adopted
a perspective focused on 1 day later, or a control condition given no temporal distance
manipulation. Analytical reasoning tasks may require comparatively greater emphasis
on feature-based, concrete, and systematic processing rather than more holistic or
integrative processing. Analyses of additional measures of the participants’ transient
mood, of how much they liked the tasks, and of their expectancies regarding their
performance suggested that these factors did not mediate the beneficial effects of the
distant temporal perspective on the nonanalytical problems. Rather, the results were
consistent with an interpretation in which “thinking about the distant future elicits a
processing shift [. . .] toward abstract mental representation that is transferred to
subsequent tasks, thereby facilitating performance on [at least some] creativity tasks,
which require abstract thought, and undermining performance on analytical tasks,
which require relatively concrete processing” (Förster et al., 2004, p. 185).
Notably, and in marked alignment with the arguments to be made in the next
chapter, regarding the degree to which we “think with our senses,” a growing body of
evidence suggests that the underlying bases for these associations of greater temporal
and psychological distance with relatively abstract thought and processing, and the
association of nearer temporal and psychological distance with relatively concrete and
analytic thought, may, in part, derive from our actual physical experiences with objects
and events that are near versus distant in space and time (e.g., what we can see of
objects from a distance versus when we are close-up to them). These implicitly and
unintentionally elicited effects of psychological distance on our cognitive and percep-
tual processing may involve an automatic “overextended” association of different
sorts of psychological distance with one another (see especially, Liberman & Förster,
2009, for findings and discussion; also cf. Förster, Liberman, & Shapira, 2009; Förster
& Dannenberg, 2010). Greater psychological distance, whether that distance relates
to time, space, social relations, or possibility, may induce more abstract construals of
objects and actions, whereas psychological closeness or nearness on each of these
dimensions may encourage more concrete or analytical construals, in part because of
how physical distance actually changes our perception. What we can “see” and “know”
when physically near to, versus far from, objects or events, differs, and this learned
experiential knowledge, based on our physical senses and ways of acting in the world,
may be “mirrored” or analogically extended into our mental and conceptual world.
As stated by Liberman and colleagues:
Without denying the uniqueness of each distinction, we propose that they all
constitute dimensions of psychological distance. Their point of origin is one’s
direct experience of the “here and now.” Transcending this point entails con-
structing mental models of what is not directly experienced, and the farther
removed an object is from direct experience, the higher (more abstract) the
level of construal of that object. Lower-level construals enable people to be
immersed in the rich details of the immediate situation, whereas higher-
level construals enable appraisal of the general meaning that might apply
across a wide range of alternatives. Consistent with this proposal, […
research] suggests that different distance dimensions are mentally associ-
ated, that distancing on any of these dimensions is associated with higher
levels of construal, and that they have similar effects on prediction, evalua-
tion, and behavior. (Liberman et al., 2008, p. 1205)
T H E E F F E C T S O F E M OT I O N , E S P E C I A L LY M I L D
P O S I T I V E A F F E C T, O N C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N
Experimental research has shown that mild positive emotions often produce patterns
of thought that are especially creative, flexible, unusual, integrative, open to informa-
tion, and efficient (e.g., Isen, 1987, 1999; for review of the possible importance of the
“approach intensity” of positive emotions, see P. Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2010).
In one early series of studies (Isen & Daubman, 1984) it was found that persons who
had been exposed to experimental conditions intended to induce mild positive affect
categorized stimuli differently than did persons in control conditions. Individuals
recently exposed to one of a number of different minor forms of positive affect
“boosters” (e.g., the provision of refreshments during the experimental session, being
given a small present, or watching a few minutes of a comedy film) categorized stimuli
(common objects, such as clothing) in a more inclusive manner than did control
participants. When asked to sort stimuli into categories, individuals in the positive
affect conditions placed more stimuli together in a category group than did the control
individuals—indicating that they perceived more of the items as related to one another
than did the control participants.
A similar pattern was found when, rather than sorting the stimuli into the catego-
ries, the participants were asked to provide ratings of how typical each stimulus was
of the category. On this task, participants in the positive affect condition tended to
rate stimuli that were nontypical instances of the category as clearer members of the
category than did control participants. Notably, this difference in ratings was obtained
for what are well-known and well-understood semantic categories. For instance,
individuals in the positive affect condition judged that such items as “camel,” “eleva-
tor,” and “feet” were more clearly members of the category “vehicle” than did the
control participants, and likewise were more willing than control participants to count
items such as a “purse” and “cane” as members of the category “clothing”—suggesting
that the increase in positive affect enabled participants to see aspects of the exemplars
and the category that the control participants found more difficult to discern or failed
to see. (For evidence that positive affect also increases the likelihood that participants
will spontaneously generate such atypical category members, see Hirt, Levine,
McDonald, & Melton, 1997.)
Similarly, Kahn and Isen (1993) found that the inducement of modest positive
affect led individuals to categorize nontypical food category items (crackers, soup, and
snack foods) as belonging to a predefined product category. A mildly positive affective
state also led to greater variety in choices among potentially pleasant items, perhaps
because the affective state gave rise to “a greater recognition of the differences among
brands in a set or the unique features various brands offer” (Kahn & Isen, 1993,
p. 258). N. Murray et al. (1990) also found that a positive affective state led individu-
als to show more flexible categorizations than did participants not in a positive affective
state. Induction of a positive affective state led participants to form broader and thus
fewer categories when asked to focus on the similarities among exemplars, and to
form narrower and thus a greater number of categories when instead asked to focus
on differences among exemplars. (The first section of Chapter 6 provides a more
general consideration of the effects of positive affect on thinking and reasoning, and
notes that effects of positive affect are not always beneficial, but depend on such
factors as the “fit” between the forms of cognitive processing that are facilitated
through positive affect and the particular contextual and task demands at hand.)
Each of the three conditions considered in this section—(1) environmental or
contextual determinants of action identification, (2) psychological or temporal
distance effects on construal level, and (3) the effects of emotional state, particularly
mild positive affect, on categorization and classification—can significantly alter the
level of representational specificity with which we engage with, and seek to under-
stand, the world and our situation within it. All three can exert largely automatic,
implicit effects on representational specificity, such that we have little or no awareness
that they have done so. However, and equally important, it is also possible to at least
sometimes make each of those conditions an explicit deliberate object of attention and
to use knowledge gained from that deliberate conscious review to enable more flexible,
contextually appropriate, thinking and categorization.7 In the next section, we take up
the question of how explicit instructions to deliberately adopt a particular level of
specificity and/or level of control may influence categorization and problem solving.
The Benefits of Using Both Processing Modes:

Explicit Instructions to Use Both Controlled
and Automatic Responding Can Enhance
Classification Performance
How often, and under what particular conditions, individuals deliberately or “meta-
cognitively” attend to, and also deliberately alter or maintain, their level of specificity
is a fundamental question, and one that is, in many ways, at the heart of the iCASA
framework. Linguistic expressions, such as “let’s take this up (or down) a level,” “let’s
focus on the big picture here,” and “okay, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty” all suggest
some deliberative attention to levels of specificity in retrieving and using informa-
tion—and also allude to important ways in which our interactions with others may
influence our ongoing level of representational specificity. Nonetheless, recent results
from an experimental investigation of how naïve individuals approach a difficult
classification task suggest that people may not always spontaneously adopt multiple
strategies—even though doing so may yield marked benefits for classification
accuracy or performance.
Few studies have examined the effects of explicitly encouraging individuals to
adopt a flexible combined strategy approach to reasoning tasks, such as using both an
analytic approach, involving a systematic, controlled, and deliberate consideration of
features and of their relation to known categories or principles, and also a nonanalytic
approach, such as making judgments based on automatic (perhaps unconscious) rapid
pattern recognition, familiarity, or similarity to previously encountered instances
(e.g., G. R. Norman & Brooks, 1997; Kulatunga-Moruzi, Brooks, & G. R. Norman,
2001). However, two promising investigations, conducted by a group of researchers
particularly interested in evaluating the conditions that might improve aspects of
decision making in medical practice, such as clinical diagnosis, have directly examined
just this question.
In their first study, Ark, Brooks, and Eva (2006) trained psychology undergradu-
ates with no previous experience in reading electrocardiograms (ECGs) to do so, using
materials created for teaching medical students. An electrocardiogram (or cardiogram)
is a graphic tracing of variations in electrical potential caused by activity of the heart,
recorded noninvasively. Interpreting an ECG requires consideration of several differ-
ent intervals and segments of the waveform to determine whether the activity is
normal, and the likely sources of abnormal patterns. The participants were taught
each of 10 diagnostic categories using a list of key features for each diagnosis; partici-
pants then also identified key features in four example cases from each diagnostic
category. The critical manipulation concerned what happened thereafter: Participants
were assigned to one of four instructional conditions: (1) an explicit “feature first”
condition, in which they were instructed to carefully identify all features present
before assigning a diagnosis; (2) a condition similar to the explicit feature first condi-
tion, but with an additional indirect or implicit instruction suggesting that some of
the cases presented during the test phase would also have been presented during the
training phase. This condition was termed “implicit combined” because it indirectly
hinted that the use of a more automatic familiarity-based approach might also be
useful, for instance, in deciding the diagnosis of cases that seemed similar to previ-
ously encountered cases; (3) a “similarity-based” condition, in which participants were
instructed to trust familiarity and to diagnose based on their first impressions, and
(4) an “explicit combined” condition, in which participants were instructed to use both
a feature-based and similarity-based approach. Participants initially worked through
10 ECG cases using these instructions, with support and feedback provided as needed.
Finally, they were given a further 20 ECG cases to read, 10 of which were novel and
10 of which had been presented during the training phase; in this test phase no feed-
back or training was provided. The key outcomes were the levels of diagnostic
classification accuracy achieved in the four conditions on this final test. The results
showed that the diagnostic accuracy of the two groups given either the feature first
(42%) or first impression (41%) instructions did not differ from one another.
Importantly, the groups instructed to use both strategies, either directly (56%) or
indirectly (53%), significantly outperformed the single-strategy groups.
These results support an “additive model” of clinical reasoning, at least for
novices to a diagnosis task: Using both a feature-oriented and a similarity-based
approach yielded higher accuracy than did adopting either approach on its own.
Notably, the overall levels of diagnostic accuracy achieved in all of these initially naïve
groups with limited task experience were equivalent to those achieved by second-year
medical students, but those who received the combined instructions demonstrated
diagnostic accuracy equivalent to that shown by second-year residents. The equivalent
performance of participants in the two single strategy conditions, that is, those given
only feature-oriented or only similarity-based instructions, is also evidence that it “is
inappropriate and unnecessary to caution students to avoid using pattern recogni-
tion” (Ark et al., 2006, p. 408), because predominant reliance on pattern recognition
yielded accuracy levels equivalent to that achieved by mainly using an analytical
approach. Furthermore, analysis of the features that participants listed in support of
their diagnoses showed no differences in the likelihood with which participants in any
condition identified features that were consistent with the correct diagnosis, though
individuals in the feature-first condition identified more features that were indicative
of incorrect diagnoses, and they also made more false alarms than did any of the other
conditions. These outcomes argue that “various reasoning/teaching strategies need
not be mutually exclusive and, in contrast, can complement one another, leading
to greater diagnostic accuracy when used together than when either an analytic or
non-analytic strategy is used in isolation” (Ark et al., 2006, p. 409).
This important conclusion was both bolstered and extended in a follow-up study by
these investigators (Ark et al., 2007) that used largely similar materials. In this follow-
up study, the diagnostic accuracy achieved by four groups was compared, including
groups that (a) were either explicitly encouraged, or not encouraged, to use a contras-
tive learning strategy (further characterized later), and (b) were also either explicitly
instructed to trust any sense of familiarity they might have when diagnosing test
cases, while also closely considering relevant features—that is, directly encouraged to
use a combined reasoning approach—or were given no instructions as to whether or
how to rely on familiarity versus feature analysis. The latter group allowed examina-
tion of the performance of individuals using a “spontaneous” or self-guided approach
to reasoning. Participants in the contrastive learning strategy conditions were encour-
aged to deliberately search for similarities and differences between the cases they were
learning, comparing diagnostic categories that were similar on the basis of their
having features in common, and categories that were known to be easily confusable.
Importantly, the second variable (explicit instructions to use a combined reasoning
approach vs. the “spontaneous” or self-guided approach) allowed examination of
whether individuals spontaneously use both more generic (automatic) familiarity-
based processes and more analytic (controlled) feature-based processes.
In line with several previous studies that have demonstrated benefits from
a contrastive learning approach (e.g., Catrambone & Holyoak, 1989; Gentner,
Loewenstein, & Thompson, 2003), diagnostic accuracy was significantly higher for the
groups that used the contrastive strategy. Particularly noteworthy here, however, was
the further finding that diagnostic accuracy was also significantly higher for the groups
that were explicitly instructed to use the combined feature-based and familiarity-based
strategies, compared to those not given such instructions. There was no interaction of
these variables (contrastive vs. noncontrastive, and combined vs. spontaneous,
instructions). Furthermore, a delayed test showed that the benefits of contrastive
learning, and of the explicit instructions to use both feature- and familiarity-guided
approaches, were still present on a delayed test that was given 1 week later.
The inference to be drawn is simple, but theoretically and pragmatically important:
Although people might naturally or spontaneously use combined reasoning strategies
to some extent, explicit direct instructions to use both automatic similarity-based
processes and controlled feature-based search appear to lead them to use combined
strategies more consistently—and leads to significant gains in accuracy—at least on
some forms of perceptual classification tasks. A key question for future research is
whether instructional interventions to use combined processing modes may also
prove beneficial on other types of reasoning and problem-solving tasks. As further
developed in Chapter 12 on some of the implications and applications of the iCASA
framework, it is important to determine whether similar benefits arising from a “dual
dialogue” between relatively more automatic and relatively more controlled process-
ing are found in other applied domains, including domains involving stimuli that do
not require mainly perceptually based judgments.
Such findings may also cohere well with increasing evidence that a comprehensive
account of human categorization performance will need to accommodate both “rule
induction” and “exemplar encoding,” and mechanisms that enable shifts of attentional
focus in each of these. A prominent example of such a model is the ATRIUM model of
M. A. Erickson and Kruschke (1998), where the acronym designates “Attention to

Rules and Instances in a Unified Model.” It is not feasible to extensively review these
models and findings here: What is particularly to be noted is the increasing number of
combined-process models that have been developed and, furthermore, that there is a
growing consensus that perhaps both forms of representations, and certainly models
of alternations in the processing between both modes, are essential (e.g., Ashby,
Alfonso-Reese, Turken, & Waldron, 1998; Ashby & Crossley, 2010; M. A. Erickson,
2008; M. A. Erickson & Kruschke, 1998; Juslin, Olsson, & Olsson, 2003; G. D. Logan,
1988; Nosofsky, Palmeri, & McKinley, 1994; Verguts, Storms, & Tuerlinckx, 2003; but
see also Johansen & Palmeri, 2002, on the distinction between shifts in the type of
information used, for which there is now abundant evidence, versus whether
these shifts necessarily also reflect shifts in the representational systems that support
perceptual categorization).
Consistent with the findings of Ark et al. (2006, 2007) suggesting that individuals
sometimes, but do not always, spontaneously adopt different processing strategies,
other research points to clear instances where individuals become “stuck” in a given
mode of processing, including more controlled, analytical, or “rule-based” attempts at
learning a categorization task, even when this approach proves highly unfruitful for
the problem at hand (e.g., A. Neal et al., 2006; A. C. Olsson et al., 2006). Using the
critical incident training approach with trainees in a fire brigade, A. Neal et al. (2006)
found evidence that the trainees used both rule-based decision making, for example,
as shown by the observation that trainees were able to generalize their training to
novel exemplars that were very unlike those used during training, and exemplar-based
decision making—for example, the trainees performed more accurately when the test
exemplars were similar to trained-on instances and those exemplars were in the same
category (e.g., safe/not safe to enter) as at training, but less accurately for items that
were similar to those that had been encountered during training but which actually
belonged to a different category. That is, in the latter test situations, trainees general-
ized inappropriately from prior examples. However, the tendency of trainees to inap-
propriately generalize on the basis of similarity to a previously encountered example,
treating an incident as belonging to the same category as the earlier instance when, in
fact, it differed in a key feature and therefore belonged in a different category, was not
reduced by explicit general instructions regarding the sorts of conditions in which
the rule would not apply. Providing such instructions seemed paradoxically to lead
the trainees to “fixate on the specific conditions mentioned and impaired their ability
to identify other conditions in which the rule might not apply” (A. Neal et al., 2006,
p. 1276). Thus, explicit directions seemed to be counterproductive in trying to reduce
this form of inappropriate generalization.
In a classification experiment requiring reliance on exemplar knowledge (because
no rule would enable correct classifications), A. C. Olsson et al. (2006) found that, as
predicted, individuals were unable to solve a nonlinear multiple-cue judgment task
using an explicit cue (rule) abstraction approach. However, participants did not spon-
taneously switch to a more effective exemplar-based approach to the task, even when
the number of instances comprised a relatively small number of exemplars, and even
when extensive learning trial opportunities were provided. Rather, “participants
appeared to be trapped in persistent and futile attempts to abstract the cue-criterion
relations” (A. C. Olsson, Enkvist, & Juslin, 2006, p. 1371). Only when participants
were explicitly asked to learn by memorizing the instances did performance accuracy
improve (under these conditions, judgment accuracy was well modeled by an exemplar
model).
These outcomes suggest that, as noted by A. C. Olsson and colleagues (2006),
“there may be nontrivial constraints on people’s ability to shift to the process that is
appropriate to the task” (p. 1381). Although sometimes such shifts do occur sponta-
neously, at other times they do not. Research by Ashby and Crossley (2010) using a
classification task that required trial-by-trial switching between declarative/
rule-based and nondeclarative/procedural categorizations similarly led the authors to
conclude that, although “trial-by-trial switching between declarative and procedural
category-learning systems is possible if enough cues are provided to signal the par-
ticipant which system should be used on each trial”—as was the case in an earlier
study by M. A. Erickson (2008)—“in the absence of such unambiguous cues [. . .]
switching does not occur automatically. Instead, participants perseverate with one
system” (Ashby & Crossley, 2010, p. 9). These authors speculate that, in the absence of
salient cues regarding which learning system should be used, there may be changes in
the interactions between the frontal cortex and basal ganglia, such that, although
simultaneous striatal-mediated procedural learning is not prevented, such procedural
learning is denied access to cortical motor output systems. This suggestion would also
account for an asymmetry in the pattern of results that they observed, such that use
of an explicit strategy impeded access to procedural knowledge, but not the reverse.
Specifically, they found that whereas separate pretraining on the rule-based compo-
nent of the final task led to perseveration in 10 of the 15 participants, when pretrained
on the procedural information-integration component 10 out of 16 participants
switched to rules during the final task.
Another possible contributor to the ease and/or likelihood with which shifts might
occur, as suggested by A. C. Olsson and colleagues (2006), is the relative success rate of
an individual’s early attempts during a task at using rule or cue abstraction versus
inferences based on similarity. If, in nonlinear tasks, early attempts at similarity-based
responding are successful, then participants may shift to using exemplar memory. If,
however, “both cue abstraction and similarity to stored exemplars yield poor judgment
accuracy early in training, it is possible that the participants return to their initial
default mode of cue abstraction, investing their energy in continued, and in these
tasks futile, attempts at ‘cracking the code’” (A. C. Olsson et al., 2006, p. 1381).
Thus, both too rigidly exemplar-based, and too rigidly rule-abstraction-based,
approaches to problems are possible, with detrimental effects on flexible, adaptive
performance in each case. Furthermore, this raises the possibility of “a more strategic
use of exemplar memory than traditionally assumed, in these cases perhaps better
aligned with explicit semantic inference (Juslin & Persson, 2002) rather than percep-
tual categorization (Nosofsky, 1984)” (p. 1381):
In some environments analytic thinking seems actually to harm learning, as

when active experimentation impedes learning […]. To master a nonlinear
task, one may sometimes need to stop analyzing things and rather go with
the flow of intuition. (A. C. Olsson, et al., 2006, p. 1381)
Analogies, Similarities, and Such: Not So Controlled

(or Automatic) Contributors to Adaptively Creative
Analogical and Categorical Problem Solving
If we are given a simple analogy, such as “a cub is to a bear as a kitten is to a cat,” we can
very readily, with little effort, recognize the analogy as providing a valid and meaningful
(albeit perhaps not tremendously illuminating) comparison. We can also quite readily
recognize more semantically distant and across-domain analogies as valid, such as
“kitten is to cat” as “spark is to fire” (A. E. Green et al., 2010). According to prominent
accounts of analogy (e.g., Gentner, 1983; Gentner & Markman, 1997; Holyoak &
Thagard, 1989; see also the section on “Analogical and Relational Thought: Brain
Correlates of Fluid Reasoning” in Chapter 9), the means by which an individual can
evaluate this as a meaningful comparison, rather than a not particularly meaningful one
(e.g., if the terms within the second pair were transposed, giving “a cub is to a bear as a
cat is to kitten”), involves a process of constructing a “semantic bridge” or a “mapping”
between one pair or system (cub-bear) and another pair or system (kitten-cat), such that
the corresponding elements are aligned with one another (cub becomes aligned with
kitten, and bear becomes aligned with cat). But at what “level” does this alignment
occur? What guides or prompts us to arrive at the appropriate alignment, sometimes
quite fluently, as here, but at other times only with difficulty or not at all as, for instance,
when we are confronting a problem that might be solved via recognition of an analogous
situation, were we only able to bring that analogous case to mind, but do not do so?
The problem of how structurally based alignment occurs, before the still-to-be-
found analogy is fully understood, has remained a persistent and particularly thorny
issue (see Haskell, 2009, for review and discussion). If creative discoveries and many
forms of “knowledge transfer” depend on the noticing of analogies across remote or
disparate domains, how are such analogies noticed in the first place? The “access paradox”
poses a problem for both structure-mapping theory and for pragmatic schema models
of analogy, according to which a base analog is accessed through the detection of an
abstract similarity between pragmatic elements of the problems, such as correspond-
ing goals, constraints, object descriptions, or operators:
One logical critique of this view is that an unsolved target problem must be
matched to a base analogue on the basis of structural features, which may
not be known in sufficient detail for the target problem (if the structural
details of the target were known, presumably it could be solved without
resort to the analogue) (Reeves & Weisberg, 1994, p. 385).
If base-target matches are to be made at a level of abstraction above that of
surface elements (i.e., either at the level of goals or deep structure), subjects
must induce the causal elements from a target analogue to accomplish a
match, thereby achieving at least a partial solution and rendering less need
for a base analogue (Reeves & Weisberg, 1994, p. 386).
New and convergent evidence that an important contributor to the compre-

hension of analogy is categorization—and specifically what has been termed
“microcategorization”—provides a promising entry point toward addressing this

problem (e.g., A. E. Green et al., 2006). According to both this newer approach and
the structure-mapping approach, when confronted with the “bear-cub, cat-kitten”
analogy, a “macrocategory” involving “instances of animal development” might be
activated. However, in addition, on the microcategory account, smaller categories,
involving “young animals” and “adult animals” would also be activated. Furthermore,
this “small-scale” categorization of the individual component terms or elements
within the larger process of analogical mapping provides important additional
constraints on the mapping between the two pairs.
This microcategory account makes two important testable predictions. First,
if categorization enables analogical reasoning, then category relations should become
active during such reasoning, even if there is no explicit requirement for categoriza-
tion to occur, and appropriate cognitive-behavioral probes (e.g., tests of semantic
priming) should be able to demonstrate that categorical knowledge was activated.
Second, if categorization is especially important to analogical reasoning, then it should
be possible to obtain evidence that such reasoning tasks activate categorical knowl-
edge to a greater extent than do other types of semantic processing.
In a series of experiments, using four-word stimuli such as in the bear-cub:
cat-kitten example provided earlier, Green and colleagues (A. E. Green et al., 2006,
A. E. Green et al., 2008) obtained outcomes in line with both of these predictions.
One approach (A. E. Green et al., 2008) involved using a priming task (naming target
words). All participants were shown the same sets of paired words, followed by a singly
presented target word, but the task instructions given to participants differed.
An example four-word pair, as shown to participants, is:
GUN BOW
BULLET ARROW
In the semantic task, participants were instructed to judge whether the four-word
set contained two conventional semantic relations, that is, whether there is “a common
sense way in which two things often do, or easily could, have to do with each other”—
with one relation in the left pair and one in the right pair (e.g., gun-bullet, bow-arrow).
In the category task, participants were asked to decide if the top and bottom word
pairs were “both members of a common category”—for instance, both gun and bow
are weapons, and both bullet and arrow are projectiles. Last, in the analogy task, par-
ticipants were asked to determine whether the four words constituted a valid or mean-
ingful analogy, for instance, since a gun shoots a bullet and a bow shoots an arrow, the
two pairs represent the same abstract relation and so comprise a meaningful analogy.
Participants answered each four word pair as “true” or “false,” with true trials inter-
mixed with false trials (e.g., rose-thorn, beach-wafer). Immediately after the four-
word trial, a single target word appeared, and participants were asked to name this
word out loud, as quickly and accurately as possible. In some instances the target word
was related to the analogy and also to the conventional semantic relation (e.g., “shoot”
following gun-bullet, bow-arrow); in some instances the target word was related to the
category relation (e.g., “beverage” following can-soda; bottle-beer), and in others the
target was unrelated, with unrelated targets occurring for both true and false trials
(e.g., puppy-dog, foal-horse, followed by “measure”; rose-thorn, beach-wafer, followed

by “belt”).
As expected, the three groups showed no difference in the speed with which they
named the unrelated targets. However, when the target word was a category word,
naming response times were faster in the explicit category task and in the analogy
task than in the semantic task—even though participants were not asked to identify
category relations in the analogy task. The priming of category words shown in the
category and the analogy tasks was equivalent, suggesting that category relations
were primed as strongly during analogical reasoning as during explicit categorization.
Also, because the words in these comparisons were semantically related, but none-
theless priming was greater for analogical reasoning than for the semantic judgment,
this argues that category information was strongly activated by the analogical reason-
ing task—above and beyond any simple semantic association between the target
words and the words in the four-word set.
Substantially similar conclusions were reached in an experiment that used these same
four-word stimuli, but, rather than simply naming the targets, a Stroop-like paradigm
was used, in which the target words were printed in different ink colors and the partici-
pant’s task was to name the ink color (A. E. Green et al., 2006). Under these conditions,
mirroring the findings presented earlier, target words that referred to categorical rela-
tions were primed (as shown by slower color naming of the ink color) both after the cat-
egorization and after the analogy task. When the color target words referred to an
analogical relation, then there was priming for the target only following the analogy task,
and not following categorization judgments. Thus, evaluating analogies led to category
priming, but categorization did not lead to the priming of abstract analogical relations.
These experiments provide suggestive evidence that flexible categorization—
whether deliberately or automatically engaged—might enable more flexible compre-
hension and perhaps also creative generation of analogies. But this inference is very
tentative, given that in all cases the analogies were directly provided and participants
needed only to evaluate if each four-word pair constituted a meaningful comparison.
However, more automatic forms of priming might also operate at the level of the rela-
tions between the terms. Previous findings (Spellman, Holyoak, & Morrison, 2001)
using both lexical decision and naming tasks showed that the processing of analogical
relations in one case may then facilitate processing on another case (e.g., bear-cave
primed bird-nest, more than bear-swamp). This analogical priming effect was obtained
using a fairly brief stimulus-onset asynchrony (400 msec) in which controlled strate-
gic processes may have been only partially employed. Yet, notably, the priming effect
was observed only when the task instructions explicitly directed participants to attend
to the possible intrapair relations of the prime-target pairs (and not if they were just
reading the individual items or preparing for a memory test of the items). Therefore,
Spellman and colleagues argued that:
… the kind of processing required to produce analogical priming seems to be

neither fully automatic nor fully strategic. Rather, it may reflect a general atten-
tional strategy set up for the entire task, which in turn initiates a relatively
automatic form of relational processing on each trial. (Spellman et al., 2001,
p. 391, emphasis added).
On the one hand, this suggests important to-be-explored avenues for potentially
increasing the likelihood that individuals will notice and use analogical relations in
ongoing processing, through appropriate (other- or self-initiated) guidance to develop
and set up a facilitative general attentional strategy—including a focus on relational
processing. On the other hand, and particularly in combination with other findings
pointing to many impediments to more abstract relational analogical processing,
these findings prompt recognition of the considerable complexity of the cognitive pro-
cesses that support analogical reasoning. “Analogical priming involves not just using
the relations between pairs of objects, but also using a higher order relation (i.e.,
sameness of relation) that holds between the two similarly related pairs of objects”
(Spellman et al., 2001, p. 391).
Nonetheless, additional findings showing that similarity of internal relations
between one item, or situation, enhances retrieval of a second (similarly related) item
or situation (Estes & Jones, 2006) argue that the human ability to, in William James’s
phrase, quoted at the beginning of Chapter 2, “intend the Same” clearly extends to
relational properties—and, under some conditions, may be relatively automatic (see
also Estes & Jones, 2009). For instance, under certain conditions, reading a prime
phrase “glass eye” may facilitate comprehension of a subsequent target phrase, such as
“copper horse,” because both phrases involve the relation “composed of.” Such facilita-
tion has also been found between relationally similar primes (“steel scissors”) and
lexically dissimilar targets (“straw hat”), suggesting that it is the similarity of the rela-
tion between the targets that leads to the processing advantage, rather than lexical
priming; that is, it is not necessary that the initial terms (steel-straw) be similar to one
another (as perhaps might be argued for glass-copper).
Relational priming of this form has also been forwarded as a possible account for
the use of analogies even in quite young children. Based on a diverse set of observa-
tions from developmental psychology, such as evidence that young children may solve
some forms of analogies and may use analogies spontaneously (e.g., Singer-Freeman
& Bauer, 2008; Tunteler & Resing, 2002; cf. Goswami, 1991), relational priming has
been suggested as a “choice candidate mechanism for a developmental account of
analogy, emerging from simple memory processes” (Leech et al., 2008, p. 363). Leech
et al. (2008) present a computational account of analogy, in which initial exposure to
a situation is taken to prime a relation that can then be applied to a novel situation to
make an analogy, and where “relations” are represented as transformations between
states. These researchers (2008, p. 372) propose that “complex analogies involving
systems of relations and simple analogies involving relational priming may use similar
underlying memory processes (e.g., pattern completion and relational priming)”—but
“in considerably different ways.”
Such an account also may provide a potential way to begin to address the “access
paradox” insofar as, first, complex analogies are not assumed to emerge in a single
step and, second, explicit structure mapping is not viewed as (invariably) necessary
for analogy to occur. Instead, explicit structure mapping is thought to hold for only
one subset of analogies. According to this account, “explicit structure mapping is a
meta-cognitive skill: a relational priming mechanism reveals a relational similarity
between two domains, but the reasoner can iteratively unfold this by repeatedly
applying the simpler mechanism over and over again to components of a domain in
order to extend the analogy or to discover where the analogy breaks down”
(Leech et al., 2008, p. 377).
On the one hand, it is clear that analogy can take many different forms, and situa-
tions can be such as to either bring the necessary “relations” readily to mind, as in
some simple analogies, or may make identifying such relations particularly difficult—
thus likely drawing more extensively on meta-cognitive and deliberate control
processes. On the other hand, the possibility that relational priming may be one
elementary process in this form of reasoning equally clearly merits further exploration.
The evidence for relational priming raises the possibility that the relations involved in
analogies may (at least sometimes) not be explicitly accessed or known. This, in turn,
may contribute toward a better understanding of both the ability to use and to match
“relations between relations” across human development, and to the growing evidence
for some sorts of “analogical thought” in nonhuman primates (e.g., Fagot & Parron,
2010; Flemming et al., 2008; Haun & Call, 2009; Thompson & Oden, 2000; for discus-
sion, see Wasserman, 2008, Premack, 2010; see also Engle Richland et al., 2010 for
evidence that cultural differences in attending to, and using, relational information
may influence the analogical performance of young children).
If priming of relations occurs, this also raises the question of the specificity of rela-
tional priming, with such questions as: Is there is a “hierarchy” of relations—more
general to more specific—with priming occurring at some levels but not others? Are
particular instantiations of some relations more representative or prototypical of a
given relation than others? With regard to the second of these questions, at least in
the case of one form of relation (that of part-whole) it has been shown that more pro-
totypical instances of the relation are more readily judged to be instances than are less
prototypical cases (Chaffin & Herrmann, 1988). It also has been argued that priming
may not occur for some extremely abstract relations and that some relations may be
more “transparent” than others. To take a specific example, according to one posited
taxonomic classification of general relations (Levi, 1978, cited in Estes & Jones, 2006),
nut bread, vegetable soup, and fruit tree are all classed together as instantiating a gen-
eral “have” relation. However, it is possible that whereas nut bread and vegetable soup
both instantiate the same relation of something like “contain,” fruit tree might instead
be an instance of a relation such as “produce.” Similarly, although both tire rim and
family cow might be construed as instantiating the general “of” relation (rim of a tire,
cow of a family) they might instead differ in their relational instantiations with the
former involving a part-whole relation and the latter a relation of possession (Estes &
Jones, 2006). Empirical examination of the levels of abstraction at which relational
priming may most often occur, and of further questions such as the consistency and
contextual modulation of such priming, is needed and will help to constrain accounts
of the roles that relational priming may assume in both analogical thought and
problem solving.
Other memory mechanisms, such as the priming of individual concepts, also might
automatically or implicitly facilitate problem solving. For instance, Schunn and
Dunbar (1996) demonstrated that participants who performed two unrelated
problems on successive days (a virus problem and a genetics problem) in which the
solution to the first problem involved a particular concept (inhibition) that was also
involved in the second problem achieved higher solutions on the second problem than
did participants in either of two control conditions. This was so even though neither
the participants’ on-line verbal protocols collected during the problem-solving task
nor postexperimental questioning suggested that the participants had any conscious
awareness that their experience with the earlier problem had helped them to solve the
second problem. Notably, the problems involved were ones known to elicit a bias
toward hypotheses involving the concept of activation (rather than inhibition); thus,
these outcomes suggest that recently primed concepts may become sufficiently readily
available to overcome biases toward different hypotheses.
This meshes well with other evidence that sometimes participants’ performance is
affected by exposure to a source problem, yet participants remain unaware of the
source problem even while applying it to the new problem. Such unwitting use of pre-
viously presented information has been demonstrated both by retrospective reports
of reminding (J. M. Mandler & Orlich, 1993) and, more persuasively, by the verbal
“talk aloud” protocols of participants elicited during problem solving (Lovett &
Anderson, 1994). The important role of unconscious priming of concepts in facilitat-
ing complex and novel problem solving also coheres well with ecologically derived
evidence that experts, such as scientists, are often unaware of the origins of their
hypotheses (e.g., Dunbar & Baker, 1994).8
Unfocused Attention, Creativity,

and “Mind Popping”
Purposeful attempts to solve a given problem involve directed search, planning, and
systematic evaluation and reasoning, but they also allow many “entry points” for rela-
tively more automatic, familiarity-based, or gist-based responses, derived from the
priming of individual concepts (as in the earlier examples), and also from the priming
of abstract, categorical, and analogical relations. Such directed problem search entails
many direct and indirect constraints on attention and cognition. Deliberate directed
thought typically involves active inhibition of associations that are remote, tangen-
tial, or idiosyncratic. Yet memory and associative processes that operate during
nonfocused “nonpurposeful” moments (or moments when we are engaged in tasks
that do not demand entire attention, as during showering, or routine cleaning),
including reverie, or states similar to what has been referred to as “random episodic”
memory (Andreasen et al., 1995), may also significantly contribute to adaptively cre-
ative agile thinking, and differ from directed thought in substantial and significant
ways (see also the section “Between Tasks” in Chapter 9 on our ever-active “salience-
detecting” and “network-changing” minds). Furthermore, deliberate controlled think-
ing is generally characterized by a higher degree of abstraction, compared with less
directed, more passive thought that involves a greater number of concrete images and
is more freely associative and analogical.
These less directed modes of cognition have often been associated with creative
thought. Martindale and Dailey (1996; see also Martindale, 2007; Richards, 1994)
argue that “creative inspiration involves regression to a moderate level of primary pro-
cess thinking” (p. 409) and Mendelsohn (1976) proposed that creative individuals
have “defocused attention.” In line with this argument, Martindale and Dailey (1996)
found that performance on the Alternative Uses Task (and also on measures of
story creativity and a composite creativity score) was significantly correlated with
measures of “primary process content” in participant’s generations of a story in
response to a simple story topic about a man and a woman. Primary process content
typically included concrete references to sensations and perceptual disinhibition
(e.g., references to disorder in the external world), whereas secondary process content
predominantly involved more abstract categories and words (e.g., temporal references,
moral imperatives, instrumental behavior, abstraction, and references to restraint and
order).
Movements—or oscillations—between phases of highly focused versus defocused
attention may allow wider and deeper access to associations that are only remotely
or weakly associated with the problem at hand or with what is at the forefront of
conscious awareness (e.g., Martindale & Dailey, 1996; see Zabelina & Robinson, 2010
for a recent defense of “creativity as flexible cognitive control”). As remarked by
Mendelsohn (1976, p. 366), “relationships between sequences of thought (or ideas
and images, etc.) can be better formulated or detected when they can be attended to
and manipulated simultaneously” and—consequently—“the greater the internal
attentional capacity, the more likely is the combinatorial leap which is generally
described as the hallmark of creativity.” If one has become mentally “stuck” on an
approach that will not work, defocusing attention (or shifting attention elsewhere)
also can facilitate a shift toward other ideas or avenues, including what S. M. Smith
(1995) has described as “dissipation of fixation.”
One broad type of fixation—deriving from an overly abstract approach to objects,
and particularly arising from an abstract conception of the purpose for which objects
are designed—is “functional fixedness.” Because it seems to involve a peculiar insensi-
tivity to perceptual features of objects that might “afford” desired actions (J. J. Gibson,
1979; Vaina, 1983) or enable sought-for ends, this form of fixation will be considered
in the next chapter on “thinking with our senses.” Other instances of fixation may,
however, involve excessive specificity. Prominent here are limitations on imaginative
thought arising from an unintended reliance on recently encountered examples, or
individual features of such examples (e.g., Jansson & Smith, 1991; Marsh, Landau, &
Hicks, 1996; Marsh, Ward, & Landau, 1999; Smith, Ward, & Schumacher, 1993; see
also Kalogerakis et al., 2010, for evidence that design and engineering consultants fre-
quently spontaneously use analogies but also that project teams tend to mainly draw
upon a limited set of familiar knowledge sources, particularly from other product cat-
egories, that may constrain the possibility for more highly creative recombination).
“Exemplar-based” fixation occurs both for experts and nonexperts. In the case of
experts, Jansson and Smith (1991) found that design engineers showed “design fixa-
tion,” defined as “a counterproductive effect of prior experience on the generation of
creative designs aimed at solving a realistic problem.” In their study, all of the
engineers were given the same problem to work on, with one key difference: half of
the engineers were given a sample design, whereas the remaining half were given no
illustration. The designs generated by the engineers who were shown a sample
design embodied many of the characteristics of the sample design, and many more
such characteristics than did the designs proposed by engineers who were not pro-
vided an example beforehand. On its own, this mimicking of example features is not
necessarily problematic: if, for example, the characteristics that were carried over
from the example were especially functional, or met some constraint in a particularly
elegant manner. However, it was further observed that even negative features of the
examples were carried over into the proposed designs. This then seems to be a clear
example of an automatic reliance on specific instances that was detrimental to
creatively adaptive problem solving. Nonetheless, this does not imply that examples
are necessarily detrimental: Rather, specific examples are, under some circumstances,
constraining on creative thought.
One reason that the effects of examples may be detrimental is that designers or
research participants often are not consciously aware that they are “fixated.” This is
shown, for instance, by little difference in the outputs of participants explicitly asked
to avoid the generation of solutions that are similar to the examples (e.g., Marsh et al.,
1999) and by the observation that designers—even those that study and teach design
on a regular basis—either do not appear to be aware of their “inadvertent” copying of
features of examples, or believe that the effect of the example solution on their
performance is positive, even though, in reality, they generate fewer ideas than con-
trols not exposed to examples, and also tend to reuse features from the example
(Linsey et al., 2010). Attempting to counteract the detrimental effects of examples
through providing designers with analogies and re-representations of the problem
through alternative categories was found to reduce fixation on some measures, but it
did not entirely eliminate it (Linsey et al., 2010). Presenting common examples rather
than unusual ones may lead to stronger links between the examples and generated
concepts, suggesting that common examples may lead to greater fixation than novel
ones (Perttula & Sipilä, 2007).
Notably, one’s own creative processes may also be the source of “examples,” and
thus it is important to evaluate if, and when, self-generated examples might help to
promote, or instead act to constrain, innovative thinking. Inspired by the creative
practices of many actual designers, recent work by Dow et al. (2010) demonstrated
that the serial (one-by-one) development of creative ideas, with feedback given after
the generation of each idea was linked with reduced creativity compared to a process
involving “parallel prototyping” (with several ideas considered concurrently). In the
parallel condition, novice designers developed three prototypes for a graphic Web
advertisement and then received feedback on all three prototypes; they then made
two more prototypes, received feedback on those two prototypes, and then made a
final version. In the serial condition, participants also created five prototypes and
then made a final version, but they received feedback after each prototype. Analyses of
the results showed that the advertisements generated by the parallel prototyping par-
ticipants obtained higher “click through” rates when posted on the web and experts
(editorial staff and ad professionals) rated the parallel ads to be of higher overall qual-
ity (across a set of five rating scales such as creativity/originality, tastefulness, and
adherence to graphic design principles). Independent raters also rated the parallel ads
as more diverse than the serial ads, and the parallel participants themselves reported
a larger increase in their level of self-efficacy related to their design abilities.
Several factors may have contributed to the higher innovativeness and diversity
in the parallel than the serial prototyping condition. Especially relevant here is
the way in which the critique of multiple ideas side-by-side may have both facilitated
comparison, and helped to prevent an excessive and too early or too exclusive focus on
refining a single idea:
Since parallel participants received feedback on multiple ideas simultane-

ously, they were more likely to read and analyze critique statements side-by-
side. Direct comparison perhaps helped parallel participants better
understand key design principles and led to more principled choices for
subsequent prototypes. In serial prototyping, participants’ ideas tended
to follow directly from the feedback. This serial approach may implicitly
encourage refinement at the expense of exploration. Performance likely
improves in parallel because people exercise their comparative abilities to
learn contextual constraints, malleable variables, and their interrelations.
(Dow et al., 2010, p. 16)
The parallel approach additionally appeared to reduce the emotional or self-

defensive threat associated with feedback. Whereas nearly one half of the serial
participants reported the feedback as “negative,” none of the parallel participants
did so, and parallel participants were significantly more likely to characterize the
feedback as helpful or intuitive than were the serial participants. Furthermore, feed-
back changed the anticipated future working methods of participants. Whereas the
majority of the parallel participants said that, in the future, they would create more
than one prototype and then obtain extensive feedback, fewer than one third of the
serial participants said they would adopt this approach.
There also is some suggestive evidence that deliberate conscious attention to a task
may exacerbate reliance on the provided examples. In a series of experiments,
Dijksterhuis and Meurs (2006) showed that when individuals were asked to con-
sciously produce items that met particular constraints (“directed thinking group”)
they tended to produce different items than did individuals who were given little
opportunity to consciously think of the items, and who were required to perform an
attention-demanding task from the time they were given the cue for the memory
retrieval or thinking task, until the time that they gave their responses (“attenuated
directed thinking group”). In separate experiments, it was found that there was no
difference in the total number of items generated by individuals in the group that
reduced deliberate and directed thinking versus by individuals in the directed thinking
condition. However, these groups did differ in the types of items they generated. The
directed thinking group produced more items that were similar to previously provided
examples, showing more “capture” or constraint as a result of salient provided
examples than did the group given less opportunity for deliberate and directed
thought. In a place-naming fluency task, the directed thinking group also produced
more place names that were the names of cities (likely relatively easily accessed) rather
than names of towns or villages (assumed to be comparatively less accessible), whereas
the group given less opportunity for deliberate and directed thought more frequently
produced items of the latter sort. Finally, in a brief version of the Alternative Uses
Task, in which participants are asked to provide noncommon or “alternative” uses of
common objects such as a brick, again the number of items did not differ for the two
groups, but the uses provided in the group given less opportunity for deliberate and
directed thought were evaluated as, overall, more creative (though the pair-wise
difference between the groups was only marginally significant). The broader question
of when reliance on unconscious processes may, or may not, facilitate complex
decision making is taken up in greater depth in Chapter 7.
G. Mandler (1994; Kvavilashvili & Mandler, 2004) refers to ideas that may occur to
us in moments of nonfocused attention as “mind popping.” This phenomenon involves
the sudden emergence of ideas or semantic knowledge into awareness where the “idea”
was not intentionally sought. Often this occurs while individuals are engaged in rela-
tively automatic activities, with their attention in a diffuse (unfocused) rather than
concentrated mode (compare with the description of Jha and colleagues, 2007, given
in the first section of this chapter, of “receptive” versus “concentrative” attention):
In […] mind popping, a similar state of affairs occurs. The target is not
intentionally sought out; it is preconscious and thus has the characteristic of
fanning out, of engaging wider spreading of activation and more extensive
elaboration and activation. Thus, “thinking” about something else makes
it possible for the actual targets to become available for conscious construc-
tion. (G. Mandler, 1994, p. 24)
In addition to thoughts that emerge during such “semi-automatic” activities, ideas

for novel and flexibly adaptive alternatives to ongoing projects or problems may
emerge during states that are even more passive and “nonactive,” described by Mandler
as involving “a genuine autonomous restriction of awareness”:
One should not dismiss the possibility that some states of passive thought
approach the sleeping state described by Hobson (1988), where quasi-ran-
dom neuronal activity significantly increases. If that can happen in some
awake states of passivity, then new elaborations (novel solutions) are more
likely to be generated. Such a state of affairs would be close to the ‘blind
variation and selective retention’ approach to problem solving advocated by
[D. T.] Campbell (1960). (G. Mandler, 1994, p. 25)
Clearly, greater receptivity to associative connections (including seeing similarity

where others typically do not) may enable the generation of more original and even
unique responses, including highly creative and innovative ones. Yet, at least in some
circumstances, such receptivity may come with accompanying costs to performance in
more controlled directed thinking contexts. Broad associative receptivity may be accom-
panied by reduced executive control, such as diminished response inhibition or response
monitoring. Consistent with this “good for some things/bad for others” construal, a
recent investigation (White & Shah, 2006; see also Brandau et al., 2007) showed that
individuals with attention-deficit disorder achieved relatively high scores on measures
of fluency, flexibility, and originality on the Alternative Uses Task, requiring divergent
flexible thinking, but obtained relatively low scores on the Remote Associates Task
(Mednick, 1962), a task requiring (at least in part) convergent controlled attention
search, in which participants must retrieve a given word that is associatively related to
each of three other words (e.g., mower, atomic, and foreign; solution = power).
Possible trade-offs between more directed (focused) versus more open (broader)
receptivity to our own associative and other “thought connections” are further consid-
ered in Chapter 7. That chapter also considers the possible roles of both conscious and
unconscious thought during an intervening period of “incubation” in promoting new
approaches to a previously attempted but unsolved problem, and more controversial
claims that unconscious thought may increase “normatively correct” forms of complex
decision making above that found during deliberate thought. Trade-offs between
more focused versus broader receptivity to our own associative and other thought
connections are also addressed in the chapter that considers personality contributors
to flexible thinking (Chapter 6), including particularly the personality dimension of
openness to experience/intellect (Digman, 1990; L. R. Goldberg, 1993; R. R. McCrae,
1987, 1994), and the automatic attentional phenomenon of latent inhibition. The
phenomenon of latent inhibition, involving the ability to screen from conscious
awareness stimuli that have previously been found to be irrelevant, is itself a form of
cognitive control that may “cut both ways”—leading to more efficient processing if a
once irrelevant stimulus remains irrelevant, but impeding learning if contingencies
change such that what formerly was not relevant becomes predictive (e.g., Lubow &
Gewirtz, 1995; J. B. Peterson, Smith, & Carson, 2002). This possible trade-off—at
multiple levels—is also implicit in several of the “subcognitive” mechanisms of ana-
logical thought that Douglas Hofstadter (1995) has proposed and which may also sub-
stantially contribute to the astonishing “fluidity” of human concepts. Several of those
subcognitive mechanisms are explored in “Excursion 2” at the end of this chapter.
Looking Back
We began, at the outset of Chapter 2, and before embarking on these two companion
chapters, with William James’s affirmation, from his chapter on “Conception” in the
Principles of Psychology, that “The mind can always intend, and know when it intends,
to think of the Same.” The questions of how “sameness,” in the sense of categorical
knowledge of things, events, qualities, and relations might be represented and main-
tained in the mind and brain, are still centrally with us: They are an intensively active
focus of debate, analysis, and experimentation, and of healthy to and fro between
them. Yet we also have seen that individuals may find themselves in the tenacious grip
of a particular sort or “level” of sameness (either too specific or too abstract), as an
outcome of diverse cognitive-neuropsychological factors ranging from the automatic
recollection of highly detailed, vivid memories, involving an extraordinarily retentive
memory for particular sorts of events (instances of superior memory such as shown
by AJ), to prolonged and repetitive retrieval of experiences at an overly categorical
or general level, that too seldom reach into the richer, more specific recollection of
particular, singular events (clinical depression, healthy aging).
Although we can rely on both the retrieval of individual instances or exemplars, and
of abstracted rules or principles in ongoing thinking, classification, and decision
making—and both have advantages and disadvantages for the likely accuracy of our
performance—we do not always adroitly and aptly choose the best strategy for the
situation at hand. We sometimes rigidly persist in using a strategy that leads to
increased probability of error and slower or blocked learning and that may further
result in diminished creativity.
Collectively, the findings of Chapters 2 and 3 suggest that we also need to be
cognizant of a significant caveat to James’s claim: Our intentions to “think the same”
or “not to think the same” may not always yield the outcomes we hope for, and
sometimes the forms of “thinking the same” that we engage in are neither as fruitful,
nor as freely initiated (taken up) or forgone (stopped) as we might wish or intend.
Equally important, these and other findings on how we use memory and conceptual
knowledge have provided strong presumptive initial evidence for the claim that agile
thinking is optimally facilitated through dual dialogue between both levels of represen-
tational specificity (abstract-specific) and modes of control (controlled-spontaneous-
automatic), with no one place on these continua uniformly or always ideal. In the next
chapter, we further explore evidence for this claim. In Chapter 4 we turn to focus on
the many ways in which thinking, including highly abstract thought, is deeply and
pervasively interpenetrated and intermeshed with the concrete particulars of sensa-
tion, perception, and also action—bringing both the external world and our bodies in
relation to it, into mind.
Excursion 2: Levels of Specificity in Douglas

Hofstadter’s Subcognitive Mechanisms
of Fluid Thought
An important subcomponent of flexibility in thought and memory is our ability to
rapidly move between how we see events, objects, people, or properties, by focusing
on some aspects or relations as the basis of a similarity between them (and ignoring
others). This is a central focus of Douglas Hofstadter’s efforts to understand the “fluid-
ity” of human concepts, and how fluidity of concepts is the foundation underlying
high-level perception, analogical thought, and discovery and creativity: “The dynamic,
‘fluid’ nature of Copycat’s concepts is intended to model the extremely flexible human
ability to perceive dissimilar things as being in fact ‘the same’ when viewed at some
appropriate level of description” (Marshall & Hofstadter, 1998, p. 1).
A key phrase here is the expression, “when viewed at some appropriate level of
description.” Recognition of similarity between two objects or other stimuli may
often occur at more than one possible level, and similarities can be characterized
by descriptions or rules that themselves vary in their level of abstractness. For
instance, given the simple analogy, abc:abd, one characterization of the transforma-
tion might be “Change letter-category of rightmost letter to successor.” But another,
equally valid rule—given only this information and no further constraints or instanc-
es—would be “Change letter-category of rightmost letter to d” (Marshall & Hofstadter,
1998, p. 3). What determines which of these characterizations we are likely to adopt,
and why?
Hofstadter (1995, pp. 360–361) proposed several “subcognitive” mechanisms that,
operating below the level of conscious awareness, might influence the degree to which the
cognitive system is tuned toward detail or abstraction. A number of these suggested
mechanisms directly and explicitly refer to levels of specificity such as the “desire” to
build chunks based on samenesses or other types of connections perceived; the
relative levels of abstractness assigned to concepts; the degree of preference for
abstract descriptions over concrete ones; and differential rates of perceptual pro-
cesses—for example, spotting sameness versus relatedness. Other subcognitive
mechanisms proposed by Hofstadter less directly, but implicitly and partially concern
levels of specificity such as one’s willingness to adjust or destroy already-solidified
perceptual chunks; the degree to which activated concepts bias ongoing perceptual
search; the ease with which default perceptions can be overridden by a drive for
perceptual uniformity; and the degree of attraction to symmetry. Additional posited
subcognitive mechanisms concern potentially more enduring or transient characteris-
tics of an individual’s “semantic nets” or conceptual representations and their inter-
relations: the propensity for a dormant concept to “wake up” when lightly activated;
differential rates of spreading of activation from a concept to various semantic neigh-
bors; differential rates of decay of activation of various concepts; size of conceptual
halos of concepts; the manner in which perceptions affect interconcept distances; and
the probability of making a slippage between two concepts at a specific distance.
Finally, yet another cluster of proposed subcognitive mechanisms might contribute to
aspects of openness to experience and willingness to experience ambiguity or uncer-
tainty (to be developed in Chapter 5). Notable here are the following: a willingness to
let a “slippage” carry related “slippages” along on its coattails; willingness to accept
fragmentary mappings; willingness to consider alternatives even when there is no one
clear leading viewpoint; intensity of dislike of trivial or boring answers; and degree of
resistance to blending rival views, rival rules, rival answers, and so on—though this
last might, again, partially reflect the rigidity of one’s category boundaries or relative
category permeability.
Developing a detailed understanding of the nature of, and the contribution of, such
subcognitive mechanisms to the flexible use of categorical knowledge is essential.
Equally essential is the need to arrive at an integrated understanding of if, how, and
when subcognitive mechanisms are successfully and adaptively recruited during more
automatic versus more controlled modes of processing, and as we deliberately or
spontaneously move between different levels of representational specificity versus
abstraction at a more macro, overt, and conscious level.
4
Thinking with Our Senses
I am a noticer.
—Brenda Milner (in Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 158)
Observation and measure are my business.

—Robert Rauschenberg (in Kostelanetz, 1968, p. 93)
Thinking seems to be a highly internal activity, a process that occurs inside our
mind, largely independent of the physical environment. Auguste Rodin’s famous
statue “The Thinker” conforms well to this view. The thinker leans over, resting his
chin on his hand, eyes staring unseeingly forward, all attention firmly focused inward.
But is this prototypical picture of the process of thinking accurate? Is this how “good
thinking”—and particularly flexibly adaptive thinking—most often or most
effectively occurs?
Insofar as our thoughts occur within minds that are not directly open to external
observation, the picture of thinking as an internal activity is, of course, correct. But
this is only a partial and limited construal of what is often a dynamic, deep, and
sometimes remarkably subtle interplay between internal “thoughts” and external
“nonthoughts” (processes, objects). Thoughts are also almost continuously guided and
shaped by external supports and influences.
Concretely embodied symbols, such as words and numbers are prominent
examples of such physical guides to thought. Although we often seem to simply “see
through” words to their meaning, words are also essentially physical: particular lines,
shapes, and forms on the page or computer screen in the case of visual text, sound
waves in the air for spoken speech, or particular patterns of movements in space and
time for sign language. These concrete physical aspects of written, spoken, or signed
language may subtly but significantly influence the directions of our thinking. Other
important and common physical guides to thinking and reasoning (sometimes termed
epistemic objects) include maps, graphs, diagrams, models, and so on.
Even thinking that appears to proceed without any overt reliance on such external
aids—such as thinking that is highly abstract—nonetheless builds on foundations of
mental concepts that are, at least in part, forged through an individual’s interactions
with the concrete world of sights and sounds, and embedded actions within it. Mental
representations are themselves grounded in perception, action, and feeling, and so,
too, therefore, is thinking—and creatively adaptive thinking.
125
The evidence in support of these broad claims, and for the critical role of “thinking
with our senses” in enabling adaptively flexible, creative thought, is vast and diverse.
It includes both a wide array of cognitive-behavioral findings and an equally wide and
growing number of observations from neuroimaging and neuropsychology, demon-
strating the essential role of brain regions that are involved in sensory and motor
processing in representing mental concepts. The latter encompasses not only direct
explorations of the role of sensory-motor cortices in the representation of concepts
(e.g., Chao, Haxby, & Martin, 1999; R. F. Goldberg, Perfetti, & Schneider, 2006; Kiefer
et al., 2008; Martin, 2007; Tranel et al., 2003) but also evidence for the recruitment of
sensory-perceptual processing regions during the recollection of earlier encountered
events (e.g., Polyn et al., 2005; M. E. Wheeler, Petersen, & Buckner, 2000), and
neuroimaging findings on the partial, but clear, overlap between brain regions that are
activated during mental imagery, when no external stimulus is present, and during
actual perception of a stimulus (e.g., Djordjevic et al., 2005; Grèzes & Decety, 2001;
Kosslyn et al., 1999; Kosslyn, Thompson, & Alpert, 1997; O’Craven & Kanwisher,
2000). The first section of Chapter 9 outlines several of these and further findings
that, together, demonstrate the concrete and multimodal—and abstract and
amodal—brain bases of conceptual representation.
In this chapter, the key role of “thinking with our senses” in enabling agile minds is
demonstrated through a consideration of four broad interrelated ways in which
thought and perception deeply and complexly intersect with, and influence, one
another. These include:
(a) Links between perception and conception within thinking, reflecting the
integral contribution of perceptual and action-related information to mental
concepts
(b) Demonstrations of how current perception (e.g., looking patterns) and
actions (e.g., gestures) may both guide, and sometimes precede, thought or
insight
(c) Contributions of perception and action to the flexible and generative use of
concepts or to innovatively “making new concepts”
(d) Links between perception and conception deriving from the embedding of
thinking in a particular concrete physical context, focusing on epistemic objects
and actions, and the role of the specific physical (sensory-perceptual) aspects of
language in shaping thought
The case to be made in this chapter is neither that we always think with our senses,
nor that we only think with them, but that we do so more often and in more ways than
we may realize.1 Furthermore, it will be argued that a failure to “think with our senses”
is at least sometimes the source of impediments to our thinking, and of the stultifying
and sorry character of some of our attempted forays into new avenues of thought and
action. The ways in which we do, and should, “think with our senses” are not limited
to simple or obvious physical actions or to our actual interactions with objects. They
are equally often important to complex modes of thought, such as hypothesis genera-
tion and testing, the formation and differentiation of complex abstract concepts, and
analogical problem solving.
Thinkin g wit h Ou r S e n s e s 127
The Centrality of Perceptual and Action-Related

Information in Thinking
SEEING WITH THE MIND’S EYE: WHEN 5-YEAR-OLDS
O U T- S M A R T ( O U T- S E E ? ) 7 - Y E A R - O L D S
In the classic insight-solving problem known as the “candle problem,” participants
are provided several objects (e.g., matches, a box of thumbtacks) and are asked to
use the provided objects to vertically mount the candle against the wall.2 Participants
may be presented the objects in one of two arrangements: with the thumbtacks
placed outside of the cardboard box on the table or, instead, placed inside the box.
Remarkably, this apparently slight difference in the visual presentation of the objects
leads to substantial differences in the likelihood that (and/or the speed with which)
individuals will solve the problem. When the tacks are presented contained within
the box, most individuals find this to be a very difficult task. However, when the tacks
are presented separately, then participants readily generate the solution—namely, to
use the box as a surface on which to mount the candle, using the thumbtacks to affix
the box to the wall. When the tacks are in the box, the box is already serving a usual or
typical function as a container, making it difficult to separate the box from this
function, and to see that it might serve a different function: that of support rather
than of containment (Adamson, 1952; Birch & Rabinowitz, 1951; Duncker, 1945).
Such “functional fixedness” (Duncker, 1945) occurs when we become stuck or fixed
upon one way of looking at an object, particularly a way of looking at an object that is
in accord with its usual function or purpose. This makes us unable to recognize that
the object might be used in different, less typical ways, even though recognizing such
an alternative use is something we otherwise might do very easily, and even though
doing so is exactly what is needed in order to address a problem that we are intently
trying to solve.
What leads to functional fixedness? These striking differences in performance on a
task with highly similar perceptual input (the only difference between the two versions
of the candle problem is whether the tacks are presented inside or beside the box)
most often have been attributed to an unfortunate, because unhelpful, reliance on
past knowledge and experience. According to one account of this puzzling but perva-
sive failure to see what is there (C. A. Kaplan & Simon, 1990; Knoblich, Ohlsson, &
Raney, 2001), placement of the tacks in the box is argued to “prime” the usual func-
tion of boxes (containment) and to make it more difficult to think of the alternative
and perhaps less frequent function of boxes (that of support), even though boxes are
often used to support one another and other objects. Similarly, according to the
“mental ruts” account (S. M. Smith, 1995), it is suggested that the particular presenta-
tion of the problem (e.g., box as container) leads to repeated exploration and increas-
ing activation of knowledge elements that are unhelpful, thereby blocking alternative
ways of viewing the object. According to these accounts, the way in which we mentally
represent the problem interacts with prior knowledge to make it difficult to access the
information needed for the solution (C. A. Kaplan & Simon, 1990; Knoblich, Ohlsson,
& Raney, 2001; S. M. Smith, 1995).
However, recent ingenious work in developmental psychology complicates

this story and demonstrates that functional fixedness cannot simply be attributed to
past experience with an object and the specific functions the object may have. These
studies show that functional fixedness cannot only be a form of habit-based or object-
specific blindness. Rather it appears to be something about the more abstract and less
perceptually anchored ways in which adults—and children above the age of about
5 years—think about objects, particularly human artifacts, that is at least partially
responsible for such nonflexible perception and apprehension.
The need to invoke something other than specific habit-based blindness to account
for individuals’ puzzling obliviousness to the possible alternative functions of an
object is supported by the conjunction of three, in many ways surprising, observa-
tions. All three observations concern how very young children respond to the same
types of problems that often solidly stump both older children and adults.
Observation 1
Children aged 5, 6, and 7 years were presented with a task in which they were to help
“Bobo the Bear” reach a toy on a high shelf (German & Defeyter, 2000). The children
were presented a number of objects, including a box, several bricks, and various items
that were irrelevant to the problem solution (a coin, a pencil eraser, and a toy car). The
height of the shelf was such that a tower constructed from the bricks alone would not
allow Bobo to reach the shelf. To help Bobo achieve his lofty goal, it was necessary for
the tower of bricks to be mounted on top of the box.
If the box was presented separately from the bricks and the other items, with the
various items arrayed beside one another, then all children rapidly and easily solved
the problem. If, however, the bricks and other items were presented nestled inside the
box (emphasizing the function of the box as a “container”), then the older children—
very much like adults attempting to solve the analogous candle problem—were slower
in reaching the solution. That is, the older children showed clear functional fixedness.
This apparently slight rearrangement of the items made solving Bobo’s dilemma much
more difficult for the 6- and 7-year-olds. But this was not so for the 5-year-olds. The
youngest group of children showed no evidence of functional fixedness and solved the
problem equally quickly in the two conditions—and more than twice as quickly as did
the 6- and 7-year-olds when the containment function of the box was primed.
This age difference in performance, with the youngest children outperforming their
elder peers in the function-primed condition, did not reflect differences in knowledge
of the function of the box. The same outcome was obtained when all of the children
were first required to demonstrate the standard function of the box before being pre-
sented the problem (cf. Gauvain & Greene, 1994). For some reason, the youngest chil-
dren were immune to the harmful effects that the function-primed arrangement of
the objects produced for their older peers even though they, like the older children, did
know and understand the usual function of boxes.
Observation 2
Although younger children showed that they knew the usual function of a box, it
might be argued that, simply by virtue of their younger age, they had a reduced
knowledge store of specific experiences with boxes, and so might be less susceptible to
habit-based “blocking.” One way to test this account of the greater problem-solving
flexibility of the younger children would be to use objects that all of the children were
equally unfamiliar with before the experiment—that is, novel objects for which the
function was newly demonstrated for the first time in the experiment itself. If the
immunity to functional fixedness shown by the younger children results from fewer
encounters with the objects, then, once novel objects are used instead, this “naivety
advantage” for the youngest group should be eliminated, and all of the age groups
should show similar patterns of performance in the function-primed condition.
To test this account of the age differences, Defeyter and German (2003) developed
novel objects that none of the children would have previously experienced. One of the
novel objects was a “light stick,” used for causing red, yellow, and green light-emitting
diodes (LEDs) in a glass holder to light up. The other novel object was a “music stick,”
used to set off one of four buzzers in a gray plastic music box. The children first were
introduced to the novel objects and were shown their light-making and music-making
functions. They were then presented a problem in which the novel objects might be used
in a different way. They were told that a puppet named Zig was about to set out on a long
journey in a spaceship. However, Zig had encountered a difficulty: his pet dog, Tog, has
been naughty and has run away and become stuck in a long narrow tube. The children
were asked to show how Zig might help Tog out of the tube, using any of the objects.
As in other experiments exploring functional fixedness, the objects were presented
in one of two different configurations. In the baseline condition, all of the objects were
presented separately. In the function demonstration condition, the light stick and
LED glass holder were presented together as a functional unit (light stick + light
source), as were the music stick and music box (music stick + music source). One
further experimental manipulation concerned the shape of the light and music sticks.
Specifically, the length of the light and music sticks was varied, such that for one half
of the children the light stick was sufficiently long that it could be used to rescue Tog,
and for the other half it was the music stick that could be used to achieve this goal.
In the baseline condition, in which all of the objects were presented separately,
most of the children rapidly solved the problem. The solution rates were 75%, 95%,
and 80% for the 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds, respectively. However, contrary to the “naivety
advantage” account, in the function demonstration condition, the solution rates of
the older children were again substantially lower, showing clear functional fixedness.
By contrast, the solution rate of the youngest group was entirely unaffected by the
function demonstration, again showing immunity to functional fixedness. In the
function demonstration condition the 5-year-olds achieved a solution rate of 75%,
clearly outperforming their older peers who had success rates of only 35% (the 6-year-
olds) and 40% (the 7-year-olds).
These outcomes demonstrate that functional fixedness cannot simply arise from
an accumulation of knowledge of the functions of real-world objects. Here, functional
fixedness was shown in the older children for novel objects that they had never previ-
ously encountered before the experiment itself. So what might lead to the older chil-
dren’s marked difficulties in the function-demonstration condition—making it so
difficult for them to see what the youngest children could see very rapidly, and what
other children in their own age group also could easily see under only a modestly
different perceptual arrangement of the objects? Why should older children perform
more poorly than did younger children specifically in the condition in which the novel
objects were grouped according to their (newly learned) functions?
Observation 3
Defeyter and German (2003) argue that the difference between the youngest and
oldest groups does not simply arise from differences in either the type or amount of
experience the different aged children have had with objects in the world, and the
findings with the novel objects support this proposal. The difference, instead, seems to
arise from a more fundamental and pervasive difference in how the older versus the
younger children think about human-made objects or artifacts.
Several lines of evidence suggest that, when adults reason about artifacts, they
take what the philosopher Daniel Dennett (1987) has called the “design stance.” The
design stance involves thinking about objects from the point of view of the creator,
maker, or designer of the object and the purpose for which the object was designed.
The design stance is an explanatory structure that explains why an artifact exists: its
function, its properties (e.g., its material, shape, and activities), and its kind (the type
of thing it is). Take the simple idea of a coffee mug. “A coffee mug is capable of contain-
ing liquids because that is what its designer intended. This intended function in turn
constrains its form (it must be closed at the bottom, open at the top, graspable when
filled with hot liquids, and so on) and also constrains the material from which it can be
made (e.g., not ice)” (Matan & Carey, 2001, p. 2). Although the properties that enable
a coffee mug to serve its intended function also, incidentally, enable it to perform
many other functions, such as holding pens or a houseplant, these are not the reason
the mug came into existence.
Adults often privilege the original intended function of objects in various tasks.
For example, if adults are asked to assign objects into different categories or classes,
they tend to categorize objects on the basis of their intended function rather than
either the object’s appearance or its current use. Similarly, they evaluate an object’s
function in relation to the original intentions of the designer rather than other
intentional or accidental uses to which the object might be put (e.g., H. C. Barrett,
Laurence, & Margolis, 2008; German & Johnson, 2002).
Evidence suggests that very young children do not necessarily adopt the design
stance. Rather, the predisposition to taking this viewpoint is something that develops
as children age, and it is consistently first shown by children sometime around 6 years
of age (though children do know the functions of objects much earlier, and sensitivity
to the intended function of objects can, under some circumstances, be shown as early
as 3 or 4 years of age; cf. Kelemen, 2004). For instance, 5-year-old children did not
prefer to classify a newly made object on the basis of what it was made for (e.g., catch-
ing rain water), over what it was currently being used for (e.g., trapping bugs), and did
not find the original function to be more important than the current one. Even if
4-year-old children themselves had made an object for a particular purpose (e.g., to
help pour lentils into a jar), and then later used it in a different incidental way (e.g., for
covering only the yellow parts of a yellow and blue picture), when asked what
they made the object for, these younger children found both the originally intended
function and the later serendipitous function equally good answers (Matan, cited in
Matan & Carey, 2001; see also German & Johnson, 2002).
It seems, then, that younger children have a less rigid or “more fluid” (German &
Defeyter, 2000, p. 708) idea of what can count as an object’s function than do older
children, or adults. Additional supporting evidence for this possibility has been
obtained by comparing the responses of children of different ages on a different type
of task. In the “Alternative Uses Task” (also previously considered in Chapters 2 and
3), the participant is given the name of a common object (e.g., a brick, a chair) and is
asked to suggest as many novel uses for the object as possible. The standard use of the
object is stated (e.g., a chair is usually used for sitting), and participants are asked to
give other possible uses (e.g., a chair might be used as a doorstop, as a hurdle, to break
a window in case of a fire, etc.). Although the Alternative Uses Task has often been
used to examine the ability of individuals to generate diverse or creative ideas, Defeyter
and German (2001; cited in Defeyter & German, 2003) were particularly interested
in contrasting the patterns of responses that were given by younger children, of about
5 years of age, compared to those given by slightly older children.
When 7-year-old children were given this task, the possible uses that they provided
tended to be minor variants on the standard function of the object (e.g., for brick,
“to build a house” might be followed by “build a wall, build a school, build a castle”).
But this pattern was much less noticeable in the uses suggested by 5-year-old children.
Responses of the younger children were likely to include other plausible uses of the
objects, beyond those congruent with the standard function (e.g., for a brick, “to stop
a door from blowing shut in the wind”).
Based on these and related findings, it seems that an important way in which the
younger children differ from the older children is that they place less emphasis on
what something is intentionally made for. For these children, other aspects of the
object, such as what it looks like, or what it is currently being used for, are just as
important as the object’s originally intended function. On these arguments, functional
fixedness does not arise from specific pairings of objects with their typical uses (a form
of experience-based habitual association), but rather from the way in which the
intended purpose for which objects are designed (in an abstract schematic sense) is
given priority over other possible considerations and features in our cognitive repre-
sentation—and our perception—of artifacts. That is, in many cases, functional fixed-
ness may arise from excessive abstraction and insufficient “thinking with our senses.”
S U P P L E M E N T I N G A N D C O M P L I C AT I N G T H E D E S I G N
S TA N C E A C C O U N T
There does, then, seem to be something special about original intentions—at least for
older children and adults. Nonetheless, an exclusive appeal to the “blinding force” of
the design stance is not fully satisfying. This account, too, is incomplete and raises
many questions. For instance: If objects are, by default, viewed from a design stance,
then why are the problems so straightforward to solve, by adults and older children
who have reached the “design stance” stage, in the baseline condition, in which the
object’s function is not specifically primed? Shouldn’t the object’s function also be
salient and prominent even in the baseline condition? Yet under the baseline condi-
tions, individuals do often flexibly see alternative functions of the objects, beyond
their most common, design-intended uses.
The design-stance account also does not seem to provide an entirely adequate
account of the findings from one of the earliest experiments on functional fixedness
(Birch & Rabinowitz, 1951), conducted with adults. This study showed a very strong
experience-linked disinclination to use one of two objects (an electrical switch or an
electrical relay) for a nonstandard function (as a pendulum weight so as to enable two
widely separated hanging ropes to be tied together) that depended on whether the
participant had earlier encountered the object while it served its designated function
(electrical switch vs. electrical relay). If participants were not given prior experience
with either the switch or the relay operating in its usual manner—but nonetheless
were highly familiar with such general sorts of objects through their electrical
training—then they were equally likely to use either the switch or the relay as a
pendulum weight to solve the two rope problem. This indicates that the physical
nature of these two objects was such that each could be adopted to serve this unusual
function. However, if participants had earlier used one of the objects in the standard
way, then they were significantly less likely to use that object for the pendulum. Both
those who had earlier been given experience with the electrical switch, and those
earlier given experience with the relay, gave plausible perceptually based reasons for
the superiority of the nonpreutilized object as a pendulum, relative to that of the
preutilized one (even though the control data argued that neither object was superior
to the other in this regard).
Birch and Rabinowitz (1951, pp. 124–125) suggested that these results pointed to
two different sorts of learning that may be important in problem solving, but that
differ in their degree of abstraction. The first sort involves the acquisition of “certain
broad, nonspecific, general notions about the properties of the object or method expe-
rienced.” They proposed that this type of learning might be typified by that shown by
chimpanzees in situations where, although they were initially unable to use a stick to
bring distant food within reach, they learned how to do so after a brief period of play
with sticks. “It is this general, broad, nonspecific experience which seems to provide
the repertoire of experience essential for productive thinking.” In contrast, the second
sort of learning acts to “convert the initial perception of broad general properties of an
object into perceptions of specific limited functional characteristics.” This narrow,
fixed learning “limits the range of perceptual organizations capable of being devel-
oped” by the individual, and thus interferes with problem solving.
These suggestions, and the earlier findings, prompt the question of whether there
are ways in which greater sensitivity or “attunement” to the sensory-perceptual prop-
erties of objects could be regularly achieved. One possible approach is that we might
physically or imaginatively rearrange the environment (physical or virtual) in which
we are attempting to move more flexibly. Arrangements of objects themselves “afford”
(E. J. Gibson, 2003; J. J. Gibson, 1979; Vaina, 1983) or offer to us certain uses. For
example, if we wish to reach a highly placed object, some elevated surfaces afford sup-
porting our weight (most chairs, step-ladders, rocks, tables) but others do not, per-
haps because they are insufficiently strong (a fragile child’s chair, perhaps) or
insufficiently stable (a rocking chair). The physical properties of objects constrain the
ways in which we can use them (e.g., whether we can grasp them) and how they can
interact with other objects (e.g., whether an object could bear the weight of a second
object). Altering the placement or relations between objects, either physically or
imaginatively, may allow us to apprehend, or to freshly perceive and conceive, new

possibilities. This suggestion seems closely related to the idea of engaging in a mental
“perceptual simulation” (Barsalou, 2003; Gallese & Lakoff, 2005), which is discussed
further later. It also seems likely to bring our attention to the broader “general notions
about the properties of the object or method experienced” that Birch and Rabinowitz
(1951) suggest are vital for “productive” (creative, imaginative, innovative) thinking.
Taking another, although related, perspective, we also might question whether
functional fixedness arises only because we see artifacts in terms of their usual func-
tions, or whether the lack of flexibility also arises because we have relied on a particu-
lar way of categorizing or classifying objects. As also observed in the fourth section of
Chapter 2, a common way to think about objects, such as apples and chairs, is in terms
of taxonomic hierarchies that arise from structuring the environment into various
classes and subclasses. In such a hierarchy, comparatively abstract and overarching or
inclusive classes, such as “foods,” include more specific and narrow classes (e.g., fruits,
vegetables, cereals) and subclasses of each of these (e.g., citrus fruits or green leafy
vegetables and root vegetables), and then object types within those (e.g., oranges and
lemons, or mandarin oranges and Meyer lemons). Yet we can form other sorts of
categories that are not governed by what objects are, but rather by a particular goal or
objective we have in mind. Barsalou (2003) has called these “goal-derived categories”
and “ad hoc categories.”
Some goal-related categories have been used frequently, for example, if we travel
often, we likely have a goal-derived category of “things to pack in a suitcase,” especially
featuring light and small items (e.g., a small tube of toothpaste). Similarly, if we regu-
larly prepare breakfast, we may have a goal-derived category of “breakfast-time” items,
and if we often go to the gym, we could have a category of “my gym things.” The latter
might include, for instance, not only your exercise clothing and shoes but also sham-
poo, soap, and other items that you regularly use when you go to the gym. But when
we need to bring to mind objects that will serve a less frequent or novel purpose (e.g.,
things with which to hold up a window in an unfamiliar suddenly smoke-filled room),
then these are ad hoc categories, for which potential members are generated on the
spot (“on-line”), on an ad hoc basis, as the situation demands, rather than from
memory (e.g., a ruler might work, or a sturdy jar, or a hardcover book). Although we
can, and often do, generate such functionally defined categories, we do not always
know how to proceed in situations that require such generation, particularly if the
relevant goals or other problem aspects are not well defined. Thus, as shown by the
findings of Chrysikou (2006) and also findings from our own lab, discussed earlier in
Chapter 2, training or practice in engaging in such functionally or goal-related catego-
rization may have beneficial carryover effects on subsequent problem solving, per-
haps increasing the ease or spontaneity with which we adopt the modes of processing
that enable such ad hoc categorization, or our cognitive flexibility more generally.
Unilaterally attributing all instances of functional fixedness to the unhelpful
contribution of the design stance has another danger: It may mislead us into
thinking that our lack of sensitivity to potentially useful sensory-perceptual features
is confined to instances involving human artifacts. But growing evidence from
cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, to be reviewed in Chapter 9, argues
that most (perhaps even all?) of our mental representations of concepts are closely
interconnected with, or initially grounded in, sensory-perceptual features and with

motor actions. Not only human artifacts such as chairs and boxes, but other sorts of
natural objects, including people, other animals, and fruits and vegetables, and also
other types of concepts, such as actions and feelings, are closely interconnected
with neural representations of their sensory-perceptual characteristics and with
representations of how things move and act in the world. Nonetheless, we do not
always fully access or use the sensory-perceptual features associated with our mental
representations of objects. Sometimes (as will be shown later) we rely, instead, or
primarily, on verbally based information or associations. This, too, can lead us to fail
to notice and use helpful sensory-perceptual information, leading us to think less
flexibly and creatively than we otherwise would do.
T H E S E N S O R Y - P E R C E P T UA L G R O U N D I N G O F C O N C E P T S :
C O G N I T I V E - B E H AV I O R A L E V I D E N C E
Imagine the following sequence of events (Case 1). You are sitting at a computer. First,
you are asked to read a sentence, shown on the monitor, such as “John hammered the
nail into the floor.” Immediately afterward, you are shown a line drawing of a nail.
Your task is to press the space bar on the computer keyboard as quickly and accurately
as possible if the object shown in the picture was mentioned in the sentence. In the
picture, the nail is shown as in Figure 4.1.
Now imagine the following sequence of events, with the same task requirements
(Case 2). First, you are asked to read a sentence such as “John hammered the nail into
the wall.” Immediately afterward, you are shown a line drawing of a nail. In the picture,
the nail is shown as in Figure 4.1.
In which of these two cases will you answer (press the space bar) most quickly?
Participants who were asked to do this task for a large number of different sentences
and objects were reliably faster in answering the questions when the orientation of
the picture matched the orientation that was implied by the sentence (here Case 2,
where the pictured nail is in a horizontal position congruent with that which would be
adopted when a nail is to be hammered into a wall) than when it was in a nonmatched
orientation (Stanfield & Zwaan, 2001). Across participants, this was true for both pos-
sible ways that the sentence could match the relevant object’s orientation, compared
to either of the nonmatching sentence-picture pairs.
Now imagine three other sequences of events:
(Case 3): First, you are asked to read a sentence such as “The ranger saw the
eagle in its nest.” Immediately afterward, you are shown a line drawing
Figure 4.1. Example Stimulus Picture. Participants were asked to indicate

whether an object such as that shown here had, or had not, been mentioned in the
immediately preceding sentence.
of an eagle. In the picture, the eagle is shown with wings outstretched, as if in

flight.
(Case 4): First, you are asked to read a sentence such as “The ranger saw the eagle in
the sky.” Immediately afterward, you are shown a line drawing of an eagle. In the
picture, the eagle is shown with wings outstretched, as if in flight.
(Case 5): First, you are asked to read a sentence such as “The ranger heard the eagle
in the forest.” Immediately afterward, you are shown a line drawing of an eagle.
In the picture, the eagle is shown with wings outstretched, as if in flight.
If you now were asked simply to name the object shown in the line drawing, as quickly
and accurately as possible, would you be fastest in Case 3, Case 4, or Case 5? Or equally
fast in all instances?
Researchers (Zwaan, Stanfield, & Yaxley, 2002) found that participants were faster
to name the object in the picture if the shape matched that implied by the text (Case
4) than if it mismatched (Case 3). These outcomes are what would be expected if, when
they were reading the sentences, readers mentally generated or “simulated” the
implied shape of the object when reading and comprehending the sentence. Then,
when the shape that they had imagined matched the one shown in the picture they
could name the object more quickly than when the shape did not match the picture.
This result is remarkable given that naming and identifying common objects seems to
be such a simple, well-practiced, and largely “automatic” activity—but nonetheless
was influenced by the specific sensory-perceptual features that were recently mentally
activated, through visual imagery or something akin to a perceptual simulation, in
relation to the to-be-named object.3
Naming response times when the sentence was neutral, neither matching nor mis-
matching the picture (Case 5), fell in between the other two conditions. That is, the
naming response times were ordered as matching < neutral < mismatching. Although
it is not entirely certain why naming times in the neutral condition would fall in
between the response times for the matched and nonmatched conditions, one possi-
bility is that, when the sentences did not strongly bias any one shape of the object,
participants sometimes imagined a shape that matched the shape shown in the pic-
ture, and sometimes imagined a shape that did not match. If, by chance, they imag-
ined a matching shape for about one-half of the neutral sentences, but a nonmatching
shape for the other half, then the average of their naming response times would fall
about midway between the matched and mismatched conditions.
Additional evidence for the important role of something like perceptual simulation
in conceptual tasks derives from property generation tasks, in which participants are
asked to list the characteristics or properties of different nouns. If asked to provide
characteristics of “half a watermelon,” participants provided more features relating to
the interior of the object (e.g., black pips, white band of rind) than if they were just
given the word “watermelon.” It was as if participants had imagined the half melon in
the former case, and so observed more properties relevant to the interior of the
object that otherwise would have been occluded. Consistent with this suggestion, the
object properties that were generated when people were given specific instructions to
visually imagine the objects were very similar to the types of properties that were
generated by people who were given no specific instructions (neutral instructions) as
to how to perform the property generation task (Wu & Barsalou, 2004, cited in
Barsalou, 2003).
Based on these findings, it seems that, in order to think of the properties of an
object, individuals may spontaneously do something very much like imagining the
object. Features of objects may be brought to mind and identified using what Barsalou
(2003) calls a “perceptual simulation” of the relevant concept, as if, to use the concept,
we needed to imaginatively be there, perceptually or behaviorally, rather than remain-
ing an abstract, uninvolved, and disembodied (mental) user of a database. Concepts
thus are dynamic and active mental constructions rather than passive objects or data
points in our minds.
There were two important differences, however, between the properties given by
people with instructions to visually imagine the objects versus those given only the
neutral instructions. First, the participants who were specifically asked to imagine the
objects produced more properties than did those given the neutral instructions. This
observation suggests that the simulations performed by the participants in the neu-
tral condition were less detailed or less extensive than those who were given explicit
imagery instructions. Second, participants in the neutral condition did not always
respond in the same manner as those in the imagery condition. If the task conditions
were easy, such that participants did not need to rely on visual imagery to perform the
task, then there was less similarity between the responses of individuals given direct
instructions to use imagery and those who were given neutral instructions.
This last point is particularly important. For example, in one experiment (Solomon
& Barsalou, 2004), individuals were asked to indicate, as quickly as possible, whether
a given property (e.g., sleeve) was a “physical part” of the concept object (e.g., BLOUSE).
In the easy condition, the false property (e.g., chin) was unassociated with the concept
(e.g., BICYCLE). By contrast, in the difficult condition, the false property (e.g., tree)
was linguistically associated with the concept, but not actually a part of the concept
(e.g., OWL). The difficult condition discouraged people from simply relying on verbal
associations and, instead, required detailed perceptual “look-up” of the information.
In this condition, people who had been given neutral instructions performed very
similarly to people who had been given imagery instructions. Under these conditions,
perceptual qualities of the objects (e.g., the size of the to-be-determined property,
and the ease of finding the property in an image of the concept) predicted how quickly
and accurately the participants could perform the property verification task, both
for people given imagery instructions and for people given neutral instructions.
In contrast, under the easy conditions, the imagery and neutral conditions differed
from one another. Whereas perceptual qualities again predicted the property verifica-
tion performance of the imagery group, linguistic qualities, such as the associative
strength from the concept word to the property, best predicted the verification
performance of the neutral group.
Under easier conditions, participants appeared to rely on the verbal associations
of the properties with the objects, rather than perceptual simulation. Under these
conditions, they could just pay attention to whether the words seemed to be verbally
associated with one another (e.g., chin and BICYCLE are not associated) and base
their answer on this, saying yes if the things were associated and no otherwise.
But this strategy would not work when all of the word pairs were verbally associated
(e.g., tree-OWL; sleeve-BLOUSE), but only some were related in the required way, such
that the first concept was a part of the second concept. These outcomes suggest
that we often may fall back on using a simple word-association strategy in tasks
or problem-solving conditions where this is not explicitly discouraged or does not
interfere with successful performance of the task.
There is an expression used particularly in social psychology that characterizes
people as “cognitive misers” (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, p. 12). This expression is based on
the observation that people often tend to take shortcuts in thinking, using rules of
thumb (heuristics) and other strategies such as relying on general schemas or stereo-
types, so as to best use limited cognitive resources. Perhaps, though, we are sometimes
sensory-perceptual (and emotional) misers too. We may sometimes be overly ready to
respond entirely on the basis of comparatively abstract and sparse lexical or verbal
information, rather than on the basis of richer more fully embedded meanings that
also connect objects to the world of the senses—how something looks, sounds, feels,
tastes, and smells, and the ways in which we interact with it.
Our concept of a chair, for example, is not just an abstract list of features, but it
depends on a rich sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor understanding of chairs,
and particular chairs, including information from vision (what chairs look like),
from action (how hard or soft a given chair is or whether it is stationary or moving,
such as an office chair), touch (perhaps the coolness of leather or the grainy texture of
a fabric), and also emotion and motivation (e.g., a particular chair may be associated
with settling down to study intensively or with relaxation and listening to music).
Although we have such richly linked sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor networks of
meaning about simple objects such as chairs and watermelons, sometimes we bring to
mind only very small and restricted subsets of what is there. Sometimes we make little
connection to the sensory-perceptual features, traversing the deep world of meanings
largely through a suspended “surface net” of words and associations between words.
The perceptual simulation account thus suggests another way of conceiving
the processes that contribute to functional fixedness and other instances where we
simply fail to see what is there, getting stuck in one way of looking at a problem or
problematic situation. From the perceptual simulation perspective, functional
fixedness might be seen as the result of either a form of perceptual simulation that
fails or as the result of excessive reliance on verbal associative information rather than
perceptual information.
Would it help not to think about the objects as they are verbally labeled and
construed (“a candle, a box of tacks, a screen”) but more perceptually, and in relation
to motor imagery and sought-for goals: “what’s needed is a surface for mounting, and
a method of mounting”? Notice that, although such an attempted simulation is more
perceptual than is the verbally based labels description, it still is not extremely
specific, or object bound and context embedded (and so is more abstract, like the first
of the two types of learning described earlier by Birch and Rabinowitz, 1951). For
instance, consider a person who wishes to change the overhead light bulb in
Figure 4.2. The characterization, “what’s needed is a surface that will support one’s
weight and increase one’s reach” does not, in this case, call to mind only one specific
object, or set of objects, but instead allows for multiple instantiations. Simulations
may embrace the essential requirements to perform a given action, such as providing
Figure 4.2. Schematic Characterization of Perceptual Simulation. Any

one of several objects in the room that possesses the appropriate but general physical
characteristics or “affordances” (B) could be enlisted to act as a possible surface for
standing on, so as to fulfill the goals of changing the light bulb (A) or of propping
open the door (C). Reprinted from Barsalou, L. W. (2003, p. 550), Situated simulation
in the human conceptual system, Language and Cognitive Processes, 18, 513–562, with
permission from Taylor & Francis. Copyright 2003, Taylor & Francis.
a surface that will support one’s weight and increase one’s reach, without specifying
precisely the sort of object needed for that action.
In the illustration, the necessary surface might equally well be provided using
the chair, the stool, or the table. Any one of these meets the broad but perceptually
grounded characterization of “a surface for supporting one’s weight and increasing
one’s reach.” Thus, there are degrees of abstraction at the perceptual level as well—
and perceptual simulations need to be at the right level of abstraction to open up
the differing “instantiations” of the necessary parameters that are possible. At the
least, it appears likely that we might show greater flexibility in thinking if we
deliberately attempted to use alternative modes of conceiving a problem—relying
not just on the verbal construal or associations but also attempting to bring to mind
sensory-perceptual images, including a mental simulation of what’s needed for the
problem.
T H E S E N S O R Y - P E R C E P T UA L G R O U N D I N G O F C O N C E P T S :
FURTHER EVIDENCE AND THE ISSUE OF CONTROLLED
V E R S U S A U TO M AT I C A C C E S S
The findings from the easier property verification task used by Solomon and Barsalou
(2004), discussed earlier, suggest that, as also found in the case of functional fixed-
ness, sometimes we may excessively rely on verbal associative properties of objects.
However, whether we are likely to depend on predominantly perceptual versus more
abstract (e.g., functional) information concerning objects or concepts does not neces-
sarily involve a deliberate conscious choice, and there is evidence that sensory-percep-
tual contributors to concept “use” also may exert effects in more indirect, and largely
automatic ways.
One source of evidence for this derives from investigations of the ease with which
individuals can determine whether a given property is characteristic of an object—
and how the speed and accuracy of verification is affected by prior verification within
the same or a different perceptual modality, either across different but successively
presented concepts or for the same concept, presented at different times. In one study
(Pecher et al., 2003), participants were shown the names of different objects (e.g.,
LEAVES) and were then asked to indicate whether a given property applied to those
objects (e.g., rustling). The types of properties that were presented were drawn from
six different modalities, including vision, audition, taste, smell, touch, and action.
Sometimes the property that was given for one trial (e.g., LEAVES-rustling) was from
the same modality as that on the immediately previous trial (e.g., BLENDER-loud); at
other times the modality changed from one trial to the next (e.g., CRANBERRIES-
sour). The nouns that were used differed on every trial.
Participants were faster if the two successive trials involved properties in the same
modality than if they were from different modalities. This result would make sense if,
in order to verify whether, for example, a BLENDER is loud, we perceptually simulate
the sound of a BLENDER, but, in order to determine if, for instance, an APPLE is
shiny, we perceptually simulate the visual appearance of the APPLE—and these differ-
ent modality simulations take place using different brain regions or networks of brain
regions, rather than the same network for both. The brain might be more “efficient” in
using the same neural system and pathways that it had just used than if it had to
switch to a different (or mostly different) system.
These findings for the property verification task are also entirely congruent with
other results that have looked at the speed with which we can actually physically
perceive stimuli in the same perceptual modality or in different modalities. It has been
found that there is a “switch cost” associated with switching our attention between
different perceptual systems, that is, from vision to touch, or from vision to sound, and
so on, rather than attending to successively presented signals within the same modal-
ity. Participants were faster to discriminate whether a signal occurred on the left or the
right if the signal on one trial and the immediately following trial were both in the
same modality, allowing processing within the same sensory system (vision, signaled
by a light; touch, signaled by a touch on a finger; or audition, signaled by a tone) than
when the consecutive signals occurred in different modalities, requiring cognitive and
brain processing to switch between systems (Spence, Nicholls, & Driver, 2000).
More recently, it was shown that there is also a longer-lasting benefit linked to the
specific sensory modality in which we have recently considered a concept that can
remain even when we have been thinking about other concepts in between (Pecher,
Zeelenberg, & Barsalou, 2004). As in the earlier study, participants were presented the
names of objects, and then they were asked to decide whether a given property applied
to the object. However, now the name of each object was presented once, and then a
second time, sometime later in the experiment. The properties that were presented,
and that the participant was asked to evaluate, were either within the same sensory
modality (e.g., APPLE-green; APPLE-shiny; both visual) or in a different modality
(e.g., APPLE-green; APPLE-sour; involving a switch from vision to taste). There was a
significant response time advantage for the same-modality properties even when as
many as 12 or 18 different objects intervened between the two presentations of a
concept (mean median reaction time advantage of 34 ms and 41 ms for the 12 and 18
item lags, respectively). Participants also made fewer errors when the sensory modal-
ity for the first and second presentation was the same than when it changed. Only
when as many as 24 or 100 items were interposed between the first and the second
occurrence of a concept did the same-modality advantage disappear.
In the preceding investigations, changes in participants’ perceptual simulations
were instigated through changing versus holding constant the sensory modality that
was involved. Similarly strong evidence for the rapid and largely automatic effects of
perceptual simulation on individuals’ ability to access specific features of objects has
been provided by a rather different approach, involving manipulating the spatial per-
spective that participants adopt during sentence processing. In one study (Borghi,
Glenberg, & Kaschak, 2004), participants were given context sentences such as “You
are driving a car” versus “You are washing a car” and then were asked to answer verifi-
cation questions such as “Can you touch the headlights?” and “Can you touch the
wheels?” If the sentence context was such that it placed the individual on the inside of
the object (e.g., inside of the car) and the to-be-verified part also was located inside
(e.g., steering wheel, horn, fuel gauge, gas pedal), then these parts were verified more
quickly than if the parts (e.g., trunk, tires, antenna, door handle) were outside. The
reverse was true if the participant was imaginatively on the outside of the object; they
then verified outside parts more quickly than inside ones. In addition, for a given per-
spective, such as the inside perspective, objects that would, in actuality, be physically
nearer to the person from that same perspective were responded to more quickly than
were other objects that, although also potentially touched from that perspective,
would be farther away from the person. In contrast, objects external to the current
perspective were responded to more slowly, and similarly slowly regardless of their
distance. That is, if one could not touch the object from one’s current location, then
the magnitude of the part’s distance from one had no effect.
Additional analyses suggested that these perspective effects did not arise from dif-
ferences in semantic or associative relatedness; furthermore, the stimuli were designed
to make it very difficult for participants to rely on quick associative checks because the
nontarget probes were all associatively related to the target. For example, for the car
target, on the distracter trials participants were asked to indicate whether they could
touch the garage, road, taxi, and street—all requiring a “no” answer because none
are parts of a car, even though all are associatively related to the concept of car
(cf. the findings of Solomon and Barsalou, 2004, discussed earlier). These changes in
the accessibility of relevant (spatially proximate) information occurred largely auto-
matically or implicitly, as a consequence or by-product of mental simulation
(MacWhinney, 2005a, 2005b, Zwaan & Madden, 2005). These results seem to point to
what Borghi and colleagues called “an exquisite type of flexibility” (Borghi, Glenberg, &
Kaschak, 2004, p. 865), wherein alterations in perspective alter not only the readiness
with which individuals can gain access to information about particular object parts but
also to information about the spatial and functional relations among the parts.
Taken together, these and many related findings, clearly suggest that we do, indeed,
“think with our senses,” and that the effects of such thinking can be shown even on
simple tasks that appear to draw upon long-known simple facts about objects, such as
the color and taste of apples or the location of the horn or the steering wheel of an
automobile. Paying attention to perceptual details sometimes involves noticing fea-
tures and relations that are actually present “out there” in the world. But paying atten-
tion to perceptual details also sometimes involves noticing features and relations that
are only potentially available for us to retrieve from our “inside world” of stored knowl-
edge, memory, and experiences. It may also require abstention from a too ready reli-
ance on simple verbal-associative knowledge, and engagement in more imaginative
perceptual and sensory-motor simulations. Both forms of noticing are a key part of
what enables more flexible and more adept thinking. A further example of the central
role of such noticing in problem solving is taken up at the end of this chapter, in
Excursion 3, entitled, A Hypothetical Train of Thought: Perceptual Simulation in
Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.
P E R C E P T I O N , P E R C E P T UA L S I M U L AT I O N ,
A N D H Y P OT H E S I S G E N E R AT I O N
If one has had a brief and introductory exposure to elementary distinctions in logic
and has discussed the differences between deduction and induction, one may well
have wondered: Is this really all there is? Are there not many situations where reason-
ing—and agile thinking—seem to depend on processes that are neither strictly deduc-
tive nor inductive? What about the processes involved when we are attempting to
solve a “mystery” or a puzzling set of circumstances, such as might confront a detec-
tive, or a scientist, with several disconnected pieces of evidence that appear to point in
quite different directions? Situations such as these, in which we are attempting to find
a promising direction of search—to decide which of many possible leads to follow and
which to reject as a probable dead end, so as to get closer to identifying the perpetrator
of the crime or the likely causes of an anomalous event or finding—certainly seem to
involve something like reasoning. But the form of reasoning involved is neither strictly
deductive (forwarding or articulating premises, and drawing conclusions from

those premises) nor inductive (forwarding or enumerating instances and arriving at
generalizations on the basis of those instances).
The possibility of a third way of thinking and reasoning, for arriving at possible or
likely knowledge, beyond deduction or induction, and that we can draw upon in situa-
tions such as these, was proposed by the philosopher Charles S. Peirce, in a form of
thinking he called “abduction.” Peirce used this term in many ways, but he often asso-
ciated it with the stage at which new ideas or hypotheses are generated, regardless of
whether and to what extent they also, concurrently or subsequently, are systemati-
cally evaluated and tested. Thus, Peirce wrote: “The first starting of a hypothesis and
the entertaining of it, whether as a simple interrogation or with any degree of confi-
dence, is an inferential step which I propose to call abduction” (Peirce, 1901/1935,
6.525, p. 358, italics in the original).
This form of creative or generative reasoning (sometimes also called “ampliative”
reasoning) involves a movement from a given set of observations—often one or more
observations that appear puzzling, or surprising, or incongruous in some way—to a
new idea or a new construal of those observations. It is closely linked to finely tuned
sensory-perceptual awareness and so has been described as a form of reasoning that
detectives use; “the logic of the ‘deductions’ of Sherlock Holmes is typically abductive”
(Niiniluto, 1999, p. S441; also see R. G. Burton, 2000). For a detective, facts are not
simply assembled and then taken “as given.” Rather, some of the alleged facts appear
odd, or incongruous; subtle details, and slight slantings or shadings of the purported
facts seem out of synch with one another and with a more global sense of what must
have happened. Accordingly, the investigator attempts to suspend belief in one or
more of these incongruous “would-be facts,” searching and probing for what is “really
there” in the temporal-spatial and explanatory gap they seem to inhabit. What really
happened? Neither the incongruity nor the eventual insight into the more probable
sequence of events (an insight that is, admittedly, sometimes or even oftentimes
mistaken, but if found to be so, gives both impetus and direction to further search)
would be likely to occur if the detective simply accepted the way the events have been
perceived, and conceived, by others.
Peirce suggests that the processes of perceptual judgment and the process of
“abduction” are intimately interconnected, with the one closely shading into the
other:
abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line
of demarcation between them […] the perceptive judgment is the result of a
process, although of a process not sufficiently conscious to be controlled, or
to state it more truly, not controllable and therefore not fully conscious. If
we were to subject this subconscious process to logical analysis, we should
find that it terminated in what that analysis would represent as an abductive
inference. (Peirce, 1901/1935, 5.181, p. 113)
These arguments suggest that noticing the perceptual features of a situation

may be particularly important to the process of generating new hypotheses or explan-
atory accounts of an event or series of events. Direct experimental support for this
possibility was provided by the “think-aloud” protocols (transcripts) of individuals as

they attempted to solve an insight problem in the laboratory (C. A. Kaplan & Simon,
1990). In the think-aloud procedure, individuals are asked to verbally say what they
are thinking as they engage on a task; what they say is then later coded to help under-
stand and evaluate the thinking processes that people use as they approach a task,
how these change across time or in response to particular events (e.g., if something
goes wrong), and so on.
The experimental task used what is called the “mutilated checkerboard” problem.
The problem is quite simple: A standard 8 x 8 checkerboard is presented but two of the
squares have been removed, one at each of two diagonal corners. The participants are
asked to imagine placing dominos on the board so that each domino either covers two
horizontally adjacent or two vertically adjacent squares. Diagonal placements are not
allowed. The problem is either to show how 31 dominos would cover the remaining
62 squares or to prove logically that a complete covering is impossible.
It was found that individuals who solved the problem comparatively more quickly
showed what Kaplan and Simon called greater “flexibility in noticing” (C. A. Kaplan &
Simon, 1990, pp. 411–412). People who solved the problem relatively rapidly noticed
both more nonperceptual aspects of the problem (e.g., related to strategies such as
decomposition, or mathematical properties) and more perceptual aspects of the prob-
lem (e.g., color). They noticed “not only more things, but a wider variety of things.”
This, then, agrees with the more philosophical observations of Peirce. It suggests
that in order to think more flexibly we should try to look and perceive more flexibly,
noticing more about the “problem space” or problematic situation that we are in. But
is this really that helpful? To “notice everything” is simply impossible. Can no further
guidance be provided? What out of all the many (often changing) things, and the
many relations between things, should we try to notice?
Kaplan and Simon were aware of the need for such further guidance and, based on
their detailed analyses of the think-aloud protocols, they provide a very helpful rule of
thumb. We should try to notice what remains the same in our various attempts to solve a
problem—what is “invariant” across different approaches, whether that is a perceptual
feature or something that is nonperceptual. They found that all of the participants
who successfully solved the mutilated checkerboard problem noticed perceptual
invariants in the problems within the first 10 minutes of attempting to solve the prob-
lem. By contrast, none of the slow subjects did so.
For the mutilated checkerboard task, noticing invariants across different attempts
to cover the board will direct attention to a key feature in the solution. Each time that
the attempt at covering fails, attention might be directed to the remaining, uncovered
squares. And, at some point, it would be noticed that the squares that are still uncov-
ered always are of the same color. Because the two squares that were removed were of
the same color, it is impossible to cover the remaining 62 squares with 31 dominos if
each domino must be placed either horizontally or vertically, thus covering two squares
of a different color. The squares remaining on the board are not completely “paired” by
color and so can never be completely covered by dominos that must each cover one
black and one white square.
In a large and complex realm of possible places to look when we are trying hard to
gain a grip on a problem or problematic situation, even a little guidance as to where we
should be looking may prove tremendously helpful. As Kaplan and Simon (1990,
p. 413) note: “The essence of discovery [. . .] is that you do not know beforehand where
the solution may lie. If noticing invariants, and in particular perceptual invariants,
provided even a little search constraint for the ill-defined task of discovery, then we
have a cause for celebration.” Perceptually grounded attentive thinking and “flexibility
in noticing” may allow us to bootstrap closer to an understanding of what really
happened or is happening in a mysterious series of events—whether those events
involve a dark and sordid crime, a deceptively simple brain teaser, or the real life but
often strange and unexpected mysteries that make a scientist’s world.4
In this connection, it is noteworthy that a recent attempt to develop a measure
of adult temperament, and to relate measures of temperament to well-established
personality dimensions, reported a very substantial correlation of r = .65 between the
Big Five personality dimension of “intellect/openness to experience”—related to
receptivity to new ideas and experiences and curiosity—and a measure of “orienting
sensitivity.” The latter measure might broadly be seen as an index of “noticing” and
included items assessing three forms of sensitivity: perceptual sensitivity, involving
awareness of slight, low-intensity stimulation arising from either the external or
internal environment; associative sensitivity, related to one’s noticing of automatic
cognitive activity, and affective perceptual sensitivity, concerned with one’s awareness
of affect associated with low intensity stimuli. The researchers comment that it was
surprising that, despite the large differences in the content of the items measuring
orienting sensitivity and openness to experience, these scales showed such a substan-
tial correlation. “It was surprising to note that orienting sensitivity, including
awareness of low-intensity stimuli, was related to much more complex personality
constructs like self-reported insight, reflection and imagination as measured in the
Big Five/[Five Factor Model]. In the past, the origins of openness have been much less
clear than for the other factors. Replication of this finding in the future and its
inclusion in developmental studies will be of great interest” (D. E. Evans & Rothbart,
2007, p. 882). The important contribution of openness to experience to agile thinking
is considered in Chapter 6.
ENACTING THINKING: THE BENEFITS OF PERCEPTION

AND ACTION IN ANALOGICAL THOUGHT
Earlier, in Chapter 2, we considered evidence relating to the role of abstract versus
specific content in analogical reasoning. We focused particularly on the effects of the
extraction of relatively abstract versus specific representations of a problem and a
problem solution on the likelihood that individuals would successfully notice analogi-
cal correspondences if they initially encountered a problem in one form and context
(the source) and later encountered it in a different form and context (the target).
Based on a wide range of evidence, pointing to both the potential costs and benefits of
extracting more specific representations, it was argued that the flexible and adaptive
use of learning across contexts might be best promoted by the combined use of percep-
tually grounded and more abstract representations, with greater specificity perhaps
particularly important in enhancing the likelihood that some individuals would appro-
priately access (retrieve) relevant knowledge when needed (also cf. Medin & Ross,
1989). However, characterizations of the processes involved in analogical transfer

have predominantly assumed that the representations that allow a mapping between
a source and the target are amodal or language-like representations, rather than
involving visual-spatial, sensory-perceptual, or motor aspects.
Catrambone and colleagues (2006) have provided intriguing evidence challenging
this amodal construal—and showing an influence of kinesthetic or motor represe-
ntations on the likelihood of analogical transfer. The source problem they used
involved the “General story” (Gick & Holyoak, 1980, 1983) in which a rebel leader is
planning to attack a dictator’s fortress with his army. The rebel knows that, in order to
overcome the fortress, the strength of his entire army will be necessary. Yet the roads
leading to the fortress have been strewn with land mines that will detonate if his army
marches en masse. How can the rebel leader nonetheless successfully attack the for-
tress? The transfer problem was Duncker’s radiation problem (described further later),
which requires participants to determine how an inoperable tumor might be destroyed
using radiation but without destroying surrounding healthy tissue. Under the guise of
a suitable cover story, in which participants were told that they would take part in two
separate studies, one concerned with how people recalled stories in different modali-
ties and one concerned with problem solving, Catrambone et al. (2006) contrasted the
rates of transfer to the target problem under three conditions.
In one condition, the verbal condition, participants were instructed to reconstruct
the story of the General (the source problem) in a purely verbal way, without using
their hands if possible. In the second condition, the sketch condition, participants
were asked to draw a simple map-like diagram, showing what had happened in the
story at the same time as they verbally recounted it. They were asked to use simple
shapes and contours to represent locations, and lines and arrows to represent direc-
tion and movement. Finally, in the third and critical condition, participants were given
three wooden blocks—one small square block said to represent the fortress, and two
longer rectangles (presented to the participants aligned beside one another), said to
represent the rebel’s army. Participants in this condition, the enactment condition,
were asked to use the wooden blocks to show what had happened in the story.
Following their “recall” of the General story, all participants took part in the “problem-
solving” phase, in which they were presented the radiation problem (the target
problem). Initially no hint was given as to the relevance of the first problem to the
second problem (Phase 1). However, if participants had not solved the problem after a
given amount of time, they were given an explicit hint and a further 2.5 minutes,
asking them to try to solve the problem “on the basis of the story that they had read
earlier” (Phase 2).
In Phase 1 of the test (pre-hint phase), participants who had used the blocks to
reenact the General’s story were significantly more likely to successfully solve the anal-
ogous radiation problem (success rate of 52%) than were participants in either the
sketch (27%) or the verbal (19%) conditions, whereas the latter conditions did not
differ from one another. Once the hint was given, the majority of participants solved
the radiation problem, and the three groups performed very similarly to one another
(91%, 85%, and 86%, respectively). Catrambone et al. (2006) argued that these
significant differences in the likelihood of spontaneously accessing the analogical
solution did not reflect differences in how memorable or how well encoded the source
problem was—as shown by the further finding that neither the number of features
recalled, nor the quality of recall, of the original General problem differed between the
three groups.
Rather, the physical enactment, particularly the process of showing, using the rect-
angular blocks, how the rebel’s forces might collide at the center (on the fortress),
seemed to increase the likelihood that the participants activated a “convergent force”
schema during the recall phase that could then be called upon again and successfully
accessed when confronting the radiation problem. Catrambone and colleagues argued
that, although a kinesthetic schema might encode structure, it is the fact that it was
possible to directly “read off ” the salient kinesthetic and spatial attributes (e.g., strong
at the center, weak at the periphery) that makes such a schema especially useful. More
broadly, they concluded that, “current models of analogical reasoning might be
improved by including perceptual information as part of their representational
schemes” (Catrambone et al., 2006, p. 1126).
These findings are congruent with two earlier demonstrations, by Beveridge and
Parkins (1987) and Pedone et al. (2001), showing the importance of animation and
perhaps implicit perceptual-spatial action in increasing the accessibility of the source
analog. Beveridge and Parkins (1987) found that the spontaneous generation of the
convergence solution among university students was increased to an astonishing 95%
when the “lines of force” in the source problem were first illustrated using six trans-
parent blue plastic strips that were hinged together at one end that was fastened to a
white sheet. The strips then were gradually “fanned out”—simultaneously showing
both a dispersion in intensity of the many “rays” as the color of the strips changed
from a darker to lighter blue and the summation of intensities at the center, where the
strips all overlapped and met one another, and so remained a darker blue. This highly
visual method of depicting both the summation and dispersion components of the
problem also yielded successful transfer in nearly a third of children, aged 10 to 11
years, who were tested.
Similarly, Pedone et al. (2001) showed that presenting participants with a diagram
of the source problem, particularly an animated (rather than static) converging arrow
diagram indicating motion toward the central point, markedly increased participants’
success on the subsequently presented target problem. Although these researchers
suggested that the representations underlying analogical inference might still be
largely amodal abstract schemas for convergence, they also considered that, either
instead, or in addition, the dynamic displays yield a “representation of moving forces
that is more purely perceptual than the kind of representation generated by reading
text” (p. 220). They argued that the solution to these problems depends “in a deep
sense, on understanding the perceptual and physical reality of how converging forces
interact with each other and with other objects that they contact along their
paths” and, further, that “this type of understanding may be best conveyed by
animated displays that generate rich perceptual representations” (p. 220).5
In conjunction, these outcomes strongly argue that the importance of “thinking
with our senses” extends also to the often creatively central process of analogical
reasoning, including beneficial effects of convergent support from visual, motor, and
kinesthetic representational processes. Yet neither the story, nor the case for “think-
ing with our senses,” ends here. The case is further bolstered by direct measurements
of individuals’ perceptual and motor activity itself during thought, for example, their
eye movements and gestures. Movements of our eyes or hands may not only support
analogical and other forms of problem solving but may in some instances reliably pre-
cede and perhaps provoke insight. It is to these ways in which our current perception
and physical actions can both support and advance agile thinking that we now turn.
Current Perception and Action as Guiding—or

Preceding—Thought
W H E R E T H E E Y E S G O, T H E M I N D A L S O
( S O M E T I M E S B E L AT E D LY ) G O E S
In the classic insight problem, known as the radiation or tumor problem, and that
served as the target problem in the studies just considered, the participant is asked to
suppose that he or she is a doctor, and one of his or her patients has an inoperable
stomach tumor. Participants are further told to suppose that they have learned that
one technique that can be used involves rays that destroy organic tissue when directed
with sufficient intensity. The problem is to determine how she or he can use these rays
to destroy the tumor without harming the healthy tissue that surrounds it. In one
study (Grant & Spivey, 2003), participants were presented this problem, together with
a simple diagram such as that shown in Figure 4.3. The figure showed a dark circle (the
tumor) inside a larger circle. The outer surface of the larger circle represented the skin,
and the intermediate area inside it represented the healthy tissue. Grant and Spivey
(2003) then used eye-tracking equipment to determine where participants looked,
and for how long, as they tried to solve the problem.
Examining the patterns of eye movements that participants made, it was found that
participants who made longer and more frequent visual fixations on the skin region of
the diagram were more likely to solve the problem than did those who looked at the
skin region less often. Compared to participants who did not solve the problem, the
participants who solved the problems on their own (without any hints) also made a
larger number of in-and-out eye movements that crossed the skin barrier, first looking
at a point outside of the skin, then to the tumor, and back out to a different point out-
side. Such in-and-out eye movement patterns also increased when participants were
given a hint as to how to solve the problem but had not yet achieved the solution.
All of these eye-movement patterns make sense given the solution to the problem.
The solution is to project a large number of low-intensity rays from several different
angles from outside the skin and through the healthy tissue, so that the rays converge
Figure 4.3. Schematic Drawing of the “Tumor Problem.”

on the tumor. The rays then will meet with sufficient combined intensity to
destroy the tumor but, because they pass through the healthy tissue in distributed low
intensities, they leave the healthy tissue unharmed.
What would happen if the perceptual attention of participants who were trying to
solve the problem were indirectly and surreptitiously drawn to the skin area? To test
this, Grant and Spivey (2003) performed another experiment, in which they again
presented participants with a verbal statement of the problem, together with a dia-
gram of the problem. However, in the experimental condition the circle that repre-
sented the skin area pulsed at a slow rate, thereby subtly “animating” the relevant
information. In the control condition, the diagram was either presented in a static
form, or a noncritical aspect of the diagram (the tumor itself) was subtly animated.
When the skin area was animated, twice as many participants reached the solution
than in either of the control conditions. Increasing the perceptual salience of the crit-
ical feature through the subtle animation effect in the skin region helped participants
to solve the problem.
These results suggest an interesting possibility. Although we generally assume that
where we look and attend is, if not irrelevant to how we think, then at least guided by
it, it may sometimes be the reverse—how we think may be informed by where it is we
look and attend. This possibility would cohere with the perceptual simulation account
that, in thinking about events or situations, we engage in “perceptual simulations” in
which we imaginatively act out interactions with objects and problem situations (see
Barsalou, 2003). From this viewpoint it is possible that participants’ “in-and-out eye
movements” themselves acted to initiate, or to “jump-start,”6 a perceptual simulation
of the multiple converging rays that, together, would allow destruction of the tumor.
How participants looked may have helped them to think more flexibly, so as to reach
this solution, or their looking may have been “ahead of” their conscious, explicitly
articulated problem solving.
Eye movements may also presage, or anticipate, explicit conscious steps in think-
ing in a quite different sort of task (Knoblich et al., 1999). “Matchstick arithmetic
problems” are arithmetic problems expressed in Roman numerals that are constructed
out of simple “matchsticks” (i.e., elongated narrow rectangles or matchstick shapes).
When first presented to the participant, each problem is incorrect. For example, the
expression
IV = III + III
is incorrect. The aim of the task is to change the problem so as to make the arithmetic
correct, producing a true arithmetic statement. However, according to the rules, you
must do this by moving a single matchstick from one position in the statement to
another. Furthermore, matchsticks may not be discarded, but can only be moved
within the problem. How can you solve this problem, moving just one matchstick?
The problem can be solved by moving the very first matchstick from in front of the
V and placing it after it instead, yielding VI = III + III. This is now a valid statement,
and it was achieved by changing the location of only one “matchstick.”
Participants who are shown problems of this general sort (Problem Type A) tend to
solve these problems quite quickly. However, they take much longer to solve another
sort of problem (Problem Type B), and sometimes simply cannot solve them, even
after a prolonged time period of attempting to do so:
III = III + III
When participants did solve problems of this sort, they often changed where they
tended to look when scanning the problems. The places they looked for relatively
longer durations, particularly during long visual fixations, were especially likely
to change from their earlier patterns of looking. Participants who were successful
at solving Problem B began to spend longer periods looking at the “plus sign” or the
operator in the problem. This change in where they looked both preceded and accom-
panied their insight into the problem. They thus were looking precisely where the
solution was, even before they had consciously become aware of how to solve the prob-
lem: Problem B is solved by changing the plus sign into an equal sign (III = III = III),
producing a true statement by, again, moving only one matchstick.
Successful resolution of Problem B, or other problems like it, requires that we
overcome an initial assumption about the nature of arithmetic problems. We assume
that the values in the equations are the variable elements, and so might be changed
to make the equation valid, but that the operators are constants. Participants’ realiza-
tion that the operators, too, might be changed was preceded by greater visual
attention allocated to the operators. Another constraint that may have made
solving Problem B particularly difficult is that the solution involves the creation of a
tautology—a statement that is true by virtue of its logical form alone. We know that
III = III = III, but it’s obvious that that is true, so we may be resistant to saying (or even
thinking?) so.
Are the processes involved in reaching a solution to this type of problem voluntary
or involuntary, controlled or automatic? After our initial explorations of various
unfruitful options, none of which yields a solution, we frequently experience a sense
of almost giving up or of not knowing where to turn—an impasse. At this point, we
know that we need to try something new or different, but not yet what.
One account of what happens at this point is that we “relax constraints” that were
implicitly or automatically adopted during our first attempts. For example, in Problem
B, the assumption that the changes must be in the values of the equation, rather than
in the operators, was relaxed, and this, for those who successfully solved the problem,
was reflected in the changed distribution of where they looked.
But where do these constraints themselves come from? A key contributor to how
we initially represent the problem involves past experience with similar kinds of prob-
lems (e.g., solving equations). When we first encounter a problem, we rely on past
general rules or ways of segmenting and understanding information (schemas, chunks,
procedures, rules) that we have used in similar situations, often successfully, in the
past. But—unlike past successes—the representation is in some manner inappro-
priate to the current problem.
Now try yet another problem (Problem Type C), again using the same rules:
Make the statement true, by moving only one matchstick.
XI = III + III
Participants who solved this problem began, toward the end of their solution attempts,
to look longer at the result (XI). Problem C can be solved by changing the result from
XI to VI, but now by decomposing the “X” itself, and rearranging it into a “V.” Problem
C requires us to overcome a different tendency—that of treating the multielement
Roman numerals (e.g., X, V) as wholes or integrated units that cannot be further
decomposed or rearranged. Again, increased perceptual attention was devoted to
the aspects that led to the solution of the problem (here the result), even before
individuals consciously were aware that this comprised the way to a solution.
The impasse in the case of Problem C arises from a different kind of nonhelpful
reliance on past experience. In this case, the solution was difficult to see because of our
tendency to treat certain well-learned or meaningful forms (e.g., X, V) in a holistic
integrated manner. This holistic processing bias makes it more difficult to think of the
possibility of breaking up or disassembling a given form into smaller component
pieces.
The processes that lead us to treat complex and well-learned objects, such as the
Roman numerals X or V, as unified “chunks” are largely automatic. Findings from
perceptual learning show that, with repetition, what was initially perceived and treated
as a complex stimulus of many individual parts (e.g., words) becomes grouped,
chunked, or “unitized” into a single complex functional unit (e.g., Goldstone, 1998).
This unit then can be perceived and rapidly acted upon, even if only a part of the
stimulus is presented.
The chunking of the multielement Roman numerals appears to be a largely auto-
matic process that occurs without much effort and without our intending to make it
happen. But what about the process of decomposing chunks when the chunks are not
necessary or when they interfere with what we need to do? Is this decomposing or
deconstruction under conscious control, or not? What is it that leads us to give up or
to relax perceptual or other assumptions that we are making that are inappropriate
and that block us from seeing the solution to a problem?
In considering their eye movement findings with the matchstick arithmetic prob-
lems, Knoblich and colleagues (1999) were reluctant to take a clear stance on this ques-
tion. For instance, in the case of the unitized Roman numerals, they suggest that,
“moving to a more fine-grained perceptual representation by breaking up familiar per-
ceptual patterns (chunks) is one of the mind’s responses to persistent failure” (Knoblich
et al., 1999, p. 1536). Yet stating that this process occurs as part of “the mind’s response
to persistent failure” describes when the constraints are changed, not how.
However, recent research provides some hints on how appropriate—but also some-
times inappropriate—constraints may exert their effects in the first place. Some
insight into the factors that lead to the adoption of what may be too narrow or other-
wise inappropriate constraints, and the factors that enable subsequent revision or
“relaxation” of those constraints, is provided by examination of how patients with
brain lesions approach the matchstick arithmetic problems. There is evidence that,
counterintuitively, individuals with lateral frontal lesions were able to solve Type C
problems not less often but more often than did normal controls. Both the patient and
control groups showed high and nearly identical levels of performance on the easier,
Type A problems. In contrast, whereas only 43% of 23 controls solved the Type C
problems, 82% of the 17 patients with lateral frontal cortical lesions did so (Reverberi,
Toraldo, D’Agnostini, & Skrap, 2005). Furthermore, the patients with lateral frontal
lesions solved Type A and Type C problems with equal ease.
What explanation can be given for this highly counterintuitive result? Why might
the performance of patients with brain lesions exceed that of individuals with intact
brain function on these difficult problems? Although a definitive answer to this ques-
tion is not yet possible, it is known that lateral frontal cortex is involved in a very wide
range of memory and thinking processes. The types of cognitive processes that call
on this brain region range from retrieving memory for recent events to accessing
general knowledge or semantic information, and from engaging in planning ahead
and reasoning to switching attention between tasks or stimuli. One account of what
the dorsolateral region of prefrontal cortex does in all of these quite different sorts of
tasks is to help define and select a set of possible responses that is appropriate for a
particular task and to bias responses in favor of that set.
The surprisingly good performance of the patients with lateral frontal lesions on
the Type C matchstick problems, particularly their ability to outperform the normal
controls, thus raises the possibility that our overly constrained construal of the task
may be mediated by the frontal lobes. Our too narrow interpretation may arise from
the imposition of “top-down” selection processes on perceptual and cognitive func-
tions (cf. Desimone & Duncan, 1995; Nathaniel-James & Frith, 2002).
The process of defining and selecting a possible set of responses in a given situation
has been incisively described as “sculpting the response space” by the proponents of
this account (e.g., Nathaniel-James & Frith, 2002). Damage to the lateral prefrontal
cortex is proposed to interfere with this biasing process. Paradoxically, then, the
reduced constraints on the set of possible responses in the patients with lesions to
lateral frontal cortex allowed them to solve the difficult Type C matchstick problems
more readily than did the normal controls.
Does this mean, as the authors ask in the title of the paper reporting these find-
ings, that we might be “better without (lateral) frontal cortex”? The answer clearly is
“no.” In other circumstances, and more frequently, the absence of frontally mediated
task-related constraints leads the patients to perform less well, and the absence of
such constraints may make the task more difficult. For example, although the patients
solved Type C problems more readily than did the controls, this was not true for Type
B problems, where the patients performed slightly more poorly than did the controls.
Another important measure of performance showed that there was also something
further amiss with the performance of the patients with frontal damage for the
Type B problems. This measure involved looking at the individual’s success rates not
for the first problem that was presented, but for further problems of that sort that
were presented after the first problem had been correctly solved. After a person solves
a problem of a given sort (e.g., Type B) for the first time, he or she should become
aware of the inappropriate constraint he or she had been working within and realize
that it was not appropriate. The constraint is then “relaxed.”
The researchers calculated a measure of “accuracy after relaxation” by calculating
the proportion of times a participant was able to find the solution, without cues, after
he or she had correctly solved one problem of that type before. Whereas the relax
scores for the patients and controls did not differ from one another for either the
Type A or for the Type C problems, they did differ for Type B problems. For these
problems, the controls showed significantly higher “relax scores” than did the patients.
For these problems, then, the (frontally mediated) failure to impose constraints was
clearly detrimental to the patients and they did not seem to be able to efficiently
use their prior experience with the general type of problem to help answer future
problems of a similar kind to the one they had just solved.
Adoption of excessively narrow or inappropriate constraints, and the subsequent
successful revision or “relaxation” of those constraints, may also critically involve
changes in attention and, especially, our attention to perceptual information. As
further developed in the next section, there are multiple factors that may assume part
of the blame, or a good portion of the blame, for our less than fully flexible “essays” in
approaching problems or, more broadly, intellectual and scientific puzzles of various
forms.
M A N Y PAT H WAY S TO R I G I D T H I N K I N G : N OT O N E B U T S E V E R A L
C U E S M AY L E A D U S A S T R AY
The pattern of findings with the matchstick problems seems to highlight cases where
our past learning and habits lead us to interpret and see a problem or problematic
situation in a nonhelpful way, which then leads to biased or blunted perception—a
failure to “think with our senses” (cf. Bilalic et al., 2008, 2010). Nonetheless, it is
unlikely that all of our cases of getting stuck in our thinking arise from such mis-
guided top-down (higher level) interpretations. Bottom-up processes, involving more
basic or low-level aspects of how we perceive events and objects, may also play a role.
For instance, whereas the tendency to focus on the variables of an arithmetic equation
may reflect our prior experience with mathematics, the tendency to treat individual
numerals and arithmetic operators as units rather than simply collections of straight
lines is based on our extensive experience with text and written symbols, and such
unitization may involve lower level perceptual grouping factors (e.g., Wu, Knoblich,
Wei, & Luo, 2009).
It is, then, too simplistic to assume that only one sort of factor contributes to our
impasses in attempting to solve insight problems or in our efforts to see what we
might do in other sorts of problematic situations. Although knowledge factors often
play a role, when knowledge or experiences are brought to bear on the problem that
may be inappropriate, misleading perceptual factors involving such aspects as percep-
tual integrity (e.g., unitization in the matchstick problems) and figure-ground rela-
tionships, and other Gestalt laws may conspire to make solving a problem difficult.
Such perceptually based factors may act to make us less likely to see ways that we could
get a handle on the problem, such that “crucial affordances” (Kershaw & Ohlsson,
2004, p. 4), or important entryways into handling the problem, are overlooked. Other
difficulties arise from process factors, such as how many different options can be con-
sidered and explored (e.g. Ash & Wiley, 2006; Fleck, 2008). The more possibilities
there are, the more difficult it is to be exhaustive in trying them all and to accurately
keep track of the ones we have tried. The number of steps into the future that must be
foreseen (the amount of “look ahead”) and how clearly we understand what the solu-
tion would look like, even if we should “happen upon” it (the specificity of the goal
state), are other important process factors that may cause difficulties.
Figure 4.4. The Nine-Dot Problem.
Clear support for the idea that it may be a “conspiracy” of multiple kinds of
factors that renders some problems particularly difficult to solve was provided in an
experiment that used a different, seemingly straightforward but rarely solved, task.
Consider a simple square, comprised of nine black dots, as shown in Figure 4.4. The
problem is apparently equally straightforward: How could you connect all of the dots,
with exactly four straight lines, without lifting the pen from the paper, and without
retracing?
This apparently simple task is surprisingly difficult, such that it has an expected
average solution rate of close to 0% when presented under standard laboratory condi-
tions that allow only a few minutes for the task (Kershaw & Ohlsson, 2004; Maier,
1930). Solution rates have only rarely been raised above 50%, and this has usually
been done only by substantially changing the nature of the problem, as in simplifying
the problem by giving away the first one or two lines of the solution, by adding more
dots to the problem, or by providing extensive strategy training and practice.
Nonetheless, individual hints can boost performance to some extent. Thus, rather
than near zero, the solution rate increases to nearly 20% or 25% when participants
are given the hint that going outside the dots is permitted, and the solution rate is also
increased by placing the square on a background surface that has unfilled or shaded
circles rather than a pure white background.
Combining several hints, some of which help to “undo” perceptually based
constraints, and others that help to undo constraints based on the inappropriate
application of prior knowledge, may additively boost performance (Kershaw & Ohlsson,
2004). Participants achieved higher solution success rates if there was a background
grid that encouraged them to see that turns might be made not only on dots but also
on the surrounding background space (so-called non-dot turns) than if there was no
such grid. This change in the background helps to combat the strong figural quality of
the square formed by the dots and the mistaken assumption that the lines must be
within the figure, rather than also reaching beyond the square and changing direction
on the surrounding background. Participants also achieved higher solution success
rates if they had prior training that gave them a more specific idea of what the solution
might look like (i.e., the goal configuration). Yet neither of these types of hints led
to anything like stellar levels of performance. With a single helpful hint the highest
solution rate was only 17.5%. But combining the hints, so that a perceptual factor, a
knowledge factor, and a process factor were all simultaneously addressed, raised the
solution rate to 40%. . . . The solution is given in Figure 4.5.
Figure 4.5. Solution to the Nine-Dot Problem. Adapted from: Maier, N. R. F.

(1930). Reasoning in humans: I. On direction. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 10,
115–143.
This outcome, while also hardly stellar, is noticeably better than the rate obtained
with no hints or with only one type of hint. This outcome also suggests that what “it”
is that causes our failure to see (or otherwise “sense”) what’s there—or what could be
there in our endeavors at creative or insightful problem solving—is not likely to be
any one thing. Rather, “it” may most often be the convergence or unhelpful collusion
of several factors that, together, lead us into a wrong-headed and rigid approach to a
problem or situation. The rigidity of our thinking in these instances may be psycho-
logically overdetermined: an outcome of several factors, including a combination of
one or more ingredients of misleading or inappropriate knowledge application, fail-
ures to perceive, and/or factors relating to how we set about thinking about and
approaching the problem, such as a too narrowly or incorrectly defined problem.7
N OT A N E P I P H E N O M E N O N : G E S T U R E S A S R E P R E S E N TAT I O N A L
A C TO R S W I T H I N — A N D S O M E T I M E S P R E S C I E N T
P R E C U R S O R S TO — T H I N K I N G
During face-to-face conversation, individuals often spontaneously use their hands as
they talk. These “co-speech gestures,” or hand movements made concurrently during
speaking, take many different forms, but they have been broadly classified into several
types. Most prominently, such gestures include: iconic or representational gestures, in
which individuals represent action or object-related semantic content, such as bring-
ing a cupped hand to the mouth to represent “drinking”; deictic gestures, in which the
speaker indicates an object, person, or other referent that is referred to, such as point-
ing toward a building or gesturing toward a chair when inviting someone to take a
seat; and emblematic or conventional gestures, involving culturally agreed-upon signs,
such as the “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” signs, or raising the index finger to the
lips to indicate the need for quietness.8 Gestures may also occur during an individual’s
efforts to understand and solve problems, such as algebra or physics problems in the
case of adults, or Piagetian problems regarding the conservation of mass or liquid
(e.g., Piaget & Inhelder, 1974) in the case of children. Here gestures may be used to
represent particular aspects of the problems (such as force or diameter) or to point to
specific features of a representation or object (e.g., the origin of a graph).
Although the gestures made during attempted problem solving or the explanation
of a problem are often consistent with what an individual is saying, in some cases
an individual’s words may say one thing (e.g., suggesting that she is focused on
one aspect), whereas her gestures suggest another (e.g., suggesting awareness of
a different aspect). Just as people sometimes showed increased eye-movements

toward solution-relevant information before they were aware that (or exactly how)
that information was relevant to the solution, gestures may point to understandings
that are, as yet, only on the verge of an individual’s explicit, conscious knowledge or
awareness.
In Piagetian conservation tasks, involving, for example, liquid that is poured from
one container to another, children often spontaneously use gestures as they explain
their answers to the question of whether there is more liquid in one container or the
other container. Sometimes the gestures used are consistent with what the child says:
For instance, the child may state that there is more liquid in the glass than in the bowl
because the liquid reaches to a higher point in the glass than in the bowl, in both cases
indicating with her fingers the vertical height of the liquid. But some children say one
thing and indicate something else by their gestures. Thus, another child might verbally
offer the same answer and justification as the first child (there’s more in the glass than
in the bowl because the liquid in the glass reaches higher), but at the same time use a
small “C-like” gesture when looking at the glass and a larger “C-like” gesture when
looking at the bowl, as though recognizing—through her gestures, but not in her
words—that the glass also differs from the bowl in that it has a smaller diameter. This
child is showing what is referred to as “gesture-speech discordance.”
The emergence of such gesture-speech discordance has been found to predict chil-
dren’s not-yet-developed but soon-to-be-acquired mastery of the concept, or their
readiness to learn the relevant concept. Children who had not yet achieved the concept
of the conservation of mass or volume but who frequently showed gesture-speech dis-
cordance in their replies to the problems were more likely to benefit from instruction
in the concept than were children who had not achieved the concept and who “doubly”
showed that they had not yet done so both in their words and their gestures.
One proposal (Alibali & Goldin-Meadow, 1993; Church & Goldin-Meadow, 1986)
for why discordant gesture and speech might predict readiness to learn is that the
discordance reflects the presence of a competing hypothesis: Whereas the child’s words
pointed to a hypothesis involving height, the child’s gestures pointed to a hypothesis
involving width, suggesting that these children were in a “transitional state” regarding
the concept. In line with this suggestion, more detailed and temporally extended
(microgenetic) probes of children’s gesture-speech concordance versus discordance on
another task involving learning to solve mathematical equivalence problems (e.g.,
3 + 4 + 5 = _ + 5; or 4 + 7 + 8 = _ + 9) often showed a specific transitional pattern relat-
ing to the course of the acquisition of the concept (Alibali & Goldin-Meadow, 1993).
At first, when the child had not yet mastered the concept, both the words and ges-
tures were concordant but focused on an incorrect aspect (concordant incorrect state);
then later, although the child’s words still focused on an incorrect aspect his gestures
suggested an awareness of the alternative relevant aspect (discordant state), and then
still later (when it was clear that the child had mastered the concept), the child’s words
and gestures were again concordant but now focused on the correct aspect (concor-
dant correct state). For example, of the children who showed gesture-speech discor-
dance on a pretest session, with their gestures but not speech indicating the correct
procedure, 65% were successful on more complex tasks after receiving instruction.
This contrasted with a success rate of only 22% for children who showed no “gestured
awareness” of the correct procedures during the pretest. Although not every child
showed the transitional pattern and not every child spontaneously used gestures,
gesture discordance was significantly predictive of concept mastery.
In addition, gesturing itself seemed to help thinking. Children who did not gesture at
all performed less well on the posttraining assessments than did children who
gestured during the task. In a further study, children who expressed a correct prob-
lem-solving strategy in both gesture and speech during instruction were significantly
more likely to correctly later solve the math problems given on a posttest than were
children who expressed the correct strategy in speech alone (Cook & Goldin-Meadow,
2006).
Although the role of gesture in thinking and problem solving has frequently been
explored in children, similar findings with adults point to instances of concordance
between the problem representations that individuals have extracted as shown in
gestures and verbal accounts, and also instances of discordance—similarly suggesting
the concurrent presence of “competing approaches” to a problem space (Alibali et al.,
1999). Undergraduates were asked to solve structurally analogous word problems in
which the problems contained entities that changed discretely, entities that changed
continuously, or included entities with both discrete and continuous changes. All of
the problems could be correctly solved using either a summing strategy, involving a
conceptualization of change as a series of discrete steps (calculating the change per
unit and then summing these amounts), or an averaging strategy, involving a concep-
tualization of change as one continuous process (finding the average rate of change
and then multiplying by the number of units). The gestures made by participants as
they worked through the problems were also classified as continuous (involving a
smooth, continuous motion such as sweeping, arcing, or dragging), discrete (involving
a set of discrete movements such as a sequence of three or more taps or points), both
continuous and discrete (e.g., a series of short sweeping motions), or neither (e.g.,
gestures that represented aspects of the problem other than manner of change).
Participants who verbally adopted a summing approach to the problem—which
involves treating change as a series of discrete events—were likely to use discrete ges-
tures; in contrast, participants who adopted an averaging approach, in which they
found an average rate of change and then multiplied it by the number of units were
more likely to use gestures that matched this construal of change as a single (continu-
ous) event. When the strategy described by the participants matched their gestures
(gesture reinforced speech), then approximately 65% of the problems were solved with
that strategy. Nonetheless, in a number of instances the aspects of the problems repre-
sented by participants by their words differed from those represented by their gestures.
It is not clear if, as in the case of children’s incipient understanding of conservation
problems or of the mathematical notion of equivalence, the presence of such speech-
gesture discordance also reflects a “transitional state” of knowledge (e.g., whether it
suggests that the individual is likely to change his or her modal problem-solving strat-
egy on subsequent problems), or perhaps whether these aspects may be more likely to
be drawn upon in future problem-solving efforts that require the generation of new
strategies (Alibali et al., 1999).9
The types and functions of gestures that occur during learning also may vary
depending on the learner’s orientation to the subject matter, particularly whether she
is actively “in the moment” and attempting to work through a still-not-fully under-
stood explanation, or whether she is restating an explanation that she herself has
previously worked through, or that she has been given by another. Based on a detailed
examination of the use of gestures by sixth-grade science learners, Crowder (1996)
found it necessary to differentiate between two types of gesturing, depending on the
“discourse mode” that the student was in. When the child was describing a memorized
or previously thought-out model, his gestures tended to be redundant with his speech,
and to be closely timed with it, for example, to emphasize stressed words. In this
mode, the child often looked at the listener rather than at his hands. This might be
termed a “demonstration” or “narrative description” mode. In contrast, when a child
was primarily involved in on-line thinking, actively reasoning or “running a model” in
her head, and attempting to explain “in the moment,” then her gestures were used in
a more active, integrated way, to help predict outcomes, revise explanations, and coor-
dinate components and mechanisms. In this mode, the gestures often preceded related
verbal content, foreshadowing the words rather than merely accompanying or empha-
sizing them, and often were iconic in nature to enhance meaning or elaborate upon
the spoken message. These gestures also seemed more private, rather than intended
for an audience. Crowder proposed that gestures of this active sort, during “in-the-
moment” explanation also might be internalized as mental imagery. For individuals in
the on-line thinking mode, gestures were sometimes at the forefront of thought; they
appeared to “do the work of leading the thinker toward a new level of understanding
and new ways of problem solving” (Crowder, 1996, p. 203).
How might gesture be helpful to, and in some cases be predictive of, new insights
or understanding? One proposal focuses on the visual-spatial nature of gestures, and
the better fit between expressions possible in this modality and the required under-
standing.
Hadamard (1945) has argued that mathematical thinking, particularly inno-

vative mathematical thinking, is not conducted in words but rather in spatial
images—images which might be more easily translated into the global-syn-
thetic representation characteristic of gesture than into the linear-segmented
representation characteristic of speech […]. For example, in acquiring math-
ematical equivalence, it may be easier to convey that the two sides of the
equation have equal status in gesture (by sweeping a flat palm under the left
half of the equation and then making precisely the same movement under
the right half of the equation) than in speech. (Alibali & Goldin-Meadow,
1993, p. 515)
The visual-spatial aspect of gestures is, however, also closely interconnected with the
ability of gestures to assume a deictic or indexing function that serves to anchor the
spoken words. Gestures can help to point to relevant information, such as the objects,
spaces, and actions to which spoken language refers, and can thereby provide contex-
tual support to the spoken words.
Gesture constitutes a support system for making salient those aspects that
the talk is about, but it also is an expressive medium that enacts (in iconic
similarity) that which the inscription is about. Gestures (pointing, iconic

enacting) do double work. They bind the utterance to the inscription,
but also express something about the inscription. Gesture allows for the
representation of (aspects) of physical experience in the world that can be
represented in words at best only indirectly and sometimes not at all (e.g., it
is difficult to represent continuous change in words, and spatial arrange-
ments cannot be accomplished in discrete aspects of spoken utterance).
(W. M. Roth, 2000, pp. 1710–1711)
Such support includes making more salient the affordances (possibilities for action and
interaction) that objects offer. Understanding a sentence in context requires that the
listener correctly map to or “index” the referents in the sentence, either to actual objects
or events, or to perceptual or analogical symbols of those referents, and perceptual
indexing may therefore facilitate comprehension. A study by Glenberg and Robertson
(1999) provides an excellent example of the key role of perceptual indexing in promot-
ing deeper understanding. These researchers found that participants who learned about
using a compass while listening and at the same time viewing images of a compass
(termed the listen and index group) considerably outperformed a group who learned
about a compass through listening and reading (listen and read group). Even though
the two groups acquired similar levels of abstract knowledge, the listen and index group
significantly outperformed the listen and read group in actual compass reading tasks.
They read and followed new directions more quickly, they less frequently needed to
stop to refer to background information, and they used the compass and map more
accurately. To the extent that gestures serve a similar indexing function, both compre-
hension and transfer performance may be facilitated. (The indexical hypothesis is
discussed again later in this chapter in the context of “making new concepts.”)
It is also possible that, in the case of children learning the concept of mathematical
equivalence, the similarity of the gestures used to indicate equivalence across different
problems (always a sweep under one side of the equation followed by the same sweep
under the other side of the equation), helped children to focus on what was constant,
and important, across the different problems: That there were two sides to the equa-
tion, and that those two sides should be treated in the same way (Cook & Goldin-
Meadow, 2006)—setting aside the details of the individual problems.
Intriguingly, however, under some conditions, children may benefit from the
teacher’s presentation of discordant information in speech versus gesture, for example,
if the speech of a teacher focuses on one strategy, whereas his gestures highlight
a different strategy (M. A. Singer & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). Children answered more
problems correctly at posttest if the teacher, in speaking, emphasized the equalizer
aspect but, in gesture, showed how a particular type of problem might be solved
(e.g., in problems with identical addends, such as 3 + 4 + 5 = _ + 5, pointing first at the
3 and 4 together, and then the blank, while verbally emphasizing that the two sides
of the equation needed to be made equal). This observation suggests that it may be
possible to provide less obtrusive specific guidance in one representational format
(e.g., through gesture, demonstrating the grouping method for solving equality prob-
lems with identical addends) concurrently with more salient abstract guidance in
another format (e.g., through speech, emphasizing the equalizer principle). Subtly
gesturing toward, but not explicitly drawing attention to, a specific but not always
applicable approach to solving a problem, such as using grouping, might help a child to
discover alternative approaches without distracting from her comprehension of the
more generic principle. Thus, the potential salutary effects of gesture may in some
cases arise precisely because gesture may elude conscious monitoring:
Gesture is not explicitly acknowledged. As a result, gesture can allow speak-

ers to introduce into their repertoires novel ideas not entirely consistent
with their current beliefs, without inviting challenge from a listener—
indeed, without inviting challenge from their own self-monitoring systems.
Gesture might allow ideas to slip into the system simply because it is
not the focus of attention. Once in, those new ideas could catalyze change.
(Goldin-Meadow & Wagner, 2005, p. 239)
A further important benefit of gesturing relates to its effects on working memory:

Gesturing can lighten cognitive load and thereby free up mental resources for other
uses. Although this seems to be an intuitively plausible benefit of gesturing, strong
and direct support for it was provided by an innovative use of a dual-task paradigm
in which children and adults were asked to remember either a short (easy) or longer
(difficult) list of verbal items (three words for children, six letters for adults) and to
concurrently explain a math problem (Goldin-Meadow, Nusbaum, Kelly, & Wagner,
2001). Both children and adults recalled more of the to-be-remembered items if they
were free to gesture while explaining the math problem than if they were asked not to
gesture. Importantly, it was not just, as one might at first suppose, that the instruc-
tion not to move one’s hands was itself a demanding task that had costs for working
memory (that is, remembering to not move one’s hands is a third task that one must
do, in addition to remembering the letters and explaining the math problem). Analyses
of the data from adults who might have gestured, but who chose not to do so, showed
that the “chose-not-to-gesture” group performed similarly to those who were
instructed not to gesture. Choosing not to use one’s hands or being instructed not to
use them had similar effects on memory performance, and in both cases—for the
more difficult six-letter lists—yielded less accurate recall than when individuals
gestured during the secondary task (Goldin-Meadow et al., 2001).
One possible interpretation of this outcome is that gesture moves some of the
cognitive load to a visual-spatial store, and thus leaves more resources available in the
verbal or phonological store. However, contrary to this interpretation, similar
outcomes were obtained even when the material that was to be remembered was
visual-spatial (remembering a visual grid pattern), and participants were asked to con-
currently explain how they had solved mathematical factoring problems either while
gesturing or while abstaining from gesturing (S. W. Wagner, Nusbaum, & Goldin-
Meadow, 2004). Participants allowed to gesture recalled more of the visual-spatial
items than did participants in either the instructed no-gesture group or the “natural”
no-gesture (chose-not-to-gesture) group. These parallel outcomes for the letter and
the visual-spatial stimuli suggest that gesturing really does free up cognitive resources,
rather than simply transferring the load to a visual-spatial store (S. W. Wagner et al.,
2004).
Additional analyses showed that the benefits to working memory performance in

this dual-task context were attenuated if the gesture and speech of the participant
were mismatched, compared to when (as in most cases) the gesture and speech
matched. Based on the combination of these findings showing similar benefits for
verbal and visual-spatial memory performance from gesturing, and a link between
gesture match/mismatch and the magnitude of the memory enhancement effect,
S. W. Wagner et al. (2004) argue that the global holistic properties of gesturing in
this context helped to provide organizational structure for speaking and thinking
(a broad conceptual mapping of gesture to speech) that then freed up working memory
capacity (verbal or visual-spatial). The latter interpretation combines aspects concern-
ing the holistic, global properties of gesture, with a claim that might be taken to
suggest that gesture and speech are integrated in a single “meaning space,” or what
Hagoort (2003) termed a single “unification space”—involving information from a
wide range of cognitive domains—including that provided by gestures.
Although both the “organizational structure” and the single “unification space”
proposals are complex claims, such claims appear to broadly cohere with other recent
evidence suggesting that speech and gesture are often tightly interconnected, and
with electrophysiological findings suggesting that gestures are very rapidly “semanti-
cally assimilated” with words during sentence processing. Using event-related poten-
tials (ERPs), Özyürek et al. (2007) evaluated the effects of semantic information
conveyed by words versus that conveyed by iconic visual gestures (videotaped to
include only the key segment of the gesture). They found that the semantic informa-
tion conveyed by words versus gestures was integrated in a timeframe of between
350 and 550 msec after the onset of the word or gesture.
Results from a commonly used electrophysiological indication of semantic integra-
tion likewise appear to support the integration of speech with co-speech gestures.
A very reliable and extensively investigated pattern, found in ERP studies, is a reduc-
tion in the magnitude of a particular component or portion of the waveform for
stimuli that semantically or contextually “fit” with the context in some way. This com-
ponent—known as the N400 because it is a negative-going wave that typically reaches
its peak amplitude at approximately 400 msec post stimulus onset—is, for example,
larger (greater in amplitude) for words that are semantically incongruent or
unexpected in the context of a sentence than for words that are semantically congru-
ent or expected. Özyürek et al. (2007) found that the N400 was larger in amplitude—
suggesting less complete semantic integration—for each of the following conditions:
when the gesture mismatched the word, but the word matched the sentence context;
when the word mismatched the gesture, but the gesture matched the sentence
context, and when both the word and the gesture mismatched the sentence context.
The ERPs for mismatching gestures or words often showed divergence before the end
of the word or the gesture; furthermore, the topographic distribution of the integra-
tion pattern for words versus gestures was very similar, suggesting that they entailed
similar integration processes. However, the location of the N400 was more anterior
than the typical semantic N400, perhaps reflecting the visual information in the ges-
tures, similar to what has been observed for the integration of picture stimuli during
sentence comprehension, which also tend to elicit a more anterior N400 distribution
than that found for words (e.g., Ganis, Kutas, & Sereno, 1996); this was so even in the
condition in which gesture was present but the mismatch occurred verbally.
Özyürek et al. (2007) conclude that “when understanding an utterance, the brain
does not restrict itself to language information alone, but also integrates semantic
information conveyed through other modalities, such as co-speech gestures” (p. 614),
and, similarly, “neural processing in language comprehension involves the simultane-
ous incorporation of information coming from a broader domain of cognition than
only verbal semantics” (p. 605). These findings again argue that we “think with our
senses”—in this case encompassing both the performance of manual actions and the
perception and interpretation of them.10
Making New Concepts

Thus far in this chapter we have emphasized the important role of our receptivity to,
and awareness of, specific sensory-perceptual and motor features of objects and events
in guiding forms of flexible thinking, such as the generation of a new hypothesis or the
formulation of a novel approach to a problem. Such attunement to the sensory-
perceptual characteristics of objects, and of our own potential interactions with
objects, is also highly influential in another form of adaptively creative thinking,
namely the rapid, on-line generation and comprehension of entirely new (never
previously encountered) uses of words (and, more generally, to the creation of new
“cognitive tools”—see M. Wilson, 2010, for discussion).
Individuals can rapidly make sense of innovative uses of nouns and verbs that
they have never previously encountered. We can readily understand sentences such as
“the newsboy porched the newspaper” (E. V. Clark & H. A. Clark, 1979) or, by a tennis
commentator, “he wristed the ball over the net” (E. V. Clark & H. A. Clark, 1979), or in
the context of an unstable table, “she booked the leg” (Glenberg & Robertson, 2000).
People rate sentences using such innovative denominal verbs as very sensible, and
they can provide highly accurate paraphrases of them.
How can we immediately perceive that a sentence such as “Hang the coat on the
upright vacuum cleaner” is sensible, whereas a seemingly very similar sentence, such
as “Hang the coat on the cup,” is not (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002)? Although the syntax
of these two sentences is remarkably similar, and they may both be presented in the
same external context (e.g., a psychology laboratory), the first is uniformly pronounced
interpretable and sensible whereas the second is not. Given no knowledge of the noun
involved, and what it, as a physical object, can and cannot allow us to do, how could
these radically different ratings of sensibility be explained?
Many interrelated factors contribute to the ease with which such innovative
phrases and uses of words are understood. Their generation and interpretation
depends on the cooperation of the speaker and listener, and it is guided by multiple
interacting constraints and conventions of use, such as the speaker’s and the listener’s
mutual knowledge (E. V. Clark & H. A. Clark, 1979). Stated very succinctly, “innovative
denominal verbs are contextuals” (E. V. Clark & H. A. Clark, 1979, p. 783). However, a
key contributor to those contextual constraints—supporting and in some sense
actualizing them—is the particular sensory-perceptual material characteristics of the

objects involved. These characteristics may either be physically present or be based on
past sensory-perceptual and motor interactions with objects of the relevant sort that
have become part of our mental representations of the objects. The innovative use of
nouns, verbs, and other phrases does not emerge from or out of nothing, but arises
in a very specific embedded context involving a network of often largely implicitly
understood perceptual-motor constraints that guide both the production of possible
phrases and their interpretation (Glenberg, 1997; Lakoff, 1987; see also Costello &
Keane, 2000).
According to the “indexical hypothesis” forwarded by Glenberg and Robertson
(1999, 2000), three separate processes are necessary to transform sentences such
as the request to “Hang the coat on the upright vacuum cleaner” into a meaningful
“construal” of the world. These three processes involve, first, indexing words and
phrases to referents, in particular to perceptual symbols, or analog mental representa-
tions (Barsalou, 1999; Stanfield & Zwann, 2001); second, deriving affordances from
these referents—that is, potential interactions between bodies and objects based on
physical characteristics and one’s goals or purposes (J. J. Gibson, 1979; M. Tucker &
Ellis, 1998); and third, integrating or meshing these affordances (Glenberg, 1997) into
a coherent interpretation, guided both by the constraints provided by the syntax of
the sentence, and physical and biological constraints deriving from our (particular)
situatedness (being) in the world (Kaschak & Glenberg, 2000, p. 508).
In terms of our example, one can derive a new “innovative” affordance from an
object, such as an upright vacuum cleaner, because the perceptual symbol represent-
ing this sort of vacuum is not abstract, or arbitrary, but richly tied to perceptual-motor
information derived from our experiences with such objects, that allow us to deter-
mine if its height, weight, and form are such that it could, indeed, support the weight
of a coat, without, for instance, simply toppling over. In the same manner, one could
also construct an atypical or unusual scenario where it might, indeed, be sensible to
say, “Hang your coat on the cup.” Imagine, as one illustration, that a ceramic or metal
cup had been firmly attached by its base to a wall, or to the back of a door, at an appro-
priate height—then “a cup” might well serve this uncustomary function. In contrast,
a paper cup that was attached in this manner likely would not work because it might
collapse and fall under the weight of the coat.
Both our very rapid evaluation that the upright vacuum cleaner could well serve as
a coat hanger and the further less rapid but equally sure evaluation that, provided that
the “affordances” were changed in just the right ways, a cup could also serve that
unusual function, show that we can creatively and innovatively derive novel interpre-
tations and uses of both words and the objects to which they refer. This is so because
the characteristics of the object as a physical object (physical referent) are an inte-
grated but dynamically queried and constructed part of the “meaning” of the word.
“Unlike the case with arbitrary symbols, new affordances can be derived from percep-
tual symbols because perceptual symbols are not arbitrarily related to their referents”
(Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002, p. 559). An individual’s rapid innovative generation of
new words and phrases, and the ease with which such never-before-encountered
descriptions are interpreted by his or her listener, reflects a form of flexible and
natural “thinking with our senses.”
Thinking in a Physical World

EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND ACTIONS: BRINGING THE WORLD
A N D O U R B O D I E S I N TO T H O U G H T
How we arrange the external environment in which our thinking and actions occur
can substantially enhance—or markedly impede—our cognitive processing and
efficiency. Take, for example, such common activities as assembling a multipart pre-
fabricated object, such as a bookcase, when one initially sorts and groups the several
components for the various different parts of the to-be-constructed object. Or take,
for example, baking, where one first sets out the necessary ingredients and utensils.
Doing so at the outset helps to ensure that all of the hoped-for components, ingredi-
ents, and tools are available (not always a forgone conclusion). But it also reduces
working memory demands in that it allows one to focus on the steps of preparation
without switching to a quite different task such as rummaging about in search of the
screwdriver with the Phillips head. Yet, in the simplified view of thinking as an exclu-
sively internal activity, the potential structure and guidance provided by the external
world and the thinker’s manipulations of the external world to facilitate thinking are
discounted and overlooked:
No allowance is made for offloading structure to the world, or for arranging

things so that the world preempts the need for certain representations, or
preempts the need for making certain inferences. This leaves the perfor-
mance of such preemptive and offloading actions mysterious. (Kirsh &
Maglio, 1994, p. 545, emphasis in the original)
The different ways and contexts in which individuals may actively facilitate—and
iteratively guide, shape, and support—thinking through changing the environment
are innumerable (see, for example, Ewenstein & Whyte, 2009, and M. Wilson, 2010).
We will here consider four examples, two from the domains of leisure and sport, and
two from professional contexts, chosen to encompass multiple levels of complexity,
and differing goals and internal and external constraints.
First, what seems to be an anecdotal example but that also is supported with
experimental evidence: In the board game Scrabble, each player must generate
words containing as many letters as possible from the particular set of seven letters
that he or she has randomly drawn. The generated word must also appropriately
intersect with one or more of the words that are already placed on the board.
Experienced Scrabble players rarely simply array their set of letter tiles in a single fixed
order, and then attempt to find potential words from the one display. Instead, they
often deliberately move the letters around into different subgroups and groupings,
first creating this combination and now that combination. These movements do not
seem to be an accidental or tangential aspect of their thinking: rather, the shuffling
and shifting of letters often is undertaken precisely as a hoped-for means to stimulat-
ing new directions of thought and new possibilities, as the letters themselves associa-
tively cue candidate solutions. Players may thus be taking advantage of the physical
embodiment of the letters, knowing that they are more likely to arrive at a closer
to optimal candidate if they let the physical letters themselves do some of the
initial “work.”
Consistent with this supposition, using an experimental analog of the game,
Maglio et al. (1999) found that participants who were asked to generate as many
English words as possible (at least two letters in length, and excluding proper nouns
and acronyms) from a set of seven letters generated significantly more words when
they were allowed to use their hands to move the letter tiles than when not allowed to
do so. However, there was also a significant interaction between the hands/no hands
manipulation and letter set. Physical movement of the letter tiles was beneficial
only for one of two letter combinations that were tested (EMTGPEA), for which the
potential solutions were primarily of low written and spoken word frequency and
were relatively few in number (53 words possible); there was not a significant advan-
tage for a letter combination (RDLOSNA) for which there were more potential solu-
tions (92 words possible), and where those solutions tended to be of higher word
frequency. Thus, the benefits accrued from physically altering the order of the letters
(or more generally, objects in the environment) may be most pronounced when one
has drawn a more difficult set of letters or is encountering a more challenging task.
A somewhat more complex example of how individuals manipulate and use
epistemic objects to facilitate thinking is provided from the realm of sport psychol-
ogy—focusing on the role of physical cues in enabling effective thought in the sport of
orienteering (Eccles, 2006). In orienteering, the individual must navigate through
wild terrain as rapidly as possible, being sure to visit, in a specific order, each of many
“control points” that are indicated on a map, and that must be found and identified
through a careful reading of the map’s elevations, landmarks, and so on. Individuals
who are skilled at orienteering adopt a number of strategies to manage the multiple
challenges posed by the requirements to swiftly read the map, interpret it with regard
to their current location, while (as far as possible) continuing to run across terrain that
itself may demand considerable attention just to maintain footing and avoid hazards.
One approach is to fold the map to show only the currently relevant section of
the terrain, thereby reducing the visual search time necessary to locate the relevant
information. The map then is refolded regularly so as to maintain updated informa-
tion that is readily consulted without prolonged search for the currently relevant data.
Eccles (2006) found that all 15 of the 15 skilled participants he surveyed used this
approach; and all 6 of the 6 coaches explicitly taught this method. Map folding is
nearly always combined with “thumbing,” in which the map is carried with the thumb
indicating the individual’s current location, thereby substantially reducing the costs of
“task switching” between looking at the map and looking where one is going (14/15
participants, 6/6 coaches). Thumbing and map folding are also used together with a
continual reorienting (setting and resetting) of the map physically, so that the world
that the map represents is aligned with the actual world, thereby circumventing the
need for cognitively demanding mental rotation (15/15 participants, 6/6 coaches).
Likewise, all of the participants and coaches found a way of attaching the control card,
providing the list of “control points” that must be reached, onto the sleeve of their
arm—thereby allowing them to more readily consult it while they were running, and
facilitating rapid comparisons between the list of control points and the map. Each of
these actions: folding, thumbing, rotating, and the fixed placement of the control
card serves to structure the individual’s physical context to substantially aid thinking.
Other sports and leisure activities that involve multiple forms of equipment and
ongoing monitoring (e.g., sailing, mountaineering, scuba diving) may similarly benefit
from epistemic actions.
Our third example involves the ways in which (at least historically) the airline crew
of a commercial airplane determines the appropriate, and extremely critical, landing
speed for the plane (Hutchins, 1995; J. Zhang & Norman, 1994). Based on analyses of
how the cockpit crew use spoken confirmations and cross-checks, instruments, calcu-
lations, and the placement of physical objects that are also symbols (so-called speed
bugs), Hutchins (1995) argued that the memory for the speed of the airplane, includ-
ing its to-be-achieved landing speed, and needed and timely adjustments associated
with the wing configurations is not in any one individual’s consciousness. Rather, the
memory resides “in the cockpit”—as a distributed interlinked network of physical
objects and socially and cognitively interacting embodied persons. The picture of
objects as external peripheral aids to cognition that primarily proceeds “in the head”
is too simple; much thinking and much intelligent behavior arises from an interwoven
processing of internal and external information.
The memory observed in the cockpit is a continual interaction with a world

of meaningful structure. The pilots continually are reading and writing,
reconstituting and reconstructing the meaning and the organization of both
the internal and the external representations of the speeds. It is not just the
retrieval of something from an internal storehouse, and not just a recogni-
tion or a match of an external form to an internally stored template. It is,
rather, a combination of recognition, recall, pattern matching, cross modality con-
sistency checking, construction, and reconstruction that is conducted in interac-
tion with a rich set of representational structures, many of which permit, but do
not demand, the reconstruction of some internal representation that we
would normally call the “memory” for the speed. (Hutchins, 1995, p. 284,
emphasis added)
Let us look at one final example, one that is central to the world of intellectual, schol-
arly, and scientific pursuits, and that provides a substantive bridge to the
final section of this chapter that will focus on “words as things.” Consider the process
of writing a scholarly article. This seems to be a process that is highly (perhaps
quintessentially) dependent on processes involving internally driven thinking and
reflection—a minded gathering and spelling out and developing of arguments. But is
the thinking that leads to the final paper really quite so exclusively or predominantly
an “internal” activity? Or is the “internal” aspect only one part of a much more
complex, interactive, and iterative (“meshed”) immersion in multiple worlds? True,
there is, in the central nexus point, the internal world of the mind with its concepts
and relations between concepts, but that “mind” also is continually in intersecting
communication with external supports and guides: printed and electronic sources,
summaries, penciled notes in margins, and so on.
Taking this too exclusively internal, and too mind-and-brain-focused, construal of
the process of writing thoroughly to task, Andy Clark (2001) points to a much more
embodied and complex reality that acknowledges the heavy dependence of the
final product on “the complex ways the brain cooperates with, and leans upon, various
special features of the media and technologies with which it continually interacts.”
He continues:
We tend to think of our biological brains as the point source of the whole
final content. But if we look a little more closely what we may often find is
that the biological brain participated in some potent and iterated loops
through the cognitive technological environment. We began, perhaps, by
looking over some old notes, then turned to some original sources. As we
read, our brain generated a few fragmentary, on-the-spot responses, which
were duly stored as marks on the page, or in the margins. This cycle repeats,
pausing to loop back to the original plans and sketches, amending them in
the same fragmentary, on-the-spot fashion. This whole process of critiquing,
rearranging, streamlining and linking is deeply informed by quite specific proper-
ties of the external media, which allow the sequence of simple reactions to
become organized and grow (hopefully) into something like an argument.
The brain’s role is crucial and special. But it is not the whole story. In fact, the
true (fast and frugal!) power and beauty of the brain’s role is that it acts as a
mediating factor in a variety of complex and iterated processes which continually
loop between brain, body and technological environment. And it is this larger
system which solves the problem. […] The intelligent process just is the
spatially and temporally extended one which zig-zags between brain, body
and world. (A. Clark, 2001, p. 132)
It is not simply that we can incorporate aspects of the external world (and our own
actions) into a representational processing economy—but that we can do this quite
readily, and naturally, and are amazingly adept and amorphously versatile in the
ways that we do so, “zig-zagging” fluidly and naturally between brain, body, and world.
We are remarkably good at relying on many sorts of nonbiological epistemic devices
(pen, paper, sketchbooks, laptops, etc.) to sustain and to bolster “our prowess at
thought and reason” (A. Clark, 2005, p. 9).11
W O R D S , TO O, A R E P H Y S I C A L T H I N G S — A N D S O A R E P H Y S I C A L
A N D N OT O N LY S Y M B O L I C S H A P E R S O F T H O U G H T
Although we predominantly tend to think of words as pointers toward meanings, the
things that do the pointing are themselves physical things: Printed letters and words
are themselves objects in the world, with a particular visual shape, form, and size.
Spoken speech involves a particular series of sounds, of greater or lesser volume,
clarity, “projection,” and distinctness. Likewise, the hand, finger, and arm movements
of sign language have particular patterns and speeds of motion and direction and, for
some words, particular accompanying movements of the eyes (e.g., “sleep,” “awake”)
or facial expression (e.g., “anger,” “sad”). Words in each of these forms (printed,
spoken, signed) also necessarily inhabit a temporal space: The time between the
auditory onset of a spoken word, phrase, or sentence and its conclusion, the time
involved in visually perceiving and decoding written text, or in generating or inter-

preting movements of the hands, face, and body. Many of these aspects of words as
physical things subtly shape what and how we think, and so both contribute to, and
illustrate, how we often, and sometimes unwittingly, “think with our senses” even
when primarily engaged in linguistic and symbolic processing.
Three quite different examples of words as physical shapers of thought will be
provided here (see also Excursion 4, “Speculating Freely: Gertrude Stein and the Letter
m ” for a further speculative example): First, evidence showing that the perception of
a given (target) word is often accompanied by the coactivation of words that are simi-
lar in sound to the target word; second, changes in the ease with which we read or
understand words and phrases related to physical aspects of the words, such as allit-
eration;12 and, last, the surprising effects of rhyme and similar physical characteristics
of language on how individuals assess the validity or truth value of statements and
make other evaluations and judgments.
Coactivation of Meanings Consistent with Physical Form:

The Consorting of Meaning and Form
A key aspect of spoken word recognition concerns its temporal nature, such that the
recognition and comprehension of a word occurs across and within time. The hearer
often does not, at the outset of a word, have sufficient information (or prescience) to
know what the word will be; this is a process that unfolds in or across time as the word
is progressively disclosed in full. Many current models of speech recognition do not
assume that the processing of a word is postponed (held in abeyance) until sufficient
information is obtained to uniquely specify the word; rather, they propose that as the
sound reveals itself, the cognitive processing of the recipient takes advantage of such
information as is provided, even though it is indeterminate. These models assume
that as the spoken stimulus is presented, words that are phonologically related or
similar to the (as-yet-not-fully specified) target word are also activated or made more
accessible. These other words—words that may comprise possible solutions to the
question, “What word will this be?”—are said to be part of the target word’s phono-
logical cohort or neighborhood.
For example, according to the Neighborhood Activation Model or NAM, proposed
by Luce and Pisoni (1998; also see Marslen-Wilson & Zwitserlood, 1989), words in the
mental lexicon are organized into “similarity neighborhoods” where the neighbor-
hoods consist of items that are phonologically similar to a specific target item. More
specifically, the neighbors of a word are all those words that can be created by altering
a single phoneme: adding, deleting, or substituting one phoneme. Thus, for the word
but some of the neighbors include put, cut, and hut (change only the initial phoneme),
bet, bat, bit, and boat (change only the middle phoneme), and buzz, bus, buck, bud,
and bug (change only the last phoneme). The model proposes that, when a target word
(or, more correctly, a speech sound) is presented, the presentation results in a graded
activation of acoustic-phonetic patterns, with greater activation for neighbors that are
more phonologically similar to the target.
An important source of evidence pointing to an increased level of activation for
phonologically similar neighbors during speech comprehension derives from tests of
memory where the items that are tested include not only the presented target items
but also phonological neighbors of the target items—items that were not themselves
presented but that, according to the cohort activation account, may have been implic-
itly activated during the perception of the target words (Wallace, Stewart, & Malone,
1995). The prediction here is straightforward: If phonological neighbors are made
comparatively more active than are nonneighbors during speech perception, then the
earlier activation may lead participants to perceive items that are, in fact, new (not
previously presented in the experimental setting) as familiar (or more familiar than
items for which such implicit activation did not occur), in turn leading to a higher rate
of false recognition or misidentification of these items. This should be particularly
true for phonologically related words that have a relatively large window of opportu-
nity to become and remain activated, because they are consistent with the actually
presented word for a relatively long period of time. To take an example, if the target
word was domineer, a late-disqualified neighbor might be dominoes (here the phono-
logical form of the two words diverges only late in the temporal processing stream, at
the third syllable); by contrast, an early-disqualified neighbor for this same target
might be pioneer (here, the phonological form of the words diverges at the first
syllable, or very early in the temporal processing stream).
Entirely consistent with these predictions, words that were disqualified only late in
presentation as the possible word were more often falsely claimed to be recognized
than were early-disqualified lures or control words; the latter two conditions did not
differ from one another (Wallace et al., 1995). This outcome was observed using audi-
tory (rather than visual) study and test presentations of the items, perhaps arguing
for a close tie to temporal processing in inducing the effect. However, a further exper-
iment showed a similar effect even for visually presented items—though only when
each of the items was presented three times. For these repeated items, both visual and
auditory presentation elicited higher levels of false recognition for late-disqualified
items than for either early-disqualified items or control items. This led Wallace et al.
(1995) to suggest that the similarity of effects across auditory and visual presenta-
tions may have derived from recoding of the visual representations into phonological
representations, or possibly may have involved orthographic to lexical translation
(N. F. Johnson & Pugh, 1994).
Additional evidence for the initial and rapid activation of phonologically similar
words is provided by eye-tracking data. Participants who were asked to look at a dis-
play of various objects on a table (e.g., a pencil, a spoon, a bag of candy, a candle) and
were instructed to perform simple actions with them (e.g., “to pick up the candy”)
often fixated on the object that had the same initial phonemes (in this instance,
candle) before they looked at the actually designated object. Thus, their eye move-
ments showed that they were anticipating the referent of the upcoming word, and
their early predictions included objects that were phonologically congruent with the
thus-far-spoken information (Spivey-Knowlton, Tanenhaus, Eberhard, & Sedivy,
1998, cited in Spivey et al., 2005).
The phenomenon of cohort activation raises several questions: Does this occur for
all words or are there exceptions—words that have unique beginnings from the very
outset? Are there such words? How might “early unique” words differ from other
words that (as it were) announce themselves as themselves only rather less immedi-
ately and directly? To what extent do poets and other writers perhaps unwittingly,
perhaps with some awareness of the evocativeness or suggestiveness of a word,

exploit cohort activation to achieve condensation and conflux of meaning—meaning
engendered through methods of which their readers, their listeners, are also only
dimly or not at all aware? Do these possibilities point to a possible difference between
reading and listening to poetry, or to questions about the optimal speed or pace of
reading certain poems? How do these possibilities fit with the realm of what tradition-
ally is considered to be “connotation”? If (as many writers have done) we construe
connotation as involving associated or secondary semantic meanings, acquired
through experience, that come to adhere to a word, it is possible that these forms of
more physically driven activations, involving phonological coactivation based on
sensory-perceptual similarities rather than semantic content per se, will be overlooked
even though they, too, may sometimes be potent shapers of thought and of the
perceived “fit” of thoughts to words.
Fluent Perception: Changes in the Ease with Which We Read or Understand

Words as a Function of Physical Aspects of the Words
The ease with which individuals comprehend or access new information can be
measured in many different ways. However, a particularly informative but also
indirect and relatively unobtrusive measure is provided by examination of ERP com-
ponents. As noted earlier in this chapter (in our consideration of the processing of
speech and gestures), a very reliable pattern often found in ERP studies is the N400, a
negative-going wave that typically reaches its peak amplitude at approximately 400
msec post stimulus onset, and that is often greater in amplitude for words that are
semantically incongruent or unexpected in the context of a sentence than for words
that are semantically congruent or expected. More generally, semantic expectancy
effects may be modulated by various factors, including both factors that are automatic
and factors that are under attentional control, that increase the activation of some
semantic concepts relative to others. (Thus, Kutas, 1988, p. 205, lists “lexical associa-
tions, the frequency of usage of a word in the language, grammatical, semantic,
thematic, and pragmatic constraints, etc.” as possible contributors—under certain
circumstances—to a word’s semantic expectancy.)
The N400 has most often been studied in connection with semantic processing.
However, several investigators have used ERPs to examine the effects of alliteration
and rhyming on this component. For example, using a rhyme-judgment task for pairs
of words or nonwords, Rugg (1984a,b) found that a negative wave, peaking at about
450 msec post stimulus onset, was smaller in amplitude for words that rhymed than
for words that did not share similar ending sounds. Using an auditory lexical decision
task, Praamstra, Meyer, and Levelt (1994) also found that brain potentials were
less negative for word pairs that rhymed, or word pairs that alliterated (sharing their
first consonant and vowel) than for unrelated word pairs. There was also an intriguing
divergence for these two forms of structural or formal similarity, such that rhyming
word pairs showed reduced amplitude responses at a somewhat later point (450 to
700 msec post stimulus onset) than did alliterative word pairs (250 to 450 msec
post stimulus onset). Using a judgment task wherein participants were asked to
decide whether spoken word pairs alliterated, McPherson and Ackerman (1999)
similarly observed that normal adolescent readers showed a priming effect in the
N400 component, such that between 250 and 450 msec post stimulus onset,
ERPs were significantly less negative for alliterating than for nonalliterating
targets.
Although alternative interpretations of these findings are possible (for example,
they may reflect facilitated postlexical integrative processing or increased activation
for phonologically related words), Praamstra et al. (1994, p. 215) concluded that the
modulations that they observed for rhyming and alliterative words were modulations
of the same underlying component, a negativity that they deemed “similar enough to
the ‘classical’ N400 to be provisionally placed in the same category.” Furthermore, the
observation of these effects across different tasks, including those focused on the
sounds of words, as in rhyming or alliteration judgment tasks, but also under condi-
tions where participants’ goals and focus of attention were not directed toward the
sounds of the words, as in the lexical decision task requiring a judgment of whether
the stimulus is or is not a word, argues for the generality of these effects and points to
possible commonalities in how apparently formal aspects and semantic aspects of
words are processed.
More generally, these outcomes are consistent with the view that, particularly the
earlier portion of the N400 or N400m—between 200 ms and 300 ms, is “crucial for
cognitive processes at the interface of phonological and lexical-semantic analysis”
(Bonte et al., 2006, p. 121; Hagoort & Brown, 2000; also see Khateb et al., 2007).
Further elucidation of the nature of these convergences remains a promising area for
empirical and theoretical endeavors (e.g., Colombo, 1986; FitzPatrick & Indefrey,
2010; Praamstra et al., 1994) with many questions remaining. For example, do the
often facilitative effects of formal similarity sometimes, instead, lead to the opposite
outcome, with too many or too strongly activated competitors leading to decreased
rather than increased accessibility?
The Perils of Repetition, Rhyming Truths, and Such: The Overreaching

Effects of Fluent Processing
An enhanced ability to perceptually perceive and identify words or text—as physical
objects with particular visual or auditory characteristics—is often beneficial. However,
enhanced sensory-perceptual fluency also may, under some circumstances, induce
inadvertent and sometimes misleading effects on many sorts of higher level judg-
ments. Numerous studies demonstrate that the fluency with which we can perceptu-
ally process words and other stimuli may inappropriately and insidiously “leak” into
judgments for which these aspects are, and should be, irrelevant.
Perhaps one of the most potent and well known of these effects arises from the
repetition of a stimulus. In an early demonstration of misplaced fluency attributions,
Hasher and colleagues (1977) showed that participants rated unfamiliar statements
as more likely to be true if the statements were repeated rather than presented only
once. This (illicit) repetition effect was shown both for statements repeated within a
single test session, and across test sessions, and was observed both for statements
that were actually true and for statements that were actually false (though all
statements were judged to be plausible). Other researchers extended these findings of
repetition as a source of “illusory truth” (e.g., Bacon, 1979; Begg, Anas, & Farinacci,
1992; see Dechêne et al., 2010, for meta-analytic review).
More broadly, heightened perceptual fluency has been found to affect several forms
of judgments (see Alter et al., 2007, for review, and for evidence that engagement in
deliberate analytical processing may be promoted by meta-cognitive experiences of
the converse subjective states of difficulty or disfluency). Fluency may affect judg-
ments of how much we like objects or words, and our preferences for one stimulus
over another. Repeatedly presented objects, which are presumably processed more
fluently, tend to be liked more and to be preferred relative to nonrepeated ones
(e.g., S. T. Murphy, Monahan, & Zajonc, 1995; Zajonc, 1968, 2001).13 Fluency also has
been shown to affect evaluations of familiarity (e.g., Whittlesea & Williams, 1998),
fame (Jacoby, Kelly, Brown, & Jascheko, 1989), and even assessments of a writer’s
intelligence (Oppenheimer, 2006). For example, participants believed the author of a
scientific abstract to be more intelligent if the abstract was written using simplified
vocabulary—and thus was more fluently read—than if the same abstract was written
using more complex vocabulary. A similar effect was found when the ease of physically
reading the words was manipulated: Participants judged the author of an essay typed
in a font that was difficult to read (italicized “Juice ITC” font) as less intelligent than
an essay typed in a more conventional font (Times New Roman).
The latter examples suggest that the illicit effects of perceptual fluency may some-
times have significant consequences and may induce biases that, if we were aware of
them, we might clearly seek to avoid. Consistent with this suggestion, if individuals
are alerted to the potential biasing effects of fluency (or of impediments to fluency),
then they may seek to counteract the effects of this factor on their judgment. However,
this is not an easy task, as calibrating the level of adjustment needed may prove diffi-
cult, so that individuals may either undercorrect for the bias or overcorrect for it (see
T. D. Wilson & Brekke, 1994). For instance, in a further experiment, Oppenheimer
(2006) found that participants’ ratings of the intelligence of a graduate school appli-
cant, and their decisions as to whether they would or would not recommend accepting
the applicant, were positively biased if the page on which the applicant’s statement
appeared was difficult to read because it was printed using a laser printer with a low
toner cartridge. Here, participants were likely to be very aware of the difficulty they
were experiencing in attempting to read the text. However, because they were both
aware of the impediment to fluent reading, and could identify a salient cause (low
toner) for that lack of fluency, they did not “penalize” the applicant for that lack of
fluency. Indeed, participants who read the application in low toner font overcompen-
sated for this perceptual effect: They rated the applicant as significantly more intelli-
gent than did participants who read the same application printed in normal font
(Cohen’s effect size d = 1.09), and they were significantly more likely to recommend
acceptance than were the normal font readers (Cohen’s effect size d = 0.86).
Enhanced fluency also may arise from only partial repetition, as in rhymes, or
alliteration. A particularly clear demonstration of the inadvertent “leaky” effects of
fluent perceptual processing on higher level judgments, in this case arising from the
poetic features of language, is provided by a study by McGlone and Tofighbakhsh
(2000; see also Häfner & Stapel, 2010). Participants were asked to evaluate unfamiliar
aphorisms for how accurately they described human behavior. Their evaluations were
contrasted for aphorisms that rhymed (e.g., Woes unite foes; What sobriety conceals,
alcohol reveals) versus nonrhyming paraphrases of the rhymes (e.g., Woes unite enemies;
What sobriety conceals, alcohol unmasks). Each aphorism was presented in one form
only for a given participant, but both forms were given across participants. If partici-
pants were not explicitly cautioned as to the need to distinguish between the contents
of the aphorism and its poetic qualities, then they gave significantly higher accuracy
ratings to the original (rhyming) aphorisms than to the modified (nonrhyming)
aphorisms. However, if explicitly cautioned to base their accuracy judgments “only on
the claim that the statement makes about behavior, not the poetic quality of the state-
ment’s wording,” then participant’s evaluations of the rhyming aphorisms were
significantly lower in the warned than in the nonwarned (control) condition, and,
also, in the warned condition, there was no difference in the accuracy judgments for
rhyming versus nonrhyming statements.
Providing individuals with a warning enabled them to circumvent the tendency,
shown by the control participants, to “conflate fluency with perceived accuracy”
(McGlone & Tofighbakhsh, 2000, p. 426). Yet this difference in susceptibility to the
differential effects of rhyming versus nonrhyming prose did not arise from differences
in individuals’ explicit beliefs about the relevance of literary form to truth content.
When asked at the end of the experiment, “In your opinion, do aphorisms that rhyme
describe human behavior more accurately than those that do not rhyme?” all of the
participants, regardless of condition, appropriately and unsurprisingly enough,
answered “no.”
These outcomes thus show that the physical character of text or words (here rhym-
ing phrases that were read silently by participants) can exert a substantial and in some
cases unintended and unwanted effect on higher level evaluative processes. These
findings further show, however, that under some circumstances, paying more explicit
attention to words as physical objects, and the distinction between words as concrete
objects in the world and their referents, can bolster resistance to illicit effects of words
as things on our further cognitive and evaluative processes.
Additional evidence suggests that the unintended “overreaching” effects of fluent
processing may not be limited to the easily identified, salient aspects of words, such as
rhyme—and also may extend to other sorts of evaluations, including assessments of
the importance of medical research or other findings (Labroo et al., 2009), and finan-
cial decisions (e.g., Alter & Oppenheimer, 2006). In both a laboratory simulation and
in two analyses of naturalistic real-world stock market data, Alter and Oppenheimer
(2006) found that fluently named stocks robustly outperformed stocks that were
relatively more difficult to name. In the laboratory study, fabricated stocks were
independently rated for the ease with which their names could be pronounced by one
group of participants and another group estimated the performance of those stocks.
Fluently named stocks were rated as likely to increase in value over a year of trading
(mean expected value significantly above zero, showing appreciation), whereas
nonfluently named items were expected to show devaluation (mean expected value
significantly below zero).
Two naturalistic real-world studies, using stocks that were newly released on to
the market, and for which, therefore, individuals were unlikely to have a great
deal of diagnostic information concerning the likely performance of the company,
showed a similar outcome. In one study, newly entering companies on the New York
Stock Exchange that were rated as having highly pronounceable names showed
a significantly larger percentage change in share price on the first day and the first
week of trading than did newly entering companies with less pronounceable names.
This effect persisted, in nonsignificant attenuated form, at 6 months and 1 year. This
“fluency effect” was further supported and extended in a second study, involving both
the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange, that examined the
effects of the company’s three-letter stock ticker identification code as a predictor of
performance. Companies that had a pronounceable ticker code (e.g., KAR) outper-
formed those with a nonpronounceable code (e.g., RDO) on the first day of trading;
this effect became attenuated and was not significant beyond the first day.
These studies convincingly demonstrate that there are many, often uninvited and
unlooked for, effects of the physical features of words and phrases on higher level
judgment. These instances, here taking a nondesirable rather than desirable form,
nonetheless also demonstrate the degree to which we do, indeed, “think with our
senses.” Not only our cognitive and evaluative judgments but also our actions may be
partially guided by inferences driven by “sensory-perceptual fluency.” Very concrete
(low-level) changes in the ease with which we identify and perceive words and text are
not to be ignored, and they may have considerable (sometimes unwelcome) conse-
quences.
Looking Back
This chapter has marshaled together, and asked us to reflect on, the many—
sometimes hidden or overlooked—roles of sensory-perceptual and motor informa-
tion in enabling complex thought and reasoning. Particular (specific) sensory-perceptual
and motor information has been shown to play an essential part in several forms
of complex thought. Among the complex modes of thought that we have considered,
each of which we found recruited (or was subserved by) the representation of
particular sensory, motor, and kinesthetic properties of objects are: The generation
of new hypotheses and the ampliative form of reasoning known as abduction; the
apt and ready access to a solution to a problem in one situation based on the
earlier use of an analogically similar solution in a very different context; the incipient
and later consummate mastery of abstract concepts such as the mathematical
notion of equivalence; and the innovative creation and rapid understanding of
entirely new uses of language in our “on-the-fly” context-appropriate “making of new
concepts”.
From the perspective of the iCASA framework, this chapter primarily provides
evidence for the importance of multiple levels of specificity in agile thinking. It is from
within the richly intertwined and intermixed use of representations at multiple
levels of specificity that innovative and generative thinking occurs. However, notable
support for the dual role of both controlled and automatic processes in adaptively
flexible thinking also emerged.
Support for the latter was found, for example, in the notions that gesture and
perhaps also eye movements may provide an implicit source of support for our
reasoning and thought processes through their deictic or indexing function. We saw
that our own gestures, or the gestures of others, may be rapidly and seamlessly
integrated with more purely “linguistic” meaning in a single unification space, and
that such gestures can presage conceptualizations that have not yet been fully spelled
out in an explicit, conscious, and controlled way. Additional support derived from
observations of the ways in which gesture may increase working memory capacity:
“embodied” physical actions such as pointing or gesturing may supplement and extend
cognitive resources. Given the central role of cognitive capacity (e.g., working memory
capacity) in enabling fluid, on-the-spot reasoning, and in such ubiquitous cognitive
processes as managing interference and keeping track of goals and subgoals, gesturing
thus comprises an important avenue for the influx from perception and action into
the “heart of thinking”.
Similarly, with regard to the external world of physical objects, we saw that multi-
ple large and small physical adjustments of the spaces in which we work and play, such
as how we carry and fold and hold a map, may help us to meet at least some task
demands “in the world,” rather than only “in our heads.” What we might characterize
as a “thoughtful external world,” or one that is aptly arranged to most readily meet our
goals, can set free more of our internal mental and self-regulatory resources for those
challenges that are less amenable to direct action, either immediate or further in the
future. Aptly arranging the external world can enable us to more adeptly continue on
our way, zigzagging between mind, body, and world, in an interlinked intermeshed
representational space that continues to grow and change with our aims and our
progress toward them.
The many sorts of impetus and motivations for such progress in enabling agility
of mind are the topic of our next chapter. The next chapter also brings us from
Part I, where we have focused on memory, categorization, and concepts, to Part II,
focused on motivation and emotion. Like Part I, Part II is comprised of three chapters:
Chapter 5 focuses on action and motivation, and Chapter 6 on emotion, self, and
personality. The last chapter of Part II (Chapter 7), entitled “Thoughts about Thoughts:
The Control versus Noncontrol of Thinking,” revisits and extends several themes we
will have explored in all of the chapters until then, particularly focusing on the ways in
which our thinking is a function of complex conjoined cognitive, motivational, and
emotional factors, such as our beliefs about the nature of learning and our tolerance
for uncertainty versus ambiguity.
Excursion 3: A Hypothetical Train of Thought:

Perceptual Simulation in Arthur Conan Doyle’s
The Hound of the Baskervilles
A pivotal moment in the process of attempting to solve the mysterious and strange
dark happenings in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901/1902)
involves two missing boots. But the boots that go missing are not a pair. First, one of
Sir Henry Baskerville’s new brown boots disappears, and then, very shortly thereafter,
an old black one. Here it is, the crux of the matter, on which the key to this strange
case lies. But is the solution found in a highly abstract manner? Or is it aided by
perceptual simulation?
We might begin thus: Why would someone want and take a single boot, rather than
a pair of boots? Why might one not be contented with a single new boot and return to
fetch an old one? Unless (an unlikely starting point) the person had only one foot or
the use of one foot, it is unlikely that a single boot would be taken to wear and, ordi-
narily, a new boot would be preferred to an old one (of the same size). Ordinarily,
unless there is something distinctive about an old one that is untrue of a new one.
They differ in their visual appearance, and their texture, and . . . ah, yes, an old boot
will be securely inhabited by the familiar smell of its longtime owner, whereas this
would not be so of a very new one. But why would the smell of a boot matter? What if
the boot was taken precisely for its smell? To allow a dog—a real dog, a real hound, to
get the scent of its owner? But there it is! What we have to deal with may not be
a long-known, often-told ghostly and ghastly legend of a dog, a dog that is no more,
but rather an all too real and still living one!
Excursion 4: Speculating Freely: Gertrude

Stein and the Letter “m”
It is said that Gertrude Stein was fond of beginning her writing with the letter m.
In an Atlantic Monthly article, published in 1934 and titled “Has Gertrude Stein a
Secret?” B. F. Skinner listed this observation, along with several others, as a point in
favor of his argument that Stein’s writing was “automatic” because, he said, this was
the letter with which “the automatic procedure often began” (p. 54).
Assuming that, in Stein’s writing (neither automatic nor not automatic, but both,
as Sherwood Anderson said), this fine initiatory office was, indeed, often assumed by
the letter m, why this letter rather than any other? What is it about the letter m,
and about physically (actually, concretely) writing this letter that might induce such
fondness? Why begin with m?
Engaging in a bit of on-line perceptual simulation of our own—that is, imagining
ourselves writing the letter—we feel, immediately, that the movement of writing this
letter is very fluid and smooth. One’s hand moves in a continuous flowing motion (the
pen need not be lifted from the page) that is both downward and upward and satisfy-
ingly forward going. Movement forward is part and parcel of writing the letter m in a
way that differs from many other letters such as s (which returns upon itself), or c, or
o, or b, or even x that end (horizontally speaking), near the point at which they were
begun. In writing the letter m, there is also a fine (but subtly different) repetition and
partial retracing of the very first beginning stroke and the middle downward stroke:
The pen goes down and then immediately retraces the line where it has just been
before it curves forward across the page, then down again, again retracing itself on its
upward path before once more curving forward. Apart from one other letter, m is
unique in that the first formed shape immediately repeats itself in exactly the same
orientation, the first half of the letter mirrors the second—perhaps inducing a form of
perceptual-motor “fluency of processing” or priming effect. The one other letter
involving such immediate and direct repetition of form (but not quite the same retrac-
ing of the first and middle strokes) is the letter w. But w is often written using straight
lines, each terminating in a sudden (sharp and jagged) point, whereas the letter
m moves flowingly forward, returning to anchor itself, to be sure, on the solid founda-
tion of the line, but then moving ahead, as though tracing the graceful arc of a
bridge—and itself forming a bridge, a bridge to effortless, pleasant, productive
thought and writing.
Simulating not the sensory-motor movements of writing, but the sounds
associated with the letter m, hearing oneself say, mm, or feeling oneself saying it: this
is likewise a soft flowing easy humming. Sometimes we hum to signal a beginning—to
begin a beginning. Prolonging or extending the sound, making it last and spanning
moments, or pausing and then repeating it, bespeaks something that is pleasurable, to
be delighted in: mmm mmmmm mmmmmm. . .
Part Two
MOTIVATION AND EMOTION

5
Action and Motivation
The Impetus for, and Enactment of, Agile Thinking
It would become me
As well as it does you, and I should do it
With much more ease, for my good will is to it,
And yours it is against.
—William Shakespeare (1623/2006, The Tempest III.i.28–31)
I am driven by an idea that I really only grasp as it

grows with the picture.
—Henri Matisse (1995, p. 132)
In this chapter, we further broaden the scope of our window into agile thinking beyond
that of the representational world of memory, categorization, and concepts (the focus
of Chapters 2 and 3), and beyond that of sensory-perceptual and motor inputs and
guides to representations and thinking (the topic of Chapter 4), to encompass action
and motivation, or the impetus for, and enactment of, agile thinking. The chapter consists
of four main sections, each of which, in turn, is comprised of several subsections. The
four sections focus on, respectively: (a) hierarchical models of action control and
motivation, particularly in relation to higher level versus lower level construals of our
actions, and the interactions between controlled and automatic processing in forming
and implementing intentions; (b) the need for moderate and changing levels of
control, emphasizing the correlation of moderate levels of control with increased
resiliency and the growing evidence that executive control or self-regulatory processes
may, under some conditions, become depleted if the need for high levels of self-
regulatory control is sustained for prolonged periods; (c) forms of motivation and
incentives, especially evidence that contests the often proposed conflict between
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and that underscores the important synergistic
effects that may be obtained by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational
orientation; and (d) the potential powerful role of reinforcement in encouraging
organisms not only to repeat but also to vary, including in innovatively creative ways.
Thus, further developing the iCASA framework, we here focus on alterations in our
level of representational specificity, and our level of control, with regard to actions and
our motivation for action, in enabling mental agility.
179
180 M O T I VAT I O N A N D E M O T I O N
Hierarchical Models of Action Control and Motivation

THE BENEFITS AND COSTS OF HIGHER LEVEL
A C T I O N C O N S T R UA L S
Earlier, in Chapter 3, we considered the three principles of the theory of “action
identification” that were proposed by Vallacher and Wegner (1987, 1989), in their
attempt to answer the question—echoing one posed in Roger Brown’s (1958) classic
article, “How Shall a Thing Be Called?”—how shall an act (or action) be called? Each of
the three principles was stated in terms of the predominant or default level of specific-
ity at which an action is typically identified by an individual, or what was termed its
“prepotent identity.” The three principles were that, first, an action is “maintained
with respect to its prepotent identity”—such that this is the level of abstraction that
is most readily and most often adopted; second, “when both a lower and higher level
act identity are available, there is a tendency for the higher level identity to become
prepotent” and, third, “when an action cannot be maintained in terms of its prepotent
identity, there is a tendency for a lower level identity to become prepotent” (Vallacher
& Wegner, 1987, pp. 4–5, italics in original omitted).
Our ongoing efforts to achieve a relatively abstract and comprehensive understand-
ing of situations and of our own and others’ actions frequently lead us to emphasize
such aspects as socially conveyed meanings or the evaluative implications of an action
or judgment. However, this tendency toward “higher level understanding” comes at a
potential cost. Such high-level construals are remote from the mechanics of action
(and from “thinking with our senses”), and so, if we encounter difficulties or obstacles,
may not provide sufficiently close guidance for correcting or adjusting our behavior.
Stated differently, whereas identifying an action at a high level of abstraction is
associated with the largely effortless action completion that we associate with highly
automatic behaviors, and is thus in many ways beneficial, that same abstraction
becomes detrimental if there is a need for closer monitoring and modification of the
behavior—as then detailed, moment-to-moment aspects of the behavior are not
readily available. Furthermore, as will be further developed later, the criterion for
whether a given action has been completed differs with the level of action identifica-
tion that we have adopted, such that higher levels of action identification often involve
more extended, more complex “units” of activity.
A clear experimental demonstration of the important interrelation between one’s
level of action identification and its match to the difficulty level of the task at hand
was provided in an ingenious experiment by Vallacher, Wegner, and Somoza (1989).
The paradigm was in some respects quite straightforward. Participants were asked to
present a written speech that would be videotaped. One-half of the participants were
told that the videotape later would be presented to an audience that would be easy to
persuade on the topic of the speech (easy task), whereas the others were told that the
audience would be difficult to persuade (difficult task). In addition, participants were
told that, because of earlier problems with the audio recording, it was possible that at
times they would notice a red light blinking on the camera that would signal to them
that their voice was too weak to be recorded properly and so they should raise their
voice slightly and speak a little more deliberately. One-half of the participants in each
Act ion an d M ot iv at ion 181
of the groups were told that it was quite likely that the signal light would blink at
various times during their speech, and that therefore they should try to remain mind-
ful of their voice throughout the speech (low-level action identification manipulation).
The other half were told that it was unlikely that the signal light would blink during
their speech and that they should concentrate on being persuasive in delivering the
speech (high-level action identification). Whereas the light did blink 10 times during
the speech for those in the former group, it never blinked during the speech of the
latter group.
Although one might think that the blinking light would disrupt performance for
everyone, the actual effects depended on whether the participants were in the “easy”
task (addressing a purported audience that would be easy to persuade) or the
“difficult” task (addressing a skeptical, difficult-to-persuade audience). Speech dysflu-
encies (e.g., “ums,” stuttering, and long pauses, as evaluated by independent raters of
the videotapes) were highest in the two conditions in which there was a mismatch
between the perceived task difficulty and the level of action identification: that is, the
easy task together with a low level of identification, or the difficult task together
with a high level of action identification. Speech errors were less frequent in the two
conditions in which there was a match between difficulty and level of identification
(easy task + high level identification, or difficult task + low level identification). Similar
crossover effects—such that conceiving their actions at a low level of action identity
boosted participants’ performance on the more difficult task but impeded it on the
easier task—also were observed on the participants’ self-ratings of their performance.
For instance, compared to the other conditions, participants were less anxious and
less dissatisfied with their performance in the matching conditions (easy task + high
level identification, difficult task + low level identification).
These outcomes are a strong example of the need for an optimal match between the
level of specificity at which we construe our activities and the difficulty of the task:
More abstract identifications may be most beneficial for tasks that do not require
step-by-step careful monitoring of the specifics of our activity (or do not require it
under a given set of conditions), whereas more concrete identifications are most
helpful for difficult tasks. Using terms that were suggested by Vallacher and colleagues
(1989), a mismatch may involve either “identity inflation” (the activity is personally
difficult but one is thinking of it, nonoptimally, in overly broad terms that cannot
guide the action) or “identity fragmentation” (the activity is personally easy or
well practiced but one is thinking of it, nonoptimally, in overly concrete low level
terms).
Our optimal and most agile and adaptive functioning may occur when we fall victim
to neither identity inflation nor to identity fragmentation. Nonetheless, the content
of our action identifications is also important, and “higher level” identifications may
lead to difficulties if they make undesired habitual actions more resistant to change.
Thus, differing levels of action identification also may play a role in problematic habit-
ual behaviors, such as alcoholism. For instance, whereas “having a drink” is a particu-
lar short segment of action, more abstract construals of drinking such as “relieving
tension” or “rewarding myself” may take longer to achieve, and so may result in longer
stretches of behavior that are resistant to interruption or alteration. “Identifying
the action at high levels, then, may make the action more stable, precluding for the
duration of the action any attempts to regulate its performance” (Wegner et al.,
1989, p. 201).
To examine whether how individuals identified their behavior did tend to change
to higher levels as behaviors became more habitual, Wegner et al. (1989) asked four
groups of individuals to rate how well various descriptions fit the act of “drinking
alcoholic beverages.” The groups included students who reported low, moderate, or
heavy alcohol use, and clients who were in an alcohol treatment center. Individuals in
the alcohol treatment center and heavy alcohol use students endorsed significantly
fewer low-level descriptors of the act of drinking alcoholic beverages than did either
low-use or moderate-use students. The heavy-use and alcohol treatment clients also
endorsed more high level descriptors, though the particular descriptors endorsed
sometimes differed. For example, both heavy-use students and alcohol treatment
clients characterized drinking as “relieving tension” significantly more often than did
low-use students. However, the alcohol treatment clients endorsed “hurting myself”
more often than did any of the other groups, including the heavy-use students, and
they significantly less often characterized drinking as “rewarding myself” than did the
heavy-use students. These findings show both differences in the predominant level of
action identification as a function of experience in a domain (more frequent drinkers
endorsed more high-level characterizations of their drinking behavior), and that such
high-level characterizations, although they have the potential to be adaptively useful,
also may (under some circumstances) lead to obdurate resistance to behavioral change
that is detrimental to an individual’s well-being.
More recently, level of action identification also was implicated in the severity of a
quite different form of habitual action: that of obsessive-compulsive hand washing
(Dar & Katz, 2005). Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients who engaged in compul-
sive hand washing were asked to rate their degree of agreement with several descrip-
tors of hand washing that reflected either a low level of identification, relating to its
technical and concrete aspects (e.g., “I soap my hands,” “I turn on the faucet”) or a com-
paratively higher level of identification, concerning its purpose or meaning (e.g., “I feel
cleansed,” “I am doing the right thing”). Obsessive-compulsive patients agreed more
with high level descriptors and less with low-level descriptors than did matched control
participants. Furthermore, the endorsement of high level rather than low-level descrip-
tors of the action of hand washing was strongly related to the severity of the disorder.
On the one hand, the latter findings appear to contradict a salient characteristic of
obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Obsessive-compulsive patients often are extremely
and minutely focused on the details of their compulsive behavior yet, particularly for
individuals experiencing a severe disorder, they seldom endorsed items that described
the concrete technical aspects of the behavior. On the other hand, this apparent para-
dox may arise from the aims with which the obsessive-compulsive individual engages
in detailed and careful instantiation of hand washing. Rather than “ends in them-
selves” the detailed and careful steps are a means to achieving certain emotional and
internal states, such as “calming myself” and “overcoming nagging thoughts”:
The details of the act are not dictated by the need to achieve a normal level of
cleanliness, but rather by the desire to achieve a specific internal state, such
as a feeling of confidence or comfort or an alleviation of anxiety or disgust.
As in the case of excessive drinking, [patients with obsessive compulsive

disorder] monitor the habitual act not in terms of its technical details,
but rather in terms of the desired changes the act is expected to produce in
their feelings. Accordingly, the criterion for completing the act is not the
attainment of an external goal (reasonably clean hands), but rather the
achievement of the desired internal state. (Dar & Katz, 2005, p. 338)
The increased stability of actions arising from comparatively higher level action
identification is, in these two examples, detrimental, because it is helping to maintain
habitual behavior that is ultimately undesired. Yet the flip side of this is that, in
situations in which a behavior is desired, higher level identifications of “what we are
doing” may help to preserve action in the face of obstacles—and to make us resistant to
the intrusion or “infiltration” of goals from other sources:
A person controlling an act with relatively low-level identities in mind is

prone toward inconsistent, perhaps even impulsive, behavior and is highly
sensitive to social feedback and other contextual cues to higher level mean-
ing. The person controlling action at a relatively high level, meanwhile, can
behave flexibly with respect to lower level identities while maintaining a
broader goal or purpose and is effectively shielded against new high-level
identities afforded by the social and physical environment. (Vallacher &
Wegner, 1987, p. 13)
An unqualified and unilateral statement of a simple dichotomized rule—such as

higher levels of action identification are “better” for agile thinking than are lower level
ones—is thus clearly unwarranted. The most effective level of action identification
will change with changing circumstances. Furthermore, the very same qualities that
make higher levels of action identification an asset under some circumstances, such as
resistance to interruption and infiltration from other goals or demands, can become a
liability in other situations.1 (See Schmeichel et al., 2011, for an especially intriguing
experimental demonstration of the importance of the match between one’s level of
action identity and the particular task demands—even when those task demands
are very similar to one another differing only in the extent to which they require
immediate sensory-based responding versus responding that also takes into account
prior events that are no longer present).
Agile thinking may thus require iterative adjustment of the ways in which we “think
of what we are doing,” so that we fluently adapt to changing internal and external
demands that promote or impede our goals. Neither a highly abstract nor a highly
concrete identification of what we are doing is likely to be a good fit in all circum-
stances. Multiple interconnected levels of action identity will enable us to both maxi-
mize efficiency through the automatization of subcomponents of activities when
circumstances allow it (during periods of little task-related difficulty or disruption),
and to rapidly shift to comparatively more narrowly and concretely controlled and
deliberate responses when confronted with task-related obstacles. This possibility for
multiple levels of action identification allows for “constancy through change” in how
we sustain our goals in view:
A person’s identity structure for a domain of action is likely to be highly

complex, consisting of multiple, overlapping hierarchies. The complexity of
identity structures imparts remarkable flexibility and individuality to the
mental control of action. Indeed, without knowledge of a person’s phenom-
enal organization of action, it may be difficult for an observer to determine
whether the person is maintaining a particular course of action over time or,
instead, is doing different things. (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987, p. 13)
C O N S T R UA L T H E O R Y, M OT I VAT I O N , A N D S E L F - R E G U L AT I O N
In Chapter 3, we considered evidence that the level of construal that an individual
adopts may affect the basic cognitive process of categorization. For instance, we saw
that individuals who were asked to imagine a temporally near event, associated with a
more concrete construal level, grouped and classified objects relating to that event
into significantly more categories (i.e., more numerous, narrower, and concrete units)
than did individuals asked to imagine a temporally distant event, who used fewer,
broader, and more abstract units (Liberman, Sagristano, & Trope, 2002; for a replica-
tion and extension see also Wyer, Perfect, & Pahl, 2010, Study 2).
Construal level may also be altered by differentially focusing attention on the
methods to be used in accomplishing a goal (how), rather than the reasons for the goal
(why). These changes in construal level may then alter further motivational aspects,
such as the saliency or accessibility of different goals, both for oneself and for others.
In one study, participants who were repeatedly asked to consider why they should
improve their health or their academic performance (a task orientation that focuses on
increasingly abstract, longer range, and more encompassing goals, values, and aspira-
tions) expected that others would, and recommended that others should, seek to obtain
more accurate but potentially self-threatening weakness-focused feedback regarding
their social intelligence or career selections than did participants who were repeatedly
asked to consider how they should improve in these domains (Freitas, Gollwitzer, &
Trope, 2004). The latter task orientation led to a focus on specific, concrete actions and
stimuli and this focus, in turn, increased the relative weighting participants appeared
to give to considerations of the immediate present. These participants thus expected
(and recommended) that others should avoid the discomfort that is likely to be
provoked by receiving self-threatening weakness-focused feedback.
In contrast, the abstract-mindset group judged that others’ long-range goals would
be more salient and more strongly affected by the feedback than did the concrete-
mindset group. The abstract-mindset group also more often referred to goals relating
to self-knowledge than did the concrete-mindset group. This study has several striking
parallels to the process of “self-affirmation” that is discussed in the second section
of Chapter 6; as noted there, it has been found that self-affirmation leads participants
to prefer, on average, a higher level of action identification for several everyday
behaviors, such as “making a list” or “reading.”
In the preceding studies, participants were encouraged to either think about
how, or why, they accomplish certain goals, and this led to changes in the relative
accessibility of different types of motivational considerations. Largely parallel shifts
in the relative accessibility of information may occur when we move from a more
deliberative mindset before making a decision to act or not to act in a certain way,
when we are still in the midst of weighing the pros and cons and other considerations,
to the state of having already made a decision (e.g., Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer et al.,
1990). Individuals who have already decided upon a goal or intention become focused
on how to accomplish the goal. Once in this implementation (rather than deliberative)
mindset, we may become especially attuned to the factors that are relevant to the
action, and we may adopt a positively biased view of the “situational affordances” for
accomplishing the hoped-for goal (Gollwitzer & Kinney, 1989; S. E. Taylor & Gollwitzer,
1995). A further important difference between deliberative versus implementation
intentions concerns the extent to which the two types of intentions can draw upon
more automatic processes. As will be seen in the following section, forming highly
specific implementation intentions for future intended actions can substantially
increase the likelihood that a given intention will be actually carried out, in part
by transferring the cuing of action initiation to less demanding automatic cognitive
processes.
As with levels of action identification, where it is neither uniformly beneficial to
adopt a high-level construal or a low-level construal, there are both benefits and
costs associated with deliberative versus implemental mindsets. Awareness of the
differential manner in which these mindsets may filter our thinking and our aware-
ness of problem-relevant information, and bias us toward focusing on relatively
lower level (more concrete) versus higher level (more abstract) factors, may help to
attenuate an excessive movement in either of these directions and thereby increase
agile thinking. Consideration of these very broad effects of mindsets on our thinking
also suggests that it may be beneficial to deliberately plan for (or even require) periods
of deliberative reevaluation during the course of larger scale projects, perhaps at more
natural “choice points” in the development of a project, at which the explicit aim is not
to implement further steps, but to reevaluate and if necessary reorient and rethink
planned directions. Stepping out of our action-oriented implementation mode during
such reevaluation phases of a project may enable shifts in mental construal level that,
in turn, allow the timely identification of newly emergent “bigger picture” threats, or
opportunities.
F L E X I B LY P O S T P O N I N G A N D R E S U M I N G I N T E N T I O N S :
LEVELS OF SPECIFICITY IN REMEMBERING
AND ACTING ON INTENTIONS
Many of our intentions or goals cannot be acted upon immediately but, instead,
require that certain conditions that are not currently in place first be met (e.g.,
particular materials or persons must be available or, often, a complex conjunction of
time, place, and persons or objects must occur). Adaptive thinking and action thus
often turns on our ability to recognize that an opportunity to fulfill an “open goal”
exists and is now at hand.
When a goal needs to be postponed, it may be particularly useful to explicitly bring
to mind specific aspects or features of the sort of situation that would, in the future,
provide a good opportunity for the realization or resumption of the goal. To take a
commonplace example: If you need to purchase olive oil, but satisfactory olive oil is
not available in the grocery shop where you usually go, you might make a mental
note that the next time you purchase cheese or olives at the delicatessen, you also
should look for olive oil there (a highly specific feature-based and location-based cue).
This strategy, which Seifert and Patalano (2001) have described as “predictive encod-
ing of pending goals,”2 may enable us to better recognize opportunities for goal
completion when they arise.
Specific cues, rather than more general ones, have been shown to increase the
likelihood that we will successfully identify opportunities for the realization of
pending goals (a form of prospective memory for intentions). For example, in a brief
opinion survey, participants who were asked to perform a particular task after com-
pleting the survey were more likely to remember to do the task if they were asked to
do so after they had finished a specific sort of question (“the Black Panthers question”)
than after they had finished a more abstractly described behavior (“the last survey
question”) (Loftus, 1971). Similarly, other research has shown that participants were
more likely to successfully remember their intention to perform a given task when
they have been prompted to take note of and remember each of the particular instances
when the task should be performed. Intention completion was greater if participants
mentally prepared themselves to perform the intention in response to the occurrence
of any one of the specific words, “lion,” “leopard,” or “tiger,” that might appear on the
computer screen during another task that they were doing than when they were asked
to remember to perform the intended task whenever they encountered any instance
of the more general category “animals” (Einstein, McDaniel, Richardson, Guynn, &
Cunfer, 1995; also see Ellis & Milne, 1996). Both younger and older adults showed
enhanced recognition of the opportunities for goal fulfillment when given specific
prospective memory cues compared to more general cues, and the magnitude of the
enhancement was similar for the two age groups.
One of the reasons for this pattern of outcomes may be that a highly general
or “superordinate” category term such as “food” tends to spontaneously lead one
to think of many different sorts of items that might be described by that category
(e.g., meats, vegetables, fruits, cereals). However, if the potential occasions for
performing the intended task are drawn from a more limited range of events, then
one’s attention and memory would not be ideally focused to identify opportunities
for completion of the pending goals. Findings from a research study by Ellis and Milne
(1996), in which they used a third, and intermediate level of specificity as the cue,
supported this possibility. They found, as in other research, that there was a strong
advantage for highly specific prospective cues (e.g., “bananas,” “pears,” “apples,”
“oranges”) compared to the very general or abstract superordinate category cue (“food
items”). However, there was only a weak advantage for participants who were given
the highly specific cues compared to a group who were told to remember to perform
a given action whenever they encountered any “fruits” (a narrower subordinate
category than “food items” but not as highly specific as actually listing all possible
exemplars of that subcategory).
This latter finding is important because often we may not be able to anticipate
exactly which situations might arise that will give us the opportunity to fulfill an
intention or an open goal. Nonetheless, we should attempt to deliberately bring
to mind possible kinds of opportunities that may arise. Flexible resumption of
postponed goals or intentions may be most efficiently met by deliberate anticipation

of the sorts of conditions that, once present, will allow us to act as we intend.
REMEMBERING INTENTIONS AND CONTROL: SHARING THE LOAD

O F R E M E M B E R I N G B Y R E C R U I T I N G A U TO M AT I C P R O C E S S E S
Remembering to act on our open goals or postponed intentions seems in itself to
require an intentional and deliberate act. We need to “remember to remember” that,
should the opportunity arise, we had wanted to do Y or to do Z. But does acting as we
intended to meet an open goal necessarily result from a deliberate or conscious
attempt to remember, or from an ongoing effort to monitor for potential opportuni-
ties to fulfill the intention? Or might more automatic or spontaneous forms of memory
also contribute to such prospective forms of remembering?
Recent research suggests that we sometimes may rely both on deliberate and effort-
ful attempts to remember what we are to do, and on more spontaneous forms of
reminding (Einstein et al., 2005; Einstein et al., 2003; see Altmann & Trafton, 2002,
for discussion and review). Such spontaneous reminding may arise automatically from
a more reflexive retrieval of a cue-action association (Einstein & McDaniel, 1996) that
occurs rapidly, obligatorily, and with little “cost” to ongoing cognitive processes
(Moscovitch, 1992; also cf. Bargh et al., 2001). Consistent with this suggestion, recent
neuroimaging evidence (Gilbert, Gollwitzer, Cohen, Oettingen, & Burgess, 2009) has
shown that whereas intentional, self-initiated retrieval may predominantly draw on
brain regions related to top-down controlled processing (e.g., particularly the fron-
toparietal network and the lateral portion of Brodmann area 10), more spontaneous
forms of externally cued retrieval may draw on other brain regions (e.g., especially the
medial portion of Brodmann area 10).
To determine when individuals might rely on relatively spontaneous (externally
cued) versus more deliberate ongoing monitoring, Einstein and colleagues (2005)
examined the conditions under which the requirement to perform one or more pro-
spective memory tasks interfered with participants’ performance of other, ongoing,
tasks. When the to-be-performed prospective memory task was centrally related to
the content of the ongoing task (e.g., participants were to press a designated key
whenever the word “tortoise” occurred, and the ongoing task required decisions as to
whether each word belonged to a specified category or not), then there was little cost
to performance of the ongoing task (compared to a baseline condition involving
only the ongoing task). Also, in both the baseline and prospective memory conditions
individuals responded with a high level of accuracy to the prospective cues.
The absence of any detrimental effects to performance of the ongoing classification
task, together with high levels of prospective memory performance, suggests that
participants could rely on relatively “spontaneous” reminding under these conditions.
They did not need to continuously monitor for occurrences of the prospective memory
prompt because they were already processing words semantically as part of their
ongoing activity, and they could readily respond to any occurrences of the single
relevant cue. However, costs to the ongoing task did emerge under several other
conditions, such as when high, rather than moderate, emphasis was placed on the
importance of performing the prospective task. Perhaps this occurred because the
increased emphasis on the need for performing the prospective task shifted
participants away from reliance on spontaneous reminding to deliberately controlled
monitoring, even though this did not always enhance performance on the prospective
task. Costs to the ongoing task were also observed when there were several possible
cues that needed to be responded to, rather than only one, and when the cues for the
prospective task were likely not in “focal” awareness (e.g., rather than a word, the cue
was comprised of only one syllable, such as “tor,” when the ongoing task required
monitoring of the semantic content of words to make classification judgments).
Additional evidence for automatically cued reminding was provided by a condition
in which an earlier prospective memory cue was made irrelevant by suspending
the requirement to perform the prospective memory task. Nonetheless, presentation
of the no-longer-relevant cue during the task resulted in a trial-specific slowdown on
a different (lexical decision) task. This suggests that automatic and “obligatory” recog-
nition of the cue’s prior relevance sometimes occurred even when the cue was
irrelevant to (and here was detrimental to) the performance of the task that was now
at hand.
Anticipating potential contexts in which we might act to fulfill open goals by imag-
ining and linking an intended action with a specific environmental situation (“when
situation x arises, I will perform y”) may enable us to switch from relying on effortful
and demanding conscious and deliberate attempts at remembering to allowing our
memory to be automatically cued by the eliciting events (Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer
& Brandstätter, 1997). Forming a detailed implementation intention, with informa-
tion about how, when, and where one will complete a desired action (e.g., a deadline
for completing a given project), and then imaginatively rehearsing this particular situ-
ation, may later enable the automatic triggering of the desired action, without the
need for further rehearsal or demanding cognitive control strategies (Gollwitzer,
1999; Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997; Gollwitzer & Schaal, 1998). Very aptly, this
process has been termed “strategic automatization” by Gollwitzer and Schaal (1998;
see also I. S. Gallo et al., 2009).
Notably, there is evidence that forming implementation intentions (essentially
prospective if-then rules) increases an individual’s perceptual sensitivity to cues
relevant to the intention even for highly habitual stimuli and for which detection of
the relevant cue is difficult (T. L. Webb & Sheeran, 2004—detecting occurrences of the
letter f in a passage, when this is difficult to do for “function” words such as “of”).
Furthermore, this enhanced sensitivity does not appear to lead to an increased number
of false alarms (mistakenly classifying situations or stimuli as intention-relevant
when they are not), and it also does not lead to slower responding to ambiguous
stimuli (T. L. Webb & Sheeran, 2004). Forming specific implementation intentions
has been found to effectively promote intended actions in a wide variety of contexts,
both for actions that occur only once and for actions that need to be performed repeat-
edly such as health- and safety-related behaviors (Sheeran & Orbell, 2000; Sheeran &
Silverman, 2003; also see Koestner, Lekes, Powers, & Chicoine, 2002).
Developing specific implementation intentions may be a powerful means to coun-
teract the pull of a well-established habit, placing a different mode of “automaticity”
against a habitually cued goal or behavior, to decrease the likelihood that the new
intention is derailed by the older habitual response. This approach may also lead to
improved memory for intentions in individuals who may experience difficulties with
deliberate conscious remembering, but not with relatively automatic forms of
processing, such as some older adults (e.g., Chasteen, Park, & Schwartz, 2001; Jacoby,
Jennings, & Hay, 1996). Older individuals who were given guidance in how to use such
“implementation intentions” showed improved prospective memory in a realistic
glucose monitoring task relative to controls who merely repeatedly rehearsed the times
that they were to take the glucose readings, or individuals who were asked to deliberate
concerning the pros and cons of testing their sugar level (Liu & Park, 2004).
The potential interplay between automatically cued and strategic monitoring for
opportunities to fulfill open goals or intentions is also clearly demonstrated by the
finding that individuals with brain lesions to the frontal lobe—who often experience
clear difficulties in appropriately executing effortful, deliberate, and strategically
demanding tasks—can nonetheless benefit from such an approach of detailed
implementation intention formation (Lengfelder & Gollwitzer, 2001). Patients with
frontal lobe lesions, patients with nonfrontal lesions, and two nonclinical control
groups were asked to track a moving circle across a computer screen and also, at the
same time, to monitor for any appearance of a number in the center of the moving
circle. They were asked to press a mouse button as quickly as possible to any numbers
that appeared, but to try to respond especially quickly to any occurrences of the
number 3. If, however, any letters appeared, they were to withhold responding. This
created a go/no-go situation, with critical targets (the number 3), noncritical targets
(the numbers 1, 5, 7, and 9) and distractor items to which the individual was not to
respond (the letters a, e, n, v, and x). Although patients with frontal and nonfrontal
lesions were slower in responding overall, all groups responded significantly more
rapidly to appearances of the critical target if they had formed an implementation
intention beforehand. That is, participants who explicitly thought, “If the number 3
appears, I will press the button particularly fast!” responded more quickly to critical
targets than did participants who took part in a familiarization phase that controlled
for experimenter expectancy and the repeated presentation of the target item but did
not encourage the formation of a detailed implementation intention. The advantage
for the implementation intention was similar in the frontal lesion group compared
with the control groups and the nonfrontal lesion group.
Furthermore, when all of the patients were separated into two groups, based on
their performance on a difficult deliberate planning task (the Tower of Hanoi task,
requiring the movement of disks across a number of pegs in accordance with several
rules, such as that no disk may be placed on another disk that is smaller than itself), it
was found that those patients who showed relatively more impaired performance on
this controlled planning task benefited the most from forming the implementation
intention. That is, these patients showed the greatest speedup for the critical target
trials. Notably, the patients with lower deliberate planning scores also outperformed
university students for these conditions.
A clear implication of these findings is that the tendency of individuals with frontal
lobe lesions, and also of other patients such as some persons with traumatic brain
injury, to be overly guided by habitual or automatic responses to environmental
cues—under the right conditions—may actually be used to help them. Specific condi-
tion-to-action cues could, for instance, be used to help individuals to improve their
daily planning abilities and initiation (cf. Cicerone, Levine, Malec, Stuss, & Whyte,
2006). Additionally, these findings suggest that, in healthy individuals, even under
conditions designed to encourage the operation of automatic responding, intact reflec-
tive and deliberative monitoring abilities may to some extent continue to modulate
and partially dampen such responding. Nonetheless, forming more specific imple-
mentation intentions may increase the likelihood of successful goal completion.
One final study investigating the effectiveness of implementation intentions also
provides a clear cross-connection to the next section concerning broader motivational
aspects of self-control. Consistent with the construal of implementation intentions as
a form of “strategic automatization,” Webb and Sheeran (2003) found that the forma-
tion of implementation intentions helped to attenuate the detrimental “depleting
effects” on self-control capacity that can arise from a prior effortful attempt at
self-regulation. Stated differently, implementation intentions seemed to “conserve”
effortful processing capacity. In one study, all participants first were given the Stroop
color-words task, which requires individuals to name the ink color of printed words
and to ignore the referents of the words that also comprise the names of colors. After
finishing the Stroop task, they were asked to attempt to solve a difficult (impossible)
puzzle task. However, participants in the “implementation intention” condition were
asked to tell themselves how they would respond to the words on the Stroop test, such
as “as soon as I see a word I will ignore its meaning.” This implementation intention
group persisted significantly longer in trying to solve the puzzle task than did partici-
pants who did not form implementation intentions. A further study showed that
even if participants had already completed a demanding self-control task, forming
implementation intentions for how to perform the Stroop task “protected” perfor-
mance on that task. Those who performed the Stroop task following the demanding
self-control task but under implementation intentions made significantly fewer
errors, and also named the ink colors significantly more rapidly, than did those who
performed the task without such intentions.
Moderate and Changing Levels of Control:

Not Too Controlled Nor Noncontrolled
The previous two sections concerned levels of specificity and control with regard to
particular goals or actions. Here we turn to a consideration of levels of control with
regard to motivation and goal-directed activity more generally. We will focus particu-
larly on the interrelations between several broad sets of constructs relating to motiva-
tion, personality, and temperament and their potential influence on agile thinking.
These constructs include the notions of ego control and ego resiliency, and also the
distinction between effortful control versus reactive control. As will be seen, in broad
agreement with the principle of the iCASA framework that agile thinking requires an
ability to adaptively move between differing levels of control (controlled vs. spontane-
ous vs. automatic), higher levels of ego resilience—involving resourceful adaptation to
changing circumstances and flexible use of problem-solving strategies—have been
found to be associated with both a capacity for effortful control and a degree of
impulsiveness and spontaneity.
EGO CONTROL AND EGO RESILIENCY

In the theoretical view of several personality researchers (e.g., Asendorpf & van Aken,
1999; J. Block, 2002; J. H. Block & J. Block, 1980; Robins et al., 1996) there are two
key aspects to the effective functioning of an individual that are important in enabling
good adaptation to the environment. One aspect involves the ability to restrain
impulses that, if expressed, would lead to problems for the individual, or more
broadly, to contain versus to express emotional and motivational impulses. This meta-
dimension of impulse inhibition/expression (Letzring, Block, & Funder, 2005) is
referred to as “ego control.” At one extreme of the continuum, individuals may be
undercontrolled. Such persons are characterized by “insufficient modulation of
impulse, the inability to delay gratification, immediate and direct expression of
motivations and affects, and vulnerability to environmental distractors” (J. H. Block &
J. Block, 1980, p. 43). At the other end of the continuum, individuals may be charac-
terized as overcontrolled. Such persons show a converse pattern, including an exces-
sive “containment of impulse, delay of gratification, inhibition of action and affect,
and insulation from environmental distractors” (J. H. Block & J. Block, 1980, p. 43).
Persons who excessively inhibit their emotional experience may have difficulties
responding to situations spontaneously; they may be likely to avoid important
situations or interactions, and they may show other forms of avoidance, fearfulness,
and social withdrawal (e.g., Kagan, Reznick, & Snidman, 1988), thereby limiting
opportunities for new learning and development.
The second aspect that is critical in determining adaptive functioning concerns the
ability of the individual to be flexible in dealing with the environment and changing
situational requirements—modulating the level of restraint that is exercised depend-
ing on circumstances, not always or uniformly restraining impulses if the conditions
do not demand such restraint, but sometimes acting more spontaneously and freely
(cf. Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010). This second meta-dimension involves the “dynamic
capacity to contextually modify one’s level of control in response to situational
demands and affordances” (Letzring et al., 2005, p. 396) and is referred to as “ego
resiliency.”
A key aspect of ego resiliency is that it involves the individual’s ability to at least
temporarily alter his or her usual (predominant) manner of responding, to more
effectively meet current circumstances. The broad construct of ego resiliency involves
temperamental, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive aspects and, with its focus on
“resourceful adaptation” and “flexible use of problem-solving strategies” (Eisenberg
et al., 2003, p. 762), is closely related to agile thinking. More specifically, J. Block and
J. H. Block characterize ego resiliency as an individual’s “ability to, within personal
limits, situationally reduce behavioral control as well as to situationally increase behavioral
control, to expand attention as well as to narrow attention” (2006, p. 318, emphasis
added). Elaborating on the differences between the ego-resilient versus relatively less
resilient individual, these researchers observe that:
The ego-resilient individual could shift behaviors, had available a versatile set
of cognitive and social procedures in the search for adaptation, could both
assimilate and accommodate, was deliberative but not ruminative, was quick
to adapt, was able to plan and work for a distant goal, and was also able
to relax and relish enjoyment when circumstances suggested and permitted.
The relatively unresilient or vulnerable individual displayed little adaptive
flexibility, was disquieted by the new and altered, was perseverative or diffuse
in responding to the changed or strange, was made anxious by competing
demands, and had difficulty in recouping from the traumatic. (J. Block &
J. H. Block, 2006, p. 318)
Although ego control and ego resiliency can be conceptualized independently,

empirical research shows that extreme levels of ego control (either highly undercon-
trolled or highly overcontrolled) are less often associated with ego resiliency. That is,
research findings suggest that moderate levels of ego control are most often associ-
ated with high levels of ego resiliency. As succinctly stated by J. H. Block and J. Block
(1980, p. 44): “extreme placement at either end of the ego-control continuum implies
a constancy in mode of behavior that, given a varying world, can be expected to be
adaptively dysfunctional.”
The first empirical demonstration of the relation of moderate levels of self or ego
control with increased ego resiliency used a personality assessment method known as
the “Q-sort” technique. In this method, an individual who knows someone well
(e.g., the parent of a child) is asked to sort a list of personality descriptions, each of
which is placed on a separate card, based on how well each personality description fits
the child (the target person). The assessor is asked to place a large number of cards
with descriptions (e.g., 100 different cards) into one of nine piles, sorting the cards
according to how characteristic the descriptions are of the target person, ranging from
extremely uncharacteristic to extremely characteristic. This produces a person-
centered description that characterizes the behavioral, affective, and cognitive charac-
teristics of the target person using descriptors that are readily understood and
interpreted by lay observers. The descriptors that are used include characteristics on
each of five personality dimensions. 3 These “Big Five” personality dimensions (briefly
alluded to here, but discussed in more depth in the next chapter) include extraversion
(e.g., he is a talkative child; he talks a lot), agreeableness (e.g., he is considerate
and thoughtful of other people), emotional stability (e.g., he is nervous and fearful),
conscientiousness (e.g., he finds ways to make things happen and get things done),
and openness to experience/intellect (e.g., he is curious and exploring; he likes to
learn and experience new things). Analyses are then performed on the “Q-sorts” to
determine whether there are personality “types”—that is, individuals who tend to be
characterized similarly on sets of personality traits or to show similar Q-sort profiles.
Using this technique with a representative sample of 300 boys, aged 12 to 13 years
at the time of data collection, Robins and colleagues (Robins, John, Caspi, Moffitt, &
Stouthamer-Loeber, 1996) identified three personality configurations or “Q types”
that classified 292 of the boys. They identified a high resilient group with moderate
ego control (termed Resilients) and two low resilient groups, one characterized by
overcontrol (Overcontrollers) and one by undercontrol (Undercontrollers). These
classifications were found to be related to behavioral outcomes in several domains; for
instance, both Resilients and Overcontrollers were generally successful in school, but
Overcontrollers tended to have a higher frequency of what are termed “internalizing”
socioemotional problems (e.g., anxiety, depression, social withdrawal). In contrast,

“externalizing” socioemotional problems (e.g., conduct and attention-deficit disor-
ders) were more often observed for Undercontrollers, and this group generally was
less successful in school. There were also significant differential associations of the
three types with the Big Five personality dimensions. Overcontrollers had lower extra-
version scores than did Resilients or Undercontrollers; Undercontrollers were lower in
agreeableness than the other two groups; and the three groups were sequentially
arrayed on conscientiousness, with Resilients exceeding Overcontrollers who in turn
exceeded Undercontrollers on this dimension. Finally, Resilients showed greater
openness to experience and also greater emotional stability than both Under- and
Overcontrollers.
In a longitudinal study of preschool children, Asendorpf and van Atken (1999)
found a similar grouping of three personality configurations and also replicated all of
the ranking patterns of the groups on the Big Five Personality dimensions, using an
independent set of personality trait ratings, derived from a lexical analysis of German
trait adjectives. These researchers also examined the relation between scores on ego
control versus ego resiliency. Consistent with the pattern found by Robins et al.
(1996), not only low but also high levels of ego control were associated with lower ego
resiliency scores at both an earlier testing age (ages 4 to 6) and a later testing age
(age 10). This longitudinal study also showed that the Overcontrolled children
demonstrated high levels of behavioral inhibition in laboratory interactions with
strangers, including both adults and children of their own age. Additionally, although
Overcontrolled and Resilient children began at a similar high level of intelligence and
school performance, the Overcontrolled children declined on these measures at the
later testing points. Other studies with other populations have also similarly reported
three personality types (Hart, Hofmann, Edelstein, & Keller, 1997), with both espe-
cially low ego control and especially high levels of ego control tending to be associated
with lower ego resilience.
Notably, the patterns of correlations between self-report measures and Q-sort
personality characteristics suggest that ego resilience is associated with having a wide
range of interests and not being uncomfortable with uncertainty and complexity
(Letzring et al., 2005). Thus, ego resilience and openness to experience appear to be
correlated constructs. Consistent with this suggestion, Letzring et al. (2005) reported
a correlation of .70 between self-reported openness to experience on the Big Five
Inventory and ego resilience in a female sample of undergraduates (.46 for males); for
both genders, this was one of the strongest correlations of ego resilience or of under-
control with a personality factor. Ego resilience was also fairly strongly correlated with
self-reported extraversion (.57 for females, .45 for males) and was slightly more
strongly correlated with other-reported extraversion (.35 and .32, respectively) than
with other-reported openness to experience (.21 and .29, respectively).
One further outcome observed by Letzring et al. (2005) involved gender differences
in two of the behavioral correlations with undercontrol. These researchers found, in
females but not males, a modestly positive correlation between undercontrol and per-
formance on SAT/ACT (r = .28, p < 0.05) and a brief problem solving/intelligence test
(r = .20, p = 0.06). This appears to suggest that intelligent females (but not necessarily
intelligent males) were somewhat more likely to be undercontrolled than less
intelligent females. Letzring and colleagues (2005) note that, although this seems to
be opposed to the notion that higher levels of control are associated with greater
cognitive skill and are therefore always advantageous (i.e., the notion that greater con-
trol is “monotonically advantageous,” discussed at length later), this apparent discrep-
ancy may reflect differences in the level of control that is typically assessed. In
particular, whereas many investigators focus on the range between too little control
and appropriate control, fewer investigators focus on the range between appropriate
control and too much (over) control. However, in this context it is also noteworthy
that J. Block and J. H. Block (2006) found that whereas for the boys and young men
that they studied, there was almost no correlation between ego control and ego resil-
iency over time, for girls the pattern changed with time. In early to mid-childhood in
girls, as for boys, there was no relation, but beginning at age 11 and continuing until
about age 20, there was a negative correlation between ego control and ego resiliency,
such that for girls during this phase, ego resiliency was correlated with lessening of
overcontrol. After age 20, there was, again, little correlation between ego control and
ego resiliency. These possible developmental differences in factors contributing to ego
resiliency at different ages are intriguing, and they suggest that the relation between
resiliency and appropriately titrated or moderated levels of control may itself be influ-
enced by biological and social forces—some of which we consider in the next section.
EFFORTFUL CONTROL AND REACTIVE CONTROL

Understanding the origin and development of some of the possible adaptive costs
associated with both undercontrol and overcontrol is important to developing a fuller
understanding of resiliency—and its relation to agile thinking. A key distinction here
(one that is clear in concept, though not always clear in application) is the differentia-
tion between what has been termed “effortful control” versus “reactive control.”
This distinction originates in a broader differentiation that researchers of tempera-
ment (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Evans, 2000; Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981) make between
the aspects of “reactivity” versus “self-regulation.” Both aspects are assumed to have a
clear biological basis that is influenced by heredity, maturation, and experience.
However, whereas reactivity refers to the “excitability, responsivity, or arousability of
the behavioral and physiological systems of the organism,” self-regulation refers to
neural and behavioral processes that may modulate this underlying reactivity. Effortful
control, in particular, refers to the “active, self-regulatory aspects of temperament”
(Rothbart & Ahadi, 1994; Rothbart & Bates, 1998) and is “a broad temperament
construct based on the executive attention system” (D. E. Evans & Rothbart, 2007).4
It involves the “capacity to inhibit a dominant response and initiate a subdominant
response according to situational demands” (K. T. Murray & Kochanska, 2002, p. 503;
see also Dvorak & Simons, 2009).5
Based on factor analyses of questionnaire results with 6- to 7-year olds, effortful
control appears to be comprised of several components, relating to attentional focus-
ing, inhibitory control, low-intensity pleasure, and perceptual sensitivity (Rothbart,
Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001). In contrast to the voluntary and intentional charac-
teristics of effortful control, reactive control may be more spontaneous, automatic,
temperamentally based, and “bottom up.” Very high levels of reactive control may lead
to extremely inhibited and rigid behaviors that “appear to be so automatic that they
often are not under voluntary control” (Valiente et al., 2003, p. 1174), whereas
extremely low levels lead to distractibility and impulsiveness.
As developed further in Chapters 8 and 9 (see for example, the last section of
Chapter 9 on “Approach versus Avoidance: Control, Controlling Control, and the
Dynamic Interplay of Cognition and Emotion”), the brain systems contributing to
effortful control and executive functions predominantly involve the frontal-striatal
and anterior attention system (especially the anterior cingulate gyrus and prefrontal
cortex, with projections to the basal ganglia and thalamus; e.g., E. K. Miller & Cohen,
2001; Rothbart & Bates, 1998). By contrast, reactive control is more strongly associ-
ated with frontal-limbic circuits, involving reactive responses to both negative and
positive incentives, such as the amygdala to fear, and the nucleus accumbens to reward
(Martel et al., 2007).
The potential benefits to be derived from possessing a high degree of effortful
control (and the closely related construct of self-control) are readily identified and
well documented. For instance, in seminal work on delay of gratification in children,
involving such simple tasks as not eating a physically present marshmallow or a cookie
so as to earn a second one at a later time, Mischel and colleagues (e.g., Mischel, Shoda,
& Peake, 1988; Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990) found that a greater capacity of young
preschool children to delay immediate gratification was correlated with a wide range
of later cognitive and social competencies during adolescence. Children who showed a
greater capacity for delay of gratification in the preschool test were later reported,
by their parents, to be more socially and academically competent; they were also
characterized as more verbally fluent, rational, attentive, planful, and as having the
capacity to deal well with frustration and stress.
More cogently, preschool delay of gratification performance was related to
objective measures of cognitive control on a demanding task administered more than
10 years later. Individuals who, as preschoolers, successfully intentionally directed
their attention away from temptation (in order to delay gratification, low temptation
focus) showed faster responses to a challenging go/no-go task, without making more
errors, than did peers who were less successful in directing their attention away from
temptation (high temptation focus). Furthermore, the difference between these two
groups was especially prominent in conditions that required higher levels of control
(trials that followed many preceding trials involving a go response). Other benefits of
higher levels of self-control include improved social adjustment and fewer disorders
that centrally involve a failure to curtail or restrain impulses, such as explosive anger,
substance abuse, or criminal behavior (e.g., Caspi, 2000; DeWall et al., 2007).
Many of the benefits of high levels of self-control were succinctly and clearly sum-
marized in the title of a paper by Tangney and colleagues (2004), “High Self-Control
Predicts Good Adjustment, Less Pathology, Better Grades, and Interpersonal Success.”
The paper developed a new questionnaire measure of individual differences in self-
control, designed to broadly assess self-control in relation to controlling one’s
thoughts, emotions, impulses, and performance. Their findings, from two large sam-
ples of undergraduate students, were that, for example, higher scores on the question-
naire correlated with higher grade point average, better relationships, and interpersonal
skills, and less binge eating and alcohol abuse.
But is it possible to have too much effortful control? Is more always better, or is
there some point at which very high levels of effortful control become problematic?
This apparently simple but very important question is difficult to answer for
several reasons. One reason centers on definitions of “overcontrol.” Some investiga-
tors argue that what appear to be cases of “too much” control, such as anorexia
nervosa or some obsessive-compulsive disorders, are, instead, cases of misregulated
control. On this view, “the putative category of over-control is simply a misuse of a
desirable capacity rather than an indication that too much self-control is bad” (Tangney
et al., 2004, p. 278). The question also is difficult to answer for the closely related
reason that sometimes what appears to be “too much effortful control” might be over-
control of a reactive sort (that is, not voluntary control but automatically elicited
responses).
Both issues are well illustrated by additional results from the study by Tangney
et al. (2004), relating to other personality correlates of self-control. These investiga-
tors argued that their results yielded no evidence for psychological problems linked to
high self-control. Adding a term to their regression analyses to test for any adverse
effects arising from high levels of control showed no significant increases in predictive
power resulting from the inclusion of a quadratic factor, leading them to conclude that
“self-control is beneficial and adaptive in a linear fashion” (p. 296). Additionally, these
researchers found positive correlations between their measure of self-control and the
“Big Five” measures of conscientiousness and emotional stability, both before and
after controlling for social desirability. (The self-control scale was quite strongly posi-
tively correlated with two measures of social desirability of responding, and all analy-
ses were therefore reported both with and without social desirability as a covariate.)
However, there was a “hint” of a possible form of overcontrol cost related to
a different measure: that of perfectionism. Perfectionism is a mode of responding char-
acterized by the tendency to adhere rigidly to unrealistically high standards and expec-
tations, and it was measured by the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Hewitt &
Flett, 1991, both studies) and a second brief unpublished perfectionism scale (Study 2
only). These measures showed only modest correlations with the self-control measure
(though the “self-oriented perfectionism” subscale of the Multidimensional Scale
showed a significant correlation with the full Self Control scale in both studies, even
after controlling for Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability). Given these results, Tangney
et al. (2004) proposed that rather than representing a form of overcontrol, perfection-
ism may comprise an example of loss of control—a form of compulsive persistence and
inability to relax that is a form of rigid and nonvoluntary overcontrol (e.g., persistently
working when one should take a break or an inability to relax excessively high standards
when one would like to do so, or it would be adaptive to do so). Whereas rigidly “over-
controlled” individuals (e.g., those with obsessive-compulsive disorder or anorexia)
have difficulties in regulating their capacity for self-control or “lack the ability to con-
trol their self-control,” in contrast, “individuals genuinely high in self-control have the
ability to exert self-control when it is required [. . .] and to suspend self-control when it
is not” (Tangney et al., 2004, p. 314)—as in the notion of the ego-resilient individual.
This in some respects parallels arguments made by Valiente and colleagues (2003)
that, although correlated with one another, overcontrol and effortful control comprise
different constructs. These researchers found that at an initial assessment (Time 1) of
children in kindergarten to third grade, both measures of overcontrol and of effortful

control could predict some unique variance in the externalizing behavior problems of
children. However, this pattern changed as the children aged, such that 4 years later
(at Time 3) only effortful control was related (negatively) to externalizing behavior
problems; at the later time point, overcontrol did not predict unique variance on this
dependent measure once the effects of effortful control were considered. At each of
three time points, higher levels of effortful control were associated with lower levels
of externalizing problem behaviors.
A more recent study of a high-risk sample of children by Martel and colleagues
(2007) similarly found a curvilinear relation between reactive control and resiliency.
Resiliency was weaker both when reactive control was very low and when it was very
high. These researchers conclude that:
The flexible adaptation of control (i.e., resiliency) appears to be more important in

determining success of executive functioning than is the actual level of control.
Further, the successful development of executive functioning likely also
enhances personality structure and resiliency by providing the cognitive
capacity and skill necessary for a flexible approach to problem solving. Thus,
resiliency, reactive control, and executive functioning appear to contribute
to adolescent outcomes in an additive, incremental fashion rather than being
largely overlapping in their effects. (Martel et al., 2007, p. 560, emphasis
added)
Nonetheless, there is some tentative developmental evidence that very high levels
of effortful control may not be adaptive. K. T. Murray and Kochanska (2002) assessed
83 children at each of three ages (normally developing toddlers, an additional
20 children were initially tested but were not available for all three tests): toddler
(approximately 2.5 years), preschool (approximately 4 years), and early school age
(5.5 years). Problem behaviors were assessed with the standardized Child Behavior
Checklist at preschool age. There was a quadratic relation between level of effortful
control and problem behaviors, such that problem behaviors were more frequently
found for children who demonstrated both especially low, and especially high, levels
of effortful control. Follow-up analyses showed that children with higher levels of
effortful control showed more internalizing behaviors than did those children with
moderate levels of control, whereas, compared to this group, children with lower levels
of effortful control showed more attention problems. However, it is possible that the
measure of effortful control also tapped some forms of reactive control (e.g., reactive
inhibition due to punishment; Eisenberg & Morris, 2002).
From a more general perspective, there are also both broader conceptual consider-
ations and specific empirical findings that argue that, as with many good things, too
much effortful control can become problematic (when exercised too relentlessly and
unremittingly). Exceedingly high levels of effortful control may sometimes reduce
flexibly adaptive processing and spontaneity, and also may potentially unduly
constrain an individual’s emotional experiences. There is also considerable empirical
evidence that effortful control may be a “limited resource,” so that at least under some
conditions, effortful exertion that is too continuously prolonged may bring costs to
our performance on subsequent effortful self-regulatory or executive tasks—when

the availability of effortful self-regulatory control is “depleted.” It is to these consider-
ations and findings that we next turn, first with respect to the relations between levels
of control, spontaneity, and openness to experience, and then to the question of
whether effortful self-control is a limited resource.
L E V E L S O F C O N T R O L , S P O N TA N E I T Y, A N D O P E N N E S S
TO E X P E R I E N C E
The potential costs of overcontrol—even if never identified as such from a societal
perspective—have been repeatedly emphasized by the initial proponents of the dis-
tinction between ego control and ego resiliency: Jean and Jack Block. These researchers
argue that overcontrol may lead to a “categorical delaying of gratifications or reflexive
rejection of interferences regarding matters both relevant and importunate” (J. Block
& J. H. Block, 2006, p. 318). Stated differently, the habits of control may become overly
generalized and be too readily and peremptorily exercised, so that the highly controlled
individual may sometimes turn away promising opportunities without due consider-
ation or ignore overtures for help or advice that should not be ignored (e.g., because he
or she is highly focused on a given task). Overcontrol might also, in some contexts,
contribute to behavior that is “rigid, unexpressive, routinized, and flattened in affect”
(p. 318). Conversely, although the hazards of undercontrol are real, what might be
considered “insufficient” self-control may also be “the basis for openness to experience,
for flexibility, for expressions of interpersonal warmth, and for creative perceptions or
recognitions” (p. 318). Spontaneity rather than a high level of effortful control may be
important to the expressiveness and receptive savoring of unexpected and unlooked-
for moments of joy that brighten our lives and sustain our hopes and relationships
with one another and with the natural and cultural world. Spontaneity may also be
essential to the open-ended curiosity, exploration, and tolerance of ambiguity that
enable us to expand our behavioral repertoires and knowledge.
Empirical support for this conceptually based proposal that high levels of control
may interfere with spontaneity and emotional expressiveness is provided by an inves-
tigation conducted by Zabelina and colleagues (Zabelina, Robinson, & Anicha, 2007).
This study used the multiple-component self-control scale that had been developed by
Tangney et al. (2004), measuring control of one’s thoughts, emotions, impulses, and
performance, together with several direct and indirect assessments of personality and
emotion. Participants (students) performed modified personality Q-sorts on them-
selves (involving 23 personality terms) as the target, and then also with regard to
themselves in several specific role relations (e.g., describing themselves when they
were with close friends, with strangers, or with their parents). Also, to obtain a more
open-ended assessment of each individual’s characteristic modes of thinking,
participants were asked, for each of seven successive days, to write a passage of
between 300 and 320 words about “What are you thinking?” These passages then were
analyzed using an automated linguistic coding procedure (Pennebaker et al., 2001)
that provides percentage frequencies for particular word categories.
The analyses of the open-ended text passages showed that higher levels of self-
control were significantly negatively correlated with the occurrence of words relating
to emotion or affect (r = –.41); this was equally true for both positive affect (r = –.26)
and for negative affect (r = –.32). Likewise, there was a significant negative correlation
between self-control and the occurrence of words that referred to physiological
states (e.g., eat, r = –.30) or to the body (e.g., tired, r = –.35). Thus, higher levels of
self-control appeared to be associated with more abstract modes of thinking, with
fewer connections to emotional and “embodied” aspects of experience. Although not
necessarily detrimental, and sometimes advantageous, such patterns of subjective
experiencing, involving reduced access to specific affective and physiological informa-
tion might also (if too extremely manifested) bear the risks of, for example, decreased
empathy or decreased self-understanding.
A further finding related to the consistency of self-descriptions, as determined
by the Q-sorts, and characterizations of the participants by others who knew
them well. Those higher in self-control showed greater consistency in their behavior
and personality expression across different role contexts, both as assessed by their
own Q-sorts for different roles, and as assessed by the Q-sorts provided by three indi-
viduals who knew them well. These informant ratings also pointed to greater shyness
and less spontaneity in individuals with high self-reported self-control, and to greater
extraversion and spontaneity in individuals with relatively lower self-reported
self-control.
These outcomes comprise what Zabelina and colleagues (2007) refer to as potential
“psychological tradeoffs” of self-control, and they offer some support for the long-held
position of the Blocks outlined earlier. From another (albeit related) viewpoint, these
findings are also broadly consistent with conclusions reached by Zimbardo and
colleagues, based on a series of studies evaluating individual differences in perspec-
tives on “psychological time.” Zimbardo and Boyd (1999) contrast individuals who are
highly and consistently oriented toward the future (strongly emphasizing future goals
and plans, resistance to temptation, and thus both high self-control and likely also a
high level of abstraction) versus individuals who have one of several other predomi-
nant orientations toward time. Other time perspectives differentiated by these
researchers include “past-negative,” characterized by a largely aversive orientation to
the past; “present-hedonistic,” featuring high levels of impulsiveness and orientation
to present pleasures with little concern for future consequences, and correlated with
both ego undercontrol and sensation seeking; “past-positive,” characterized by a
warm, sentimental attitude toward the past; and “present-fatalistic,” entailing a fatal-
istic, helpless, and hopeless attitude toward the future and life.
A too-extreme immersion in any one of these time perspectives has undeniable
drawbacks, yet the clear and many benefits that can be gained from a future time
perspective may lead individuals to adopt it too continuously and too uniformly. Thus,
Zimbardo and Boyd (1999, p. 1285) express concern for “those excessively future-
oriented people who cannot ‘waste’ time relating to family or friends, in community
activities, or enjoying any personal indulgence” and who, though successful in their
careers, are unsuccessful in life, because they lack “a broader temporal perspective in
which to integrate work, play, and social responsibility.” These investigators specifi-
cally argue that an adaptively changing “balanced time perspective” is the most healthy
both psychologically and physically, and optimal for societal function:
Balance is defined as the mental ability to switch flexibly among [time

perspectives] depending on task features, situational considerations, and
personal resources rather than be biased toward a specific [time perspective]

that is not adaptive across situations. (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999, p. 1285)
In line with these arguments that an ever-faithful and ever-strong adherence to the
demands of the far future may not always be beneficial is evidence that individuals
may come to regret their past choices of high levels of self-control. In contrast to the
“myopia” that has been the predominant focus of concern in the classical literature on
self-control, there is evidence that people “sometimes suffer from excessive farsight-
edness and future-biased preferences, consistently delaying pleasure and overweight-
ing necessity and virtue in local decisions”—a form of excessive restraint termed
“hyperopia” (Kivetz & Keinan, 2006). For instance, students in their second year of
university who were asked to evaluate any regrets that they had about how they had
spent their winter break not infrequently endorsed regrets at having too much
self-control. The degree to which they endorsed such regrets (e.g., “I should have
enjoyed myself more,” “I should have traveled more”) was greater for their winter
break 1 year ago than 1 week ago. Although for the winter break that had just passed,
participants more strongly endorsed regrets about not studying and not working more
often (so-called virtue regrets) than about not enjoying themselves and not traveling
(“indulgence regrets”), these patterns reversed when they reflected on the winter
break of the year before.
Taking part in such activities as leisure travel is sometimes construed in negatively
value-laden terms (e.g., as being wasteful or irresponsible). Yet unduly weighting this
viewpoint may lead some people to repeatedly forfeit precisely those activities that
they enjoy the most, and also to forgo important new opportunities for learning and
exploration.6 Thus although many of us clearly do experience significant problems
deriving from a too-ready acquiescence to “indulge” (very broadly construed), others
may experience a too-ready and too-persistent “weakness for necessity.” In the long
term, the latter individuals may more often and more completely abstain from pur-
suits that they really wish they would undertake, even though, at the time, the strong
voice of necessity would always trump those pursuits. People in the latter category
may sometimes adopt deliberate strategies aimed to overcome their “weakness for
necessity”—for instance, by precommitting to indulgence in the form of prebooked
holidays or choosing specific “luxury prizes” over their cash equivalents (Kivetz &
Simonson, 2002). Individuals may also opt for this approach on behalf of friends and
loved ones, choosing a particular product or outcome over more fungible cash rewards
precisely so as to “force” their loved ones to “indulge” rather than to save or spend on
necessities.
In summary, there are both positive and negative implications that arise from too
uniformly and consistently high levels of control; equally, both positive and negative
implications arise from relatively lower levels of control. Within a fairly broad range of
possible degrees of control, it might be argued that the level of control one exerts is,
on its own, “neutral” and that the adaptive value of a given degree of control is
determined by contextual and individually modulated factors. Ego resilience is an
important construct in relation to agile thinking because it directly and explicitly
recognizes the need for variable and modulated control, and the complex relations
of levels of control to exploration, positive affect, and the development of new
repertoires of behavior. In the long run, “overly predetermined response patterns”

involving “automatic invocation of over-control or a succumbing to under-control”
will yield less successful adaptations to environmental contexts, together with
increased negative affect, and a “less differentiated behavioral repertoire” (J. Block &
Kremen, 1996, p. 351). In contrast, ego resilience (with accompanying absence of
negative affect) will enable positive engagement and openness to experience.
“ S E L F - R E G U L ATO R Y D E P L E T I O N ” — I S E F F O R T F U L
SELF-CONTROL A LIMITED RESOURCE?
Another important reason to question whether exercising more effortful self-control
is invariably beneficial derives from arguments and evidence that the capacity for
effortful self-control is a limited resource—not only in the sense that we have limited
attentional or central executive and working memory capacity at any one moment in
time, but that we have limited executive control resources over time. It has been
argued that expenditure of this resource, through acts requiring effortful self-regula-
tory control, will lead to fewer available resources if a further situation requiring self
control is encountered, before this capacity has had an opportunity to be “replen-
ished.” This is a central claim of the “ego depletion” or “self-regulatory depletion”
account of self-regulation and of failures in self-regulatory behavior that has been pro-
posed by Baumeister and colleagues (e.g., Baumeister, 2003; Baumeister, Bratslavsky,
Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Baumeister, Muraven, & Tice, 2000; Vohs & Heatherton,
2000; for recent meta-analysis, see Hagger et al., 2010. See also the “Attention
Restoration Theory” proposed by S. Kaplan, 1995, 2001, that similarly emphasizes the
fragility and vulnerability to fatigue of voluntary “directed attention” and that, as
developed in Chapter 11, provides a conceptual analysis and evidence regarding the
types of experiences that are likely to lead to recovery from such fatigue).
Stated simply, Baumeister and colleagues suggest that, “controlling oneself—
especially when this involves overriding one’s own impulses, habits, or established
tendencies—consumes some limited resource.” Further, they suggest that, “This
resource resembles an energy or strength. When it is depleted, people become less
able to control themselves” (Baumeister et al., 2000, p. 131). To the extent that this is
true (and we will consider and evaluate some of the evidence for this view later)
it might also suggest that individuals characterized by a moderate modal level of
control will be more resilient and adaptively flexible because more often they
will move between periods of highly effortful control and less controlled/more
automatic/more spontaneous processing modes, during which control resources may
be “replenished.”
According to Baumeister and colleagues, diverse sorts of self-control activities
depend upon the same (single form) resource, such that one and the same resource is
called upon if the individual is attempting to regulate his or her emotions, to control
impulses, to suppress thoughts, to initiate actions, to deliberately enhance perfor-
mance, or to make responsible choices or decisions. The posited scarcity of the self-
regulatory resource is based, in part, on evidence that self-control failures occur quite
frequently and are more likely at particular times (e.g., late rather than early in the
day, and when under stress), suggesting, at least on the face of it, that ego depletion
itself may be a quite common occurrence (e.g., Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007;
Vohs & Faber, 2007; Vohs & Heatherton, 2000). Notably, self-regulatory depletion is
proposed to occur specifically after engaging in activities that demand any of several
forms of self-control, not simply the concentrated expenditure of energy in a more
generic manner. For example, whereas avoiding thinking of a forbidden topic
(intentional thought suppression) led to reduced self-regulatory capacity on a subse-
quent task, solving difficult multiplication problems did not (e.g., Muraven et al.,
1998). It is further argued that:
The widespread reliance on automatic processing, habit, routine, and similar

patterns may well reflect the fact that it is costly to the self to exert control.
Exercise of free will or conscious, deliberate choice exacts a toll on the self,
and the self may wish to avoid paying this price much of the time. (Baumeister
et al., 2000, p. 131)
Investigators have used a highly diverse set of initial manipulations of “self-control”

leading to “ego depletion,” and an equally diverse array of subsequent tasks on which
the deleterious effects of this diminishment of resources have been evaluated.
Illustrative studies involving five such “depleting” manipulations and varying depen-
dent outcome indices are outlined next.
(i) Emotional regulation: Undergraduate participants who watched an emotion-

ally upsetting movie and were asked either to deliberately not express their
emotions or to deliberately exaggerate the expression of their emotions in
response to the film, later showed reduced physical stamina (as measured by
how long they were able to continuously squeeze a hand grip) compared with
participants who watched the film without the requirement to regulate their
emotional expression (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998, Experiment 1).
There was also a significant negative correlation (r = –.27) between partici-
pants’ ratings of how difficult it was to control their emotions during the
film and the magnitude of the decline in physical stamina that they showed
from the initial (pretest) measure of hand-grip duration to the final (posttest)
measure of hand-grip duration.
(ii) Thought suppression: Undergraduate participants who were asked to continu-
ously list their thoughts while deliberately avoiding (suppressing) any
thoughts about a particular topic later showed reduced persistence on a diffi-
cult (impossible) anagram-solving task compared to participants who simply
listed their thoughts, with no requirement for effortful thought suppression
(Muraven et al., 1998, Experiment 2).
(iii) Dietary restraint: Undergraduate participants allegedly taking part in a
study of taste perception who were asked to eat radishes from a bowl that
was presented to them, and to refrain from eating cookies or chocolates that
were also present (under the guise of this being the experimental condition to
which they had been randomly assigned) later showed reduced persistence on
a difficult (impossible) figure-tracing task compared with individuals who
were either presented with no foods or were presented with the foods but
were not asked to refrain from eating any of them (Baumeister et al., 1998,
Experiment 1).
(iv) Attention control: Undergraduate participants who were asked to perform a
demanding letter cancellation task (involving multiple rules for the letter
cancellations and difficult-to-read text) and who were then requested to watch
a tedious video in order to be able to correctly answer questions concerning it,
showed greater passive than active choosing than did participants who had
performed an easy letter cancellation task. Those in the demanding letter
cancellation condition watched more of the movie when the method that they
needed to use in order to indicate that they wanted to discontinue watching
required that they make an active response (pressing a signal button) than
when they could indicate that they wanted to discontinue watching the film by
making only a passive response (releasing the signal button from a “default”
pressed position). In contrast, those who had earlier performed the easy letter
cancellation task were equally likely to indicate that they wanted to stop
watching the movie by actively pressing or passively releasing the signal
button.
(v) Thought suppression: Under the guise of a marketing study for the university
bookstore, undergraduate participants who had earlier been asked to suppress
thoughts concerning a particular topic when later offered the opportunity to
spend money on various products chose to spend significantly more money
than did individuals not asked to suppress (actual dollars spent). This effect
was especially pronounced for persons with a stronger general predisposition
to impulsive spending (Vohs & Faber, 2007, Experiment 2), and it was
observed both for the purchase of products that would be considered healthy
and for purchases of products likely deemed unhealthy (Experiment 3).
The latter outcomes, in which persons who had engaged in an earlier task that
demanded effortful self-regulation then spent more of their own money on available
products than did individuals in the control condition, suggest that the potential
effects of self-regulatory depletion may not be confined to behavioral indices of par-
ticipation in what might be construed as essentially “inconsequential” laboratory
tasks, and also are not confined to tasks that may be impossible to solve (as in cases ii
and iii described earlier). Several further studies have strongly supported the potential
“real world”7 and more complex cognitive effects of self-regulatory depletion, includ-
ing on measures that directly involve flexible, on-the-spot thinking and judgment.
For instance, using initial depletion tasks that required individuals to either actively
regulate their attention or to suppress emotion, Schmeichel, Vohs, and Baumeister
(2003) found that individuals who had performed these demanding self-regulatory
tasks showed impaired performance on several complex judgment and reasoning
tasks. The tasks included measures of logic and reasoning (Graduate Record
Examination tests of analytical reasoning), a measure of complex reading comprehen-
sion (GRE reading comprehension), and a measure of fluid intellectual reasoning
(the Cognitive Estimates Test, requiring the flexible on-the-spot use of prior knowl-
edge to answer questions for which the answers are not known, but that can be
approximated using reasoning and related knowledge, such as “How many seeds are
there in a watermelon?”), In contrast, earlier performance of the demanding

self-regulatory task did not affect measures of general knowledge (e.g., a standardized
test of vocabulary) or memory recall of nonsense syllables—suggesting that the
detrimental effects of self-regulatory exertion are confined to tasks that require
higher levels of effortful control rather than relatively more automatic or associative
responding.
In further studies, S. C. Wheeler, Brinol, and Hermann (2007) found that whereas
individuals who had earlier engaged in a demanding letter cancellation task were
equally persuaded by strong and weak arguments for a given course of action (the
installation of comprehensive exams in a university program), individuals who had
engaged in an easy task were—appropriately—more persuaded by strong arguments.
In other work, Bruyneel et al. (2006) showed that asking individuals to make several
active product choices (compared to simply passively collecting the same products
into a shopping basket as had been selected by an individual in the active choice
condition) increased the degree to which participants were susceptible to the salient
affective features of a final product choice.
Similarly, additional research has shown that requiring participants to engage in
standardized tasks that are known to place high demands on executive control also
leads to deficits in subsequent tasks that likewise require executive control processes
(Schmeichel, 2007). For example, participants who first performed a task that required
control of attention (watching a video with instructions to ignore words presented in
the lower half of the screen) subsequently showed impaired working memory span
performance relative to individuals who watched the video without any attention con-
trol demands. Individuals’ ability to update working memory (but not to simply main-
tain items in working memory) also was significantly impaired by earlier performance
of a task requiring ongoing monitoring and suppression of habitual forms of respond-
ing (writing passages while never using words that contained the frequent letters a
and n versus engaging in a writing task with no such letter constraints imposed).
Likewise, performing a challenging working memory task (the operation span task)
significantly reduced participants’ ability to intentionally suppress facial expressions
of emotion when watching a film that elicited high levels of negative affect compared
with performing a maintenance working memory task only. Conversely, intentionally
attempting to exaggerate one’s emotional expressions during films that depicted sad
situations impaired later working memory (operation span) performance (also see
Zyphur et al., 2007).
This latter set of findings, showing detrimental effects of prior executive control
demands on other subsequently tested indices of executive function, points to the
reliability and generality of the self-regulatory depletion effect. The diversity of
the dependent measures that show impairments, including not only timed measures
but also accuracy indices such as working memory operation span, is particularly
important given that in a number of studies the experimental design and procedures
were such that they allowed considerable scope for experimenter expectancy effects
(e.g., the experimenters were not blind to experimental condition, and dependent
measures such as response times that are assessed by a stopwatch may be susceptible
to subtle expectancy effects). The consistent observation of impairments in executive
and self-regulatory control across multiple dependent measures and initial types of
self-regulatory tasks suggests that the phenomenon of regulatory depletion is both

real and remarkably similar across diverse types of executive and self-regulatory
demands.
If self-regulatory depletion is “real” what, then, are the mechanisms that lead to
this effect? Might the effect be due, perhaps in part, to other consequences that
accompany acts of sustained self-regulation, such as changes in emotional state or
arousal level? Although not always included, many of the studies incorporated
additional manipulation checks to evaluate other indices on which the “depleted”
versus “nondepleted” (comparison) groups might differ, such as emotional state, level
of arousal, or level of effort expended. Typically the groups did not differ on these
factors (e.g., Schmeichel et al., 2003) and between-subject analyses including indices
of these variables as covariates resulted in the same pattern as found without the
covariate (e.g., Schmeichel, 2007). Note, however, that most often the measures of
emotional state that have been used did not examine within-participant changes in
emotion or arousal. In contrast, recent studies in our lab (Klaphake & Koutstaal,
unpublished data) have demonstrated that the mood and arousal of participants in
the depleting conditions change more from pre- to posttask than does the mood of
participants in the nondepleting conditions, such that depleted participants show a
significantly greater pre- to postintervention increase in negative mood and also a
significantly greater increase in arousal levels. Consistent with these findings, a recent
meta-analysis (Hagger et al., 2010) found that depletion was associated with a small,
but significant and homogeneous increase in negative affect. Thus, future research
should use more sensitive within-subject assessments of mood and arousal, to
more accurately evaluate, and potentially statistically control for, the effects of self-
regulatory depletion on mood and arousal.
The plausible alternative account that the effects of the prior performance of self-
regulatory or executive control tasks are simply due to performing any effortful
demanding task has also been examined. To illustrate, performing difficult and pro-
longed short-term memory tasks (without a requirement for memory updating) did
not lead to regulatory depletion, whereas performing a shorter task that did require
memory updating did (Schmeichel, 2007, Experiment 3). Another series of experi-
ments (Persson, Welsh, Jonides, & Reuter-Lorenz, 2007) further demonstrated that
intensive training on tasks that specifically required the resolution of interference
decreased performance on a subsequent transfer task only if the transfer task also
required the resolution of interference, or the training and transfer tasks both relied
on overlapping neural representations. For example, performing a working memory
task that included high interference trials (due to the negative probes having acquired
high familiarity from the preceding trials) reduced participants’ ability to resolve
interference on a subsequent task both when that task involved semantic memory
(verb generation with nouns that have multiple rather than few alternatives) and
episodic memory (paired associate learning with multiple words, rather than one
word, paired with a given cue word). In contrast, if participants first performed a
working memory task that did not include high levels of interference, then there was
no reduction in interference resolution on the following transfer tasks.
A strong converging source of evidence supporting the self-regulatory or executive
depletion processing accounts derives from psychobiological measures. Recent work
suggests that an important psychobiological correlate of the exertion of self-control

may involve changes in the availability of blood glucose.8 Glucose is one of the brain’s
major energy sources and the relative availability of blood glucose influences a wide
range of cognitive tasks, including working memory, vigilance, facial recognition,
interference control, word fluency, mental arithmetic, and multitasking (e.g., Benton,
Owens, & Parker, 1994; see Fairclough & Houston, 2004, Gailliot, 2008; Scholey,
Harper, & Kennedy, 2001, for review). Although simpler cognitive processes do not
seem to be strongly affected by minor momentary fluctuations in glucose levels, tasks
that are difficult and require effortful processing, such as inhibiting a prepotent
response in the Stroop color-word interference paradigm (Benton, Owens, & Parker,
1994) or complex reaction time tasks (e.g., rapidly pressing a button underneath one
of eight randomly signaled stimuli; Owens & Benton, 1994), are more adversely
affected by lowered availability of glucose. In particular, effortful controlled process-
ing may be disproportionately impeded by reductions in the availability of glucose
(Fairclough & Houston, 2004).
Reduced blood glucose levels following several activities requiring self-control
(e.g., thought suppression, emotion regulation, attention control) were found in a
series of studies by Gailliot, Baumeister, and colleagues (2007; Gailliot, 2008; see also
Dvorak & Simons, 2009; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; X. T. Wang & Dvorak, 2010).
These investigators also demonstrated that low levels of blood glucose following
one self-control task predicted poorer performance on a subsequent task requiring
self-control. More persuasively, experimental increases of the level of blood glucose
(through asking participants to consume a glucose drink) reduced or eliminated the
detrimental effects arising from an earlier demanding self-regulatory task. For exam-
ple, participants given a placebo drink after watching a video in which they needed
to control their attention made significantly more errors on a subsequent Stroop
color-word interference task than did individuals who simply watched the video with-
out concurrently engaging in an attention-demanding task. However, the attention-
control and “watch-normally” groups showed an equivalent number of errors on the
Stroop interference task if the group given the demanding attention-control instruc-
tions had consumed a glucose drink after watching the video and before performing
the Stroop task (Gailliot et al., 2007, Experiment 7). Bolstering blood glucose levels
through a glucose drink, rather than a placebo drink, similarly sustained performance
on a word-fragment completion task following a challenge to self-regulatory control.
On the one hand, these and similar studies clearly point to the existence of impor-
tant, and potentially adverse, effects of sustained and successive effortful acts of self-
regulation on later actions that likewise demand self-regulatory control processing
(broadly construed). On the other hand, the possibility that such adverse effects might
be circumvented through the simple expedient of increasing one’s blood glucose sug-
gests that the detrimental effects are not inevitable. Nonetheless, caution in inter-
preting these findings is necessary. Beyond the comparatively small number of studies
that have tested the glucose account, it is important to note—as also underscored by
Hagger et al. (2010)—that the studies did not measure glucose consumption in the
brain, as is required for validation of the purported mechanism.
Additionally, although it is increasingly clear that certain forms of activities place
high demands on what we construe as “self-control,” with potential carryover effects
to subsequent tasks that may continue to exert demands on such control, precisely
how best to construe the “self” in “self-regulatory control” remains unclear. It has
been proposed that self-regulatory control and associated decreases in glucose might
lead to increased reliance on heuristic-based “System 1” cognitive processes at the cost
of effortful “System 2” reasoning (e.g., Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; see Chapter 1
discussion of dual-process accounts of cognition). However, recent findings pointing
to apparently similar depletion effects in domesticated dogs suggest that care must be
taken not to “overfit” an account to humans and human cognition. H. C. Miller and
colleagues (2010) found that dogs demonstrated both decreases in “self-control” (per-
sistence at an unsolvable task) as a consequence of earlier self-control exertion and
increased persistence after being provided with a glucose drink (compared with a sug-
ar-free control drink). Specifically, dogs that were required to sit and stay in
solitude for 10 minutes showed less persistence in attempting to obtain food from a
“puzzle-toy” than did dogs left in their cages for a corresponding amount of time;
furthermore, providing the dogs with a glucose drink eliminated the detrimental
effects of the earlier demanding “sit-and-stay” control task on the animal’s
persistence. As suggested by H. C. Miller and colleagues (2010, p. 537), “The ability to
coordinate rule-based memories and current behavior in a goal-directed way is perva-
sive across species.” The parallel findings in humans and dogs argue that there
are potentially important biological commonalities between human and nonhuman
“self-control” or “executive-control” processes. These simultaneously suggest that we
should take care not to tailor self-regulatory accounts to human cognition too
narrowly, and they provide exciting new research avenues for exploring basic similari-
ties and articulation of differences in executive-control processes across species.
Beyond the psychobiological intervention of increasing available glucose, many
further cognitive and motivational factors may modulate the occurrence of self-
regulatory depletion in humans. One key factor is how one thinks of the action of
self-regulation, and also one’s manner of responding. Changing the construal of a
given task, and how and to what one allocates one’s attention, may change the degree
of difficulty it poses. For instance, preschool children who thought of marshmallows
as “clouds” or pictures showed greater resistance to temptation and longer delay of
gratification than did children who focused on the soft texture and taste of the
marshmallows (e.g., Mischel & Moore, 1980; B. Moore, Mischel, & Zeiss, 1976).
Implicit assumptions and priming effects may also moderate how individuals
respond to self-regulatory challenges. Questionnaire data (Martijn et al., 2002,
Experiment 2) indicate that individuals explicitly endorse a view of self-control as
energy (e.g., “After completing an exacting task, I take some time to relax,” “Controlling
intense emotions wears me out”). However, the alternative view—that self-control
involves a “state of mind,” such that if you want to and try hard you can always control
yourself—was also endorsed, though somewhat less strongly (e.g., “I perform better
when I am under pressure,” “Sometimes when I feel that I am finished, I can do a lot
more than I thought”).
Martijn et al. (2002) found that presenting information that challenged assump-
tions about the general resource and use of “energy” for self-control tasks significantly
changed the patterns of outcomes that were observed. Participants first watched a
highly aversive video (that evoked disgust) either with instructions to suppress their
emotional responses/expression (suppress emotion condition) or with no suppression

instructions (control condition). Next, they were asked to squeeze a hand-grip.
However, before doing so, some participants in the emotional suppression condition
were told that, although often people think that they need to rest after an effortful
task, research has shown that this is not the case after emotional effort (suppress
emotion + expectancy challenge condition). Consistent with several previous studies,
the hand-grip duration of participants in the suppress emotion condition decreased
from the first to the second hand-grip test, whereas those who watched the film with-
out emotional suppression showed no change in hand-grip squeezing duration from
the first to the second test. In contrast, participants given the “expectancy challenge”
showed a longer hand-grip squeeze on the second test than on the first test. In line
with the “state of mind” construal of self-regulation, these outcomes suggest that
expectancy effects can oppose the self-control as limited resource interpretation and
circumvent depletion effects at least under some conditions.
More recent studies that both measured, and experimentally manipulated, the
degree to which individuals adopted a view of willpower as a limited resource further
support the potential role of implicit theories or beliefs about “willpower” in moderat-
ing the nature of the effects that are observed (Job, Dweck, & Walton, 2010). A limited
resource view was indicated by greater endorsement of such statements as “After a
strenuous mental activity your energy is depleted and you must rest to get it refueled
again.” In contrast, a nonlimited resource view was shown by greater endorsement of
such statements as “Your mental stamina fuels itself; even after strenuous mental
exertion you can continue doing more of it.” Greater endorsement of the limited
resource view at an earlier point in time also was found to be predictive of “real-world”
behaviors at a later time that involved heightened self-regulatory demands (final
examinations). The more that student participants agreed with a limited resource
theory at a preexaminations time point, the more, during examinations, they reported
eating unhealthy foods, procrastinating with respect to studying, and also failing to
self-regulate effectively with respect to another important personal goal.
One possibility is that after exertion of self-regulation, individuals may show
a tendency to seek to conserve remaining resources. Alberts and colleagues (2007; also
see Martijn et al., 2007; Mukhopadhyay & Johar, 2005) argue that this is not typically
a deliberate and conscious decision, but rather often is a more automatic process that
might not reach awareness:
. . . [T]he tendency to conserve resources can best be interpreted as a stan-

dard or default reaction after enactment of self-control. After an act of self-
control, people may automatically switch to a standby or “energy conservation”
mode that enables them to deal in the most careful way with the remaining
amount of energy. (Alberts et al., 2007, p. 385)
Consistent with this proposal, participants who were implicitly primed with the
ideas of persistence and perseverance in a scrambled sentence task showed no
decrement in hand-grip duration following a challenging labyrinths task, whereas
participants in a neutral priming condition who performed this difficult task showed
the typical self-regulation-related decrement (Alberts et al., 2007). This pattern was
replicated in a further study using difficult versus easy calculations as the initial task,
and a different implicit prime manipulation. In a meta-analysis of the moderation of
the self-regulatory depletion effect by motivational strategies, Hagger et al. (2010)
found a large effect size; additionally, congruent with a conception according to which
self-regulation is likely influenced by multiple psychological and contextual factors,
there was also significant heterogeneity of effect sizes across studies.
Further evidence suggests that the inducement of mild positive affect also may
attenuate or eliminate the effects of self-regulatory depletion. Following an initial act
of self-regulation, individuals who were given a small surprise gift or who watched a
comedy film subsequently performed as well as did control participants, who had not
been challenged to self-regulate, on new tasks that required effortful self-regulatory
control—and outperformed individuals who instead were exposed to an emotionally
neutral or sad stimulus, or were given a brief rest break (Tice, Baumeister, Shmueli, &
Muraven, 2007).
Thus, a construal of self-control as a matter of a limited and fixed amount of energy
alone is far too simple: Self-regulatory behavior also is strongly modulated by both
conscious and implicit expectancies. In addition, as noted earlier, and shown by the
results of Webb and Sheeran (2003), we can use implementation intentions (a form of
“strategic automatization”) to proactively reduce demands on self-regulatory control.
Individuals who formed implementation intentions relating to when and how to act
during a depletion task later performed better on a self-regulatory task than did indi-
viduals who did not form such intentions—suggesting that automatic processes could
be proactively brought to bear to conserve effortful controlled processing resources.
An overly simplified construal of self-control as a highly limited and fixed quantity
resource also fails to accommodate evidence that forms of executive capacity such as
working memory and attention control may be enhanced through training or regular
practice. In one prominent example, healthy adults who engaged in several weeks of
training on three visual-spatial working memory tasks in which the difficulty level was
systematically incremented across sessions showed continuous improvements on
each of the three tasks (Olesen, Westerberg, & Klingberg, 2004). Similarly, 3- and
4-year-old children repeatedly given tasks that required inhibitory control and the
flexible modulation of their behavior in response to changing rules, together with
explicit feedback on their performance, later showed improved response control
and executive functions on a different go/no-go discrimination learning task than did
children simply given intervening practice (with no explicit feedback) on the go/no-go
task (Dowsett & Livesey, 2000; also see Kramer, Larish, & Strayer, 1995). These and
other important intervention procedures shown to enhance the capacity for forms of
flexible thinking that require executive control are discussed further in Chapter 11.
Here, however, it is noteworthy that there is also some evidence that individuals
can increase self-regulatory strength through regularly engaging in tasks that require
effortful control (Gailliot, Plant, Butz, & Baumeister, 2007; see also Muraven, 2010;
Oaten & Cheng, 2007). In a series of studies, healthy young adult participants were
asked, over a period of 2 weeks, to either write with their nondominant hand or to
change how they normally spoke, for example, avoiding slang, swear words, and col-
loquialisms for the words “yes” or “no,” and speaking in full sentences (self-regulatory
training manipulation). They then took part in a “stereotype suppression task” in
which they were asked to either describe a particular type of person without making
any references to stereotypes or to take part in a brief social interaction with a person
who was a member of the often-stereotyped category. This was the self-regulatory
control challenge. Participants were also preexperimentally tested for internal and
external motivation to avoid using stereotypes. Specifically, participants were selected
to be either low in both forms of motivation (and so were likely relatively unpracticed
at engaging in stereotype suppression) or high in either internal or external motiva-
tion (and so were likely comparatively more practiced at engaging in stereotype sup-
pression). The self-regulatory control challenge was both preceded by and followed by
(across the different studies) a further assessment of self-regulatory performance,
including either a difficult anagram task or a Stroop color-word interference task.
It was predicted that, relative to the individual’s original anagram or Stroop perfor-
mance, the stereotype suppression task would lead to a decrease in self-regulatory
control on the second anagram or Stroop interference task, but only for individuals
who were low in motivation to avoid stereotyping, and so comparatively unpracticed
at doing so (thus requiring more effortful control during the stereotype suppression
phase). It was further predicted that the longitudinal self-regulatory training manipu-
lation would attenuate or eliminate the adverse effects of the stereotype suppression
task on the subsequent anagram or Stroop interference tasks, but particularly so in
the low motivation group—because only they were expected to show decrements in
self-regulatory control as a function of the relatively unfamiliar and thus effortful
requirement to suppress the use of stereotypes.
The results were in line with both of these predictions. In each of three longitudinal
experiments, the regular exercise of self-regulatory control over the preceding 2 weeks
acted to alleviate the behavioral costs that were associated with the effortful suppres-
sion of stereotypes, with this benefit largely confined to those participants who were
assumed to have had the least prior practice at inhibiting stereotypes because they
reported low motivation to do so. Beneficial effects of prior training in self-regulatory
control, with training leading to improved performance on self-control tasks and
attenuated self-regulatory depletion, also were found in Hagger et al.’s (2010) meta-
analysis of self-regulatory training studies; again, however, the significant positive
effect size was accompanied by considerable heterogeneity of effect sizes across the
nine tests that were included. This effect size heterogeneity suggests that, like self-
regulatory depletion, the success of efforts to increase self-regulatory control through
systematic exercise or “training” is likely modulated by a number of factors.
Three final points relating to self-regulatory control, and its relation to the iCASA
framework, need to be emphasized. First, Baumeister et al.’s (1998) characterization
of what the “resource” is that is depleted by the exercise of volition/control explicitly
links self-regulatory control to levels of representation, particularly the capacity for
accessing and acting upon more abstract goals even under conditions that render this
more difficult. They suggest that it is a “resource that functions to connect abstract
principles, standards, and intentions to overt behavior” (Baumeister, Bratslavsky,
Muraven, & Tice, 1998, p. 1263; also cf. Magen & Gross, 2007). The further statement
that “Even a small amount of this resource would be extremely adaptive in enabling
human behavior to become flexible, varied, and able to transcend the pattern of simply
responding to immediate stimuli” (p. 1263) again links control to the capacity for
abstraction, in the sense of an ability to resist responding to highly salient and

immediately present aspects of one’s current environment. Yet, although high levels
of effortful control are often central to maintaining and supporting longer term
abstract goals, such control may also be crucial for forms of highly specific, detail-
oriented, and concrete activities, such as proofreading or error and quality monitoring
of many sorts. Similarly, as highlighted in the first section of this chapter on the ben-
efits and costs of higher level action construals, remaining focused on the precise
mechanics of action may sometimes be necessary, and it may comprise an exercise of
extreme self-control to remain thus focused rather than moving to a more abstract
goal-related construal of one’s activities.
Second, and returning to our earlier question of whether too much effortful control
can become problematic, the considerable evidence that effortful self-regulatory
control can lead to diminished resources for later self-regulatory or executive tasks
(even if this is not inevitable) provides grounds for arguing that increased flexibility of
thinking—agile minds—may be enabled by not always aiming for high levels of effort-
ful control. Greater levels of control may not be monotonically advantageous and may
not maximally increase flexibly adaptive responding. Rather, the appropriate modula-
tion of levels of control, moving from phases of highly controlled processing to micro-
phrases or slightly longer phases in which we allow more automatic or more
spontaneous processing to occur may ultimately lead to optimal agility of mind. Agile
minds may most clearly thrive not under conditions of ever greater and ever
more constant self-regulatory control, but under conditions that enable appropriate
“oscillatory range” in the level of control that we adopt.
The substantial body of evidence relating to self-regulatory depletion suggests that
an important strategy for maintaining increased stamina involves contextually appro-
priate alternation or oscillation between modes of processing and responding: highly
controlled versus more spontaneous and automatic. The benefits of engaging in such
routine and familiar activities as walking or personal hygiene (showering, bathing) for
enabling new ideas and new connections to emerge may partially arise from two fac-
tors that have been previously emphasized. First, these activities are often associated
with mild positive affect. Second, the presence of a relatively less controlled (more
spontaneous or automatic) receptive mental state with a relaxed “landscape of associa-
tions” allows less dominant responses to reach awareness. Emergence of alternative
responses may, in turn, potentially override perseverative but inappropriate and block-
ing responses that were highly activated during earlier attempts at solving or refram-
ing a problem or problematic situation. (See also the section on “Unfocused Attention,
Incubation, and ‘Mind Popping’” in Chapter 3, and the section on “Working Well with
the Unconscious” in Chapter 7). However, the benefits for innovative and creative
thinking derived from such routine, familiar, and mildly affectively positive activities
may also derive from a third factor: the increased availability of executive resources
deriving from the engagement in the familiar activity. That is, not only automatic but
also controlled processes may receive a boost from such activities (replenishment of
self-regulatory control resources) and this new influx of executive control resources
may also significantly contribute to the sudden emergence of insights, realizations, or
new framings of ideas, issues, or problems (see also the discussion of “Attention
Restoration Theory and Experiences of the Natural Environment” in Chapter 11).
The fundamental concept that alternating between time periods involving highly
controlled and highly complex forms of thinking versus periods involving relatively
familiar, mildly emotionally positive, and predominantly automatically completed
activities has also recently been explicitly forwarded as a strategy for fostering
creativity in the workplace, particularly among “chronically overworked profession-
als.” Elsbach and Hargadon (2006) proposed that interspersing phases of what they
termed “mindless” work (that is, work that is low in both cognitive difficulty and pres-
sures relating to performance) with phases of much more cognitively challenging and
high-pressure work should lead to enhanced creative productivity. Although such
work might be better described by their alternative expressions of “recharge time” or
perhaps (depending on the context) “hands-on time,” their proposal (further discussed
in Chapter 12, together with recent related empirical findings) coheres well with the
evidence reviewed in this section.
All of these possibilities clearly merit further research and conceptual clarification.
Research incorporating a consideration of individual differences in how we respond to
situations that may be resource depleting (or replenishing) is also essential. For
instance, Shamosh and Gray (2007) found that individuals who scored high on a
measure of fluid intelligence (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices) were more
susceptible to resource depletion than were individuals who scored lower on this mea-
sure, even though this difference was not associated with differences in performance
on the resource-demanding task that they used (an emotion suppression task). Stated
differently, it appeared that the high fluid intelligence participants experienced a
greater cost to regulatory resources, with no corresponding increment in performance.
Although this finding is consistent with evidence linking fluid intelligence with
executive control and working memory functions, it raises important questions about
longer term patterns of resource depletion versus replenishment that might help to
offset greater costs. Indeed, Shamosh and Gray (2007, p. 1841) suggest that it is
plausible that “long-term optimization of resource allocation profits from a greater
initial investment of resources during relatively novel self-regulatory challenges.”
Third, and finally, many of the experimental tests of self-regulatory depletion
have involved an externally determined, and in some respects essentially arbitrary,
imposition of demanding tasks on individuals (e.g., watching an emotional film while
suppressing emotional expressions of responses to the film; here the participants have
no strong internally driven reason for such suppression, as might arise if one is
suppressing emotional responses in order to avoid distressing a child or a loved one).
Yet many of the highly demanding self-regulatory activities that we regularly engage
in are self-determined rather than directly determined by others. This raises the
important question of whether the degree to which self-regulatory depletion arises
from performing a given self-regulatory task, or making particular decisions, also is
moderated by whether the task or decisions are self-determined.
According to a theory of self-determination proposed by Deci and Ryan (e.g., 1987),
the forms of regulation that we undertake differ, depending on what we perceive as
the origins of the regulation and the degree of autonomy and volition versus control
and pressure that we exercise in so acting. As used by these theorists, autonomous
regulation refers to regulation that is “initiated and sustained by one’s integrated, or
true, self.” In contrast, controlled regulation “encompasses regulation by aspects of
the person that are less well integrated with the self.” More specifically, “controlled
regulation involves feeling pressured, coerced, or seduced into action, whereas auton-
omous regulation involves doing what one finds interesting or important and would
be inclined to do more freely” (Moller, Deci, & Ryan, 2006, p. 1025).
To examine the effects of controlled versus autonomous choices on regulatory
depletion, Moller and colleagues (2006) modified a paradigm used by Baumeister et al.
(1998). In that paradigm, undergraduate participants allegedly taking part in a study
on responses to persuasion who had chosen to give a speech that either agreed
with their own attitudes or disagreed with their attitudes toward a tuition increase
(but had not actually made the speech) subsequently showed reduced persistence on a
difficult (impossible) figure-tracing task compared with individuals who were not
asked to make a choice about giving a speech. Decreased persistence was shown both
by less time spent on the figure-tracing task and a decreased number of attempts to
solve it (Baumeister et al., 1998, Experiment 2). Baumeister and colleagues inter-
preted these outcomes as suggesting that not only resisting temptation but also
making responsible choices may decrease the availability of “self-control” resources.
However, Moller et al. (2006) observed that, in the earlier study, what appeared to be
a free choice by the participant actually comprised a controlled choice in that the exper-
imenter strongly encouraged the participant to opt for making the speech with regard
to one rather than another position. Participants were given the cover story that
because there were already enough participants who had chosen one of the speech
topics, it would help the study a great deal if they chose the other topic. In fact, all
participants then chose the topic that the experimenter said would substantially help
the study, suggesting that participants may have felt pressured to comply with the
experimenter’s request.
Moller and colleagues (2006) modified the paradigm so that three choice condi-
tions were included: no choice, controlled choice (with a cover story very similar to
that used by Baumeister et al., 1998), and free choice (no constraints on the speech
topic to be given). Comparisons of these conditions showed that persistence on the
figure-tracing task (both number of attempts and time on task) was significantly
greater in the free choice condition than in the controlled choice condition (Moller
et al., 2006). A similar outcome was obtained in two further experiments using
different choice tasks and also different tasks on which to measure subsequent persis-
tence. Additional manipulation checks confirmed, as expected, that participants did
experience their choices as more self-determined in the free choice than in the forced
choice conditions. Furthermore, a mediation analysis following the guidelines devel-
oped by Baron and Kenny (1986) demonstrated that perceived self-determination
mediated the persistence effect. In contrast, the differences in persistence did not
appear to be related to participants’ evaluations of how interesting or intrinsically
rewarding they found the tasks to be.
Thus, not all sorts of choices place similar demands on us, or equally consume self-
regulatory resources. Additional research has further established the important
contribution of an individual’s level of experienced autonomy in mediating the extent
to which particular tasks prove to be depleting of self-regulatory resources (see
Muraven, Gagné, & Rosman, 2008), suggesting that it is not only what the task
requirements are but also the reasons behind an activity, and the broader context in
which a given activity is pursued, that determine the degree to which it draws
upon self-regulatory capacity. It is to these questions of the varying degrees of self-
determination that we may experience in embarking on, and persisting with, a given
course of action that we now turn.
Forms of Motivation
I N T R I N S I C A N D E X T R I N S I C M OT I VAT I O N A R E O F T E N
C O N J O I N E D — R AT H E R T H A N O P P O S E D — A I D S TO
AGILE THINKING
When we say of someone that he or she is “intrinsically motivated,” we are describing
several interrelated aspects of how and why the person approaches an activity or
pursuit. We are noting that the person engages in the activity predominantly for its
own inherent interest, for the joy and love of the activity, including the process of
discovery and creation itself, rather than for the sake of the “extrinsic” rewards,
incentives, or disincentives associated with it. Thus, intrinsic motivation involves
elements such as curiosity, enjoyment, and interest as well as aspects of self-
determination, task absorption, and a healthy relishing of the various sorts of
challenges and opportunities for mastery that a given pursuit offers. In contrast, the
elements most associated with extrinsic motivation involve a focus on financial or
other tangible incentives related to a pursuit, and concerns with competition, evalua-
tion or recognition by others, as well as “other-imposed” (rather than self-determined)
constraints (Amabile et al., 1994).
The central relevance of this distinction to flexibly adaptive thinking lies in the
assumption that intrinsic motivation itself is conducive to such modes of thinking.
As succinctly summarized by Shalley, Zhou, and Oldham (2004), “Scholars have long
argued that individuals are likely to be most creative when they experience high levels
of intrinsic motivation [. . .] since such motivation increases their tendency to be
curious, cognitively flexible, risk taking, and persistent in the face of barriers [. . .] all
of which should facilitate the development of creative ideas” (p. 935).
Research has largely supported this viewpoint (e.g., Hirt, Levine, McDonald, &
Melton, 1997; Koestner, Ryan, Bernieri, & Holt, 1984; Kruglanski, Friedman, & Zeevi,
1971). However, there is a second and different claim that, although also supported to
some extent (e.g., Amabile, 1985), receives much more qualified and limited support.
This second claim, which merits close critical examination, is that there is a negative
or “adversarial” relation between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In particular, it
has been found that providing individuals with extrinsic rewards for performing an
activity that they already “intrinsically enjoy” and would pursue in the absence of the
rewards undermines or diminishes the intrinsic motivation they experience (see Deci,
Koestner, & Ryan, 1999, for review). Thus, once the reward is removed or no longer
forthcoming, these individuals are less motivated to engage in the activity than they
would have been had no extrinsic rewards earlier been forthcoming. Extrinsic rewards
also may have other effects, such as decreasing the amount of incidental learning that
individuals show—that is, learning that occurs without a specific motive or formal
instruction or set to learn—perhaps through narrowing their attentional focus or

through increased perceptual selectivity (e.g., Bahrick, 1954; Bahrick, Fitts, & Rankin,
1952; see also Amabile, Hennessey, & Grossman, 1986) or by increasing perseverative
reliance on previously established (and rewarded) approaches to a problem that are,
however, no longer applicable (McGraw & McCullers, 1979).
Meta-analyses suggest that such undermining of intrinsic motivation, although
often present, is moderated by several factors. Based on an analysis of 128 studies,
Deci, Koestner, and Ryan (1999) found that such detrimental effects of extrinsic
rewards were more clearly observed for some measures of participants’ interest (e.g.,
the amount of time the participants freely spent on a previously rewarded activity)
than others (e.g., their self-reports of their level of interest in the activity). Detrimental
effects were also more often observed after particular sorts of rewards (tangible
rewards such as money, particularly if reward was made contingent on the individual
performing or completing an activity) than others (verbal feedback).
Yet the dichotomy between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation also may not be
as simple as it seems. In addition, the outcomes that are obtained in paradigms used
to investigate the effects of reward on behavior—particularly those behaviors most
relevant in the current context involving flexible or divergent thinking and creativ-
ity—are substantially shaped by a number of further factors, such as the clarity and
explicitness of the instructions concerning desirable aspects of task performance,
implicit expectancies, and additional characteristics of the rewards (e.g., whether the
rewards are multiple or single, promised or actually given, and highly salient or less
salient). We will consider each of these in turn.
B E Y O N D A B I P O L A R C O N T R A S T, A N D D I F F E R E N T I AT I O N S
W I T H I N E X T R I N S I C M OT I VAT I O N
The differentiation between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation does not necessarily
imply that these reside on a single underlying dimension. Extensive data collected
from several adult samples (Amabile et al., 1994) have shown that the two forms of
motivation are largely independent of one another, and so may be best conceived as
two unipolar constructs rather than a single bipolar one. Thus, an individual may be
high on one form of motivation (e.g., intrinsic) and low on the other (extrinsic),
but each of the other combinations are equally possible: individuals may be high
on extrinsic but low on intrinsic motivation, low on both intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation, or high on both.
In a large-scale investigation with data collected over a period of several years and
from several samples of college students and working adults, Amabile et al. (1994)
reported a correlation of –.08 between the Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation scales of
their Work Preference Inventory for adults (total sample of 1,055 individuals) and a
correlation of –.21 for students (total sample of 1,363 undergraduates). Using
the Academic Motivation Scale (Vallerand & Bissonnette, 1992) with a sample of
171 university students, Walker et al. (2006) reported essentially no correlation
between the intrinsic and extrinsic measures (Pearson r = .02). Analyses of the number
of individuals who scored high on both scales likewise pointed to the relative indepen-
dence of the Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation scales. Similarly, Amabile et al. (1994)
found that self-reported current engagement in problem-solving activities such

as computer programming, solving logic problems, and designing experiments was
significantly correlated with both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. These correla-
tions were particularly strong for the “challenge” subscale of the intrinsic motivation
scale and with the “compensation” subscale of the extrinsic primary scale.
The validity of the intrinsic and extrinsic scales was supported by several conver-
gent findings. For instance, modest but significant positive correlations were
found between the intrinsic motivation score and a questionnaire measure of adult
playfulness (r = .29), designed to assess an individual’s propensity to imaginatively or
metaphorically define, or redefine, activities so as to enhance intrinsic enjoyment,
involvement, and satisfaction, and also between intrinsic motivation scores and
cognitive playfulness (r = .21) (Amabile et al., 1994). Similarly, there were significant
positive correlations between the intrinsic score and various self-report, behavioral,
and other-report measures (e.g., the amount of time student artists reported devoting
to their art, the number of artworks they had produced in the past 2 years, and
the percentage of waking time that professional artists devoted to their art). Student
artists’ intrinsic (challenge) scores also correlated positively with confidential ratings
made by the students’ art instructors of the student’s commitment to art, and
with instructors’ ratings of the students’ potential for a lifelong commitment to art
(correlations of .56 and .58, respectively; Amabile et al., 1994).
The construal of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as two unipolar constructs—
rather than a single bipolar one—suggests that, broadly speaking, individuals might
thus predominantly be considered to be (in a given domain or situation) as one of the
following: dually motivated, or highly responsive to both intrinsic and extrinsic con-
siderations; intrinsically motivated; extrinsically motivated; or “unmotivated,” that is,
comparatively low in both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Yet the classification of
individuals as simply “extrinsically” motivated itself also may be overly simplified. In
a proposed taxonomy of human motivation, Ryan and Deci (2000a, 2000b) distin-
guished between amotivation (the state of lacking an intention to act), intrinsic moti-
vation, and extrinsic motivation, but with the latter further differentiated into four
types, involving lower versus higher levels of self-determination. The four subtypes
within extrinsic motivation are ranged according to the level of autonomy or self-
determination they involve from “external regulation” (involving the least autonomy)
to “introjected,” “identified,” and “integrated regulation” (involving the greatest
autonomy).
External regulation is the extreme (perhaps prototypical) form of extrinsic regula-
tion; it involves behaviors that are performed to satisfy an external demand or to
obtain an externally imposed reward contingency. External regulation is typically per-
ceived by the individual as controlled or alienated, and the locus of causality for the
behavior is seen as external to one’s self. The second form of extrinsic motivation,
introjected regulation, is also experienced as controlled, but the pressure derives from
an individual’s own (internal) feelings of guilt or anxiety or efforts to attain ego
enhancements. In contrast, in both identified and integrated regulation, the individ-
ual recognizes and accepts the personal importance of a behavior and accepts it as
self-regulated (rather than externally controlled). Nonetheless, even for integrated
regulation, as for each of the other types of extrinsic motivation, the behaviors are
still performed for their presumed instrumental value: Behavior is undertaken as a

means toward an end that the person highly values, rather than for its own sake.
Despite the predominant emphasis that has been placed on intrinsic motivation, a
number of both formal and informal considerations have also supported the central
importance of identified motivation, particularly for the performance of activities that
are not themselves intrinsically rewarding but that are necessary for the successful
pursuit of a given aim, including aims relating to creative pursuits. As succinctly
summarized by K. D. Burton and colleagues:
Self-determination theory suggests that intrinsic motivation and internal-

ization work in a complementary fashion to encourage vitality, growth, and
adaptation […]. Intrinsic self-regulation promotes a focus on the task itself
and yields energizing emotions such as interest and excitement, whereas
identification keeps one oriented toward the long-term significance of one’s
current pursuits and may foster persistence at uninteresting, but important,
activities. Possessing high levels of both intrinsic motivation and identifica-
tion would seem to allow one the flexibility to adapt to a wide array of
situations. (K. D. Burton, Lydon, D’Alessandro, & Koestner, 2006, p. 751)
An overly exclusive focus on the importance of intrinsic motivation also fails to

fully take into account the temporal and dynamic aspects of creative pursuits.
Significant creative enterprises are very often extended across time, so that there are
multiple phases and time points where either intrinsic or extrinsic factors may assume
the ascendancy of importance. Both flexible thinking more broadly and creativity
more specifically may not be maximally advanced through an exclusive reliance on
intrinsic motivation. Rather, creatively adaptive thinking needs to be also guided and
fueled by more controlled processes, including external contingencies or rules that
one imposes on oneself precisely to set the potential conditions for intrinsically driven
engagement to emerge. For instance, Boice (1983) found that the simple intervention
of requiring academic writers who were experiencing writer’s block to write at specific
times (and to make not unsubstantial donations to organizations they did not like if
they failed to do so on three consecutive occasions) markedly increased their written
productivity over a 10-week period compared with a group encouraged to write only
when freely and “spontaneously” prompted to do so. In separate studies of both grade
school children and university students, K. D. Burton et al. (2006) also found evidence
that, independent of intrinsic regulation, identified regulation was a significant pre-
dictor of academic performance; in contrast, intrinsic regulation was more strongly
linked to feelings of well-being.
Using a very different methodology, Kasof and colleagues (2007) also present argu-
ments and evidence for the synergistic benefits that may arise from the combination
of an intrinsic motivational orientation and self-determined extrinsic motivation.
These researchers used an array of laboratory tasks to measure creativity in under-
graduate students. They included measures of verbal creativity (e.g., writing a brief
poem to highly specific constraints, with the first line of each poem assigned, and a
story with the title “Beyond the Edge”), artistic creativity (e.g., a drawing task that
required the creation of eight small drawings with particular titles, such as “circle,”
“contrast,” “motion,” and “dream”), and mathematical creativity (measures of

originality and flexibility in solutions to ambiguous mathematical problems). Trained
raters evaluated the degree of product creativity, and a standardized mean creativity
score across the three domains was obtained. Participants also completed measures of
intrinsic motivation (the Intrinsic Motivation scale of the Work Preference Inventory,
Student Version; Amabile et al., 1994) and the Schwartz Value Survey (S. Schwartz,
1994). Creative performance was significantly positively correlated with the
“self-direction” value subscale, as well as with two value types postulated to be adjacent
to this subscale (Stimulation and Universalism). Most important from the current
perspective, hierarchical regression analyses performed on the mean creativity scores
showed that creative performance was significantly predicted both by intrinsic
motivational orientation and the self-direction value type independently, and also by
their interaction.9
From the perspective of the iCASA framework, these findings demonstrating the
conjunctive positive effects of intrinsic motivation and also of identified extrinsic
motivation on creativity underscore that adaptively creative thinking emerges not
only under conditions that elicit the inherently rewarding and self-reinforcing states
that are associated with intrinsic motivation (and often moderate to low levels of
deliberate control). Self-determined forms of extrinsic motivation also substantially
support such adaptively creative thinking. Such self-determined extrinsic motivation
helps to carry the individual forward across activities or subphases of activities that,
although necessary for his or her longer term goals and aims, are not intrinsically
satisfying. Equally important, self-determined extrinsic activity often may help to
set the preconditions—through the appropriate exercise of deliberate control of the
environment and task contexts—for the emergence of intrinsically rewarding phases
of engagement in action.
R E WA R D I N G C R E AT I V I T Y
The evidence that extrinsic rewards may decrease creativity is mixed and not entirely
clear. One contributor to the lack of clarity derives from the fact that the procedures
and instructions adopted did not always clearly indicate to the participants that
creativity—rather than various other possible dimensions of performance, such as
organization or efficiency or conventionality—was desirable, or to be rewarded
(e.g., Eisenberger & Rhoades, 2001). If the conditions that need to be met to receive
rewards are left vague or underspecified, then individuals may default to assuming
that what is to be rewarded is conventional or standard behaviors. (The final section of
this chapter will consider evidence for the marked effectiveness of explicit contingen-
cies that reinforce the generation of novel rather than repeated behaviors.)
Eisenberger and Selbst (1994) showed that rewarding fifth- and sixth-grade
children for divergent thought on one task (constructing six new words from the
letters of given words, such as “instrument” or “brontosaurus”) was associated with
increased originality on a subsequent task (picture drawing incorporating predrawn
circles, such that the circle was a main part of the picture). In contrast, rewarding low
levels of divergent thinking (asking for only one new word to be generated) decreased
originality on the second task. Two independent raters assessed originality, with
pictorial subjects that were rarely produced by the children assigned higher originality
scores. However, these results were found only for a small reward; when a large reward
was used, this outcome was not found. Under these large reward conditions, individu-
als in both the high and low divergent training conditions looked similar to the
no-reward condition.
In a further series of experiments (Eisenberger & Armeli, 1997), fifth- and
sixth-grade children were first asked to provide, and were rewarded for providing,
either usual or novel uses of common objects. Those children given a large reward for
producing novel (rather than usual) uses of objects generated pictures that were
judged to be more original (rarer among the topics produced overall) than did children
in any of the remaining conditions (no reward/usual uses, no reward/novel uses, or
small reward for either task). They also more often chose to try to produce novel
drawings rather than to copy a familiar drawing than did children who received
a large reward for generating usual uses.
Although the reasons for differential effects of small versus large rewards on
creative behavior remain unclear, the findings do not support the view that rewarding
divergent or creative thinking necessarily undermines such activities—and provide
some (albeit not complete) support for the view that reward may increase originality
or divergence of thought. Additional studies (Eisenberger & Rhoades, 2001) using
different dependent measures (e.g., the creativity of titles offered for a movie or a
story) and populations (e.g., undergraduates, organizational employees) were similarly
consistent with this conclusion, though other factors, such as precisely how the poten-
tial for reward is construed or “framed,” may also be important (Friedman, 2009).
In an attempt to evaluate creativity in relation to the expectancy of reward in more
everyday contexts, Eisenberger and Rhoades (2001) assessed the creativity of ideas
that employees generated in response to a questionnaire that asked for suggestions
concerning how the organization might either reduce costs or increase profits (Study
5), and also supervisor’s evaluations of the creativity level of the employees (Study 4).
Measures were also included to assess the degree to which employees perceived a rela-
tion between job performance and reward (e.g., “Good performance in my job leads to
higher pay”) and either employees’ self-reported intrinsic task interest in their work
(e.g., “My job is interesting,” “My job is enjoyable,” Study 4) or their perceived self-
determination at work (e.g., “I have the freedom to adopt my own approach to the job,”
“My job allows me opportunity for independent thought and action”). In both studies,
structural equation models showed a significant positive relation (standardized path
coefficient) between the measures of performance-reward expectancy and intrinsic
interest/perceived self-determination; there was also a significant positive relation
between intrinsic interest/perceived self-determination and creativity, but no signifi-
cant direct relation between performance-reward expectancy and creativity. Thus,
performance-reward expectancy exerted effects on the aspects of intrinsic interest or
perceived self-determination, and these, in turn, were related to the two different
measures of creativity.
The following section further examines the effects of reward on behavior, focusing
particularly on behavioral variability. Here, however, a final point might be made
concerning an important implication of the construal of intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation as two unipolar constructs—rather than a single bipolar one. Given that
individuals may be high in both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, an intriguing

question arises as to how these two sources of motivation provide an impetus to
adaptively creative thinking, or if they may sometimes interfere or compete with one
another. Eisenberger and Armeli (1997) explicitly note the potential value of
both modes of motivation as an impetus to creative achievements—when reaching
achievement will involve many periods of difficult and sometimes tedious application
(rather than inherently effortless involvement). They point to several sources as
supporting the “importance of salient rewards for sustaining creative effort” in the
lives of many “outstanding scientists and mathematicians often identified as paragons
of intrinsic creative interest, including Einstein, Feynman, von Neumann, and
Ramanujan” (Eisenberger & Armeli, 1997, p. 661). Nonetheless, achieving and main-
taining the ideal balance between these modes of motivation may sometimes prove
difficult. Excursion 5 (“An Example of Dual Motivation Gone Awry?”) provides a spec-
ulative example of a situation where an individual who appears to possess exceedingly
high levels of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation—the choreographer and dancer
Twyla Tharp—found herself in an unfamiliar motivational landscape, because the
balance between the two modes had been shifted, and one form had been given the
upper hand.
Learning to Vary versus Learning to Repeat:

The Sources and Role of Behavioral Variation
in Innovation
The concept of behavioral reinforcement is often associated with ideas of regularity or
consistency in behavior and, in the extreme, with repetitive, stereotyped, or even
“mindless” automatic responding. Yet a long and itself varied line of research in
psychology convincingly argues against a necessary or inevitable association of
behavioral reinforcement with repetitively stereotyped responding. Although we and
other animals can (under certain conditions) be reinforced or “shaped” to perform in
highly stereotyped, “automatized” and repetitive ways (e.g., McGraw & McCullers,
1979), reinforcement may also powerfully shape the opposite of predictable behavior,
namely highly variable—nonrepetitive, constantly changing, and also innovatively
creative—responding (Neuringer, 2002, 2004). We can be reinforced not only for
repeating but also for not repeating.
There does seem to be a paradox in the notion of reinforcement of originality.
As an early reviewer of scientific investigations of “training of originality” remarked,
“originality is manifestly different from other behaviors”—thus, “How can the rein-
forcement of one bit of uncommon behavior increase the frequency of other uncom-
mon behaviors which by definition are different?” (Maltzman, 1960, pp. 230–231).
Nonetheless, as we shall see from the consideration of a number of examples and also
theoretical considerations, such selective reinforcement is both possible and effective
in altering behavior.10
We will begin by considering two classic examples that systematically examined the
effects of reinforcing behavioral variability on the originality of the complex responses
that were produced. These examples will then be followed by demonstrations of how
training in variability may have important adaptive consequences for thinking and
problem solving beyond the trained-on behavior itself. Thereafter, broader theoretical
considerations relating to the origins of variability and connections to other principles
of behavioral modification, including important caveats on the conditions under
which variability is likely to be elicited, will be outlined. Finally, we will consider
the role of variability in individuals’ strategic approaches to problem solving and
important proposals that such variability may both reflect, and build upon, aspects of
both highly practiced, often repeated, and familiar procedures that may be automatic,
and more controlled meta-cognitive evaluations, revisions, and extensions of current
and ongoing problem-solving efforts.
T R A I N I N G I N VA R I A B I L I T Y : E M P I R I C A L D E M O N S T R AT I O N S
An early study of the “training of variability” involved the block building of preschool
children (Goetz & Baer, 1973). The participants were three 4-year-old girls from
a university preschool classroom, selected because, based on the informal reports of
classroom staff, they showed little sophistication in block building, tending either to
simply lay the blocks out in different flat shapes (without construction) or to repeat
the same few simple constructed forms on each occasion (e.g., the same “castle”).
Goetz and Baer (1973) first included several baseline sessions to assess the types of
block constructions the children made and also derived a list of some 20 different
basic types or forms of block constructions that were commonly observed in other
children’s block constructions (e.g., ramp, tower, arch, storied arch, and balance).
Using an “ABA” experimental design, in which they first reinforced one behavior
(Phase A), then reinforced another behavior (Phase B), and then returned to reinforc-
ing the initial behavior (the second Phase A), the researchers systematically altered
the contingencies of social reinforcement (a teacher’s responses to the block construc-
tions that the child produced). Each phase was comprised of several individual one-on-
one block-building sessions during which the child was either consistently reinforced
for making forms that were different from ones she had made previously during the
session (e.g., “Oh, that’s very nice—that’s different!”), or for repeating forms she had
already made within the same session (e.g., “How nice, another arch!”). Each child was
first reinforced (in several sessions) for varied and novel responses (Phase A), then
reinforced for repetitions of same responses (Phase B), and then once again reinforced
for varied and novel responses (return to Phase A).
All three children showed a clear and steady increase in the diversity of forms
created during the phases in which only different forms were followed by reinforce-
ment. This pattern of increasing form diversity was reversed and began to decline in
Phase B when reinforcement was, instead, given only for repeated forms, but again
increased when reinforcement for different forms was reintroduced. By the end of
training, all three children also showed markedly higher diversity in their block
constructions. Whereas during the baseline sessions, each child produced only between
one and four different forms, by the end of the training, the children were producing
between 11 and 18 different forms—even though, at no point, were the children
provided instructions as to how to make different block forms.
In this study, the criterion for “not repeating” was relative, in that reinforcement
was provided for block constructions that had not previously been produced within
the given experimental session, rather than ones that were necessarily unique (though
the different “forms” were themselves actually classes or types, and so, at a more
specific level, some of the children’s constructions may have been unique). A relative
criterion may be more pragmatically tractable than a criterion that requires “absolute”
novelty. It is very difficult (sometimes impossible) to accurately assess absolute
novelty (an evaluation that requires knowledge of the entire history of the individual),
particularly when such assessment needs to occur very rapidly, so that reinforcement
of the novel behavior can be either given immediately, or be withheld, as appropriate.
Our second example, from a rather different domain, used a criterion closer to the
latter sort. The initial motivation for the study by Pryor, Haag, and O’Reilly (1969)
was simple, if unusual: One of the authors was working at Sea Life Park in Oahu,
Hawaii, and introduced into the five public daily performances at the Ocean Science
Theater, a demonstration of reinforcement of previously unconditioned behavior.
The subject was a female rough-toothed porpoise, named Malia. Here—because
the demonstration was designed to show the effects of reinforcement on previously
unconditioned behavior—the criterion for reinforcement was (as far as possible)
absolute novelty. As the authors describe, in the face of this requirement to find a new
behavior that would be reinforced in each of five brief daily sessions, the behavior of
Malia changed remarkably:
Within a few days, Malia began emitting an unprecedented range of

behaviors, including aerial flips, gliding with one tail out of the water, and
“skidding” on the tank floor, some of which were as complex as responses
normally produced by shaping techniques, and many of which were quite
unlike anything seen in Malia or any other porpoise by Sea Life Park staff.
It appeared that the trainer’s criterion, “only those actions will be reinforced
which have not been reinforced previously,” was met by Malia with the
presentation of complete patterns of gross body movement in which novelty
was an intrinsic factor. Furthermore, the trainers could not imagine shaped
behaviors as unusual as some emitted spontaneously by the porpoise. (Pryor
et al., 1969, p. 653)
To assess the effects of such selective reinforcement of novel behaviors more

systematically, the trainers undertook a controlled investigation of another porpoise,
never involved in public demonstrations, named Hou. Two research collaborators
observed the animal’s behavior, one above water and one watching the underwater
area; both of the observers and the trainer wore microphones and earphones to allow
“on-line” communication between them about the animal’s behavior and judgments
as to which behaviors (if any) were novel and therefore should be reinforced. Novel
behaviors that could be reinforced were defined as any movement that was not part of
the animal’s normal swimming and which was sufficiently prolonged through time to
be reported by two or more of the observers.
Hou had been trained to wear a harness so as to participate in physiological
experiments in the open sea, and, though she had a large repertoire of conditioned
responses, she had never been reinforced for showing “spontaneous activity.” Indeed,
other Sea Life trainers characterized her as “a docile, timid individual with little
initiative” (Pryor et al., 1969, p. 654). Nonetheless, as in the case of Malia, when
exposed to a similar regime of two to four brief (5–20 min) daily sessions all requiring
the performance of a novel behavior, Hou progressively showed more and more
complex behaviors. However, unlike for Malia, some behavioral shaping sessions were
needed in intervening sessions. In particular, in the initial sessions, any given behav-
ior that was reinforced was offered repeatedly by Hou; each session began with the
behavior that had been reinforced in the previous session, but, when that was consis-
tently not reinforced, Hou often fell back into a highly repetitive pattern of leaping in
and out of the water (porpoising), circling, and inverting. To interrupt this repetitive
fall-back pattern, Hou was shaped and reinforced to show a “tail walk” and, in later
sessions, to show a “tail wave.” Thereafter, Hou began to show increasing variety in the
number of behaviors shown per session, including also the number of novel behaviors
she demonstrated. Whereas before Session 16, Hou never emitted more than one new
behavior per session, in Session 16 four completely new behaviors were shown.
In addition, although some sessions occurred with no judged new responses11 (and
thus also no reinforcement), by Sessions 31 and 32, Hou gave entirely novel responses
at the beginning of each of six of seven consecutive sessions and showed no unrein-
forceable responses once that novel response was provided.
This “establishment of a series of new types of responses,” each newly produced at
the beginning of the sessions, was considered to be the end of the experiment:
It appears to demonstrate that the animal had established a class of responses charac-
terized by the description “only new kinds of responses will be reinforced.” After 32
training sessions, the topography of Hou’s aerial responses “became so complex that,
while undoubtedly novel, the behaviors exceeded the powers of the observers to dis-
criminate and describe them” (Pryor et al., 1969, p. 654). Some of the behaviors were
ones that have been found to occur spontaneously in many species (breaching, inverted
swimming, tail slap, sideswipe); others are rarely if ever shown spontaneously, though
they can be shaped (beaching, inverted tail slap, spitting); and still others have never
been observed to occur spontaneously (corkscrew, back flip, inverted leap).
Although these two sets of studies, exploring the effects of reinforcing variability
of behavior in young children and a nonhuman animal species, are different from one
another in many ways, they are similar in that, in both studies, providing positive
reinforcement for generating new and different rather than repeated actions led to a
marked increase in the variability of the behaviors observed. This outcome is both
theoretically and practically important, in that it shows a clear positive or beneficial
effect of reinforcement that is often overlooked.
The effectiveness of reinforcement of variability has been demonstrated in several
other studies, often using highly controlled and precisely measured dimensions of
behavior, such as the interresponse interval between pecks in pigeons (e.g., Blough,
1966; Machado, 1989, 1992), or the sequence of right versus left key pecks (e.g., Page
& Neuringer, 1985; Shimp, 1967),12 and the duration of lever presses in rats (Roberts
& Gharib, 2006). These animal studies have further shown that the level of variable
responding, just as is true for repeated responding, can be brought under discrimina-
tive stimulus control, such that the animal demonstrates variable responding in the
presence of one stimulus, but repeated responses in the presence of a different stimu-
lus (Page & Neuringer, 1985). For example, Mercado and colleagues (1998) report on
two bottle-nosed dolphins who were trained to self-select behaviors in response to a
gestured “be creative” command; the animals were permitted to perform any behavior
in response to the “be creative” command, except for behaviors that they had recently
generated in response to the command. One of the animals generated as many as 61
different behaviors in response to the command; the other varied across a range of 88
different behaviors. Investigations have also shown that the degree of variation can
itself be modulated with reinforcement, such that the more variability required to
obtain a reinforcer, the more variable the responding shown (e.g., Machado, 1989;
Page & Neuringer, 1985; K. Wagner & Neuringer, 2006). More recently, reinforcement
of novel behaviors was shown to elicit a wide range of novel vocalized sounds, both
under water and in air, by two captive walruses (Schusterman & Reichmuth, 2008).
B E Y O N D T H E T R A I N E D B E H AV I O R : I M P L I C AT I O N S
F O R P R O B L E M S O LV I N G
These and other studies that have extended the investigation of the effects of rein-
forcement of variable behaviors to additional human populations, such as adolescents
or children with autism (e.g., R. Lee, McComas, & Jawor, 2002; N. Miller & Neuringer,
2000) or individuals with mild depression (Hopkinson & Neuringer, 2003), also raise
hopes for increased modifiability of behaviors that extend beyond the behaviors that
are themselves trained. Such generalized variability is important because it may facili-
tate the acquisition of new behaviors and behavior sequences (Hopkinson & Neuringer,
2003). Indeed, at a broader, more encompassing level, “learning to vary” is, in part,
what is meant by engagement in diverse activities, in that an “enriched” cognitive and
physical environment both enables and requires varied modes of responding and
behavior. From this perspective, training in variability, like enriched environments,
should lead to improved and more flexible problem-solving performance.
Support for such a connection between behavioral variability and improvements in
problem solving is provided by a study that directly contrasted the problem-solving
abilities of animals that were reinforced for variable responding versus animals that
were not (Neuringer, 2004). One group of laboratory rats (the experimental group)
was introduced to different objects each day and the animals were reinforced for
varying how they interacted with each object. By contrast, a control group of rats
(the yoked group) simply received reinforcement at the same times as rats in the
experimental group, entirely independently of how they behaved. This group thus
received the same number of reinforcements as did the experimental group, but in a
random manner that was not correlated with their activity. A second control group
was simply handled each day and did not receive reinforcement.
After this training period, the rats were individually placed in a room in which there
were 30 different objects—all different from the objects that they had encountered in
the training phase. Hidden within each of the objects was a small pellet of food. The
rats were allowed to freely explore the objects for 20 minutes and to consume any of
the food pellets that they discovered. The key finding was that rats in the experimental
group discovered significantly more of the pellets than did rats in either of the control
groups (which did not differ from one another). In addition, the rats in the experimen-
tal group appeared to be bolder, and more willing to explore, than were the rats in
the control groups. Thus, directly reinforcing variable behavior, rather than habitual
or repetitive actions, enhanced the problem-solving skills of the animals in new
situations.
This conclusion was further supported by another study that examined the ability
of animals to learn a complex and difficult sequence of right-left lever presses. Only
animals that had received periodic reinforcement for variable responding concurrently
with the learning of shorter sequences of left-right lever press sequences later learned
the more complex and difficult sequence. Neither control animals given no intermit-
tent reinforcement, nor animals given random intermittent reinforcement, did so
(Neuringer, Deiss, & Olson, 2000). Similarly, in research related to that taken up in
Chapter 11, Luchins and Forgus (1955) found that laboratory animals raised in a
broader, more varied environment, when placed in a new context, showed more
variability in their choices and exploratory behavior than did control animals. When
given the opportunity to explore a new multipath maze, in which all of the paths led
to food, animals that were from an enriched environment took more varied routes
than did those from the control environment. Such increments in varied responding,
if manifested in the real world, also would offer the animals many new opportunities
to learn and find resources, thereby further increasing their cognitive and behavioral
repertoires and enabling more adaptive problem solving in future situations.
From the perspective of instrumental learning, where the aim often is to eventu-
ally elicit and then reinforce a particular complex behavior or sequence of behaviors,
variation in the organism’s responding must be neither too little nor too great. If vari-
ation is extremely high, then an animal might never re-produce or repeat the required
(to-be-rewarded) response. But if variation is too low, then, again, the animal might
never produce the required response. Yet in situations where some behaviors have
been frequently rewarded, variation may be too costly.
When some responses are paying off, an increase in the variability of [the]
form [of the response] will decrease the frequency of reward, because some
responses will be outside the criteria for reward (e.g., in the case of duration,
too short or too long). As the likelihood of reward goes down, there is less to
lose, so the cost of variability goes down. If the cost of variability goes down,
the optimum amount of variability should rise. (Gharib, Derby, & Roberts,
2001, p. 177)
Variable responding is often crucial to the discovery of new modes of thinking and
acting (e.g., D. T. Campbell, 1960). Exploration and “foraging behaviors,” such as those
undertaken by animals in the search for new, more palatable, or more plentiful food
sources, lead to greater variability in the types of responses shown. In contrast, highly
stereotyped responding is elicited most markedly under conditions in which continu-
ous reinforcement is offered and so little exploration or foraging behavior is needed
(Lopatto & Brown, 1994; Lopatto et al., 1998). Correspondingly, it is well documented
that response variability increases under conditions where reinforcement is rare or
absent—including periods of behavioral extinction, in which a previously reinforced
behavior is no longer rewarded (e.g., Antonitis, 1951; Neuringer, Kornell, & Olufs,
2001). At such times, when reinforcement occurs only rarely or not at all, previously
learned responses still continue to be made but they are intermixed with a higher
number of novel and more varied responses.
At a more cognitive level, under task conditions that are somewhat unclear or
ambiguous to the participant, the discovery of a response that leads to reinforcement
may elicit a type of confirmation bias (e.g., B. Schwartz, 1982) in which a known
“successful response” (one that is reinforced) is simply repeated, without attempts to
explore if it is necessarily the only possible successful response. Learning to repeat,
including repeating a behavior or sequence of behaviors in a very stereotyped manner,
may be adaptive—at least in the short term—when the contingencies reinforce such
repetition: “Doing precisely what has worked in the past seems like a quite sensible
adaptation to most contingencies in the environment. To the extent that such
actions become automatic, time, effort and attention can be devoted to other things”
(B. Schwartz, 1982, p. 26). Reinforcement can give rise to highly stereotyped func-
tional behavioral units that are also highly efficient, provided that the circumstances
are such that mere repetition of past behavior remains effective. In contrast, under
different circumstances—in which reinforcement is made contingent not on repeated
or stereotyped responses but on novel, not previously produced, or only rarely emitted
responses—then reinforcement can also lead to the emergence and strengthening of
varied and divergent, even entirely unique, responses (Goetz & Baer, 1973; Harding
et al., 2004; Maltzman, 1960).
Thus, a highly relevant analogy can be made between “variability” in the context of
instrumental learning and variability in natural selection. In a detailed consideration
of this analogy, Staddon and Simmelhag (1971; also see D. T. Campbell, 1960)
suggested that the term “principles of behavioral variation” could be used to designate
the diverse set of factors that lead to new, “originating behavior” in situations before
any reinforcement occurs. Included among such factors are past experience in similar
situations (transfer), motivation, stimulus factors (e.g., novel stimuli), and so on.
Staddon and Simmelhag suggested that these “principles of behavioral variation” were
directly comparable to Darwin’s laws of variation; they were “intended to denote not
mere variability, but the organized production of novelty, in the Darwinian sense”
(Staddon & Simmelhag, 1971, p. 17). Yet whereas evolutionary theory has empha-
sized both variation (important to the generation of new genotypes) and selection
(important to choosing among genotypes), research on instrumental learning has
been more “one sided:”
It has been almost entirely about selection—how reward amplifies a subset

of existing behavior. Little is known about variation—what controls the
variability of the behavior from which reward selects. […] With one excep-
tion [namely the well-established generalization that variability of behavior
increases during extinction] empirical generalizations about instrumental
learning have been rules of selection, statements about how reward increases
the probability of the actions it follows. Yet the success of instrumental
learning requires that variation be properly controlled. If variation is too
low, an animal may never make the right (rewarded) response. If variation is
too high, it may never make the right response twice (Gharib, Derby, &
Roberts, 2001, p. 165).
C O N T R O L L I N G ( A N D N OT C O N T R O L L I N G ) B E H AV I O R A L
VA R I AT I O N : E X T I N C T I O N A N D T H E I M M I N E N T
P R E S E N C E O F R E WA R D
As noted, variability of responding typically increases under behavioral extinction,
when reinforcement is withheld, and, more generally, when humans or other animals
experience a “downshift” in the reward value of current reinforcement or options com-
pared to a previously experienced value (Balsam, Deich, Ohyama, & Stokes, 1998).
Under these conditions, both the variety of forms of behaviors that are shown, and
the number of environmental stimuli that are interacted with, increase, as shown, for
instance, in the sequences of responses that are made by laboratory rats, or the hori-
zontal placement of their “nose pokes” into a response slot, and the location of pecks
made by pigeons (e.g., Antonitis, 1951; Carlton, 1962; Eckerman & Lanson, 1969).
Reinforcement withdrawal in the form of extinction has been shown to lead to
increased variation in the duration of responses, the latency and force of responses,
and also the nature of displacement responses that occur (Gharib et al., 2001).
Downshifts in reward also have been shown to lead to increased variability of respond-
ing in humans. Participants who first had been trained to type sequences to earn
points were then allocated to one of three groups: one group experienced a decrease in
reward value, another a complete loss of reward, and a third an increase in reward.
Although all three groups experienced surprising changes in reward, only the first
two, for whom the rewards had been reduced or eliminated (downshifted), showed an
increase in behavioral variability as a result of the shift (Balsam et al., 1998).13
Thus far, we have primarily considered the effects of reinforcement on the
frequency of the given behavior. However, it is well known that other dimensions of
behavior, apart from frequency, also are influenced by reinforcement and by specific
contingencies or patterns of reinforcement. Particularly when reinforcement for a
behavior is made available after a given time interval, or after a given number of
responses (e.g., under what are called fixed-interval or fixed-ratio training schedules),
reinforcement often also changes the energy and speed with which a response is given.
When a possible reinforcer is near, or will be given soon, animals and people respond
more quickly, with more energy, and often also more accurately. It is as though the
reinforcer has an extra “attractive pull” when it is nearer in time—and as we or other
animals “anticipate” its arrival. This anticipation of the reinforcement often leads to a
characteristically shaped sequence of responding, with “dips” and “peaks” in response
frequency that look like a repeated scalloped pattern, such that responses are the most
rapid, the most intense, and the most accurate just before reinforcement is given.
But this then raises an important question. If reinforcement can act to increase
the variability of behavior, making it less stereotyped or predictable—does reinforced
variation of behavior also show this temporally related pattern, such that there is more
accurate and speedier variability of responses just before reinforcement occurs?
Cherot, Jones, and Neuringer (1996) considered a number of factors that
might lead to differential effects of the nearness in time of reinforcement on repeated
behaviors (“operant repetitions”) compared with varied behaviors (“operant

variations”). One of the factors they noted is that the typically observed increase in
the speed of responding just before reinforcement would also tend to make responses
less variable or more stereotyped: Faster highly efficient responses often vary less
than do slower less efficient responses. A further reason expands on the earlier
analogy of variation in behavior with evolutionary theory (Staddon & Simmelhag,
1971) and draws on ethnological theory relating to “appetitive” behavior compared to
“consumatory” behavior. Whereas appetitive behaviors typically involve varied and
sometimes random search, consumatory behaviors show less variability. The eminent
ethnologists Nikolaas Tinbergen (1951/1974) and Konrad Lorenz (1981) both
explicitly contrasted the plasticity, adaptiveness, modifiability, and complex integration
of appetitive behaviors versus the relatively more fixed and simple behaviors that
comprise consumatory behavior. Thus, the imminent presence of a primary reward or
punishment might lead to decreased variability of behavior—even if the reinforce-
ment contingencies are such that what will be reinforced is variability rather than
repetition.
Entirely consistent with these proposals, and in clear contrast to the several
demonstrations showing comparable effects of reinforcement for repetition versus
variation, Cherot and colleagues (1996) found that “operant repetitions” versus
“operant variations” did not demonstrate the same temporal patterns. Although rein-
forcement of variable responding did, indeed, increase how variable pigeons’ and rats’
responding was on average, unlike operant repetitions which became more accurate
and faster as the likelihood or opportunity for reinforcement approached, animals
that were required to respond in a variable way behaved less—not more—variably
when reinforcement became nearer. Thus, for example, despite the fact that it was the
variability in their pecking sequences that was being reinforced, the pigeons varied
less as reinforcement more closely approached. This contrasted with the pigeons that
were reinforced for repeating, who showed the usual scalloped-like pattern of increases
in repeating just before the reinforcement was given. These different patterns for
operant repetitions versus operant variations were also observed when, rather than a
primary reinforcer (food), a secondary reinforcer (a stimulus correlated with food,
rather than food itself) was used: for example, a red key light that signaled a period of
availability of food for the pigeon. These parallel findings for both primary and
secondary reinforcement suggest that it was not only something about the animal’s
manner of responding to the primary reinforcer that was important, but that
the imminent prospect of reinforcement itself seemed to undermine, rather than
promote, the variability of responding that was needed.
Summarizing these findings, Neuringer (2004) notes that reinforcement of
variability appears to have two effects, both of which are relevant to creativity—and,
from our current perspective, agile thought in a much broader and more encompass-
ing sense. On the one hand, the levels of overall variability are increased, “sometimes
to the highest levels, thereby possibly facilitating creative work,” and also agile think-
ing. On the other hand, the imminent nearness of, and possibly an organism’s conse-
quent focus of attention upon, reinforcers “constrains, or lowers, variability, thereby
interfering” with adaptive responding. Notably, the degree to which overall behavioral
variability was increased by reinforcement was much greater than the degree to which
the imminent approach of reinforcement decreased such behavioral variability.

Yet both the overall increase in behavioral variability and the decrement in such vari-
ability in the moments of time just before reinforcement was given were consistent
and statistically significant. Thus,
Disagreement concerning whether reinforcement facilitates or interferes

with creativity may partly be due to emphasizing one or the other of these
effects. Reinforcers may have many influences, each of which must be identi-
fied, understood, and invoked. (Neuringer, 2004, p. 902)
Several of the conditions that may facilitate or impede successful variation

in behavior, or that, contrariwise, are most likely to elicit highly stereotyped and
repetitive behavior, are already known and understood.
We can enhance the level of stereotypy by introducing any task characteris-

tics that demand efficiency, such as time urgency, competition, punishment
of incorrect responses, large reward for correct responses, high levels of
anxiety, high levels of drive or deprivation, fatigue, and information over-
load. Similarly, one can reduce stereotypy by reducing the need for efficiency
and increasing the value of exploration, information seeking, and discovery.
(Wong & Peacock, 1986, p. 158)
Notably, it is possible that one of the mechanisms by which extrinsic rewards may
undermine intrinsic motivation is precisely through the reduction of variability in
responding. As B. Schwartz (1982, p. 51) observed, one of the properties that is held
in common by many (highly diverse) intrinsically motivated activities is that activities
of this sort, “as a class, permit novel response properties from occasion to occasion,
and result in novel outcomes.” If, in part, it is precisely such variation that sustains the
performance of these activities, then, if particular sorts of contingent reinforcement
eliminate variation, then reinforcement has undermined a key impetus to the (once
intrinsically rewarding) activity.
I N T E G R AT I N G VA R I A B I L I T Y A N D S TA B I L I T Y :
TO WA R D A G R O U N D E D A G I L I T Y
Two final important caveats: First, the previous sections have emphasized the benefits
that can be derived from the reinforcement of, and increases in, variable responding.
However, it is important not to exclusively emphasize the value of variation in acting,
and to appropriately contextualize claims for the benefits of “learning to vary.” Clearly,
reliance on either repeated responses or variable responses can both be adaptive, depend-
ing on circumstance. This point was also stressed by Wong and Peacock, who similarly
highlighted the importance of allowing stereotypy to develop under conditions where
the high level of efficiency that such stereotypy yields will itself be advantageous:
Given the adaptive value of stereotypy, one need not be overly concerned
with the development of stereotypy in educational settings where efficiency
matters. However, if one wants to foster discovery and creativity in learning

situations, one can do so by removing implicit and explicit reinforcement
contingencies for efficiency, and by encouraging information seeking.
Contingent reinforcement can promote the dual educational objective of
efficiency and creativity, if variables relevant to differential reinforcement
are properly understood and judiciously employed. (Wong & Peacock, 1986,
p. 160).
Second, and equally important, within any one complex set of conditions, elements
of both highly overlearned and stereotyped and of more innovative, newly generated,
or constructed behaviors may assume complementary and synergistic roles in contri-
buting to flexibly adaptive behavior and thought. The task-guided and condition-
guided intermixing or interdigitization of automatized components of a task (e.g.,
typing text, spelling, computing simple arithmetic sums) and nonautomatized com-
ponents (e.g., strategic, controlled search and evaluation of responses) may ultimately
lead to the greatest flexibility and potential for creative and innovative response.
In some respects, this proposal is analogous to the proposal of R. Epstein (1991,
1985) that the generativity of behavior, including behavior that is novel, continuous,
and probabilistic, is enhanced by the co-presence of multiple competing repertoires of
behavior: Such repertoires compete with one another and interact over time, with
“new sequences and new topographies” that then can be recombined. In a provoca-
tively titled article, “’Insight in the Pigeon: Antecedents and Determinants of an
Intelligent Performance,” Epstein and colleagues (R. Epstein, Kirshnit, Lanza, &
Rubin, 1984) reported that pigeons which had been trained in the essential subcom-
ponents of a complex task (e.g., to climb and peck at a facsimile of a banana; to push a
box toward a green spot placed at random positions within the experimental cham-
ber) later spontaneously solved a new problem that had never been presented. In the
new task, the pigeons needed to push the box underneath the banana, in order to peck
at it. In each case, the solution was attained rapidly, in the space of about 1–2 minutes.
Pigeons that did not earlier acquire the key components (e.g., they had been trained to
push the box, but not toward a specific location) did not solve the novel problem.
Epstein (1987) reported similar outcomes for a more complex behavior, requiring the
novel interconnection of four components rather than three.
These experiments provide support for the adaptive emergence of novelty from
individual behavior repertoires. Epstein (1987; see also R. Epstein et al., 2008, and
Hixson, 2004) argues that, for this reason, conditions that lead to the activation of
multiple competing repertoires—such as multiple controlling stimuli and, also,
intriguingly, failure, because failure may allow the resurgence of previously dominant
responses—are important to enabling creativity.14 Based on these factors, this
researcher also offered explicit practical advice with regard to how to enhance
creativity, several aspects of which, again, involve immersion in relatively “enriched”
environments, together with conditions that allow for the emergence of variability,
rather than repetition.
Most important “is to capture some of the new that is being generated all the time”
(R. Epstein, 1991, p. 368). Artists and writers carry sketchpads and notebooks for
precisely this purpose. The poet Wallace Stevens, for instance, was always at the ready
to capture lines and phrases that might suddenly emerge in his mind, sometimes when
he was at work,15 and more often, when he was walking, at lunchtime, and to and from
his home to the office, a distance of about 2.5 miles. “[Stevens] most always had some
envelopes stuffed in his pocket, and he’d just pull them out and write on the back.
Just walking, he’d say, ‘Wait just a minute, please.’ He’d pull out an envelope. He always
had about a half-dozen in his pocket” (Brazeau, 1983, p. 38).
Additional practical advice offered by Epstein concerns creating the conditions for
the emergence of multiple and competing response repertoires:
Finding conditions under which one can take the time to pay attention to
competing repertoires is also important, and one can enhance the competi-
tion by acquiring new skills and knowledge (thus increasing the number of
repertoires available to compete), by exposing oneself to diverse and chang-
ing situations (roughly, multiple controlling stimuli), and by exposing
oneself to new challenges (and the possibility of extinction-induced resur-
gence). (R. Epstein, 1991, p. 368)
Although Epstein’s experiments with the pigeons still involved relatively simple
behaviors, these demonstrations nonetheless forcefully argue that highly overlearned
and stereotyped behaviors may be recombined to enable innovative, newly generated
flexibly adaptive behavior. M. J. Marr also argued for this essential point:
In the context of creative behavior, controlled versus automatic processing

and rule-governed versus contingency-controlled behavior, as the ordering
within these two contrasts might imply, are not unidirectional, but are, in
fact, dynamically interactive in yielding truly complex and novel perfor-
mances. (Marr, 2003, p. 23)
Marr points to particular examples, such as what he dubs the “compulsive and
complete immersion in numbers and equations of the physicist Richard P. Feynman
and the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan” and “the endless practices of the
musician” and asks, “What are the consequences of such persistent, relentless,
compulsive play?” He answers: “the result is a huge behavioral repertoire with complex
units, associative links, and relational frames, all in a rich and deep dynamic blend”
(Marr, 2003, p. 23). Proposing an analogy of a dynamical web of interconnectivity of
skills and knowledge and rules and heuristics, Marr continues:
… Basic behavioral processes of response differentiation and stimulus con-

trol can result in complex stochastic and dynamic webs of associative links
that may, in turn, engender novel behavior. One can think of a spider web on
which a slight tug at any one point may exert variations in effects at many
distant points. This dynamical web is continually modified and extended
through intensive, long-term interaction with a knowledge domain that
provides not simply an enormous repertoire of knowledge and skills but
also automaticity at least to the level of elaborate relational, rule, and heuris-
tic-based performances. These performances act functionally as if directly
controlled by the contingencies related to the problem at hand. Given these

conditions, a person’s ability to manipulate the domain to generate problems
as well as their solutions will, to the uninitiated, appear as astoundingly
magical. (Marr, 2003, p. 25)
A largely similar emphasis on the generative and creative potential of multiple com-
ponents of behavior has been proposed, again from a rather different direction, in
developmental psychology, and the emergence of new strategic approaches that
children find in problem-solving situations, such as arithmetic. In this case, however,
the components also have the potential to be subjected to higher order evaluations or
metacognitive assessments, as the child reflects on and becomes aware of his or her
own behaviors and the subcomponents that contribute to that behavior. According to
the “competitive negotiation” account of strategy development proposed by Siegler
(2007), the high levels of variability in strategy use shown by children and others may
itself be adaptive because new strategies in problem solving are often constructed from
subroutines of existing approaches. Further, the likelihood and ease of such cross-
fertilization, of the reconjoining of subroutines from different strategies, is increased
if a number of different strategies have been used recently and thus are relatively active
(Siegler, 2007, p. 108). On this latter interpretation, adaptive choices among strategies
and the discovery of new strategies “are fundamentally interwoven processes”:
Without multiple prior strategy discoveries, there would be no choices to be

made, adaptive or otherwise. Without adaptive choices among available
strategies, there would be no point to most strategy discoveries; people
would be better off relying consistently on the most effective approach over-
all. (Shrager & Siegler, 1998, p. 407)
These authors argue that strategy discovery arises from what they describe as a
“competitive negotiation between meta-cognitive and associative mechanisms”
(Crowley, Shrager, & Siegler, 1997, p. 462). This is a negotiation between associative
mechanisms, involving largely implicit learned associations or correlations among
tasks, actions, and outcomes and metacognitive knowledge that is potentially verbal-
izable and thus potentially accessible for flexible use in planning, monitoring, and
adjusting behavior. For instance, nearly all first-grade children who first discovered a
new method of addition termed the “min strategy” showed variability in how often
they applied the strategy on later problems. In the min strategy, rather than counting
out both numbers to be added, one counts up only from the larger of the two addends
(as in 2 + 3: counted out as “3, 4, 5” or “4, 5” rather than “1, 2 . . . 3, 4, 5”). The children
who discovered this strategy did not generalize its use perfectly to all later problems.
However, those children who were comparatively better able to explicitly state what
they had done showed more consistent application of the strategy to later problems
(they used it on more than 40% of subsequent counting problems) than did children
who showed little explicit insight into their use of the min strategy (these children
used the approach on fewer than 10% of subsequent problems). Yet the complete set
of behavioral observations was not well accounted for by either metacognitive or
associative mechanisms alone: Both were needed.
Crowley and colleagues (1997) propose that the dominance of one system over the
other is largely determined by the extent of experience that the associative system
has. If the problem solver is working in a highly familiar context, then the fast associa-
tive system may dominate, and the metacognitive system may focus, instead, on mon-
itoring progress of the associative system, or notice and encode “interesting aspects or
concomitants of strategies that are not necessarily related to the immediate goal of
solving the problem” (Crowley et al., 1997, p. 480). However, in novel situations, the
metacognitive system may assume a larger role. The metacognitive system may also
intervene at other points, for a variety of reasons, such as “noticing something inter-
esting about prior solutions, becoming tired of using the same approach, perceiving a
time-saving shortcut, or encountering explicit instructions (e.g., from a teacher) about
how to solve a problem” (Crowley et al., 1997, p. 481). Thus, the discovery of new
strategies will not always occur during an impasse, but may occur during the perfor-
mance of quite familiar tasks that allow sufficient leeway for such metacognitive notic-
ing and observation. These conditions may also encourage resistance to acting on
whatever strategy is proposed by the associative system, in deference to a more novel
or stimulating approach. The “negotiation” between the two systems allows for many
degrees of explicit knowledge concerning how and why discoveries occurred. For
example, “Sometimes, a weak bid from the meta-cognitive system will be enough to
nudge the associative system to select a new path” (Crowley et al., 1997, p. 483)—but
the reasons for the resulting strategic change might not be readily verbalized and be
accompanied with little explicit insight.16
Taken together, then, the evidence for our joint ability to learn to vary and to learn
to repeat, and the potential role of metacognitive reflection, affirms the need for mul-
tiple and varied levels of control—as proposed by the iCASA framework. There are
potential benefits and potential drawbacks from both varying our actions and from
repeating our actions; both are necessary, and together they can often compensate for
the shortcomings of the other. Both, together, form a particularly powerful alliance
for creatively adaptive behavior and agility of mind.
Looking Back
In this chapter, we have focused on the diverse ways in which aspects of motivation
and action intersect with cognition to either shape or obstruct agility of mind. We
began by canvassing the benefits and costs of adopting a higher level, more abstract
versus lower level, more concrete construal of “what we are doing” and the relations
between our level of construal and self-regulation. We then turned our attention to
the intersections between automatic and controlled processes in influencing our
ability to both appropriately postpone, and to opportunely resume, our intentions
to undertake particular actions, in accordance with changing contextual circum-
stances, and also as a function of the level of representational specificity at which we
had anticipated possible opportune moments or contexts.
Intersections of motivation and action with several developmental and personality
factors, such as openness to experience, were then emphasized. We considered
questions such as whether it is possible to be too controlled or overly controlled and also
the evidence that our capacity for self-regulatory control may be a “limited resource”—
albeit also a capacity that may be extended through exercise. We noted how the
demands on self-regulatory resources may be modified by such factors as whether we
experience what we are doing as predominantly externally imposed or as more freely
chosen or self-determined. This then led us to a consideration of the unipolar rather
than bipolar nature of motivation—such that, for a given behavior or domain,
individuals may be high or low on both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Here we also
encountered the important notion that extrinsic motivation, too, comes in different
guises, varying in the level of experienced autonomy (from external regulation,
characterized by the lowest level of autonomy to integrated regulation, characterized
by the most autonomy), with markedly differing consequences for the ways we are
likely to pursue a given action.
In the final several subsections of the chapter we considered especially the effects
of reinforcement on creative and adaptive behavior, such as the question of what types
of rewards can be beneficial for creativity, and the key notion that not only repetitions
of behaviors but also variations of behaviors—including novel and innovative actions—
can be fostered and encouraged through reinforcement. The potential benefits of
variation, and the possible “leaps” in learning that might occur through having a wider
repertoire of subcomponents of behaviors that can be called upon, and recombined,
were highlighted. The chapter closed with theoretical considerations of the roles of
both response variability and response stability in enabling innovative advances in
thought and action.
Excursion 5: An Example of Dual Motivation

Gone Awry?
In her book, The Creative Habit, the internationally known choreographer and dancer
Twyla Tharp recounts the circumstances surrounding a particular production that she
undertook with the New York City Ballet. The circumstances that she describes
involved a concatenation of many mistakes, any one of which is likely to be “deadly”
for creative success. In her initial explicit list of the “deadly” mistakes that somehow
managed to co-occur—despite her well-honed and hard-won explicit understanding
of their destructive potential based on many years of dancing and choreography—
were these five factors: “relying too much on others, waiting for the perfect setup,
over-thinking structure, feeling obligated to finish what you’ve started, and working
with the wrong materials” (p. 128).
However, in reading Tharp’s portrayal of her work on the ballet, each of those
mistakes seemed to evolve from an initial unbalance of a different sort, relating to
the intricate play between elements of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Tharp’s strong
current of intrinsic motivation, both toward her work generally and toward the ballet
she was then working on, may have been first unsettled and misdirected by something
that might seem to be, instead, a strong source of nourishment for such motivation.
This was a veritable bounty of resources, of all sorts and kinds, that were available
for the project, including time, money, and talent. Compared to other projects she
had undertaken, Tharp’s project with the New York City Ballet had ample time until
production, generous access to many excellent dancers, dedicated rehearsal times for
those dancers, and (topping off the list) the vast musical potential provided by an
entire and talented orchestra.
All this, though, Tharp underscores is something she immediately should
have identified as a source of imminent danger, and that should have quickly placed
her on “red alert.” In her wonderfully designed book, the message that she should
have heeded appears in large red font, blazoning forth from the surrounding land-
scape of smaller black text: “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited
resources” (p. 129).
Why the red alert—and that in the face of such a windfall of good things?
Because, because: creativity rarely occurs in an unconstrained and entirely
open-ended unbounded universe—or, if it does, the creator’s first act may be to inten-
tionally and freely impose constraints where none necessarily existed. Think of Piet
Mondrian’s later palette of “primary” colors and his exclusive use of straight lines and
planes. Think of Agnes Martin’s resolute sparseness: “My paintings have neither
objects, nor space, nor time, not anything—no forms” (Cooke, 2005, p. 27); or of
Barnett Newman’s recurrent (but never the same) upward reaching “zips,” simultane-
ously spanning, defining, and defying the canvas. Each of these artists both found and
made a more limited “micro-world”—or micro-language—with its own syntax, and its
own vocabulary. . . to allow vast generative (and regenerative) creativity.
Unlimited resources are, from this perspective, somewhat akin to a universe with
no known vocabulary, no known means of expression. Unlimited resources may
remove the very constraints that provide an important channeling, directing, and
guiding force for creative energy—constraints that free and unleash creativity rather
than hamper it by providing initial boundaries and limits to work within and around
and against. It is notable that the artist Jeff Wall spoke of “renunciation,” such as the
renunciation of color as an “originary gesture” (Wall, 2005a)—to be creative means to
forgo some options or courses for others.
The cognitive psychologist Thomas Ward (1994) has described what may occur in
situations where there are few constraints operating as taking the “path-of-least-resis-
tance.” Unfortunately, taking this path often will lead us to simply implement the first
solution that comes to mind. Yet that solution is itself likely to be based on a solution
that worked in the past, or on largely habit-bound semantic memory processes, such
as category generation, and thus is unlikely to be either particularly innovative or
uniquely tailored to the specific circumstances at hand.
The conditions that foster agile thought arise from the dynamic interaction between
automatic processes, such as reminding and semantic association, and nonautomatic
processes, such as deliberate search, a willingness to tolerate and “enjoy” uncertainty
or ambiguity, where the materials or situation at hand preclude the simple application
of a simple “straight out of the box”—or “out of the past”—solution. Agile thought
also often may depend on the self-generation of constraints and constraints that vary: a
self-imposed demand for variable responding (for experimental and theoretical review,
see, for example, Moreau and Dahl, 2005, and P. D. Stokes, 2001).
Further, it seemed that, in Tharp’s (richly illustrative!) case, circumstances
conspired not only to remove or make it more difficult to either make or choose this
would-be source of intrinsic motivation consisting of the challenge of meeting known
constraints. Circumstances were such as to transmute those resources into a sort of

extrinsic motivation. Rather than receiving the fee for the ballet that she normally
received (Tharp thrillingly undercuts any notions of the creative genius as necessarily
unconcerned with remuneration in her simple statement, “I have worked long and
hard to get one of the highest fees in the world”), the New York City Ballet worked
differently. For the NYC ballet, every choreographer received the same, clearly not so
generous, fee, under something called the “Most Favored Nations” clause.
But then Tharp asked herself, and often also her son, when she found herself strug-
gling with the course of the project and her feelings in relation to it, to explain why it
was she was working so hard—for so little money. And the reply that was provided, at
first by Tharp, but then also, with its repeated affirmation, again and again from her
son, “This is the New York City Ballet” . . . “You’re paying for the opportunity to hit a
home run out of Yankee Stadium.”
As Tharp wryly recollects, this particular combination of circumstances led to a
“swing-for-the-fences-mentality” in which “everything I did was predicated on being
bigger, bolder, grander. I was going to make a statement. I was going to change the
company. All in one dance” (p. 131). But these, too, were almost entirely extrinsic goals.
They were focused on the impact that the ballet would have on others, how it would be
evaluated and perceived by others, rather than on the meaning or evolution of the
piece “in and of itself.”
Thus, another of the numerous important lessons to be gained from this incident,
beyond that constraints are not necessarily bad, is that extrinsic motivation is not simple,
or unidimensional, or readily contained within our own, perhaps overly literal, concep-
tion of its rightful universe. In Tharp’s case, changes in extrinsic motivation in the form
of reduced monetary compensation, when combined with the lack of constraints or
abundance of resources, seemed to introduce another sort of extrinsically motivated
logic; as we might imagine Tharp saying to herself: I’m doing this because of the immense
resources (viewed as part of the universe of extrinsic motivation), and those immense
resources are important and worth having because (same universe of extrinsic consider-
ations) of the opportunity they provide to impress and impact others, thereby earning
(same universe) their (astonished, awe-struck) accolades and approbation.
In this imagined line of thinking, we have never moved from an other-focused
extrinsically directed, extrinsically pulled universe—even though Tharp scarcely ever
seemed to focus upon, or concern herself with, these sorts of issues in the many other
descriptions of her creative endeavors. A high-achiever like Tharp and many others is
likely to thrive on the synergy created by the combination of both high intrinsic
rewards and high extrinsic rewards. Although not the “focal point” of her life or of her
art, it was not inconsequential that Tharp was well paid; the two broad sorts of moti-
vation worked together in supporting flexible and creative flourishing. But in this par-
ticular case, this graceful dual interplay was pushed toward a one-sided ungainly and
unsettling focus on extrinsic concerns.
These “lessons” in the intricate balancing of differing sorts of motivation appear to
cohere well with the conclusions of researchers who undertook a series of systematic
in-depth interviews with creative individuals in quite another domain: that of entre-
preneurs in the high-technology industry (Amit, MacCrimmon, Zietsma, & Oesch,
2000). Data from 51 entrepreneurs and a control group of 28 senior managers in the
high-technology industry who decided not to start ventures (“nonentrepreneurs”)

provided little evidence to support the “common perception” that money is either the
only, or even the most important, motive for entrepreneurs’ decisions to start new
ventures. Entrepreneurs did not rate the attainment of wealth as more important
than did nonentrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs pointed to the attainment of wealth as
significantly less important than an aggregate of 10 other decision dimensions.
Although entrepreneurs did believe that they had higher chances of attaining their
desired level of wealth and other returns by their chosen course of action than did
nonentrepreneurs—that is, they were generally more optimistic than their nonven-
turing counterparts—other motives, such as innovation, independence, challenge, and
vision were more important and much more salient than money.
6
Emotion, Self, Personality
Thought Personified
Young people—schoolboys and girls who are put up to this kind

of pestering by their teachers—often ask, with youthful
bluntness, “Where do you get your ideas from?” My usual,
perfectly honest reply is, “I don’t get them; they get me.”
—Robertson Davies (1991, p. 89)
I write with experiences in mind, but I don’t write

about them, I write out of them.
—John Ashbery (1983, p. 13)
In the previous chapter we considered motivational contributors to agile thinking; in

this chapter we continue to broaden the scope of our purview into “agile minds” to
take cognizance of several key intersections of thought with emotion, self, and
personality. We will first further explore the role of positive emotions in enabling
mental agility, expanding on our earlier consideration (in the third section of
Chapter 3) of the role of positive emotions in enabling broader or more flexible and
permeable categorizations of objects and events, to ask, more generally, what is the
functional role of positive emotions, and to examine possible longer term and cumula-
tive effects of positive emotion. We will also consider whether the experiencing of
positive emotions is uniformly beneficial for flexible thinking and cognition, and the
notion of the “granularity” with which we construe our emotions and its role in
promoting resilience.
Next, we will turn our attention to the beneficial effects of interventions that
appear to invoke a form of “self-affirmation” in encouraging individuals to show
greater receptivity and objectivity with respect to counterattitudinal, or otherwise
self-threatening or challenging information. Additional potential effects of self-
affirmation, such as reducing the occurrence of intrusive thoughts and counteracting
stereotype threat (i.e., anxiety or concern about confirming a negative group-related
stereotype) also are considered, together with questions regarding the possible
mechanisms at work in the process of self-affirmation and circumstances under which
self-affirmation might not necessarily prove helpful. This leads us to a consideration of
the personality characteristic of openness to experience, and related constructs such
238
E motio n , S e l f, Pe rs on al it y 239
as orienting sensitivity, in relation to creativity and adaptability. More differentiated

facets within the construct of openness to experience, such as open-mindedness and
both valuing of, and attunement to, aesthetic experiences are noted, and the proposal
that the five factors of personality might be grouped into two overarching dimensions,
relating to plasticity on the one hand (subsuming openness to experience and
extraversion) and stability on the other hand (subsuming conscientiousness, emotional
stability, and agreeableness) are also taken up. In the final section, and anticipating
the bridge to the following chapter on “Thoughts about Thoughts,” we look at the
relations between the experiences of interest and curiosity, which may be construed as
“epistemological emotions,” and the seeking of variety.
Positive Emotions
W H AT I S T H E F U N C T I O N A L R O L E O F P O S I T I V E E M OT I O N S ?
Positive emotions can play an important role in promoting agile thinking. However,
not all positive emotions are of the “same ilk” but may differ substantially depending
on the type of action situation from which they emerge (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1990;
Higgins, 1997). One broad group of positive emotions may arise from the successful
avoidance of negative outcomes or events—these might be emotions such as relief, or
calmness, or tranquility (rather than the contrary states of fear, tension, anxiety, and
so on). These are positive emotions that often arise in the context of the actions of
escaping from, eluding, or avoiding threats. In contrast, another broad group of posi-
tive emotions may arise in the context of pursuing incentives: typical positive emo-
tions in this approach context are eagerness, excitement, or joy.
Carver (2003, 2004, 2006) has argued that affect often provides a source of feed-
back regarding whether our activities are leading us closer to our goals. Positive affect
indicates good, or better-than-expected progress toward the goal, whereas negative
affect points to poor, or worse-than-expected goal-related progress. Thus, if our activ-
ities are going well, then we are likely to experience pleasure, but the type of pleasure
will vary depending on whether the action we are engaging in is one of avoidance or
approach. Both types of action can lead to positive affects, to neutral affect, or to
negative affect, but on different continuums, ranging from fear and anxiety (negative
pole) to relief and calmness (positive pole) for actions aimed at avoidance, but sadness
and depression (negative pole) versus elation and eagerness (positive pole) for
approach actions.
In Carver’s model, it is comparatively easy to understand the role of negative affect.
Negative feelings indicate that something is not going well, and so we (typically) will
try harder or undertake a different approach to the matter at hand. What is counter-
intuitive, in the model, is what happens when positive feelings occur, because things
are going “better than they need to.” In this case, individuals may begin to “coast” a
bit—letting up on their efforts with regard to the particular activity.
This seems paradoxical, and even contrary, to claims that pleasure in an activity
should lead to an intensification of engagement in the activity. Yet the latter
proposal (pleasure intensifies engagement) itself raises a problem: If pleasure leads to
intensification of engagement in an activity, why do individuals ever shift focus to

another concern or project? Particularly when there are no clearly looming sources of
negative affect to attract our attention and efforts, why do we not become ever more
tightly bound to a given pursuit that is pleasurable?
By contrast, a model in which the subjective sense that “things are going better
than they need to” is a signal that tells us we can “let up a bit,” can help to explain why,
once we have made satisfactory progress in one specific domain, we often shift our
attention to another project or concern. Rather than seeking to achieve perfect or
ideal achievement in one area, individuals often seek to “satisfice” (Simon, 1967) in
multiple areas—reaching “good enough” performance in several areas rather than
ideal performance in any one.
When progress toward a given goal is satisfactory, individuals may become more
open to a reprioritization of their goals, either turning toward activities that (earlier)
were slightly lower in their list of priorities or opportunistically capitalizing on new
developments that happen to arise and come to their attention. Thus, positive affect,
like negative affect, may be a signal that helps us to manage our priorities. But whereas
negative affect tends to narrow and focus our attention and efforts on the specific
factors that may lead to undesired consequences, positive affect tends to broaden our
attention, encouraging us to scan both for new priorities (including identification of
neglected matters that may later become threats if not dealt with soon) and for new
opportunities. Expressed more broadly, emotion may comprise “a domain general
mechanism for regulating effort allocation” (Nesse, 2004, p. 1339).
From this perspective, pleasure can be seen as “a sign you can attend to something
else”—enabling the individual to both “maintain satisfactory standing with regard to
multiple goals and to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities, thus providing
adaptive value” (Carver, 2003, p. 241). However, if, when we broaden our scope we
find that no sufficiently pressing alternative priorities loom into our awareness, and
no new sufficiently enticing options pull us in their direction, then we may simply
continue with the current activity.
Figure 6.1 provides a schematic representation of the proposed variations in one’s
level of behavioral engagement with a given task or project as a function of the rate of
one’s progress toward one’s goal (doing well versus doing poorly, relative to meeting
one’s criterion expectations for performance). Also provided are examples of the
affects that might be experienced, their affective valence, and their hypothesized
broader functions. Note that, according to this account, the greatest levels of engage-
ment are not found either when one is doing exceedingly well, or exceedingly poorly,
in reaching one’s goals but, rather, when one’s progress is relatively close to where one
expects or desires to be.
Louro and colleagues recently provided an initial test of Carver’s model (Louro,
Pieters, & Zeelenberg, 2007; see also DeShon & Gillespie, 2005, for broader concep-
tual review). For example, in one experiment, participants were asked to imagine that
they were training for an important upcoming athletic track event. They were also
asked to imagine that they had an additional goal (earning extra money) for which an
important and attractive opportunity had just presented itself (acting as a part-time
guide at an art gallery). Participants were either assigned to a condition in which they
were told to suppose that they had been performing consistently well during their
Adequacy Example Affect Broader

of progress affects valence function
Doing Openness to
other goals
well Elation
Coasting,
Positive
conserving
energy
Activation,
Eagerness
Criterion to sustain
velocity
Frustration
Activation,
Anger to regain
Negative
velocity
Sadness
Depression Deactivation,
Doing in service of
poorly Dejection disengagement,
conservation
Despondency of energy
Engagement
Figure 6.1. Goal Progress and Affect. Representation of variations in level of

behavioral engagement (x–axis) with a current task depending on the adequacy of
progress (y-axis) toward the goal (doing well vs. doing poorly, relative to meeting one’s
criterion for performance), together with examples of associated affects and their
affective valence (positive or negative). Broader functions that may be served by affects
at different levels of “adequacy of progress” are suggested in the rightmost section.
Reprinted from Carver, C. S. (2004, p. 16), Negative affects deriving from the
behavioral approach system, Emotion, 4, 3–22, with permission from the American
Psychological Association. Copyright 2004, American Psychological Association.
track training in the prior weeks (associated with nearness of the goal of qualifying for
the event) or had been doing consistently poorly (associated with distance from the
qualifying goal). They were then also asked to imagine that they had just been to a
further training session in which they achieved either a winning time in all 12 trials or
had obtained a bad time in all 12 trials. This further manipulation was intended to
influence positive versus negative emotion, and it was crossed with the manipulation
of goal distance, so that four goal distance by emotion conditions were created:
near–positive, near–negative, distant–positive, and distant–negative.
The results showed that, when the goal was near, positive emotions increased the
extent to which participants were likely to “choose” to decrease—not increase—their
training efforts in order to meet the additional financial goal. In contrast, negative
emotions under these conditions instead increased the effort devoted to the focal goal
and participants chose to exert less effort toward earning extra money. Additional
findings from these investigators likewise supported the notion that when “focal goal
attainment is imminent and goal-related emotions signal progress” individuals
with multiple goals tend to reduce their efforts toward the goal and also then begin to
“prioritize competing goals” (Louro et al., 2007, p. 191).
More generally, positive affect may encourage us to deepen and broaden how we
interact with the world and with other people so that we engage in additional explora-
tion and attempts to understand social and physical events, rather than simply auto-
matically or habitually reacting to those events. Positive affect may encourage social
interactions (e.g., Cunningham, 1988; Vittengl & Holt, 1998; D. Watson et al., 1992)
and may help to foster cooperative or helping behavior (e.g., George & Brief, 1992;
Isen, 1987). Diary studies show that high levels of positive affect, as reported in daily
or weekly logs, are associated both with higher levels of social activity (e.g., time with
friends, family, or partners) and an increased frequency of engaging in a variety of
leisure and other activities (e.g., going to a museum, arts or hobbies, weekend trips,
etc., e.g., D. Watson et al., 1992). Further, individuals who are happy are more likely to
actually enjoy themselves when engaging in such leisure activities than are less happy
individuals (e.g., L. Lu & Argyle, 1991), and they have a greater likelihood of experi-
encing intrinsically rewarding states (Graef, Csikszentmihalyi, & Gianinno, 1983).
These findings suggest that there may be incremental longer term consequences of
more often experiencing states of high positive affect. Individuals who tend to experi-
ence positive affect across many situations over an extended period of time or who are
high scorers on positive affect as a personality trait may engage in activities and affili-
ations that themselves further foster positive affect. In turn, such engagement may
increase both the positive nature of their experience and the breadth of their cognitive
horizons in ways that further enable creative approaches to problems and problematic
situations (e.g., Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002; Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004).
This self-reinforcing process, whereby positive emotional experiences give
rise to “reachings-out” into the world and toward others in ways that then supplement
and extend our knowledge has been termed the “broaden and build theory.” According
to broaden and build theory (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001, 2004), the exploration,
modification, and extension of our understanding and skills is most likely to occur
when we are in a positive emotional state, such as interest, or contentment. That is, it
is especially such positive emotions that “appear to broaden peoples’ momentary
thought-action repertoires and build their enduring personal resources” (Fredrickson,
2004, p. 1369).
In brief, according to the broaden and build account, “over time and as a product of
recurrent play, exploration, and integration, positive emotions have the incidental
effect of building a person’s social, physical, and personal resources (e.g., recurrent
exploration increases a person’s knowledge base)” (Kunzmann, Stange, & Jordan,
2005, p. 575). Other researchers have made similar claims. For example, Lyubomirsky,
King, and Diener (2005, pp. 803–804) point to research that “positively valenced
moods and emotions lead people to think, feel, and act in ways that promote
both resource building and involvement with approach goals” (e.g., Carver, 2003;
Elliot & Thrash, 2002; Lyubomirsky, 2001). These views are also at least broadly
consistent with the “feelings-as-information” model (e.g., N. Schwartz, 1990, 2001)
and its construal of the “signal” that is provided by positive affective states versus
negative affective states. According to this view, whereas negative affective states
signal that the current state may be problematic, and are associated with increased
aversion to risk and the inhibition of the use of novel alternatives, positive affective
states signal safety. On the “feelings-as-information” model, situations invoking
positive affect suggest that cognitive effort is unnecessary unless required by other
ongoing goals or aims. Such positive affective states also tend to be associated with an
increased tendency toward risk taking and the exploration and use of novel or creative
alternatives.
EFFECTS OF POSITIVE MOOD ON FLEXIBLE THINKING

AND COGNITION: THE POSITIVE CASE
Several studies, using diverse methodologies, have provided evidence that is broadly
consistent with these proposed roles of positive affect in fostering exploratory and
flexible thinking. For example, individuals who were induced to experience a mildly
positive affective state (via receiving the gift of a small packet of candy or sugarless
gum) showed greater variety in their choices of positive or neutral products, perhaps
pointing to an increased willingness to explore and experiment when in a positive
affective state (Kahn & Isen, 1993). Other evidence suggests that positive affect
may encourage a preference for unusual over commonplace tasks and specifically
improves performance on creative or interesting tasks, without altering performance
on routine tasks (see Kahn & Isen, 1993).
Diary studies of instances of “everyday creativity”—in which people adaptively
discover new ways to approach activities and problems in their everyday lives—
suggest that everyday creativity most often occurs when individuals are in either a
positive or neutral mood (e.g., Richards, 1994). Similarly, but with regard to occupa-
tional creativity, both quantitative and qualitative longitudinal data from diaries of
employees likewise showed that positive affect was positively correlated with creativ-
ity in organizations. Time-lagged analyses were performed on an average of 52 daily
questionnaires from more than 200 employees on “knowledge work” project teams
from several companies, including high-tech industries, chemical industries, and
consumer products industries. The results showed that positive affect was both
a correlate of and an antecedent of creative thought, as measured by peer ratings and by
coder assessments, with positive affect preceding creativity by up to 2 days (Amabile,
Barsade, Mueller, & Staw, 2005).1
Earlier, in Chapter 3, we considered evidence that positive emotions may
encourage people to use broader or more flexible and permeable categorizations of
objects and events. In one series of studies, individuals who were exposed to one of a
number of different manipulations intended to induce mildly positive affect then
categorized common objects, such as various items of clothing, in a more inclusive
manner than did control participants (Isen & Daubman, 1984). Participants in the
positive affect condition also tended to more frequently rate stimuli that were
nontypical instances of the category as comprising valid members of the category
than did control participants (also see Kahn & Isen, 1993). Other work has shown that
participants in a positive affective state are also more likely to spontaneously generate
such nontypical items during a category generation task (Hirt, Levine, McDonald, &
Melton, 1997).
Positive affect has also been associated with enhanced fluency on the Alternative
Uses Task, requiring the generation of nonstandard uses of common objects (Phillips,
Bull, Adams, & Fraser, 2002), as well as with facilitated performance on more complex
measures of divergent thinking (Vosburg, 1998). In other research, the induction of
positive affect led to the formation of both broader and thus fewer categories when
individuals were encouraged to focus on the similarities among exemplars, but
narrower and more numerous categories when they were encouraged to attend to
differences among exemplars (N. Murray et al., 1990).
The latter outcomes suggest that positive affect might enhance an individual’s
ability to perceive less salient or less common characteristics or relations. This sugges-
tion is consistent with a further demonstration by Isen and colleagues (Isen, Daubman,
& Nowicki, 1987) of the effects of positive affect on thinking. In this case, however,
what was measured following the induction of a positive affective state, or in several
control conditions, was the participant’s ability to solve Duncker’s “candle problem.”
As discussed in Chapter 4, in relation to issues of perceptual attunement and the
influence of the “design stance” on categorization and problem solving, Duncker’s
candle problem involves the presentation of several objects, including some tacks, a
box, a candle, and (in some versions of the task) a vertical screen. Participants are
asked to use these materials to affix the candle to the vertical screen, so that it can
burn upright. This proves to be a difficult task because, in the standard condition, it
requires changing how one sees the box: When it is currently being used as a container
of the tacks, the solution to the problem requires emptying the box of the tacks and
using the box to support the candle.
Isen et al. (1987) found that only 3 out 15 control participants who watched a neu-
tral film prior to being given the candle problem managed to solve the problem within
the 10 minutes allotted to do so; this performance level was similar to that shown by
participants in a no manipulation control condition, where 2 out 15 participants
solved the problem. In marked contrast, for participants shown a positive (comedy)
film, 9 out of 12 solved the problem. Indeed, the participants in the positive film
condition demonstrated a solution rate that was nearly as high as that of participants
who were presented the problem with a visually facilitative display, such that all of the
objects were separated from one another, with the tacks beside the box rather than
inside the box. (See also the discussion in Chapter 4, of the differential effects of
“preutilization” or function priming on the performance of younger vs. older children,
with younger children tending to be less adversely affected by the current usage of the
objects than are older children.)
Positive affect arising from watching a comedy film also has been shown to facili-
tate conceptual-associative problem solving (Estrada et al., 1994; Isen et al., 1987;
Subramaniam, Kounios, et al., 2009) on the “remote associates task” (Mednick, 1962).
In the remote associates task, three different words, each of which is associatively
related to a further word, are presented. The participant’s task is to identify the word
that connects all three presented words. For example, the three stimulus words, age,
mile, and sand, are all related to the target word, stone. Enhanced semantic associative
search on the remote associates task for individuals given a positive compared with a
negative mood induction was also found using a music induction procedure, in which
individuals initially listened to either 10 minutes of music that had previously been
shown to induce a more positive mood, or to 10 minutes of music known to induce a
more sad mood, and then continued to be softly exposed to the happy or sad music
throughout the remainder of the test period (G. Rowe, Hirsh, & Anderson, 2007;
Chapter 9 considers some of the possible neural factors that may facilitate perfor-
mance on this task).
Individuals in a positive mood may also provide more unusual word associations
than do persons in neutral or negative affect conditions. This pattern held for each of
three different definitions of “unusualness,” including a measure comparing the
responses to those given in a normative sample of 1,000 respondents (Isen, Johnson,
Mertz, & Robinson, 1985). These experimental results also are in line with psycho-
metric findings concerning the cognitive characteristics that are associated with
elevated positive mood, and also with findings relating to the cognitive effects of mild
hypomanic states, in which individuals may show symptoms similar to those found in
mania, but less severe. In addition to elevated mood, such individuals may, for exam-
ple, show decreased need for sleep and high levels of energy but also tendencies toward
overinclusiveness of thinking and a loosening of conceptual boundaries (C. L. Bowden,
1994; Richards, 1994).
Mild hypomania may be associated with higher levels of fluency of ideas or diver-
gent thinking (Furnham et al., 2008) and associative and combinatorial thinking,
including the intrusion of irrelevant ideas or incongruent combinations (Jamison
et al., 1980; Schuldberg, 2000-2001). Several researchers have pointed to the similar-
ity between episodes involving mild hypomania and intense phases of creative
endeavor. Richards (1994, pp. 56–57) observed that the cognitive style in mild hypo-
mania is one of “integrative complexity” (cf. Barron, 1963), and that a “preference for
the complex integration of material is an important associate of creative thought
across different fields of endeavor.” She further identified three specific effects of
mood, and of mood swings, that might “raise the odds for the emergence of creative
thoughts.” These are, first, “the number of available elements or classes” available to
awareness; second, “the richness and sophistication of their structural intercombina-
tions”; and, third, “the flexibility of their dynamic patterns of access and use (at least,
if central cognitive control is retained and not abandoned for a psychotic process).”
In a study using a university-wide behavior inventory to identify students who
might be at high risk for bipolar syndromes, P. J. Shapiro and Weisberg (1999) found
that symptoms relating to hypomania or euphoria were significantly positively
correlated with scores on the adjective checklist creative personality scale (ACL-CPS,
Gough, 1979). Persons who displayed a “hyperthymic” pattern involving high levels of
(subsyndromal) mildly elevated mood with few or no symptoms of depression scored
significantly higher on the creativity measure than did individuals showing either
depression or a cycling pattern (cyclothymia). Using multiple regression analyses,
hypomania symptoms were again related to creativity; although depressive symptoms
alone were not predictive of creativity, the combination of hypomania and depression
dimensions accounted for the largest proportion of variance in the adjective checklist
measure of creativity, leading the authors to suggest that “depressive symptomato-
logy has a suppressive effect on creativity” (P. J. Shapiro & Weisberg, 1999, p. 757).
Similarly, in earlier work, Schuldberg (1990) found that hypomanic personality traits,
measured by a scale concerning experiences of being “up” or “hyper,” were positively
correlated with the adjective checklist measure of creativity and with creative scores
on the Alternative Uses Task, as well as with a questionnaire of beliefs, attitudes,
traits, and behaviors associated with creativity. As observed by Kaufmann (2003,
p. 132), “in a positive sense, this cluster of cognitive characteristics may tend to
facilitate originality and creativity in problem solving.”
A further demonstration of the beneficial effects of mild positive affect for agile
thinking— in this case involving decision making and reasoning in physicians—is that
provided by Estrada, Isen, and Young (1997). In this study, internists were randomly
assigned to one of three groups: a mild positive affect group (given a small gift of
candy), a control group, or a further comparison condition. The physicians were asked
to read a summary of a case of a patient, and then to “think aloud” while they attempted
to determine a diagnosis. During their attempted diagnosis, they could choose to read
different sorts of information about the patient, and they also could request the results
of various lab tests. The physicians’ think-aloud protocols were tape-recorded and then
later transcribed and scored for several features. The researchers focused particularly
on evidence pertaining to the point in time at which the correct diagnosis was
first suggested, evidence for engaging in a process of hypothesis confirmation, and
indicators of “anchoring,” here defined as involving an overly strong and continued
adherence to an early hypothesis rather than considering alternative hypotheses.
The mild positive affect and control groups established a final diagnosis at a similar
point in the protocol (hypothesis confirmation), and all physicians did so only with
sufficient evidence; that is, no physicians decided on a diagnosis prematurely. However,
physicians in the mild positive affect condition generated the correct hypothesis
(hypothesis generation) and began to consider the correct diagnosis significantly
earlier in the protocol than did those in the control group. The positive affect group
also showed less “anchoring” on an initial hypothesis than did the control group. Thus,
the earlier generation of the correct hypothesis in the positive affect group did not
reflect hasty or closed responding, but points to relatively enhanced “efficiency,
improved integration of material and improved correct hypothesis generation”
(Estrada et al., 1997, p. 131).
The beneficial effects of positive affect on problem solving may not be confined to
situations where individuals face problems on their own—some findings suggest that
positive affect also enhances interpersonal problem solving. Using an interpersonal
bargaining task, Carnevale and Isen (1986) found that individuals in a positive affect
exposure condition negotiated more effectively and achieved solutions that had higher
joint benefits than did control participants. There is also evidence that, compared with
a relatively negative naturally occurring affective state, positive mood may be related
to increased fluency of ideas both with regard to proposing possible approaches or
solutions to everyday problem scenarios, and for the process of envisioning possible
productive questions to pursue, or “problem finding” (Okuda, Runco, & Berger, 1991)
requiring the identification of problems of a given broad type (Vosburg, 1998).
Isen and her colleagues suggest that the beneficial effects of positive affect on
creative problem solving arise from alternations in an individual’s attentional focus
that accompany the changes in affective state:
The interpretation that we have suggested for the impact of positive affect
on creative problem solving is that good feelings increase the tendency to
combine material in new ways and to see relatedness between divergent
stimuli. We hypothesize that this occurs because the large amount of cogni-
tive material cued by the positive affective state results in defocused atten-
tion, and the more complex cognitive context thus experienced by persons
who are feeling happy allows them a greater number and range of interpreta-
tions. This increased range of interpretations results in awareness of more
aspects of stimuli and more possible ways of relating and combining them.
(Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987, p. 1130)
However, as also noted by these authors, the directionality of some of the effects
remains unclear. For example, do individuals in a more positive affective state notice
more features because they are aware of more alternative interpretations, or are they
more aware of alternative interpretations because they notice more features?
Nonetheless, a somewhat similar account, emphasizing the increased “breadth” of
activation of cognitive and memory-based associations during positive affective
states, has been proposed by other researchers. For instance, according to what has
been termed the “personality systems interaction theory,” proposed by Kuhl and asso-
ciates (Kuhl & Kazén, 1999), affective states influence (modulate) the ease and type of
associations that individuals make. This account proposes that positive affect sup-
ports a holistic processing mode, associated with the “activation of wide semantic
fields” in memory and thus encompassing weak or remote associates, whereas nega-
tive affect supports analytic processing and is characterized by a “more restricted
spread of activation to close associates and dominant word meanings” (Bolte, Goschke,
& Kuhl, 2003, p. 416; see also the section on “Brain Correlates of Insight Problem
Solving” in Chapter 9, including Figure 9.6).
According to this account, although mild positive affect may be associated with a
preference for global processing, this does not entail a reduced ability to flexibly switch
to more local strategies if conditions so require. The personality systems interaction
theory proposes that positive affect enhances “open, flexible and efficient processing.”
More specifically, this theory postulates that positive affect increases the accessibility
of a high-level intuitive form of memory, termed “extension memory.” As summarized
by Baumann and Kuhl (2005):
According to this theory, moderate levels of positive affect increase the

activation of a central executive system called extension memory whereas
unattenuated negative affect reduces access to this system. Extension
memory is conceived of as an implicit representational system that is neces-
sary to have an overview of extended semantic fields […], relevant episodes
experienced […], and integrated self-representations […]. It operates accord-
ing to connectionist principles and promotes intuitive-holistic processes.
[…] According to [personality systems interaction theory], extension
memory is a high-level intuitive system that can be distinguished from a
low-level intuitive system [… that] is involved in intuitive (i.e., automatized)
behavior control […]. Whereas the low-level intuitive system may promote
greater reliance on accessible information and dominant reactions, the

high-level intuitive system (extension memory) promotes access to extended
networks of relevant semantic meanings, remote action alternatives, and
integrative abilities. (Baumann & Kuhl, 2005, p. 124)
Evidence in line with this flexibility hypothesis was provided by an initial experiment
that manipulated mood via a trial-by-trial priming manipulation (Baumann & Kuhl,
2005). The experiment used a perceptual identification task where the stimuli were
larger geometrical objects composed of smaller geometrical objects. Participants were
required to detect a given target shape (e.g., a triangle) that could be present in either
the global form or the local form (e.g., a large circle constituted by many smaller trian-
gles). Each trial was preceded by a priming word that, for the individual participant, was
associated with neutral, positive, or negative affect. Based on participants’ responses
following the neutral word primes, individuals were classified as either showing a global
processing default bias (about two-thirds of the participants) or a local processing
default bias (one-third of the participants). The results showed that, for the “global
default group,” positive primes reduced latencies to nondominant local targets. However,
the reverse occurred for the “local default group”—that is, for this group, positive affect
facilitated processing of global targets. In contrast, negative affect primes did not influ-
ence processing of global targets and slowed responding to local targets. These outcomes
suggest that positive affect may enhance not only the processing of global information
but also (at least under some conditions) the processing of local information if situa-
tional demands require a focus on such detailed information. They are, then, conceptu-
ally consistent with the results reported by N. Murray et al. (1990), and considered both
earlier in this section and in Chapter 3, that a positive affective state led individuals to
show more flexible categorizations than did participants not in a positive affective state,
not only forming broader and thus fewer categories when asked to focus on the simi-
larities among exemplars but also forming narrower and thus a greater number of cat-
egories when instead asked to focus on differences among exemplars.
EFFECTS OF POSITIVE MOOD ON FLEXIBLE THINKING

A N D C O G N I T I O N : T H E N E G AT I V E C A S E
Yet there also are inconsistencies in the conceptual accounts of how mood influences
cognitive processing. Some earlier accounts of mood effects on cognition (e.g.,
Bodenhausen, 1993) suggested that positive moods lead to less effortful and less sys-
tematic processing, whereas negative moods lead to more careful and systematic or
“vigilant” processing. More recent proposals (e.g., Bless, 2000; Fiedler, 2001, 2002)
have argued that different moods encourage different styles of processing, with nega-
tive moods inducing processing that is more externally oriented and focused on actual
external details (a comparatively more “stimulus-driven,” and “accommodative” mode
of processing), whereas positive moods lead to more constructive processing that
draws on existing knowledge and heuristic or schematic knowledge (a comparatively
more “knowledge-driven” and “assimilative” mode of processing).
Fiedler (2001, p. 87), for example, proposed that “whereas negative mood supports
the conservative function of sticking to the stimulus facts and avoiding mistakes,
positive mood supports the creative function of active generation, or enriching the
stimulus input with inferences based on prior knowledge.” Similarly, Clore and Palmer
(2009, p. 26) proposed that affect is one factor governing the “tipping point” between
perceptually focused bottom-up processing versus cognitively focused top-down
processing, with positive affective cues promoting cognitive, relational processing and
negative affect encouraging a more perceptual, stimulus-bound focus. It also has been
suggested that negative affective states may signal that one’s dominant response
should not be given (that is, one should avoid the use of accessible cognitions and
responses), whereas positive affective states encourage the provision of dominant
responses (Clore & Huntsinger, 2007). In a similar vein, Bless (2000, p. 213) suggested
that it may be “highly adaptive for individuals to rely on their general knowledge
structures differentially as a function of the current psychological situation”—such
that individuals “in benign situations may rely on their general knowledge structures,
which usually serve them well,” whereas in problematic situations, which are usually
deviations from normal or routine circumstances, individuals “would be poorly advised
to rely on the knowledge they usually apply.”
Evidence that is apparently consistent with the latter suggestions has been
reported. For instance, persons in a positive mood who were asked to make “first
impression” judgments of others were more strongly influenced by irrelevant “primes”
than were the judgments given by persons in a negative mood (Fiedler et al., 1991).
Similarly, positive mood participants were more prone to the effects of “misleading
postevent questioning” than were persons in either a neutral or negative mood
(Forgas, Laham, & Vargas, 2005). They were also more prone to incorrectly recall asso-
ciatively related words in a word-learning task (Storbeck & Clore, 2005), possibly
because positive mood increased a tendency to accept information in an uncritical,
accepting manner (e.g., Bless, 2000) or increased reliance on relational rather than
item-specific processing (e.g., Storbeck & Clore, 2005).
Other studies have shown that participants in positive moods may be less influ-
enced by argument strength than by peripheral cues (e.g., Bless, Mackie, & Schwarz,
1992), and they also show greater reliance on stereotypes in their judgments (e.g.,
Bodenhausen, 1993; Stroessner & Mackie, 1992). Also, for individuals in a negative
mood, task instructions that directly and explicitly encourage them to provide
responses freely have been shown to lead to greater fluency, particularly for new
responses (Gasper, 2004). This outcome suggests that the diminished fluency of new
ideas observed in individuals with negative affect may at least partially be attributable
to their adoption of a more stringent criterion for “outputting” a response that then
leads to the “editing out” or suppression of generated ideas rather than the failure to
have such ideas at all.
Further findings pointing to rather less than universally positive benefits from
positive mood also have been reported. Two studies by Kaufmann and Vosburg (1997,
2002) failed to show benefits of positive mood on insight problems, and indeed,
showed that positive mood impeded performance. The second of these investigations
provided evidence that the beneficial effects of positive mood on the fluency of idea
generation may be predominantly found early on in the phase of generating ideas but
that, over time, idea production by individuals in a neutral or negative mood exceeded
that of individuals in a positive mood. It also has been suggested (Vosburg, 1998) that
these conflicting findings may be related to the types of task constraints that are
present, specifically whether successful task performance requires systematic search
and “optimizing” versus heuristic search and “satisficing.” In the insight problem task
of Kaufmann and Vosburg (1997), participants were not provided feedback as to the
adequacy of their solutions, and it is possible that a positive mood led individuals to
stop sooner with a solution that they believed to be sufficient, but not the one deemed
“correct.”
Yet from this perspective, according to which positive moods lead to processing
that is more reliant on heuristics and prior knowledge, it is difficult to understand
the bidirectional facilitative categorization effects that have been reported by
N. Murray et al. (1990; also compare with the findings regarding the local/global task
of Baumann & Kuhl, 2005, discussed in the previous section). As noted earlier,
N. Murray et al. (1990) found that a positive affective state led individuals both to
form broader categories when asked to focus on the similarities among exemplars and
to form narrower categories when instead asked to focus on differences among
exemplars. It seems unclear why greater reliance on preexisting general knowledge
structures would not instead have led to stereotyped or habitual responses. Likewise,
the findings from Estrada, Isen, and Young (1997), showing that physicians in a posi-
tive mood manifested comparatively less anchoring on an initial hypothesis than did
those in a control group, also do not seem to cohere well with the proposal that posi-
tive moods necessarily lead to more heuristically or schematically driven processing.
Taken as a whole, whereas there is a good deal of evidence supporting the potential
facilitative effects of positive moods on creatively adaptive thinking, there are also a
number of empirical findings that clearly raise the need for caution in making overly
encompassing and unilaterally enthusiastic statements regarding the effects of posi-
tive affect on cognition (see also Hennessey & Amabile, 2010). Furthermore, the
observation of beneficial effects for modest positive affect on creatively adaptive think-
ing should not be taken to indicate an exclusivity claim—other forms of affect, such as
emotional ambivalence, might also sometimes prove beneficial (e.g., Fong, 2006). A
fuller understanding of the contributions of positive affect to mental agility will need
to take into account several factors. Prominent among these are the questions of how
well the cognitive effects of mild positive affect “match” the predominant demands of
a given problem situation—such as predominantly favoring local versus global pro-
cessing, or maintaining goals versus flexibly switching goals—and whether an increased
openness or orientation to novelty may, under a given set of task or situational circum-
stances, be beneficial or harmful (e.g., Dreisbach, 2006; Dreisbach & Goschke, 2004;
Phillips et al., 2002; see also Förster & Dannenberg, 2010, for extended discussion).
Nonetheless, and also taken as a whole, the majority of the research to date indi-
cates that, at least under a number of task conditions, positive affect plays an impor-
tant facilitative role in flexible thinking. This facilitation arises, in the first instance,
through comparatively immediate short-term effects on cognitive processing (e.g., in
altering the ease with which categories are extended to include atypical members).
More speculatively, in a longer term manner, such facilitation may emerge because
positive affect helps to “broaden and build” (e.g., Fredrickson, 1998, 2001) an
individual’s repertoire of problem-related skills and knowledge that, in turn, enhance
creatively adaptive thought. As we will see in the next section, there is also evidence
that positive emotions may be an important contributor to psychological resilience,

thereby providing yet a further route to increasing, or at a minimum helping to
sustain, mental agility.
P O S I T I V E E M OT I O N , P S Y C H O L O G I C A L R E S I L I E N C E ,
A N D T H E “ G R A N U L A R I T Y ” O F E M OT I O N S
Broadly stated, psychological resilience involves an ability to “bounce back” from nega-
tive emotional experiences and to flexibly adapt to the changing demands imposed by
stressful situations or events. Resilience is demonstrated by the effective coping and
adaptation of an individual, even though he or she is confronted with varying degrees
of stress, including loss, hardship, or adversity (also see the second section of Chapter
5, particularly the subsections on “Ego Control and Ego Resiliency” and “Effortful
Control and Reactive Control”). Research has shown that “trait-resilient” individuals
tend to share many characteristics: They are generally optimistic and full of energy,
curious and open to new experiences, and—most relevant here—tend to show high
levels of positive emotionality (e.g., J. Block & Kremen, 1996; Klohnen, 1996).
Positive emotions may help to bolster and sustain psychological resilience by
“undoing” the lingering aftereffects of negative emotions and helping to restore an
individual to physiological (e.g., cardiovascular) and psychological equilibrium. In one
study (Fredrickson & Levenson, 1998) participants were first asked to watch a fear-
eliciting film, and then were asked to watch one of four further films intended to elicit
contentment, amusement, or sadness, or to be emotionally neutral. Individuals who
watched either the contentment or amusement films showed faster recovery to base-
line cardiovascular reactivity after the fear-eliciting film than did individuals who
watched the sad or neutral film. Fredrickson and Levenson (1998) further found that
those participants who spontaneously smiled while they were watching a sad film
showed a more rapid return to baseline levels of cardiovascular activity than did
participants who did not smile—suggesting a possible buffering effect of spontaneous
positive emotion.
In other work, Ulrich et al. (1991) likewise found evidence for more rapid physio-
logical recovery, and also recuperation of self-rated affect, from a laboratory-induced
stressor after exposure to (pleasant) nature scenes than to (less pleasant) urban
scenes. Partly based in psycho-evolutionary theory (e.g., Parsons et al., 1998; Ulrich,
1993; Ulrich et al., 1991, 2008) and E. O. Wilson’s (1984) concept of “biophilia” (a love
of living things), Ulrich proposes that exposure to particular sorts of natural scenes
may both counteract negative affect and foster positive affect. According to this
account, often beginning with “immediate, unconsciously triggered and initiated
emotional responses” (1991, p. 207), natural settings favorable to ongoing well-being
and survival (e.g., a savannah-like area or a setting with water), rapidly help to offset
or counter stressors. Such settings may shift us toward a more positively toned
emotional state, counteract stress-induced mobilization of the sympathetic nervous
system (e.g., elevated blood pressure and electrodermal activity) and influence
attention, subsequent conscious processing, and behavior. (Chapter 11 will consider
additional experimental research documenting the beneficial effects of exposure to
nature on directed attention capacity.)
Links between positive affect and psychological resilience have also been reported
when using questionnaire measures to assess more stable “trait” resilience. Using
J. Block and Kremen’s (1996) Ego-Resiliency Scale, consisting of 14 self-reported items
such as “I quickly get over and recover from being startled” and “I enjoy dealing with
new and unusual situations,” Tugade, Fredrickson, and Barrett (2004; Tugade &
Fredrickson, 2004) found that psychological trait resilience was positively associated
with positive mood but was not associated with negative mood. They also showed that
resilient individuals recovered from the cardiovascular effects of anxiety (experimen-
tally induced through telling participants that they would be given 60 seconds to
prepare a 3-minute speech on a still-to-be-determined topic) more quickly than did
less resilient individuals. Furthermore, using R. M. Baron and Kenny’s (1986) criteria
for establishing statistical mediation, these researchers found that the relation
between the duration of cardiovascular reactivity and resilience was mediated by
positive emotion: The relation between physiological reactivity and resilience was no
longer significant when controlling for positive emotionality.
Nonetheless, it is also important to note that it does not appear to be the case that
resilient individuals are simply unrealistically optimistic or are unaware of adverse
conditions. Rather, individuals high in trait resilience are often able to experience
positive emotions even when also fully recognizing the negative aspects of the event
or situation with which they must deal, and experiencing the negative affect (e.g.,
anxiety, frustration) associated with the event. It seems as though positive emotions
serve as a “psychological breather” (Ong et al., 2006, p. 743) in the midst of distress.
Lazarus, Kanner, and Folkman (1980) hypothesized that under stressful conditions,
when negative emotions tend to predominate, “positive emotions may provide a psy-
chological break or respite, support continued coping efforts, and replenish resources
that have been depleted by the stress” (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000, p. 649).
These characterizations of resilience, and also our earlier considerations of the
effects of affect on cognition and mental agility, seem to treat positive and negative
emotions as largely separate, although sometimes “interspersed” affective conditions.
Yet is such separation of positive and negative emotions invariably present, across time
and circumstances within an individual, or across different individuals? Or might the
degree of independence between the positive and the negative emotions that we expe-
rience itself change in the face of adversity? And might individuals differ both in the
extent to which their positive and negative emotions appear to covary with one another,
and in how finely differentiated their responses are within those broad categories?
The ways in which the relations between positive and negative affect may dynami-
cally change, particularly during times of coping with stress, are the central focus of a
model proposed by Zautra and colleagues (2001). The model predicts that under
normal conditions positive and negative emotion are (as implied earlier) relatively
independent of one another. However, under conditions of stress, affective states may
become less differentiated from one another.
More specifically, according to the dynamic affect model, under ordinary circum-
stances it is beneficial to have distinct positive and negative emotions, or “separate
accounts” for positive and negative affect. When emotions remain distinct, they pro-
vide the individual with the maximum amount of independent information regarding
his or her affective responses because “the scope of their experience with one emotion
is not determined by the presence or absence of the other” (Zautra et al., 2001,
p. 787). Under these conditions, however, the amount of “uncertainty” that is present
is also greatest, because one’s knowledge concerning the type and degree of affective
experience one has with regard to a given aspect of one’s situation provides minimal
information (and so cannot reduce uncertainty) about one’s feelings with regard to
other aspects.
An implication of this is that a situation involving a high degree of affective differ-
entiation and affective complexity is likely to be more cognitively demanding—
because it involves a greater amount of uncertainty—than is a situation involving less
affective differentiation. Yet we also know that the experience of pain or high levels of
stress itself draws on cognitive resources as one attempts to cope with the stress and
the uncertainty surrounding it. According to the dynamic affect model, this competi-
tion for limited cognitive resources may lead to less differentiation of our affective
judgments during times of pain and stress. During such times, rather than little or no
relation, there may be an inverse correlation between positive and negative affective
states, with increases in negative affect accompanied by marked decreases in positive
affect. Whereas, during periods of low stress, positive and negative moods appear to
fluctuate independently, during times of high stress “positive affect becomes con-
strained by negative affect” and instead of involving independent dimensions, “the
structure of affective space approaches unidimensionality” (N. A. Hamilton, Karoly, &
Kitzman, 2004, p. 567). Nonetheless, such differentiation may also be influenced by
more stable individual differences. As will be further developed later in this section,
the differentiation between emotions may vary with differences in an individual’s
ability to understand one’s own emotions (termed “mood clarity” by Salovey & Mayer,
1990), with one’s relative emphasis on the valence (hedonic) versus arousal aspects of
emotion (Barrett, Gross, Christensen, & Benvenuto, 2001; Feldman, 1995), and with
differences in cognitive-affective complexity (Labouvie-Vief & Medler, 2002), as well
as with trait resilience.
Individuals characterized as resilient have been found to engage in several
strategies that strengthen positive emotions. Among these strategies are engaging in
positive reappraisal and “benefit finding” in the face of adversity, and using humor
(see, for example, Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004). Ongoing day-to-day monitoring of
positive emotions and stressful circumstances in older adults showed that positive
emotions could help to foster well-being both by interrupting the ongoing experience
of stress (providing a temporary respite) and by increasing the speed of adaptation to
subsequent stressors. Whereas relatively more resilient individuals could use momen-
tary interludes of positive emotion to alleviate stress, for individuals who were less
resilient, “the unpleasant experience of one daily stressful event tends to follow on the
heels of another, thereby ratcheting up subsequent stress levels even higher” (Ong
et al., 2006 p. 743). Thus, both between-person differences in psychological resilience
and within-person differences in the operation of positive emotion contribute to
whether and how flexible adaptation to adversity is observed (e.g., Bonanno, 2004,
2005; Bonanno et al., 2004).
The personality trait of “hardiness” also may help to buffer individuals against
extreme forms of stress. Hardiness involves three central components: first, a com-
mitment to finding meaningful purpose in life, involving oneself in, rather than
alienating oneself from, whatever one is doing or encounters; second, the belief that
one can influence one’s surroundings and the course and outcome of events, or the
“perception of oneself as having a definite influence through the exercise of imagina-
tion, knowledge, skill, and choice” (Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn, 1982, p. 169); and third,
the belief that one can learn and grow from both positive and negative life experi-
ences, or the “belief that change rather than stability is normal in life and that the
anticipation of changes [provides] interesting incentives to growth rather than threats
to security” (Kobasa et al., 1982, p. 170; see also Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997; Bonnano,
2004; Florian, Mikulincer, & Taubman, 1995; Kravetz, Drory, & Florian, 1993). In a
prospective study of middle- and upper-level managers over a period of 5 years, Kobasa
et al. (1982) showed that although stressful life events were associated with increases
in illness symptoms, hardiness decreased the likelihood of symptoms occurring,
particularly under circumstances involving extremely stressful life events.
Researchers have also begun to identify coping strategies that do not only mini-
mize the negative aspects of stress, but that are associated with increased positive
well-being, including feelings of energy, strength, engagement, and enjoyment (Shiota,
2006; Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004; Tugade, Fredrickson, & Barrett, 2004). Some of
these strategies overlap with those for hardiness, including positive reappraisal
(emphasizing the positive aspects to be gained from a negative event or situation),
and problem-focused coping (directing efforts toward constructively responding to
the negative event or situation). Other coping strategies that may help to increase
positive well-being include eliciting social support and creating positive events for
oneself and others (e.g., taking a few moments to appreciate natural beauty; see the
section on “Attention Restoration Theory and Experiences of the Natural Environment”
in Chapter 11). In a study of the effects of bereavement, Ong and colleagues (2006,
p. 743) found that widows characterized by high trait resilience were more likely to
“selectively mobilize positive emotions to recover and bounce back from daily stress.”
Maintaining or increasing emotional complexity—so as to preserve at least partial
separation between positive and negative emotional states and differentiating between
emotions of a similar affective valence—also may be an important aspect of resilience
(Ong et al., 2006; also see Labouvie-Vief & Medler, 2002). Whereas individuals with
high emotional granularity differentiate between related positive emotions, thus
representing positive emotional experience precisely (e.g., distinguishing between the
experience of joy vs. contentment vs. interest), individuals with low emotional granu-
larity tend to group similar emotional states together, representing emotions more
globally or generally (e.g., using all three of the former descriptors for a given state,
thereby referring to a general feeling of pleasantness). Additionally, persons with low
emotional granularity often characterize their emotions predominantly only by their
core affect, most often “valence” (Barrett et al., 2001; Feldman, 1995).
One study (Zautra et al., 2001) examined the characteristic of “mood clarity” in
individuals suffering from pain due to arthritis, or fibromyalgia involving widespread
muscular and joint pain and fatigue. Mood clarity was defined using a 10-item ques-
tionnaire measure developed by Salovey et al. (1995), on which participants indicated
their agreement versus disagreement with statements such as “I am rarely confused
about how I feel,” “I am often aware of my feelings on a matter,” and “I can’t make
sense out of my feelings” (reverse coded). It was found that, for individuals high in
mood clarity, changes in negative affect were not associated with changes in positive
affect. In contrast, for persons low in mood clarity, there was a strong inverse relation
between changes in negative affect and the level of positive affect experienced (Study
1). Positive affect also reduced the magnitude of the relationship between pain and
negative affect, even after accounting for the main effects of positive affect on nega-
tive affect (Study 1 and 2). In their earlier work, Salovey et al. (1995) also found that
greater mood clarity predicted recovery of positive mood following a stressful event.
Comparatively more complex representations of one’s self may exert a similar buff-
ering effect during times of stress. Linville (1985, 1987) construes greater self-com-
plexity as entailing a cognitive organization of self-knowledge or self-representation
using a greater number of cognitive self-aspects, and maintaining greater distinctions
among self-aspects. She defines a “self-aspect” as a “self-relevant cognitive category,
concept, or schema” (Linville, 1985, p. 97), with the number of self-aspects generally
increasing as an individual gains increasing experience in different roles, relation-
ships, behaviors, or situations. (Compare this account with the hierarchical model of
autobiographical memory, proposed by Martin Conway, and schematically rendered in
Fig. 2.2 in Chapter 2.) For instance, one undergraduate participant tested by Linville
(1985) provided the following trait groupings for self-characteristics: creative, alone,
with friends, real-world survival, and bad traits, placing a number of specific traits
under each of these groupings (e.g., imaginative and individualistic under “creative”).
Linville (1987) proposes that greater complexity or differentiation of the self may
help to minimize global “spillover” of negative affect associated with one domain to
other (differentiated rather than undifferentiated) aspects.
When self-aspects are few and undifferentiated, a stressful event in one

aspect tends to spill over and color thoughts and feelings about other aspects.
For people who maintain more aspects and perceive greater distinctions
among self-aspects, the impact of a negative event is likely to be confined to
a smaller portion of their self-representation. Thus, they are more likely to
maintain positive thoughts and feelings about some self-aspects despite the
negative impact of stress in one area. These positive thoughts and feelings
about other self-aspects may act as buffers against the negative thoughts and
feelings that result from stressful events. The greater the proportion of unaf-
fected self-aspects, the greater the potential buffering effect. If one assumes
that negative thoughts and feelings about various self-aspects contribute to
stress reactions and their physical and mental health consequences, then
maintaining more distinct self-aspects should act as a buffer against these
adverse consequences of stress. (Linville, 1987, p. 664)
In support of this reasoning, in a prospective study of university students, Linville

(1987) found that individuals characterized by higher levels of self-complexity showed
greater resistance to physical illness (e.g., flu) and depression following high levels
of stressful events than did persons characterized by relatively lower levels of self-
complexity.
However, an alternative account of the buffering effects of high self-complexity
focuses on the enhanced potential for self-regulatory processing after a negative
event. According to this account, “a large number of self-aspects is essential for

processes of reorientation and reinterpretation, which help to offset or neutralize the
self-threatening implications of negative events” (Rothermund & Meiniger, 2004,
p. 264). Reorientation might involve, for example, a temporary or medium- or
long-term redirection of one’s energies toward an alternative domain following
a negative event in another domain. Alternatively, reinterpretation might involve
positive reappraisal of a threatening event, or countering or rejecting the negative
implications derived from a negative occurrence. Although Rothermund and Meiniger
(2004) postulate that such processes as reappraisal and reinterpretation would be
facilitated by the greater availability of multiple alternative perspectives or self-
aspects, they argue that such self-regulatory processing will be unaffected by the
degree of relatedness among self-aspects: It is primarily the number of different self-
aspects that is central.
A further difference between the self-regulatory and affective spillover accounts of
the moderating effects of self-complexity concerns the postulated outcomes for posi-
tive rather than negative affective events. The buffering effects of higher self-complex-
ity in the affective spillover model are thought to apply to both positive and negative
events (because the spreading of affect to other aspects of the self is thought to be a
largely passive process). In contrast, only negative events and accompanying negative
affect are thought to invoke self-regulatory processing, because only negative affect
signals that there is a significant discrepancy between what is desired and the actual
state of affairs (cf. Carver, 2004 and Fig. 6.1). Using a prospective design that closely
paralleled that used by Linville (1987), Rothermund and Meiniger (2004) replicated
Linville’s finding that higher levels of self-complexity (greater number of self-aspects)
attenuated the adverse effects of negative events on depression. However, in line with
the self-regulatory processes account, the relatedness of different self-aspects was not
important, and also self-complexity did not moderate the effects of positive events.
Particularly noteworthy here, the self-regulatory processing account also predicts
that, for individuals with high numbers of different self-aspects, activating self-
regulatory processes (e.g., reorientation or reappraisal) after negative or stressful
events should lead to an increase in the number of positive experiences after such
negative events. In a follow-up study just this effect was observed: Controlling for
initial levels of positive experiences, individuals with a relatively high number of self-
aspects showed a differential increase in the number of positive experiences they
reported after a high level of stress, whereas the level of positive experiences for indi-
viduals with relatively fewer numbers of self-aspects remained essentially constant
across levels of stress. This increase in positive events likely acted to buffer the effects
of stress. These findings again point to the important role of positive emotion in
fostering and sustaining resilience.
On the one hand, the beneficial “buffering” effects against stress arising from
relatively greater complexity in one’s self-representation seem clear, particularly with
respect to a decreased likelihood of developing depression and illness. On the other
hand, the mechanisms that support this buffering effect are not entirely clear. The
observation that greater self-complexity leads to an increase in positive events
following stress only further deepens the questions. How is the likelihood of such
positive events increased?
One important route may be that greater self-complexity, such as that resulting
from more extensive and varied roles and interests, could influence automatic associa-
tive processes, providing more numerous and diverse potential trains of thought and
problem solving, and also influence attention through, for instance, the activation of
different goals (e.g., Rothermund, Wentura, & Bak, 2001). Such processes might
operate at a largely subconscious level. However, it might also be noted that some
individuals in the face of high levels of stress or pain may intentionally remind them-
selves of positive benefits. The processes involved in benefit-finding in adversity might
differ from those that contribute to what Affleck and Tennen (1996) refer to as
“benefit-reminding,” involving deliberate and strategic self-reminders of the benefits,
gains, or advantages that have been obtained through the adversity (e.g., illness, pain)
that one or one’s loved one is enduring. The relative contributions of more automatic
versus more strategic processes in the emergence of the buffering effects of relatively
greater self-complexity remain to be fully determined.
It is also not known if, perhaps, individuals who are more resilient to stress and
adversity, and who also have greater self-complexity, might more often deliberately
engage in a process of thinking about what they find highly valuable and important, so
as to intentionally counteract pain or negative affect in one domain, by affirming or
reaffirming positive engagement and enduring commitments in another domain. As
will be developed in the next section, mentally stepping “upward” in one’s inner cog-
nitive-emotional world, to focus on what one most highly values, may be a surpris-
ingly potent act, with clear consequences for mental agility. Notably, findings from
two different laboratories (Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009; Wakslak & Trope, 2009) have
associated the beneficial effects arising from such inner evaluative redirection—often
termed “self-affirmation”—with a shift in one’s level of representational specificity.
Reflection on one’s values and one’s most important aspirations may induce a more
abstract level of action identification; this, in turn, may partially underpin the benefi-
cial effects on cognitive flexibility and enhanced self-regulatory capacity that have
been associated with this intervention.
Self-Affirmation and Flexible Thinking

We are often resistant to information or views that challenge our long-held beliefs or
values, or that might suggest that our behaviors are harmful to ourselves or to others
(e.g., to our health or to the environment). Similarly, individuals in interchanges with
others, such as during negotiations, may become extremely resistant to arguments—
even sound and cogent arguments—that would require changing the stance that they
have taken. Such intransigence regarding one’s position may be shown “even when the
cost of inflexibility is heavy” (G. L. Cohen et al., 2007, p. 415). Is there any way to
reduce the defensiveness that is often present in such circumstances, so as to enable a
more open-minded and reasons-based assessment of the relevant positions?
One approach that has been proposed and now tested in several experimental
studies involves interventions that promote what has been called “self-affirmation.”
According to self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988; Steele, Spencer, & Lynch, 1993),
people are fundamentally motivated to protect their sense of self-integrity or
self-worth. This sense of self-integrity may be threatened under conditions such as

those that typically elicit high levels of defensiveness in us, where our core beliefs or
values are challenged, or we confront data or interpretations that are contrary to the
way we would like to see ourselves. In such situations, individuals often attempt to
dispel or neutralize the threat quite directly. For example, if the cause of an unsatisfac-
tory outcome is ambiguous, a person may attempt to attribute the outcomes to
external rather than to internal causes thereby displacing responsibility outside the
self. If the evidence is mixed, he or she might selectively emphasize the evidence that
is supportive of his or her own position while critiquing the evidence that is contrary
to that position.
In contrast, the theory and evidence relating to self-affirmation (Steele, 1988;
Steele, Spencer, & Lynch, 1993) suggests that there may be a less direct route that can
help to reduce our defensiveness, and thereby potentially enhance the extent to which
we attend to and process the evidence or arguments that are presented. Crucially, an
assumption of self-affirmation theory is that individuals strive to maintain a global or
overall sense of self-worth—a perception of “overall moral and adaptive adequacy”
(Steele et al., 1993, p. 885)—rather than domain-specific self-worth. The theory
postulates that it is possible to “compensate” for threats to self-integrity in one domain
by enhancing the accessibility of a sense of self-integrity derived from a different
domain. Stated differently, “there is a degree of fungibility or substitutability in
sources of self-integrity, such that bolstering one’s sense of self-integrity in one
domain increases one’s ability to endure threats in another, different domain” (G. L.
Cohen et al., 2007, p. 426). Or, to draw on another metaphor, there is a “fluidity of
adaptation” (Steele, 1988, p. 267) that is geared toward maintaining an overall sense
of self-integrity.
Self-affirmation can thus act as a buffer or coping resource (Steele et al., 1993)
when the self is threatened. More specifically:
… salient self-affirming thoughts may help objectify thinking about self-

threatening information. Such thoughts, even when not substantively
related to the information, can reduce the biasing pressure to make the
information self-affirming, to fit it to a favorable self-image. (Steele & Liu,
1983, p. 18)
Experimental manipulations of self-affirmation thus involve the “affirmation of

some important aspect of the self (i.e., personal values, characteristics, or positive
qualities)” (McQueen & Klein, 2006, p. 291). Often such manipulations ask individu-
als to identify and reflect on an important value. For instance, participants may be
asked to write about occasions when they have acted in accordance with a significant
value that they endorse as being central to their sense of themselves and their
identity, such as being kind, or creative, or resourceful.
Several studies have focused on the effects of self-affirmation on the processing of
risk information, such as self-threatening health information. An illustrative study is
that by Sherman, Nelson, and Steele (2000). Undergraduate participants who had
earlier (during a prescreening phase) reported that they were sexually active were
recruited to take part in a study on “Evaluating AIDS Educational Materials.” In the
first part of the study all participants were asked to consider a list of values and
characteristics such as artistic skills, creativity, relations with friends/family, and
spontaneity, and to rank order these values and characteristics in terms of their
personal importance. Thereafter, each participant was given an envelope that described
the writing assignment for the next part of the study and that comprised the
experimental manipulation (but to which the experimenter thus was blind).
In the self-affirmation condition, participants were asked to indicate their most
important value and to write an essay describing why the value was important to them
and a time when it had been especially important. In contrast, participants in the
control (no-affirmation) condition first indicated their ninth most important value
and then wrote an essay describing why this value might be important to the average
student. All participants then viewed a 12-minute educational video about AIDS that
showed six people who had contracted AIDS, each telling how they had contracted the
disease and relating their life course after learning they had the disease. Afterward,
participants were asked to rate the video with regard to several questions and to
indicate their personal risk for contracting AIDS on a 9-point scale. They were also
given the opportunity to take some educational AIDS brochures (on three different
topics) and to purchase condoms at the same price as at the student health center.
The key finding was that, after viewing the video, participants in the self-affirmed
condition perceived themselves as at greater personal risk from HIV compared
with how they had rated their perception of risk at pretest; in contrast, participants in
the nonaffirmed condition showed no significant change in their perceived risk as a
function of watching the video. Furthermore, whereas 50% of the self-affirmed
participants purchased condoms, only 25% of the nonaffirmed participants did so;
affirmed participants also were more likely to take one or more educational brochures
than were nonaffirmed participants (78% vs. 54%). These outcomes suggest that self-
affirmation both increased processing of the threatening information in the video and
heightened the intention to minimize risk in the future.
More recently, P. R. Harris, Mayle, Mabbott, and Napper (2007) examined the
responses of young cigarette smokers to graphic labels designed to warn of the haz-
ards of smoking either following a self-affirmation manipulation (requiring partici-
pants to recall as many of their desirable characteristics as they could think of) or
following a control manipulation (requiring participants to recall recent events).
Participants were shown four images that were being considered for use on cigarette
packages in the European Union, and that were designed to shock and induce strong
negative affect in smokers or potential smokers (e.g., a close-up of an open thorax
during a heart operation, with accompanying text such as “smokers die younger”).
Similar to the study on AIDS, self-affirmed participants rated these images as signifi-
cantly more personally relevant and as more threatening than did control participants;
they also reported higher intentions to quit than did the controls. In addition, the
increase in rated personal relevance was greater for those who smoked more, such that
self-affirmation moderated the personal relevance ratings and intentions of partici-
pants at high or moderate risk but did not affect the ratings or intentions of individu-
als at low risk.
A study in which young women read leaflets on the link between alcohol consump-
tion and breast cancer yielded similar outcomes (P. R. Harris & Napper, 2005).
Compared with nonaffirmed controls, when consumption was high, self-affirmed

participants provided higher ratings of risk and stronger intentions to reduce alcohol
consumption. They also reported higher rates of negative affect (e.g., fear) than did
the controls and reported finding it easier to imagine developing breast cancer from
their alcohol consumption. The ability to imagine such consequences might also have
contributed to their assessments of vulnerability (e.g., Kahneman, 2003).
These convergent outcomes across different studies and different sorts of health-
risk situations are very promising in that they suggest that self-affirmation may
facilitate less defensive processing of health-related information. As concluded by
P. R. Harris and Napper (2005, p. 1250), “the findings support the view that self-
affirmation in an unrelated domain can offset defensive processing of a threatening
health message, promoting central route persuasion [that involves high effort cogni-
tive processes, e.g., Petty, Wegener, & Fabrigar, 1997] and producing consequential
and durable increases in message acceptance.”
Nonetheless, it is equally important to note that the links between self-affirmation,
self-assessed intentions to change behavior, and actual behavior in these studies are
not strong. For instance, although the affirmed participants in the P. R. Harris et al.
(2007) study of smokers reported higher levels of intentions to quit (and their motiva-
tion to do so at a 1-week follow-up point remained higher than for controls), their
actual self-reported consumption did not differ. Likewise, despite differences in
reported self-perception of risk, the participants in the study by P. R. Harris and
Napper (2005) did not change their actual alcohol consumption at 1-week or 1-month
follow-ups. In a study of caffeine consumption, Reed and Aspinwall (1998) found a
similar “disconnection” between intentions and behavior. Although an affirmation
manipulation led frequent caffeine drinkers to process health risk information in a
less biased manner, it did not significantly change the frequency of caffeine consump-
tion at 1-week follow-up. Similarly, although the outcome measure of the AIDS
education study by Sherman et al. (2000) did involve a form of preventive behavior
(purchasing condoms), in this instance, too, the likelihood that affirmed participants
actually modified risky behaviors is unknown.
Given the many and strong determinants of behaviors such as smoking and alcohol
use, self-affirmation at the point of information dissemination, although potentially
beneficial in increasing communicative assimilation and processing, is most likely to
prove insufficient for modifying such strongly habitual behaviors (see, for example,
Graybiel, 2008; Verplanken & Wood, 2006; W. Wood & Neal, 2007). The more balanced
and open processing of risk information induced via self-affirmation in many cases
will need to be supplemented with other modes of support for changing behaviors
(e.g., depending on the target behavior, combined social, behavioral, and/or pharma-
cological interventions).
A further significant domain in which the potential benefits that may be derived
from self-affirmation have been explored involves interpersonal communication and
negotiation. Examining participants’ views on capital punishment and on abortion
when they had, versus had not, earlier been exposed to a self-affirmation manipula-
tion, G. L. Cohen, Aronson, and Steele (2000) found that self-affirmation was associ-
ated with a less biased or more even-handed assessment of relevant evidence. Similarly,
Correll, Spencer, and Zanna (2004) found that, for participants who felt that the issue
of tuition increases was highly important to them, self-affirmation helped to increase

sensitivity to argument strength during a videotaped debate between advocates for
and against an increase in tuition rates. Among these “high importance” participants,
self-affirmed individuals judged strong arguments to be more persuasive than weak
arguments, whereas argument strength was nonsignificantly related to the persua-
siveness ratings given by the control participants.
However, there is also evidence to suggest that self-affirmation is not a uniformly
effective “all-purpose” manipulation for enhancing flexible thinking. Rather, the
effects of self-affirmation on individuals’ openness to opposing or belief-inconsistent
evidence may be modulated by the particular identity that is salient in the situation—
and emphasis on some identities or goals (such as that of rationality or compromise)
can yield some surprisingly counterintuitive outcomes.
G. L. Cohen et al. (2007) present evidence that suggests that self-affirmation
attenuates resistance only under conditions where an individual’s partisan identity
and/or identity-related convictions are made salient. For instance, in one study
individuals were asked to assume the role of a negotiator in a face-to-face negotiation
regarding a proposed change to the Abortion Control Act against an advocate who
held an opposing position. (The advocate was actually an experimental confederate,
providing standardized but strong arguments for the pro-life position on abortion,
whereas all of the recruited participants were pro-choice). Participants were asked to
assume that they were in the role of a Democratic Party legislator, whereas their coun-
terpart would assume the role of a Republication Party legislator, and furthermore,
that it was necessary for them to reach complete agreement on the revisions to the
proposed bill or it would be forwarded to a new committee that was likely to be quite
conservative and thus unfavorable to the pro-choice position. Before engaging in
the negotiation, participants either affirmed an important source of self-integrity
(writing an essay that described behavior or experiences relevant to a top-ranked
personal value) or threatened such a source (by describing an occasion on which they
had hurt someone’s feelings or had disappointed someone). These researchers found
that the number of concessions that were made depended not only on whether
individuals were under threat or affirmation but also on whether the individual’s
convictions relating to the topic of the negotiation had been made salient. Participants
for whom their position had been made very salient (through completing a “True
Beliefs Form” in which they were instructed to indicate, using checkmarks, everything
they believed should be included or excluded from the Abortion Control Act) made
significantly more concessions in the affirmation than the threat condition. However,
if their position was not made salient, there was no significant difference in the
number of concessions offered by the affirmation versus threat participants.
In a further study, a similar interaction was found using an affirmation versus
threat manipulation in combination with a manipulation aimed to emphasize either
the participant’s identity as “committed partisans” or, instead, as “cooperative nego-
tiators.” Participants whose identity as “committed partisans” had been emphasized
made more concessions following self-affirmation than following threat. However, the
pattern was actually reversed for participants whose identity as “cooperative negotia-
tors” was stressed—here, participants made more concessions in the threat than the
affirmation condition. Thus, “self-affirmation freed people to act and think in ways
that deviated from the particular challenged identity made salient in the situation.”
More broadly:
… although intransigence arises in part from identity needs, those needs

may be contextually dependent […]. That is, the personal meaning of
openness (vs. intransigence) with respect to an identity-relevant issue, and
its costliness in terms of feelings of personal integrity, depend on the
particular identity (whether it be faithful adherent, open-minded pragma-
tist, or rational but skeptical information processor) that happens to be
salient at the particular moment and in the particular context. (G. L. Cohen
et al., 2007, p. 427)
If the goal/identity involved commitment to a particular position (e.g., pro-choice),

then the self-affirmation led individuals to be more open to views and actions that
challenged that position. If, however, the goal/identity involved commitment to
rationality or compromise, then affirmation also led individuals to be more open to
views and actions that challenged that position—but here this had the outcome of
resulting in fewer compromises, and, paradoxically, less open responding.
As suggested by Cohen and colleagues, this implies that self-affirmation may some-
times lead to suboptimal outcomes. In particular, such affirmation may prove to be
counterproductive “in contexts in which the behavior that the actors are displaying to
maintain self-integrity is constructive, for instance, compromising with an adversary
to avoid being seen as closed-minded [. . .] or pursuing academic- or work-related goals
to maintain a sense of personal competence” (G. L. Cohen et al., 2007, p. 427, empha-
sis added). Furthermore, there may be some individuals who are neither positively
nor adversely influenced but who are unaffected by affirmation, particularly those
individuals “whose intransigent or flexible behavior reflect a commitment to the
achievement of an optimal outcome rather than an attempt to serve a goal related to
identity maintenance” (G. L. Cohen et al., 2007, p. 427).
Additional research that has explored the types of self-affirmation that individuals
engage in—affirming intrinsic and self-determined aspects of the self versus extrinsic
and other-determined aspects—likewise has shown that self-affirmation does not
always enhance performance, and that the precise form of identity that is affirmed is
important (Schimel, Arndt, Banko, & Cook, 2004). Whereas, in line with many other
studies, a self-affirmation procedure that guided participants toward thinking about
their intrinsic values and standards reduced defensiveness and enhanced cognitive
functioning (e.g., performance on mathematics problems), a self-affirmation proce-
dure that emphasized extrinsic and contingent values—that is, ways of thinking
about the self in positive ways that were contingent on meeting externally imposed
standards—had the opposite effect and instead raised defensive concerns (compare
with the section on “Forms of Motivation” in Chapter 5).
A third and equally important domain in which self-affirmation has been proposed
to be influential involves what might be broadly termed the control of thoughts,
although the processes involved may lead to increased control predominantly through
altering the automatic accessibility of particular types of thoughts rather than increas-
ing intentional (deliberate) control directly. In a series of experiments, Koole and
colleagues showed that providing a self-affirming opportunity either after a failure

experience relating to several impossible-to-solve intelligence test questions (Study 1
and Study 2) or before the failure experience (Study 3) reduced the accessibility of
thoughts related to the experience (Koole, Smeets, van Knippenberg, & Dijksterhuis,
1999). In a lexical decision task, non-self-affirmed participants responded to words
that were relevant to intelligence more quickly than did self-affirmed participants; in
two other experiments, participants in the non-self-affirmed condition also showed
elevated recognition of words related to the failure experience. In line with other find-
ings showing higher recognition accuracy for goal-related words (e.g., Goschke & Kuhl,
1993), Koole et al. (1999) interpreted these outcomes as showing that self-affirmation
reduced the heightened accessibility of thoughts regarding the self-threatening failure
experience. (See also Schimel et al., 2004, Study 3, for evidence that intrinsic self-
affirmation reduced the accessibility of thoughts about social rejection prior to an
evaluative social interaction.)
In other work, Koole and van Knippenberg (2007) provided evidence that self-
affirmation might also help to reduce the unwanted strong recurrence or “rebound” of
thoughts that have, temporarily, been intentionally suppressed from conscious
awareness. Although individuals often are successful in deliberately suppressing
conscious thoughts of a particular topic, either specified by an experimenter or one
that is naturally occurring and unwanted, there is considerable evidence that success-
ful suppression frequently leads to a later “rebound” of the unwanted thought (Wegner,
1992, 1994; Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987; for review, see Koutstaal &
Schacter, 1997b, and the section on “Trying Not” in Chapter 7). The cause of such
rebound is not entirely understood, but it has been postulated to reflect a conflict
between automatic and controlled processes (the dual process account) or to arise
from motivational factors, particularly motivational tension.
According to the dual process account (Wegner et al., 1987), thought suppression
involves both a controlled search for distracters (that help the individual to avoid think-
ing of the to-be-suppressed topic, such as thoughts about a recent traumatic experi-
ence, or an experimentally determined “forbidden” thought) and an automatic
monitoring process, that checks for occurrences of the unwanted thought. Whereas the
controlled search process helps to suppress thoughts relating to the to-be-suppressed
topic, the automatic monitoring process ironically leads to heightened accessibility of
the thought and related associations, as shown, for instance, by an increased likeli-
hood of related words being produced on implicit tests of word association, or by
reduced effectiveness of controlled suppression under dual-task (divided attention)
conditions. The motivational tension account, on the other hand, posits that rebound
may occur due to the presence of unfulfilled or frustrated goals related to the to-be-
suppressed topic, so that these goals remain in a heightened state of activation (e.g.,
Goschke & Kuhl, 1993; Liberman & Förster, 2000).
Based on their earlier observation that self-affirmation may help to decrease the
accessibility of thoughts concerning a failure experience (Koole et al., 1999), Koole and
van Knippenberg (2007) hypothesized that self-affirmation might enhance the suc-
cessful suppression of other forms of unwanted thought, such as negative stereotypes
about other people or groups. To test this, participants were asked to either intention-
ally suppress or to deliberately access a social stereotype (regarding bodybuilders) in a
situation involving impression formation. After this, participants were given either
self-affirming or neutral feedback.
As expected, and in line with previous findings on thought suppression, partici-
pants who had been asked to suppress the stereotype and who were given neutral
feedback showed a “rebound” of thoughts related to the suppressed stereotype—they
showed an increased likelihood of completing word fragments with stereotypic words.
Notably, however, this rebound was not observed in individuals given the thought
suppression instructions in combination with self-affirming feedback: These partici-
pants did not produce more stereotype-related word fragments than did the groups
that were never asked to suppress thoughts about the stereotype. These outcomes
imply that rebound effects may be circumvented through indirect means, “by affirm-
ing people’s positive conceptions of themselves in a domain that is completely
unrelated to the suppression task”—thereby potentially further suggesting that
“people have considerable flexibility in preventing rebound effects after thought sup-
pression” and may rely on self-affirmation resources to “effectively enhance their
capacity for mental control and reduce interference from unwanted thoughts” (Koole
& van Knippenberg, 2007, p. 675).
The results of the latter two studies raise the intriguing possibility that self-
affirmation may also prove beneficial for improving flexible thinking under conditions
where other types of unwanted thoughts repeatedly intrude on an individual’s
awareness. One such context may involve situations requiring creative or innovative
problem solving. Often, in such situations, the most easily accessed associations or
ideas do not lead to the solution but act to preclude more imaginative or novel possi-
bilities from emerging into awareness (e.g., Jansson & Smith, 1991; Marsh, Landau, &
Hicks, 1996; Marsh, Ward, & Landau, 1999; Smith, Ward, & Schumacher, 1993; see
also the discussion of “design fixation” in the first two subsections of Chapter 4). It is
an important question then, whether, given an appropriate context and framing, self-
affirmation might help to increase innovative flexibility of thinking in creatively
demanding problem-solving and problem-finding contexts that are not directly
self-relevant.2 Notably, recent findings from our lab (Wen, Butler, & Koutstaal, in prepa-
ration) have demonstrated that, compared both to a control condition involving simple
word association, and to a no-task neutral baseline control, a self-affirmation inter-
vention led to improved performance on two different problem-solving tasks: An
insight problem-solving task, and a task requiring novel on-line visual-spatial analogi-
cal reasoning and problem solving (the Cattell Culture Fair fluid intelligence test).
Participants who were presented with 12 pairs of values (e.g., thrifty and generous) and
were asked to write about personally significant experiences for one or both values in
each pair significantly outperformed participants in the word association and baseline
control conditions on a subsequent insight problem-solving task (Cohen’s d = 1.03 and
0.85, respectively) and a fluid-reasoning task (Cohen’s d = 0.65 and 0.63, respectively).
A further significant context in which the potential beneficial role of self-affirmation
in enabling suppression of unwanted thoughts might be manifested involves the
social-psychological effect known as “stereotype threat” (e.g., Aronson, Fried, & Good,
2002; Steele & Aronson, 1995). Potentially applicable to any group that may be viewed
as inferior in ability or performance in some domain, stereotype threat involves the
idea that in situations where a stereotype about a group’s abilities is relevant, the
stereotyped group may experience the situation as involving a self-evaluative threat.

More specifically, in such situations persons who are negatively stereotyped on the
basis of race or of some other characteristic (e.g., gender) “bear an extra cognitive and
emotional burden not borne by people for whom the stereotype does not apply”:
This burden takes the form of a performance-disruptive apprehension, anxi-

ety about the possibility of confirming a deeply negative racial inferiority—
in the eyes of others, in one’s own eyes, or both at the same time. Importantly,
it is not necessary that a student believe the stereotype to feel this burden
[…]. He or she need only be aware of the stereotype and care enough about
performing well in the domain (e.g., on the test, in the math class) to want to
disprove the stereotype’s unflattering implications. (Aronson, Fried, & Good,
2002, p. 114)
In two randomized double-blind field experiments with seventh-and eighth-

graders, G. L. Cohen et al. (2006; see also G. L. Cohen et al., 2009, for longer term
follow-up results) sought to examine whether self-affirmation might counteract the
detrimental effects of stereotype threat on the academic performance of African
American school children. Children were instructed to select and then write about one
or three values that were most important to him or her self (affirmation condition) or
to select and then write about values that were least important to her or him self
(control condition). The intervention occurred in a classroom setting, with approxi-
mately one-half of the children in each classroom assigned to the experimental and
one-half to the control condition. Envelopes and other safeguards ensured that the
teachers were unaware of the particular assignment (experimental vs. control) of
individual children.
The results showed that, for African American children in the affirmation condi-
tion, end-of-term grades in the targeted course (i.e., the class in which the interven-
tion took place) increased 0.26 grade points (out of 4.00) in Study 1, and 0.34 grade
points in Study 2. Both children who were performing relatively poorly and children
showing moderate performance levels benefited from the affirmation manipulation,
which also (combining across the studies) was associated with a significant reduction
in the number of African American children who obtained failing grades. Across stud-
ies, there was also a similar increase in grade point average in the other (nontargeted)
courses. In contrast, the affirmation condition did not significantly affect the grades
of the European American children.
The magnitude of the positive effects is perhaps surprising, particularly given the
brevity of the intervention (asking children to write about their most vs. least impor-
tant values required only approximately 15 minutes). However, as outlined by G. L.
Cohen et al. (2006) and T. D. Wilson (2006), the affirmation may have intervened in
complex cyclical feedback processes (both negative and positive) and initiated “cascad-
ing changes in motivation and performance” (T. D. Wilson, 2006, p. 1252. See also
Walton & Cohen, 2011, for another brief intervention, involving “social belonging-
ness” in newly entered African American college students, that likewise appeared to
exert cascading longer term effects on multiple academic and health-related measures,
and Miyake et al., 2010, for evidence that a randomized double-blind self-affirmation
intervention similarly appeared to have a positive “snowballing effect” in countering

negative gender stereotypes about capabilities in mathematics and physics in women,
leading to significant gains in women’s grades in a difficult physics course, particularly
among women who strongly endorsed the negative stereotype).
Some insight into the possible effects of the manipulation was provided by
measures of the children’s academic performance gathered across an extended period
of time, including two preintervention phases and then several phases post inter-
vention. As shown in Figure 6.2, for the African American children the affirmation
intervention seemed to counteract an early decline in grade performance, perhaps
interrupting a recursive negative feedback cycle by alleviating stereotype threat and
bolstering subsequent positive feedback. Additional data from a word-fragment
completion task suggested that one such effect may have been to reduce the relative
availability of racial stereotypes. Across the two studies, compared to African American
children in the control condition, African American children in the affirmation
condition showed a reduced likelihood of completing word fragments (e.g., _ACE)
with stereotype-relevant words (e.g., race) compared with stereotype-irrelevant words
(e.g., face, pace, lace). The affirmation manipulation did not affect the word fragment
completion rates of European Americans.
In an accompanying commentary on these outcomes, T. D. Wilson (2006) drew
parallels between the self-affirmation manipulation and other apparently brief and
relatively minor social-psychological interventions that likewise have been demon-
strated to yield clear benefits for academic performance. Among these are interven-
tions that inform college students of the malleability or expandability of intelligence
(Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002), that inform first-year college students that grades
improve after the first year, and that inform African American college students that
worries about social belonging lessen over time. On a 4-point Grade Point Average
scale, each of these manipulations led to grade point increases between 0.27 and 0.34,
based on exams and papers assessed from weeks to months later. These latter manipu-
lations testify to the potency of empirically guided attempts to modify beliefs and
thoughts about thinking in enhancing adaptive responding, and they are explored
further in the first section of the next chapter.
Apart from evidence that self-affirmation may help to reduce the accessibility of
threat- or failure-related thoughts, the mechanisms underlying the effects of self-
affirmation on flexible thinking remain to be elucidated. Several studies have used
self-report measures to assess whether the effects are mediated by an increase in
positive affect. For instance, participants may be given the Positive and Negative
Affect Scales (PANAS; D. Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), on which they are asked to
rate, on a 9-point scale, the applicability of each of 10 positive mood and 10 negative
mood descriptors to themselves (1 = not at all applicable, 9 = very applicable). These
studies have generally concluded that increases in positive affect are not responsible
for the effects of self-affirmation (e.g., Koole & van Knippenberg, 2007; Steele et al.,
1993), though in some instances significant differences in mood have been observed
(e.g., G. L. Cohen et al., 2007, Study 3, observed more positive self-reported mood in
their affirmation than in their threat condition).
However, explicit self-report measures are vulnerable to concerns such as insensi-
tivity and social desirability response biases. Notably, using an indirect projective
1.0
European Americans - Control & affirmation
African Americans - Control
African Americans - Affirmation
0.9
Average assignment performance
(proportion of total points earned)
0.8
0.7
0.6
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Performance block
Intervention
Figure 6.2. Average Academic Performance Across 10 Chronological

Performance Blocks. Results are shown separately by student race and
experimental condition (self-affirmation or control). The experimental intervention
did not significantly affect the academic performance for the two European
American conditions and so they are shown combined. Reprinted from Cohen, G. L.,
Garcia, J., Apfel, N., & Master, A. (2006, p. 1309), Reducing the racial achievement
gap: A social-psychological intervention, Science, 313 (Sept. 1), 1307–1310, with
permission from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Copyright 2006, AAAS.
measure, Koole et al. (1999) found initial evidence to suggest that more indirectly
assessed forms of affect might mediate the effects of affirmation. They used an indirect
test of mood in which participants were very briefly shown nonsense words (e.g.,
LOWN) followed by a mask, and then were asked to indicate, from four options, which
word might have been shown. The four-word array included an affect-related word
(e.g., DOWN) and several neutral words (e.g., GOWN, TOWN). This test (with 10
positive, 10 negative, and 5 filler items) was administered, under a cover story about
subliminal perception, both before and after the affirmation manipulation. Whereas
participants in the affirmation and no affirmation conditions did not differ in implicit
affect before the manipulation, afterward those in the affirmation condition showed
an increase in positive affect with no difference in negative affect. Thus, these outcomes
at least raise the possibility that, in addition to reducing the relative accessibility of
recurrent or intrusive thoughts relating, for instance, to a failure experience or stereo-
type threat, self-affirmation may help to reduce defensive processing and increase
openness to information through subtle and perhaps unconscious enhancements of
positive affect.
Notably, recent evidence suggests that an important further potential mechanism
invoked by self-affirmation involves a change in an individual’s construal level,
particularly level of specificity of action identification (discussed in the first section of
Chapter 5). In a series of experiments, Schmeichel and Vohs (2009) found that
self-affirmation helped to counteract executive resource depletion (also discussed in
Chapter 5), such that it eliminated the detrimental effect of an earlier effortful
self-control task on subsequent attempted self-control tasks. They hypothesized that
self-affirmation facilitated self-control because it helped to move the individual’s level
of mental construal to a relatively higher and more abstract level. In line with this
hypothesis, these researchers found that participants who were administered a ques-
tionnaire assessing their preferred levels of construal for various behaviors directly
after engaging in a self-affirmation exercise demonstrated higher levels of construal
than did individuals in a control condition who did not engage in self-affirmation.
Self-affirmed participants scored significantly higher on the Behavioral Identification
Form of Vallacher and Wegner (1989) than did nonaffirmed participants.
In a further experiment, Schmeichel and Vohs (2009) also found that, among
participants in a resource-depleted condition, affirming the self at a high level of action
identification, by asking participants to consider why they pursued an important value,
led to significantly greater subsequent self-control (delay of gratification) than did
affirming the self at a relatively low level of action identification, induced by asking
participants to consider how they pursued an important value. Additionally, among
participants in the resource-depleted condition, level of mental construal was signifi-
cantly predictive of subsequent delay-of-gratification performance. Other recent work
(Wakslak & Trope, 2009) has replicated and extended these findings. These investiga-
tors found that, compared with a control condition, self-affirmation led participants to
choose more abstract, higher level action identifications over lower level identifica-
tions and also to perform more accurately on a fragmented picture task requiring
global holistic processing. In contrast self-affirmation did not enhance performance on
a task that drew on more detail-oriented analytical attention, requiring participants to
identify parts that were missing from a picture (also cf. Schmeichel et al., 2011).
On the one hand, it does not seem warranted to conclude, in line with the strong
claim offered by Koole and van Knippenberg, that “an educational style that promotes
self-affirmation may inoculate individuals against the development of mental fixations
and obsessive thought patterns” (2007, p. 676). On the other hand, we have seen that
there are multiple converging sources of evidence that self-affirmation can, under some
conditions, increase flexibility of thought, and also evidence that it may help to foster
a more abstract level of construal. The consequences of self-affirmation do not appear
to be invariably beneficial, but are modified by such contextual factors as the particular
identity and goals that are salient in the situation. Nonetheless, at least under some
conditions self-affirmation may help to reduce defensiveness and to enhance receptiv-
ity to information that runs counter to or otherwise challenges an individual’s beliefs
and behaviors. Both real-world interventions, such as those undertaken by G. L. Cohen

and colleagues (2006, 2009; Miyake et al., 2010), and laboratory-based interventions,
such as our examination of the effects of self-affirmation on insight problem-solving
performance and on fluid reasoning (Wen, Butler, & Koutstaal, in preparation) further
suggest that self-affirmation may also increase flexibility of thinking and reasoning on
some cognitive and perceptual tasks, the content of which (e.g., physics problems, or
visual-spatial analogies) does not directly relate to the self.
Openness to Experience, Creativity, and Adaptability

Thus far in this chapter we have considered two key conditions—positive emotion and
self-affirmation—that may often (albeit not invariably) act to promote mental agility.
In this section, and the next section, we turn our attention to two further contribu-
tors that may involve more enduring personality or temperamental dispositions:
“openness to experience,” to be considered in the current section, and interest,
curiosity, and variety seeking, to be taken up in the subsequent section.
Despite ongoing attempts at further differentiation and clarification, many
personality researchers agree that at least five factors are necessary to adequately
capture substantial individual differences in personality (e.g., Digman, 1990; L. R.
Goldberg, 1993; R. R. McCrae & John, 1992). These five factors, sometimes referred to
as “the Big Five” or the “five factor model”3 have emerged through different method-
ologies, including factor analyses of personality questionnaires, lexical-semantic anal-
yses of naturally occurring trait and personality descriptors in the language, and peer
ratings of personality (e.g., W. T. Norman, 1963). The terms used to describe the fac-
tors have varied, but those most often associated with the first four have included
extraversion (less frequently termed surgency), agreeableness, conscientiousness, and
emotional stability (vs. neuroticism). The fifth factor has been perhaps the most often
disputed, and there is ongoing debate as to how best to designate it, but frequently
proposed terms have included openness to experience, culture, intellect or intellect-
ence, as well as combined terms such as openness to experience/intellect.4
The specific behavioral and dispositional characteristics that are associated with
the fifth factor (rather than with its designation) have been less often disputed and
include such features as imagination, creativity, intellectual curiosity, inquisitiveness,
unconventional attitudes, culturedness, and divergent thinking (L. R. Goldberg, 1992;
R. R. McCrae, 1994). Openness to experience also has been described as being shown
in “the breadth, depth, and permeability of consciousness, and in the recurrent need
to enlarge and examine experience” (McCrae & Costa, cited in R. R. McCrae, 1996) and
in the softening of the rigidity of mental concepts (R. R. McCrae, 1994).
Historically, Costa and McCrae borrowed the basic idea of “openness” from R. W.
Coan (1972), who specifically held that individuals vary substantially in both the range
and types of experience to which they are open. Coan, therefore, developed an
Experience Inventory, aimed to measure “openness” in many different domains. Such
a range of domains is also incorporated in the standardized and frequently used
personality questionnaire measure known as the NEO-PI-R, on which the Openness
to Experience scale includes questions that capture modes of responding to six
different facets: Ideas, Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings, Actions, and Values. High scorers
on each of these facets, respectively, demonstrate open-mindedness and a willingness
to consider new ideas and to pursue intellectual interests (Ideas); both possess, and
value, a vivid imagination and fantasy life (Fantasy); highly esteem and can be moved
by art, music, poetry, and beauty (Aesthetics); are receptive to inner feelings, deeply
experience their emotions, and see them as important (Feelings); are willing to experi-
ence new activities, foods, and places, and prefer novelty to routine (Actions); and are
willing to reexamine social, political, and religious values (Values) (B. Griffin &
Hesketh, 2004).
Perhaps not surprisingly, given these characteristics, openness to experience
is the dimension of personality that has most consistently been linked to creativity
and associated aspects of creativity such as divergent thinking and increased sensitiv-
ity to perceptual, associative, and other aspects of experience. Also perhaps not
surprising, but less well known, openness to experience—perhaps due to its associa-
tion with attributes involving positive attitudes toward learning experiences, such as
curiosity—has also been found to be related to increased adaptability and proficiency
in broader contexts such as job performance. We will consider each of these aspects in
turn.
O P E N N E S S TO E X P E R I E N C E , C R E AT I V I T Y, D I V E R G E N T
THINKING, AND ORIENTING SENSITIVITY
As noted, openness to experience is the component of the five-factor model of
personality that has been most consistently linked to creativity (Carson, Peterson, &
Higgins, 2005; Dollinger, Urban, & James, 2004; L. A. King, Walker, & Broyles, 1996;
R. R. McCrae, 1987; G. F. Miller & Tal, 2007; Wolfradt & Pretz, 2001). Summarizing
evidence from a large number of studies concerning the personality characteristics
that tend to differentiate creative individuals, Feist (1998, Table 4) pointed to the two
cognitive traits “open and imaginative,” as distinguishing artists from nonartists and
“open and flexible” as distinguishing scientists from nonscientists. Commenting on
these characteristics, he explicitly and repeatedly remarked on the links between
openness and flexible thinking:
Although not exclusively cognitive, openness, flexibility, and imagination

can be categorized as cognitive dispositions because they each involve latent
response tendencies toward processing information […]. The disposition of
openness involves first and foremost a response style of approach or avoid-
ance to novel ideas, people, or situations. […] Openness is closely related to
having a flexible cognitive style when approaching problems, that is, being
able to “think outside the box” and not being tied to any one perspective
[…]. Openness and flexibility in turn are related to having the imagination
to think of how things could be, not just how they are. By being receptive to
different perspectives, ideas, people, and situations, open people are able to
have at their disposal a wide range of thoughts, feelings, and problem-solving
strategies, the combination of which may lead to novel and useful solutions
or ideas. (Feist, 1998, p. 300)5
In a longitudinal study of more than 250 male participants in the Baltimore

Longitudinal Studies of Aging, R. R. McCrae (1987) found that measures of divergent
thinking were consistently associated with both self-reported and peer-obtained
ratings of openness to experience. Several measures of divergent thinking were
administered, including five different measures: associational fluency, in which
participants are asked to provide synonyms to words; expressional fluency, requiring
individuals to write sentences in which each of the words begins with designated
letters; ideational fluency (the Alternative Uses Task, discussed in Chapter 3, in which
participants provide nonstandard uses of common objects); word fluency, requiring
the generation of words that contain a designated letter; and consequences, in which
individuals are asked to imagine the various consequences that might ensue from
unusual situations. The latter measure is scored separately for consequences that are
deemed to be “obvious” and consequences that are thought to be “remote” (less obvi-
ous). Using the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness-to-Experience Personality
Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1985), the total score across all of these divergent think-
ing tests significantly correlated with openness to experience (r = .39). Each of the
separate divergent thinking measures, with the exception of obvious consequences
(and which might arguably comprise a less sensitive measure of divergent thinking)
also significantly correlated with openness. Notably, this same pattern of correlations,
consistently pointing to a positive relation between openness to experience and
divergent thinking, was found when, instead of self-report measures, peer ratings of
personality, using the same descriptors as for the self-report personality questions,
were used. Again correlations for each individual measure of divergent thinking with
peer-rated openness to experience yielded a significant positive association as also did
the total divergent thinking score (r = .41).
Similarly, in a cross-sectional study of undergraduates, L. A. King, Walker, and
Broyles (1996) found significant correlations between openness and a composite mea-
sure of verbal creativity that includes tasks similar to the Alternative Uses and
Consequences tasks (r = .38) and also between openness and self-reported creative
accomplishments (r = .47). Evaluating a new scale of creative achievement (the Creative
Achievement Questionnaire), Carson, Peterson, and Higgins (2005) reported a sig-
nificant positive correlation (r = .33) between scores on this self-report measure of
creative achievement and openness. They also reported significant positive correla-
tions between Gough’s (1979) Creative Personality Scale and openness (r = .42), and
between openness and several measures of divergent thinking (e.g., total divergent
thinking score, originality, and flexibility).
Based on an extensive set of measures of creativity, including both creative prod-
ucts and accomplishments, Dollinger, Urban, and James (2004, p. 43) concluded,
“Openness to experience would appear to be the personality domain most important
in various kinds of creativity.” These researchers found that openness to experience
was predictive of scores on an inventory of creative behaviors that measured involve-
ment in various types of creative activities, even after statistically controlling for adjec-
tive checklist measures of “creativity,” including Gough’s (1979) Creativity Personality
Scale and Domino’s (1970) Creativity Scale. They therefore suggest that, although the
adjective checklists are “markers of creativity, the preferred measure of creative poten-
tial should be openness to experience” (Dollinger et al., 2004, p. 45, italics in original).
Although the causal bases of the association between openness to experience and
creativity are not known, R. R. McCrae (1987) speculated that three factors might
contribute. First, persons higher in openness to experience might simply be more
interested in and engaged by tasks that require open-ended, creative problem solving,
and so may tend to excel at such tasks. This possibility suggests that “open and
closed individuals may differ not in true divergent thinking ability but merely in test
performance” (R. R. McCrae, 1987, p. 1264). Second, individuals high in openness to
experience may, over time, have developed (or discovered) cognitive skills and strate-
gies that are associated with creative and divergent thinking, in particular flexibility
and fluidity of thought. Given that individuals higher in openness to experience
actively seek out more varied experiences and sensations, drawing on this broader
experiential “database” also then might enable more flexibility and fluency of thought.
This alternative suggests that the correlation between openness to experience and
divergent thinking should be less strong in younger than in older individuals, though,
to date, this possibility has not been supported (R. R. McCrae, 1987). Third, it may be
that individuals who have a preexisting ability to think in flexible ways actively seek
out novelty and varied experiences. That is, “individuals who easily generate new ideas,
whose cognitive processes are flexible, may develop an interest in varied experience,
just as individuals with particular competencies develop corresponding vocational
interests” (R. R. McCrae, 1987, p. 1264).
Other findings show that a broad cluster of behavioral-temperamental characteris-
tics relating to the types of stimuli that individuals are likely to notice is also corre-
lated with openness to experience. This cluster of characteristics is referred to as
“orienting sensitivity” (D. E. Evans & Rothbart, 2007, 2008; see also the discussion of
orienting sensitivity in Chapter 4, at the end of the subsection on “Perception,
Perceptual Simulation, and Hypothesis Generation”). Orienting sensitivity is con-
ceived of as a broad attentional construct that consists of three components: percep-
tual sensitivity, associative sensitivity, and affective perceptual sensitivity.
The first of these, perceptual sensitivity, relates to an individual’s awareness of
slight, low-intensity stimulation arising from either the external or internal environ-
ment. Questions such as “I often notice visual details in the environment” are designed
to tap this general aspect of attentional processing (item examples taken from the
orienting sensitivity scales of D. E. Evans & Rothbart, 2007). Associative sensitivity
refers to the frequency and remoteness of automatic cognitive activity, or spontane-
ous cognitive content that is not related to standard associations with the environ-
ment. It is measured by responses to statements such as “When I am resting with my
eyes closed, I sometimes see visual images.” Finally, affective perceptual sensitivity
relates to a person’s awareness of affect associated with low-intensity stimuli. An
example questionnaire item for this construct is, “I am often consciously aware of how
the weather seems to affect my mood.” Orienting sensitivity was most strongly related
to the intellect/openness factor (D. E. Evans & Rothbart, 2007, Table 4; Rothbart,
Ahadi, & Evans, 2000); however, consistent with relations between positive emotion
and associative processes (discussed earlier in this chapter) there was also a modestly
positive loading of orienting sensitivity on extraversion (e.g., a loading of .29 in Table 8
of D. E. Evans & Rothbart, 2007).
In addition, there is evidence from developmental psychology that suggests that

increased perceptual/aesthetic sensitivity may, in turn, be linked to effortful control
(Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001). Early-emerging aspects of temperament,
particularly sensitivity to perceptual differences (i.e., detection of subtle, low-intensity
changes from the external environment) are positively related to a factor of effortful
control, together with other aspects such as attentional focusing, inhibitory control,
soothability, smiling/laughter, and low-intensity pleasure (Rothbart et al., 2001).
Effortful control, in turn, is associated with many potential contributors to agile
thinking, such as the ability to suppress prepotent responses or impulsive approach
responses, and may be helpful indirectly by, for instance, helping to attenuate
negative affect (Posner & Rothbart, 2007).
Another important (perhaps related) aspect of openness to experience may be
sensitivity to peripheral cues (Ansburg & Hill, 2003) or to stimuli that appear to be
irrelevant. Research has shown that there is a positive correlation between openness to
experience and resistance to “latent inhibition” (Carson, Peterson, & Higgins, 2003;
Peterson & Carson, 2000)—involving a tendency to screen from awareness stimuli that
have previously been found to be irrelevant. More formally, latent inhibition is an
attentional phenomenon (sometimes more strongly characterized as a preconscious
gating mechanism) in which earlier preexposure to a stimulus that is apparently
irrelevant impedes subsequent learning of an association between that (now relevant)
stimulus and a given outcome. Stated differently, and more succinctly, “a stimulus that
is casually familiar enters into new associations more slowly than a novel stimulus”
(Lubow & Gewirtz, 1995, p. 87). Latent inhibition has been argued to serve an impor-
tant adaptive function, such that without it, “ordinary learning would be a cumbersome
process.” Specifically, it has been argued to promote “the stimulus selectivity required
for rapid, efficient learning” and to create “a bias in favor of potentially important
stimuli” by diminishing the degree to which stimuli “that have been registered as incon-
sequential in the past” (Lubow & Gewirtz, 1995, p. 87) are attended to or noticed.
In a sample of high-achieving individuals, Peterson and Carson (2000) found a sub-
stantial negative correlation between latent inhibition and openness to experience
(r = –.44), reflecting decreased latent inhibition for individuals with higher openness
to experience. That is, the learning performance of individuals with higher openness
to experience was less adversely affected by the previous “irrelevance” (“casual famil-
iarity”) of a stimulus, suggesting continued or less attenuated processing of the stimu-
lus, even though, until the time of test, it had been nonpredictive. Similarly, in a
meta-analysis of two studies, Carson et al. (2003) found that high lifetime creative
achievers had significantly lower latent inhibition scores—showing greater resistance
to latent inhibition—than did individuals who showed low lifetime creativity.
J. B. Peterson, Smith, and Carson (2002) replicated these findings and further
found that, compared with individuals who showed high levels of latent inhibition,
persons who showed low levels of latent inhibition achieved higher scores on open-
ness to experience, extraversion, and Gough’s (1979) Creative Personality Scale. These
researchers found that a measure that involved a combination of openness to experi-
ence and extraversion best differentiated between the groups showing reduced versus
intact latent inhibition. As considered next, this combined measure has been argued
to reflect a higher order personality factor of “plasticity.” From another perspective,

these findings raise the possibility that “highly creative people do not pre-categorize
stimuli as irrelevant in the same manner as less creative individuals” (Carson et al.,
2003, p. 500).6
Overall, openness to experience, although conceived as an aspect of personality,
appears to especially closely intersect with aspects of information processing, orient-
ing sensitivity, and exploration of the environment. It thus seems to be tightly linked
with flexibly adaptive thinking and behavior. Consistent with this broad sense, meta-
analyses of the “Big Five” personality factors have suggested that they may be grouped
into two higher order factors (Digman, 1997). At this higher level of abstraction,
openness to experience may be grouped (together with extraversion) as a higher order
factor named “plasticity” by DeYoung, Peterson, and Higgins (2002), whereas the
remaining three factors (emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness)
may comprise a higher order factor of “stability.” As noted by the latter investigators:
The shared variance of Extraversion and Openness […] appears to reflect the
tendency to explore or to engage voluntarily with novelty and may, in conse-
quence, be associated with plasticity or flexibility in behavior and cognition.
Extraversion classically brings to mind sociability […], but it has been more
broadly linked with positive affectivity, incentive reward sensitivity, approach
behavior and novelty/excitement seeking […]. The alternate label Surgency
[proposed by Goldberg, 1992, 1993] is intended to capture the active, explor-
atory sense of this factor more strongly. (DeYoung et al., 2002, pp. 535–536)
DeYoung and colleagues (2005) therefore characterize openness to experience as

“motivated cognitive flexibility” or “cognitive exploration.” Chapters 10 and 11 exten-
sively demonstrate the importance of varied forms of social-cultural and sensory-
cognitive stimulation in fostering and sustaining mental agility. Personality or
temperamental characteristics of individuals relating to openness to experience may
also lead them to alter their environments—leading to a form of self-generated environ-
mental enrichment. There is preliminary evidence that suggests that a tendency to seek
stimulation and to actively explore new environments in early childhood (3 years of
age) predicts later academic achievement and IQ. Children who showed greater stimu-
lation seeking at age 3 showed higher cognitive, scholastic, and neuropsychological test
performance at age 11 years (effect size d = 0.52 for the correlational analysis; Raine,
Reynolds, Venables, & Mednick, 2002). Early increased stimulation seeking may
also predict later openness-to-experience/intellect (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005);
“it is hypothesized that young stimulation seekers create for themselves an enriched
environment that stimulates cognitive development” (Raine et al., 2002, p. 663).
Finally, some of the characteristics that hold true of individuals high in trait
resilience and hardiness, such as the resilient and hardy individual’s inclination to
interpret the need for change and the occurrence of stressful events as positive
challenges—inviting a response of attempted positive mastery—may also be relevant
here. Viewing change and adverse events as potential sources for positive growth may
not only help to minimize the immediate and longer term detrimental effects of stress
but could also lead to progressively more enriching environments as individuals
master knowledge and skills that are needed to overcome obstacles or problems.
Openness to experience may also be accompanied by a greater capacity for tolerance of
ambiguity (e.g., Sun, DeYoung, & Koutstaal, 2010) or for uncertainty that, as devel-
oped in the next section, and in Chapter 7, set conditions that allow for the innovative
generation of new interpretations and approaches.7 Likewise, openness to experience
may help to counteract tendencies toward confirming preestablished or prejudicial
views by encouraging greater receptivity to new or conflicting information (e.g.,
F. J. Flynn, 2005), and it may also encourage flexibility in one’s perspectives regarding
oneself and one’s possible roles in life (e.g., Whitbourne, 1986).
O P E N N E S S TO E X P E R I E N C E A N D A D A P T I V E L E A R N I N G
Considering the likely relations between the Big Five personality traits and measures
of occupational performance, Barrick and Mount (1991) predicted that whereas
conscientiousness would be a predictor of overall occupational performance, open-
ness to experience, due to its association with attributes involving positive attitudes
toward learning experiences, such as curiosity, broad mindedness, and intelligence,
would be a valid predictor of a particular aspect of occupational performance involving
training proficiency. In a large-scale meta-analysis of personnel studies across several
different occupational groups (professionals, police, managers, salespersons, skilled/
semi-skilled workers), these researchers found, as predicted, that conscientiousness
was a valid predictor of each of three aspects of occupational performance that were
considered: job proficiency, training proficiency, and personnel indices such as salary
and tenure. In contrast, openness to experience specifically predicted training profi-
ciency (e.g., training performance ratings, and productivity data; also see Salgado,
1997 for meta-analytic results showing a similar relation between training proficiency
and openness).
The findings concerning conscientiousness are consistent with similar findings
with regard to educational achievement (e.g., Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2003;
Wolfe & Johnson, 1995). The more specific correlation between openness to experi-
ence and training proficiency may relate either to attitudes toward learning or to the
ability to benefit from training, in that, unlike the other personality dimensions,
openness to experience also is moderately but consistently positively correlated with
measures of intelligence (e.g., Ashton, Lee, Vernon, & Jang, 2000; see note 5 at the
end of this volume).
The factors of conscientiousness and openness to experience have also been shown
to differentially contribute to school or academic performance (Blickle, 1996). Factor
analysis of a questionnaire that assessed the learning strategies of junior college
students yielded two factors, one that seemed to correspond to “learning discipline”
(with scales relating to aspects such as effort, meta-cognition, management of time
and learning environments, attention, and organization) and a second factor that
Blickle (1996) termed “elaboration,” which included scales relating to critical evalua-
tion, noting relationships, and searching literature. Whereas the “learning discipline”
factor was strongly correlated with conscientiousness (r = .57), the “elaboration” factor
was strongly correlated with openness to experience (r = .49). Each of the six facets of
the openness to experience factor (fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, and
values) was significantly positively correlated with the “elaboration” factor, but that
for Ideas (r = .59) was especially strong. A similar two-factor structure, again showing
that “elaboration” correlated with openness to experience, was obtained in a further
study with senior college students. In conceptually related work, Busato and colleagues
(1999) found that, compared with the other personality dimensions, openness to
experience was particularly strongly correlated with a meaning-directed learning style
(involving efforts to understand material precisely and critically, and to interrelate it
with other already-learned information), perhaps reflecting such characteristics as the
need for variety and cognition, and motivation.
A more direct experimental test of the relation between openness to experience
and adaptive learning is that of LePine and colleagues (2000). Although openness to
experience has not been found to be a strong predictor of overall performance in most
task contexts, LePine et al. (2000) specifically sought to evaluate whether it might
better predict performance in changing contexts. This research thus focused not only
on the learning of a task that was novel and complex, but particularly on the “unlearn-
ing” of how to perform a task in view of changed contingencies or rules, by contrasting
predictors of decision-making accuracy before a change (stable task context) versus
after an unforeseen change. As these researchers noted:
Adaptability not only requires learning (actually unlearning and relearning)

but also the development of different, more appropriate, and possibly coun-
terintuitive ways of doing things. This requirement places a premium on cre-
ativity and the ability to focus attention on areas that others may not
consider. Because open individuals tend to be creative, receptive to change,
enjoy intellectual types of problems (e.g., brain teasers), and are more willing
to try new things […] they should be more effective in decision-making after
a familiar path to success has changed. That is, Openness should be more
highly related to adaptability than to decision-making performance before
an unexpected change in the task. (LePine et al., 2000, p. 570)
Undergraduates in an upper-level management course were asked to take part in a

computerized multiple-cue probability-learning task, in which participants needed to
make decisions about the threat levels posed by different unidentified aircraft and
how to respond to those threats. Their decisions were to be based on one of three
different combinational rules relating to various features of the aircraft’s behavior,
such as its altitude, speed, range, and angle. Although participants were informed of
all three different combinational rules, they were told that how they should weight the
rules was something they needed to learn on the basis of experience and feedback.
After each trial they received feedback concerning how far their chosen action diverged
from the correct action. What was unknown by the participants was that the rule that
was always weighted as “correct” changed partway through the simulation session—
after 25 trials and then again after a further 25 trials.
As predicted, although there was no relation between openness and decision-
making accuracy before the context change, openness significantly predicted decision
accuracy after the rule changes. There were significant context by openness interac-
tions, for both the first and second context changes. In addition, openness accounted
for differences in decision-making accuracy over and above the effects accounted for
by a measure of general intelligence and also beyond that accounted for by the mea-
sure of conscientiousness. Figure 6.3 shows the effects of high versus low openness to
experience on decision-making accuracy (lower values indicate greater accuracy)
during the initial phase of the experiment (prechange performance) and after the first
and second surreptitious changes in the rules.
These findings support the general claim made by these authors that “change places
demands on people that are quite distinct from demands existing during initial task
activity”—possibly because, when the environmental contingencies remain constant,
“a more automatic mode of information processing” may be used and “information
concerning correct behavior is less ambiguous” (LePine et al., 2000, p. 586).
Subsequent studies have likewise provided converging support for the specific rela-
tion between openness to experience and adaptation to occupational change or transi-
tions. In a field setting examining managerial success, Judge, Thoresen, Pucik, and
Welbourne (1999) found that managers’ ability to adaptively respond to various types
of organizational change, such as those resulting from business mergers, acquisitions,
or downsizing, was positively related to their level of openness to experience. Both
self-reports of an individual’s ability to cope with change, and independent ratings of
10
9
(lower scores reflect greater accuracy)
Decision-making performance
8
Prechange
7 performance
6 Performance after
first change
5
Performance after
4 second change
0
Low High
Openness to experience
Figure 6.3. Effects of Openness to Experience on Adaptive Decision-

Making Performance (Lower Scores Reflect Greater Accuracy). Whereas
decision-making performance did not differ as a function of openness to experience
before the changes in the task rules, those high in openness to experience showed
greater decision accuracy after both the first and second context changes. Reprinted
from LePine, J. A., Colquitt, J. A., & Erez, A. (2000, p. 581), Adaptability to changing
task contexts: Effects of cognitive ability, conscientiousness, and openness to
experience, Personnel Psychology, 53, 563–593, with permission from John Wiley
and Sons. Copyright 2000, John Wiley and Sons.
coping with change, were positively correlated with a composite “risk tolerance”
measure comprised of measures of openness to experience, tolerance for ambiguity,
and low-risk aversion. In another study, Thoresen, Bradley, Bliese, and Thoresen
(2004) found that openness to experience predicted overall performance and perfor-
mance increases for employees engaged in a transitional phase of an organization
(a large pharmaceutical company in which employees were launching a new medica-
tion, therefore requiring them to learn new information and to seek out a new client
base) but not for those in a “maintenance” phase (that did not involve the launching
of a new product). These outcomes are consistent with the notion that transitional
phases may particularly bring to the foreground individual differences associated with
openness to experience, such as creativity, intellectual flexibility, problem solving, and
adaptability (Thoresen et al., 2004)8
Interest, Curiosity, and Variety Seeking

What is interest—and, in particular, is it an emotion? Theorists disagree: Some argue
that it is not an emotion, but, increasingly, it has been acknowledged as one of a family
of “epistemology-based emotions” (Silvia, 2005, p. 89; Silvia, 2008, 2010; cf. Rozin &
Cohen, 2003; Ellsworth, 2003). Like other emotions, interest can be characterized as
consisting of an organized set of different components relating to behavioral indices
(e.g., how much time is spent viewing a stimulus), facial or postural expressions (e.g.,
when individuals are interested, they often still and tilt their head), physiological
activity, and motivational and goal-related processes and outcomes, especially with
regard to learning, exploration, and information seeking. In her characterization of
the “broaden and build” theory of positive emotion (discussed in the first section of
this chapter), Fredrickson (2001, p. 220) contrasted the beneficial effects of joy, which
fosters “the urge to play, push the limits, and be creative” with the beneficial effects of
interest. The latter is “a phenomenologically distinct positive emotion” that “broadens
by creating the urge to explore, take in new information and experiences, and to
expand the self in the process.” As we have seen, in this account, these and also other
positive emotions, such as contentment, pride, and love, share a commonality in that
they all foster thought-action tendencies that “broaden habitual modes of thinking or
acting” (Fredrickson, 2001, p. 220).
Interest is often closely coupled with curiosity. Curiosity has been defined as “an
appetitive state involving the recognition, pursuit, and intense desire to investigate
novel information and experiences that demand one’s attention” (Kashdan & Steger,
2007, p. 159). It has been argued that curiosity may involve components of explora-
tion, involving appetitive strivings for novelty and challenge, and of absorption,
characterized by full-hearted intense engagement in specific activities (Kashdan,
Rose, & Fincham, 2004; also see the section on “Absorption, Flow, and ‘Hypoegoic’
Self-Regulation” in Chapter 7). Other characterizations of curiosity include differenti-
ating between state versus trait curiosity, and a distinction based on the main motiva-
tional “pull” for curiosity.
Drawing on earlier and often contrasting theoretical proposals regarding the nature
of curiosity, Litman and Jimerson (2004; Litman, 2005) proposed that curiosity could
be aroused in individuals under two quite different sets of circumstances. On the

one hand, sometimes curiosity is stimulated when individuals feel deprived of
information and wish to reduce or eliminate their ignorance. Under these circum-
stances, curiosity may be experienced as a “feeling of deprivation” and may be associ-
ated with some degree of negative affect (e.g., frustration, dissatisfaction) relating to
uncertainty. This sort of curiosity is proposed to be associated with the seeking of
information that is substantive, meaningful, and likely to increase the individual’s
competence, such as obtaining the answer to a complex question or finding the
solution to a difficult problem. Questionnaire items that tap this sort of curiosity
include items such as “I feel frustrated if I can’t figure out the solution to a problem, so
I work even harder to solve it” and “It bothers me if I come across a word that I don’t
know, so I will look up its meaning in a dictionary.” Loewenstein (1994) characterized
such curiosity as involving a powerful motive to obtain knowledge and as an impor-
tant determinant in increasing an individual’s competence.
On the other hand, sometimes curiosity may be experienced even when the indi-
vidual does not feel especially deprived of information relating to a given concern or
issue, but nonetheless would enjoy learning something new. Here curiosity may be
experienced as a “feeling of interest” and may be associated with positive feelings of
interest and joy relating to the anticipation of new learning. The information that
individuals seek in response to this sort of curiosity is proposed to be of a “more
casual, unessential, entertaining, or aesthetically pleasing nature, such as [. . .] an
amusing anecdote, or an entertaining story.” Whereas curiosity arising from a feeling
of deprivation is proposed to reflect a “need to know” that can lead to intense and
motivated curiosity, that arising from a feeling of interest may be less so. Evidence
suggests that the former is associated with higher levels of exploratory behavior than
the latter (Litman, Hutchins, & Russon, 2005).
Curiosity in general, but particularly curiosity as a feeling of deprivation, thus might
be a significant bridge between the environmental existence of opportunities for learn-
ing and for the development of new skills and understanding, and our actual response
to such opportunities—that is, whether and how we respond to novel learning oppor-
tunities. In line with this possibility, recent research (Kang et al., 2009) has shown that
participants who reported high levels of curiosity about specific questions that they
were posed (e.g., “What instrument was invented to sound like a human singing?”)
showed significantly higher levels of correct recollection for the presented answers to
those questions, on a surprise memory test given several days later, than was shown for
questions the participants were only moderately or not very curious about. Additionally,
measures of pupil diameter indicated that high curiosity was accompanied by signifi-
cantly greater pupil dilation during the visual display of the answer to questions than
was true for items associated with moderate or low curiosity (pupil dilation is linked to
attention, arousal, interest, and also cognitive effort, e.g., Beatty, 1982). Concurrent
neuroimaging data showed that greater curiosity was associated with activity in the
lateral prefrontal cortex and in the caudate—a region that is known to be involved in
reward anticipation, or reward learning (e.g., M. R. Delgado, Locke, Stenger, & Fiez,
2003). Participants were also more willing to spend resources (scarce tokens, or their
own time through a requirement to wait between 5 and 25 seconds until the answer was
shown) to find out the answers to questions about which they were highly curious.
Thus, curiosity may exert multiple conjoined effects that help to promote learning,
such as increasing attention, and actions undertaken in the pursuit of, or linked with,
the satisfaction of curiosity may be highly rewarding (e.g., Biederman & Vessel, 2006).
Similarly, the conceptually related construct of “need for cognition,” involving a stable
individual difference tendency to engage in, and enjoy, effortful cognitive endeavors
(Cacioppo & Petty, 1982; Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996), has been
found to be associated not only with openness to experience but also with “a general
tendency to actively invest cognitive resources independent of context” (Fleischhauer
et al., 2010, p. 90). Notably, one’s predispositional tendencies toward creative and
meaningful engagement with the world—as shown by openness to experience, need
for cognition, and also mindfulness (discussed in Chapter 3)—may itself be a modest
but independent predictor of levels of fluid reasoning ability across adults from
a variety of walks of life (Fleischhauer et al., 2010) and likewise in older adulthood
(Parisi et al., 2009). It is not only whether, or how frequently, we perform a variety
of cognitive and leisure activities that is important. Our level of thoughtful and
committed integrative engagement with those activities is likewise significant. In the
beginning of the next chapter we will continue to examine this question of how we
approach learning, but from the perspective of the beliefs that we have about the
nature of learning, and of how we respond to setbacks or failures during our attempts
to master new skills or to acquire new knowledge.
Looking Back
In this chapter, we have explored both possible short-term and longer term effects of
the experience of positive affect. We have treated such questions as the functional role
of positive emotions with respect to our goals, to our level of engagement in different
projects, and to goal prioritization, and how positive affect might influence cognitive
flexibility. Also identified were the potential long-term incremental effects of
frequently experiencing positive affect if such experiences are accompanied by an
increased tendency to explore and to embark upon varied behavioral, cognitive, and
social “essays” into different domains, succinctly characterized as the “broaden and
build” function of positive emotions. We have also turned our attention toward a
number of intersections between flexibility of mind and personality, such as the
personality trait of “openness to experience/intellect,” the pairing of this trait with
that of extraversion in a higher order personality construct involving “plasticity”
(compared with “stability”), and the effects of interventions that appear to “affirm the
self,” particularly with regard to broader, more encompassing, and more abstract
values and ideals.
Several of the emotion and personality factors that we have focused on, such as the
“granularity” with which individuals classify their emotions, and the tendency to
adopt higher level construals of one’s actions following self-affirmation interventions,
clearly involve constraints upon, or modifications of, levels of representational
specificity. This also applies to the positive correlation between openness to experi-
ence and perceptual orienting sensitivity, involving awareness of subtle differences in
one’s concrete sensory-perceptual and immediate experience. Other factors, such as
the tendency of individuals who are both higher in openness to experience and higher
in creativity to show attenuated “latent inhibition”—reflecting a reduced tendency to
screen from conscious awareness stimuli that have earlier proved to be inconsequen-
tial or uninformative—involve differences in levels of control (here, reduced auto-
matic or preattentive exclusion of stimuli from awareness). We also have briefly
considered the contributions of the “epistemic” emotions of interest and curiosity in
fostering agility of mind, with cross-connections not only to the “broaden-and-build”
account of positive emotions but also to our earlier explorations of the importance of
“learning to vary” (as well as to repeat) in setting the preconditions for the adaptive
generativity of behavior and thought.
7
Thoughts about Thoughts
The Control versus Noncontrol of Thinking
No matter what theories one may have, I doubt very much that
they are in one’s mind at the moment of writing a poem….
—Elizabeth Bishop (1950/2008, p. 687)
I have a rhyming dictionary which I find doesn’t help except

it primes the mind in some kind of way. So sometimes I’ll
just read the rhyming dictionary as if it were fiction and just
allow the rhymes to associate with one another and produce
possibilities in the mind. I mean these are pretty desperate
circumstances. But they often are, when you’re writing.
—Leonard Cohen (2008, np)
As suggested by the title, this chapter focuses on levels of cognitive control versus
noncontrol (e.g., spontaneity, automaticity) with respect to a person’s “thoughts about
thoughts,” involving higher level beliefs about cognition and oneself. We also focus on
the intersections of metacognition with more affectively and motivationally related
states such as absorption and “flow,” and intolerance of ambiguity or uncertainty.
These are considered particularly with respect to how these states may affect an
individual’s predominant level of representational specificity or level of control and, in
turn, how these can bolster, or impede, agile thinking. Each of the sections in this
chapter testifies, in different ways, to the complex “whole person” nature of mental
agility and further illustrates how thinking is neither entirely generated by nor conclu-
sively and concisely guided by that “small voice in the head” that we may associate
with explicit, deliberate, directed thinking. There is a much wider and markedly more
diverse and less docile array of contributors to our thinking. Not all of them are within
our immediate control, and not all of them are at a similar or parallel level of abstrac-
tion or level of reach to our explicit consciousness and awareness.
The eight sections in this chapter, although not exhaustive, are representative
of that range: (a) epistemological beliefs, learning to learn, and flexible thinking;
(b) jumping to conclusions and intolerance of uncertainty versus intolerance of
ambiguity; (c) optimism versus pessimism; overconfidence versus underconfidence;
(d) trying not: intentional forgetting, deliberate thought suppression, and flexible
thinking; (e) absorption, flow, and “hypoegoic” self-regulation: the controlled losing of
282
Thoug h t s abou t T h ou g h t s 283
control and the melding of thought-emotion-action; (f) working well with the uncon-
scious: incubation and complex multicomponential decision making; (g) movements
between higher and lower level goals: opportunistic design, and (h) encountering
diversity in the thoughts and views of others. As will become clear, the topics in each
of these several sections cannot be readily circumscribed to any one domain—
concepts, perception, emotion, or motivation and action—but involve complex inter-
penetrations of those domains. We begin with our beliefs about the nature of learning
and knowledge, and the related notions of how we construe “intelligence,” and how
those beliefs may, for good or for ill, recursively influence the very “subjects” or
“processes” to which they themselves refer.
Epistemological Beliefs, Learning to Learn,

and Flexible Thinking
“Beliefs about beliefs” concern what an individual believes about the certainty of
knowledge, and beliefs about how one acquires knowledge, how knowledge claims are
justified, and how information is organized. Such beliefs about beliefs might thus be
referred to as “personal epistemology” (e.g., Hofer, 2001).
Our personal epistemology may play a substantial role in modulating how
we respond to learning situations. For example, in research on learning in mathemat-
ics and science, one of the factors contributing to the poor performance of some
students concerns their beliefs about knowledge itself, such as the belief that knowl-
edge is best viewed as a list of “unrelated facts,” that learning occurs quickly and easily,
and that the learner has no control over learning. In a study of high school students,
Schommer (1993) found that, once having controlled for general intelligence, the
strongest predictor of the grade point average of students was belief in “all-or-none
learning.”
In another study, college students were asked to read complex passages about
either the social sciences or the physical sciences that reported tentative findings
(Schommer, 1990). The students were asked to evaluate their own comprehension, to
complete a comprehension test, and to write a concluding paragraph to the passages,
which had been removed from the original passage. The more strongly that the
students believed in rapid “all-or-none” learning—as shown by their responses to a
questionnaire 1 month previously—the less successful they were in comprehending
and in writing a conclusion to the passages. These students were also more overconfi-
dent in their comprehension. Students who had strong beliefs in certain knowledge
(also shown on the questionnaire) tended to distort the information in the passage
and misinterpreted tentative knowledge as absolute. Other findings indicated that
persons in their first year of college were more likely, and those who had taken a larger
number of college courses were less likely, to view knowledge as comprised of isolated
facts, or as certain. In addition, they were less likely to endorse views of learning as a
quick, all-or-none process. Similar changes across grade levels have been observed in
secondary school students (Cano, 2005), with students’ epistemological beliefs about
knowledge and learning becoming less naïve and more complex as they progress from
middle school to junior high school to senior high school.
A related epistemological belief concerns what a person holds to be true concerning

the nature of intelligence. Is intelligence fixed: an entity, or an uncontrollable trait,
or is it a malleable quality that can be—at least partially—modified and increased?
In seminal research examining children’s views on the nature of intelligence, Dweck
and colleagues (e.g., Dweck & Leggett, 1988) found that children who held to the
“intelligence is fixed” perspective were more likely to give up and to show helpless
behavior when confronted with a difficult task than were children who thought that
“intelligence can be changed.” In the face of a challenging task, children who viewed
intelligence as malleable were both more persistent and more flexible, trying a wider
range of strategies or approaches to the task. More recently, research has shown that
encouraging individuals to view intelligence as malleable instead of as an ability that
cannot be modified helped African American college students overcome the conse-
quences of negative intellectual stereotyping. They received better grades and were
more engaged in school when constructs and evidence regarding the malleability of
intelligence were made salient (Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002). Similarly, inter-
ventions that foster an incremental rather than fixed view of the nature of intelligence
were found to positively affect the motivation and grade performance of adolescents
with respect to mathematics (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007).
The predominant goals that one brings to a novel or challenging learning situation
also may influence one’s responses to such opportunities (e.g., Covington, 2000).
Do we mainly see the situation as an opportunity to expand what we know and to
improve our skills and understanding—even if we fail or struggle with the problem
during the process? (Recall Samuel Beckett’s “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail
better.”—beautifully captured in two lithographs by Tom Phillips.1) Or do we primarily
construe the situation as about striving to achieve a given outcome, such as a high
score, or a score that is higher than that obtained by most others performing the task?
Even momentary and indirect encouragement of a learning orientation through
highlighting an “incremental” rather than “entity” construal of intelligence may
help to alleviate the harmful effects of failure experiences in individuals who highly
value success in a given domain, including attenuating negative affect states, such as
anxiety and depression, and reducing costs to self-esteem (Niiya, Crocker, & Bartmess,
2004).
Both the evidence for the potentially pervasive and powerful effects of epistemo-
logical beliefs—and the evidence that such beliefs are themselves not fixed, but
subject to change through indirect experience and direct instruction—suggests that
more explicit consideration should be given to what individuals of all ages “take
to be the case” about the nature of knowledge and learning. As argued by Schommer
(1990), “education may be the key to the prevention and intervention of self-defeating
epistemological beliefs:”
Teachers can inform children in grade school that knowledge is integrated,

that prior knowledge should be accessed, and that many times there is more
than one right answer. […] Both high school and college students may benefit
from activities that raise their consciousness about the underpinnings of
knowledge and learning and how their own epistemological views influence
their learning. (Schommer, 1990, pp. 503–504)
A further, perhaps less obvious, but equally important, consideration concerns the
implications of an overt and explicit focus on “intelligence” as a reason for offering
praise to students or children by teachers, parents, and others. Although it may seem
beneficial to praise a child’s intelligence or ability when he or she shows high levels of
performance on a challenging task (“You must be smart at these problems!”), in a
series of studies C. M. Mueller and Dweck (1998) showed that such praise encouraged
children to focus on performance goals and implicitly promoted an interpretation of
intelligence as a fixed, internal entity. In contrast, praising a child’s efforts, or hard
work (“You must have worked hard at these problems!”), led children to focus on the
more malleable motivational aspects of intelligence. Of particular significance, praise
concerning the child’s effort rather than ability increased the likelihood that the child
later would choose challenging problems that provided opportunities to increase their
learning and skills, rather than “safe” problems that they would answer correctly.
Praise for effort rather than ability also changed what type of information children
most often requested. If given a choice between learning how others had scored on the
task, or learning about strategies that could help them to improve their own perfor-
mance, children praised for their ability more often chose to learn about how other
children had scored on the task. In contrast, children praised for their efforts were
more likely to choose to be given strategy information that could help expand their
mastery of the task. The attributions that the children made after a failure on the task
also diverged. In the face of failure, children earlier praised for their intelligence
showed lower levels of persistence and effort, more negative affect and decreases in
task enjoyment, and decreased performance compared to those earlier praised for
their efforts. These effects were found to be independent of children’s actual perfor-
mance levels. Children who received positive feedback without an explicit attribution
to either their ability or their effort (e.g., “That’s a really high score!” or “Good job!”)
showed patterns of performance and responses that were intermediate between the
ability- versus effort-attribution groups.
Stated briefly, unlike praise for appropriate task engagement, praise for intelligence
tends to encourage a focus on performance rather than learning, and on trait informa-
tion, rather than contextually variable effort, task attentiveness or involvement, and
so on. Thus, in offering praise, just as in giving criticism, it may be helpful to “separate
the deed from the doer” (C. M. Mueller & Dweck, 1998, p. 50). Nonetheless, caution is
needed in advocating overly simplistic approaches, or an absolute abstention from
trait ascriptions, regardless of circumstances. Additionally, it is important to recog-
nize that, depending on the precise phrasing that one uses, even attributions to effort
may become “trait-like” (e.g., “You’re a hard worker!”), and fostering a very strong
learning orientation might itself become detrimental if individuals too exclusively and
too exhaustively focus on mastery as an end in itself.
Jumping to Conclusions and Intolerance of

Uncertainty versus Intolerance of Ambiguity
In everyday situations that are uncertain or ambiguous, there are often no hard and
fast rules of “approach” that one can adopt to reduce the uncertainty or disambiguate
the situation. How does one go about gathering additional information, or deciding
what information to consider and how much, or in what order, or how to weight
varying sorts of evidence, or how to integrate sometimes apparently conflicting or
outright contradictory evidence or arguments? In such situations, personality and
emotional and motivational influences on data gathering and inference making, such
as state and trait anxiety, or one’s tolerance of uncertainty and need for cognitive
closure, emerge as important.
Individuals who have a general predisposition or tendency to respond to different
situations with high levels of anxiety, for example, show several cognitive biases
regarding information that could be perceived as signaling potential dangers or
problems (e.g., physical symptoms such as a sore throat, or aches and pains). These
biases can lead to a misinterpretation (exaggeration) of the degree of threat that is
present both externally and also internally. Persons who are high compared with low
in “trait” anxiety demonstrate increased attention to threat-relevant information
(e.g., Mathews & MacLeod, 1994), tend to interpret ambiguous stimuli as more threat-
ening (e.g., Byrne & Eysenck, 1993), and may be “on the watch” for danger, jumping to
the most threatening conclusion (Mathews & Mackintosh, 1998). They may also
be likely to overestimate the likelihood that negative events will happen to them
(e.g., G. Butler & Mathews, 1987).
A simple task designed to evaluate how personality and other factors might affect
data-gathering styles under uncertainty is the “beads task.” In this task, participants
are told that there are two jars, and that each jar has a different proportion of beads of
two colors. For example, participants may be told that one jar has 85% blue and 15%
yellow beads, and the other jar has 85% yellow and 15% blue beads. The participant
will then successively be shown beads one at a time that the experimenter draws from
one of the jars hidden from the view of the participant, and the participant’s task is to
judge from which of the two jars the experimenter is drawing. A key measure of inter-
est is the number of draws that are needed before the participant is willing to reach a
judgment concerning the jars. The task also allows examination of how participants’
judgments are influenced by the designated proportions of beads in the two jars
(e.g., when the proportions are 85:15 vs. 60:40) and by the specific order in which
beads of particular colors are drawn.
Individuals who were high compared with low in trait anxiety (as determined by a
median split of the sample) were found to request fewer beads before reaching a deci-
sion (Bensi & Giusberti, 2007) for each of three different bead ratios (85:15, 70:30,
and 60:40).2 High trait anxiety individuals also consistently tended to reach a conclu-
sion more quickly in response to other probabilistic scenarios presented via computer
(e.g., trying to decide which of two game-show contestants was the stronger player,
based on question-by-question information about whether each of the contestants
answered correctly to a series of questions).
High trait anxiety compared with low trait anxiety participants also were found to
be significantly more often incorrect in their inductions in a card selection task that
required individuals to form and test several successive hypotheses regarding which of
several cards had been covertly selected by the experimenter (Bensi & Giusberti,
2007). The task was designed so that it was not possible to conclusively rule out
each of the competing possibilities before the fifth trial of feedback was provided.
High anxious individuals, on average, reached a decision by about the fourth trial and
were correct on only about one-third of the trials, compared with about 70% correct
responses by the low trait anxious group, who tended to wait about one card longer
before making their judgments.
Notably, however, group differences as a function of trait anxiety were not always
observed, but depended on the particular structuring of the process of data gathering
and testing. When all of the information relevant to reaching a decision was provided
together at the outset, so that there was no intervening period of uncertainty and no
further information had to be requested, then the groups who were high versus low in
trait anxiety performed similarly. These findings support the possibility that high trait
anxious individuals were likely to “jump to conclusions” under conditions in which
they were facing uncertainty and where reaching a decision more quickly would itself
terminate the uncertainty more quickly. As suggested by Bensi and Giusberti (2007),
individuals prone to anxiety may come to perceive the state of being uncertain as itself
stressful and upsetting, regardless of the objective likelihood of a positive or negative
outcome. Given that persons prone to anxiety often experience anxiety in situations
of uncertainty, they may come to have an implicit goal of uncertainty reduction, thereby
hoping to lower anxiety and discomfort, even in situations of low actual threat or
danger. Indeed, Dugas, Buhr, and Ladouceur (2004) argue that individuals who are
high in intolerance of uncertainty find uncertain situations inherently distressing—
so much so, in fact, that they may even prefer a certain but negative outcome over an
uncertain outcome.
Intolerance of uncertainty, defined as “a dispositional characteristic that arises
from a set of negative beliefs about uncertainty and its connotations and conse-
quences” (Koerner & Dugas, 2008, p. 631), also has been shown to play an important
causal and maintenance role in excessive worry, and in generalized anxiety, both in
clinical and nonclinical samples (e.g., Dugas et al., 1997; Koerner & Dugas, 2008;
Ladouceur, Gosselin, & Dugas, 2000). Intolerance of uncertainty has been measured
by a questionnaire (Freeston et al., 1994), including items relating to several different
dimensions. Among the dimensions are an individual’s behavioral attempts to control
the future and to avoid uncertainty (e.g., “I should be able to organize everything in
advance”); inhibition of action (e.g., “The smallest doubt can stop me from acting”);
emotional reactions such as frustration and stress (e.g., “The ambiguities in life stress
me”); and cognitive interpretations that imply that being uncertain reflects badly on
oneself (e.g., “Being uncertain means that a person is disorganized”). Intolerance of
uncertainty was found by Freeston et al. (1994) to predict which individuals would be
likely to meet criteria for generalized anxiety disorder, a condition in which patho-
logical worry is a hallmark symptom; importantly, the predictive value of intolerance
of uncertainty was not accounted for by shared variance with negative affect. Similarly,
Dugas et al. (2001) showed that intolerance of uncertainty in a large nonclinical
undergraduate sample explained a high proportion of the variance in the tendency to
worry, over and above that explained by related variables such as anxiety sensitivity.
Intolerance of uncertainty thus might interfere with agile thinking, both directly
and indirectly. To the degree that such intolerance leads to worry—for example, if
individuals believe that worrying increases their control over uncertain events or their
consequences—detrimental effects on problem solving would emerge if individuals
switched from relying on more concrete sensory images to a highly verbal-linguistic

mode of thought. As we saw in Chapter 2, verbal-linguistic processing may help indi-
viduals to cope with feelings of unease and discomfort by decreasing their level of
physiological activation. Yet this desired reduction in physiological activation comes
at a cost, inasmuch as the highly verbal nature of worrying is also linked with an
abstracted form of thinking that can, in turn, impede concrete problem solving. Both
the avoidance theory of worry proposed by Borkovec (e.g., Borkovec & Inz, 1990) and
the metacognitive theory of Wells (e.g., Wells, 2005), propose that “worry essentially
contributes to its own maintenance by interfering with flexible information process-
ing” (Koerner & Dugas, 2008, p. 633).
Stated simply, “because worry consists largely of cognitive activity, it is hypo-
thesized to detract from cognitive resources needed for the objective, or unbiased
evaluation of ambiguous stimuli or events and for consideration of alternative
interpretations” (Koerner & Dugas, 2008, p. 633). In addition, it has been proposed
that intolerance of uncertainty might further interfere with focused problem solving
through several other effects. Such intolerance might lead to the formation of mis-
taken perceptions (e.g., perceiving a problem where none objectively exists), foster
nonadaptive emotional states, provoke impulsive behaviors that help to remove the
uncertainty but do not address the problem at hand, and lead the individual to set
excessively high standards for the amount and type of evidence required before he or
she can reach a decision.
Intolerance of uncertainty, together with intolerance of emotional arousal, has
been assigned an important role in some general models of anxiety. Krohne (1989)
postulated that these two variables might perpetuate one another, leading to ongoing
cognitive avoidance reactions. According to Krohne’s model of coping modes:
… an elevated level of intolerance of uncertainty provokes reactions of

hyper-vigilance when individuals are faced with uncertain or ambiguous
problems, while an elevated level of intolerance to emotional arousal stimu-
lates cognitive avoidance reactions. Excessive anxiety would then result from
the constant shifting from a hyper-vigilant state (linked to the uncertainty
of the situation) to a state of avoidance (linked to the anxious reactions felt
by the individual).” (Ladouceur, Gosselin, et al., 2000, p. 934)
Consistent with these proposals, an evaluation of the therapeutic effectiveness of a

cognitive-behavioral intervention for generalized anxiety disorder found that includ-
ing strategies for enhancing an individual’s tolerance toward uncertainty and for reduc-
ing cognitive avoidance significantly reduced worry (e.g., Ladouceur, Dugas, et al.,
2000). In addition, in a smaller behavioral study using a multiple baseline design across
individuals (Dugas & Ladouceur, 2000), the changes in level of tolerance toward uncer-
tainty in patients with generalized anxiety disorder preceded changes in the level of
worry in 4 out of 4 patients (significantly so in 3 out of 4), suggesting that intolerance
of uncertainty might itself be a causal risk factor for excessive worry and anxiety.
How might someone be helped to interrupt a cycle of hypervigilance and cognitive
and emotional avoidance associated with intolerance of uncertainty, particularly with
regard to a situation that is, in fact, amenable to problem solving, such as a current
interpersonal conflict? Dugas et al. (1997) suggested several steps, each of which
aims at increasing the ability of the individual to connect with the actual (concrete)
problem and his or her own experiences:
First, to improve their emotional problem orientation, high worriers should

be encouraged to stay focused on the problem situation while correcting
faulty perceptions and interpretations of their emotional arousal (thus
targeting intolerance of emotional arousal). Second, they should be helped to
identify all key elements of the problem situation while not paying undue
attention to minor details related to the situation. Once the key elements
have been identified, they should be encouraged to proceed with the problem
solving process even if they are not absolutely certain of its outcome before-
hand (thus targeting intolerance of uncertainty). Therefore, high worriers
should learn to seek a middle ground between trying to avoid the problem
situation and attempting to gather excessive amounts of information about
the situation, both of which delay problem solving and prolong worry.
(Dugas et al., 1997, p. 603)
In contrast, for worries that concern highly improbable future events, these
investigators recommended cognitive exposure. Such exposure should particularly
aim at encouraging individuals to fully experience their most fearful images and the
aversive somatic/physiological activation that those images invoke—rather than the
verbal content of the worry—so as to allow them to develop a better understanding of
their own ability to tolerate emotional arousal and uncertainty.
Although intolerance of uncertainty has been found to be partially associated with
the concept of intolerance of ambiguity, and some investigations have used them inter-
changeably, they are not the same construct. (See also Excursion 6: Uncertainty versus
Equivocality.) Historically, the concept of tolerance or intolerance of ambiguity has
been associated with the way in which individuals (or groups/organizations) perceive
and process information in situations that involve unfamiliar, complex, or incongru-
ent/apparently conflicting or contradictory cues or elements (Budner, 1962; Frenkel-
Brunswik, 1948; Furnham, 1994), and it has been linked particularly to ambiguity
relating to novelty, complexity, and/or insolubility (Budner, 1962). Furnham (1994)
clearly summarized the many emotional and perceptual behavioral correlates of intol-
erance of ambiguity that were initially articulated by Frenkel-Brunswik, including:
… resistance to reversal of apparent[ly] fluctuating stimuli, the early selec-

tion and maintenance of one solution in a perceptually ambiguous situation,
inability to allow for the possibility of good and bad traits in the same person,
acceptance of attitude statements representing a rigid, black-white view of
life, seeking for certainty, a rigid dichotomizing into fixed categories, prema-
ture closure, and remaining closed except to familiar characteristics of stim-
uli. (Furnham, 1994, pp. 403–404)
In a comparison of four different questionnaire measures, of varying lengths and

contents, that have been developed to measure tolerance/intolerance of ambiguity,
Furnham (1994) found that the different questionnaire measures were all modestly
correlated with one another (pairwise correlations between .44 and .82). Factor analy-
ses on the questionnaires suggested several different factors. For example, one of the
scales yielded six different factors related to such aspects as problem solving
(e.g., “Nothing gets accomplished in this world unless you stick to some basic rules”),
anxiety induced by ambiguous stimuli (e.g., “I get pretty anxious when I’m in a social
situation over which I have no control”), desire to complete or finish problems (e.g.,
“If I were a scientist, I might become frustrated because my work would never be com-
pleted—science will always make new discoveries”), and adventurousness (e.g., “I like
to fool around with new ideas, even if they turn out later to be a total waste of time”);
another questionnaire yielded factors related to predictability, variety and originality,
clarity, and regularity. Thus, issues relating to uncertainty appeared to be only one
aspect of these conceptualizations of ambiguity tolerance/intolerance, which itself
appears to be a multidimensional construct involving aspects related to preferences,
anxieties, and also epistemological or philosophical preferences. Consistent with this
suggestion, based on cluster analyses of several different tasks and questionnaires,
Kreitler and colleagues (1975) concluded that ambiguity intolerance involved three
different clusters of behaviors relating to, first, intolerance of situations admitting of
multiple interpretations, second, intolerance of situations that are difficult to catego-
rize, and, third, intolerance of situations with contradictions or conflict.
There is also evidence that intolerance of uncertainty versus intolerance of ambigu-
ity may be differently related to conditions such as worry. Buhr and Dugas (2006)
empirically examined the relations between the constructs of intolerance of uncer-
tainty versus intolerance of ambiguity, and additional constructs such as perfection-
ism and sense of control, to worry in a large undergraduate sample. Although scores
on the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (Freeston et al., 1994) correlated significantly
and positively with scores on the Scale of Tolerance-Intolerance of Ambiguity (Budner,
1962), the correlation was only modest: r = .42. In addition, regression analyses
revealed that intolerance of uncertainty was uniquely related to worry; the relation-
ship between this measure and worry remained significant even when shared variance
associated with intolerance of ambiguity, perfectionism, and perceived control was
statistically removed.
Like intolerance of uncertainty, ambiguity intolerance may have cognitive, emo-
tional, and behavioral components. However, Grenier and colleagues (2005) suggested
that an important conceptual difference between them is that whereas ambiguity intol-
erance “refers to a static component embedded in the present,” uncertainty intolerance
has a different temporal focus on the future. Individuals who are intolerant of ambigu-
ity are “unable to tolerate a ‘here and now’ situation characterized by equivocal or
ambiguous features [. . .] these individuals interpret the present situation as a source of
threat” (Grenier et al., 2005, p. 596). In contrast, intolerance of uncertainty is orien-
tated toward the future, such that individuals high in intolerance of uncertainty “will
consider it unacceptable that a future and negative event may occur, however small the
probability of its occurrence” (Grenier et al., 2005, p. 596; see also Dugas et al., 2001).
Although, according to Krohne’s (1989) model of coping modes, ambiguity appears
to precede uncertainty, with respect to empirical evidence on the development of
anxiety and worry, it remains unclear whether intolerance of ambiguity might foster
intolerance of uncertainty, and vice versa. In addition, the distinction between the
predominant temporal foci of intolerance of uncertainty (focused on the future)
versus intolerance of ambiguity (focused on the present) merits exploration in
relation to evidence concerning the apparent automatic processing of future event
information in clinical depression. There is evidence to suggest that depressed indi-
viduals may automatically characterize the future in negative terms (e.g., S. M. Andersen
& Limpert, 2001; S. M. Andersen et al., 1992), and also the converse of what has been
termed “automatic optimism” (Lench & Ditto, 2008) in which healthy “normal”
individuals show biased use of base rate information for positive and negative events.
Biases toward excessive pessimism or excessive optimism, in normal individuals and in
depression, are considered in the next section. Intriguingly, although both sets of
biases may arise from relatively automatic modes of processing, the precise mecha-
nisms that have been theorized to underpin these biases are quite different.
Optimism versus Pessimism, Overconfidence

versus Underconfidence
When asked to rate the likelihood that they will experience various events in the
future, individuals are generally overly optimistic in their estimations (S. E. Taylor &
Brown, 1988; Weinstein, 1980), both underestimating the likelihood that they will
experience various negative outcomes (e.g., be unemployed at some point, or be
burglarized, or get divorced) and overestimating the likelihood of positive outcomes
(e.g., owning their own home). One research group summarized this tendency with
the generalization that “normal social perception enlists a series of social and cogni-
tive filters that screen and spin incoming experience into the most desirable future
outlook within reasonable limits” (Carroll et al., 2006, p. 56).
Although there may be multiple reasons for this bias toward optimism (or overop-
timism), such as a tendency to focus on the number of favorable aspects in one’s own
case, without realizing that others may have a similar number of favorable factors
working on their behalf (e.g., Weinstein, 1980), Lench and Ditto (2008) postulated
that an important contributor to such bias derives from our tendency to rapidly and
automatically rely on our affective reactions in making judgments (cf. Slovic & Peters,
2006). According to this account, the negative affect that is elicited by considering or
thinking about potentially negative events leads to “cognitive rejection” of the events
and a judgment of the events as unlikely. In contrast, the positive affect associated
with positive events leads to both cognitive acceptance and judgments of the events as
likely to occur. In short, these investigators proposed that “at the core of optimistic
bias is an automatic tendency to rely on affect to judge the likelihood of future events”
(Lench & Ditto, 2008, p. 632; see also Kahneman & Ritov, 1994; Kahneman, Ritov, &
Schkade, 1999).
Several findings appear to support this proposal. In one experiment, participants
took part in a card game, in which the odds of winning were clearly stated (e.g., “In this
deck, there are 3 out of 10 winning cards. Do you think you have a winning card?”).
Participants were offered incentives that encouraged either accuracy (e.g., a prize if
their predictions were accurate) or motivated reasoning (e.g., a prize if they won the
hand). However, the incentives had little effect on the predictions that the partici-
pants made. In all cases, although participants did appropriately change their predic-
tions in accord with the stated odds, they nonetheless consistently were more likely to
predict that they had winning cards than losing cards (odds ratio of 3.67, confidence
interval of 2.56–5.26). Greater optimism bias was also observed when participants
were required to respond quickly in predicting whether they would or would not
experience positive and negative future events. These findings support the notion
that, in part, optimistic bias may arise from our tendency to rely on an “affect heuris-
tic” that does not necessarily relate to extreme states of emotion, but to what Slovic
and Peters (2006) characterized as the “faint whisper of emotion,” called affect:
We use the term affect to mean the specific quality of “goodness” or “badness”
(a) experienced as a feeling state (with or without consciousness) and
(b) demarcating a positive and negative quality of a stimulus. We have used
the term “the affect heuristic” to characterize reliance on such feelings […]
the experienced feelings are used as information to guide judgment and
decision making […]. One of the main characteristics of the intuitive, expe-
riential system is its affective basis. Although analysis is certainly important
in some decision-making circumstances, reliance on affect is generally a
quicker, easier, and more efficient way to navigate in a complex, uncertain,
and sometimes dangerous world. (Slovic & Peters, 2006, p. 322)
A dispositional tendency toward optimism, characterized by generally positive

expectations for the future—that is, expectations that good, rather than bad, out-
comes will generally occur across important life domains (Scheier et al., 1989)—often
has been measured using the Life Orientation Test, developed by Scheier and Carver
(1985), or its revised version (Life Orientation Test–Revised; Scheier, Carver, &
Bridges, 1994). The revised measure includes 6 statements, plus 4 filler items, with
half of the statements phrased optimistically and half phrased pessimistically, such as
“I hardly ever expect things to go my way,” “I’m always optimistic about my future,”
and “Overall, I expect more good things to happen to me than bad.” Higher levels of
optimism are generally associated with more persistent, effective, and successful
pursuit of goals (e.g., Segerstrom, 2007a; Segerstrom & Nes, 2006).
Several prospective studies have shown that dispositional optimism may yield
benefits for subjective well-being and health. For example, women who were more
optimistic in the third trimester of their pregnancy were significantly less likely to
show postpartum depression 3 weeks after giving birth, even when taking into account
the level of depression they showed at intake (Carver & Gaines, 1987). Another pro-
spective study of men who underwent coronary artery bypass surgery showed that,
independent of several major health considerations, men who were more optimistic at
baseline evidenced greater subjective well-being over time, as shown, for example, in
greater satisfaction with the level of medical care and social support they received, and
(5 years later) greater satisfaction with their friends, job, and general quality of life
(Scheier et al., 1989; see also Contrada et al., 2008). Considering another type of stres-
sor—that of adjustment to college life by entering undergraduates—Aspinwall and
Taylor (1992) found that higher optimism upon entering college was associated with
lower levels of psychological distress 3 months later. Similarly, compared with

pessimists, optimists developed fewer physical symptoms and illnesses during the
highly stressful final weeks of the academic term (Scheier & Carver, 1985).
Many factors may contribute to these differing trajectories for individuals high in
optimism versus high in pessimism. One important source of the divergent outcomes
involves differences in how optimists versus pessimists tend to cope with stress
(e.g., Nes & Segerstrom, 2006). Whereas individuals higher in optimism frequently
report using problem-focused coping methods to deal with stress, as well as the use of
positive reinterpretation and also attempts to accept the reality of the situation—
particularly for stressful events that are uncontrollable—such individuals tend not to
use denial or psychological distancing from the problem. For example, in the study of
entering undergraduates conducted by Aspinwall and Taylor (1992), optimists were
more likely than were pessimists to engage in active coping. Additionally, the use of
avoidance coping was negatively associated with longer term adjustment, whereas
active coping was positively associated with such adjustment. In another study that
examined coping responses in women undergoing breast cancer surgery (Carver, Pozo
et al., 1993), optimism was associated—presurgery—with reports of planning and
taking active steps to do whatever could be done, but after surgery it was associated
with attempts to accept the situation and efforts to place it in as positive a light as
possible. These changes in coping behavior also were associated with differences in
self-reported levels of distress, such that whereas denial and behavioral disengage-
ment were positively related to distress, reframing and acceptance were inversely
related to self-reported distress.
Nonetheless, greater optimism is not invariably a “good thing” even as assessed by
physical health indicators. Segerstrom (2005) summarizes data from several studies,
both naturalistic and experimental, suggesting on the one hand, that greater disposi-
tional optimism is positively related to preserved or enhanced physiological immunity
when the stressors are “easy,” for example, straightforward, brief, and controllable. On
the other hand, optimism is negatively related to immunity under conditions involv-
ing difficult stressors, that is, stressors characterized by the opposing attributes of
complexity, persistence, and uncontrollability. One potential reason for this differen-
tial pattern involves levels of engagement with the stressor. Optimists potentially
invest more persistent and extensive efforts in pursuing difficult goals, with this
leading to short-term physiological costs as indicated by, for example, increased skin
conductance responses and elevated salivary cortisol levels (Nes et al., 2005;
Segerstrom et al., 2003). However, to the extent that sustaining immunity itself
can be conceptualized as potentially involving opportunity costs—that is, there may
be other activities or resources that are not pursued in order to make energy available
for immune activity—such short-term reductions in immunosuppression may not
necessarily or invariably be maladaptive:
It is important for well-being to minimize losses in resources such as social

integration that are strongly positively associated with human health […]
Therefore, when resources are threatened, it could be adaptive for organisms to
direct energy away from the immune system and toward protecting or restor-
ing their resources—that is, resolving the stress. (Segerstrom, 2007b, p. 327)
Other findings suggest that optimism may “give way,” potentially to especially
extreme despair, under severe and sustained stressors. Hirsch and colleagues (2007)
found that, in an undergraduate sample, individuals who scored relatively high in level
of optimism continued to fend well when confronted with a number of negative life
events, including events that were potentially traumatic, suggesting that optimism
and a future-oriented perspective helped to offset stressors. However, for very large
numbers of negative life events, those high in optimism were at significantly greater
risk for experiencing ideas and imagery relating to suicide, and also for suicide
attempts, than were persons of more moderate or low optimism.
Not only have people been found to be generally overoptimistic: It appears that
they may also believe that it is best to be overly optimistic—that is, that others ought
to be optimistic (Armor et al., 2008). When asked to provide prescriptions about the
level of optimism that individuals in different realistic scenarios should display,
ranging from –4 (extremely pessimistic) through 0 (accurate) through +4 (extremely
optimistic), participants consistently prescribed a moderate level of optimism. Across
four different scenarios, including decisions about a financial investment, an academic
award application, a surgical procedure, and a dinner party, the modal prescribed level
of optimism was +2; this response was endorsed by just over 30% of the participants,
compared with only 18% who endorsed the “accurate” option. Although participants
who were asked to describe how optimistic people actually were also described people
as optimistic (mean of 0.82), participants on average recommended even greater
optimism (mean of 1.12).
The level of optimism that was recommended varied with several aspects of the
situation. Participants recommended greater optimism if the individual had already
committed himself or herself to the action (mean of 1.24) than if commitment to the
action had not yet been taken (mean of 0.61); if the decision to commit was the pro-
tagonist’s to make (mean of 1.04) than if it was not (mean of 0.80); and if the protago-
nist’s control over the outcome was high (mean of 1.34) rather than low (mean of
0.51). Intriguingly, even individuals who were themselves comparatively pessimistic,
in that they obtained trait optimism scores below the midpoint on the Life Orientation
Test-Revised (Scheier et al., 1994), also prescribed optimism for others (mean of 0.87).
These outcomes suggest that people may not always endorse a view that it is “best” or
“ideal” to be accurate in one’s predictions. Rather, they may sometimes see optimism
as both desired and desirable, and not, for example, just an unwanted or unintended
effect of motivated reasoning, or of cognitive or information-processing limitations.
Additional findings clearly point to variation in the circumstances under which
individuals tend to be optimistic versus shifting toward pessimism. Sweeny and
colleagues (2006) propose that both optimism and shifts away from optimism serve a
similar goal, namely “the need for preparedness”:
Preparedness is a goal state of readiness to respond to uncertain outcomes.

It includes being prepared for possible setbacks should they occur, but also
being prepared to take advantage of opportunities when they arise. In most
circumstances, optimism best serves the goal of preparedness by organizing
thoughts and activity around goal pursuit and persistence and the acquisi-
tion of opportunities and resources. Optimism fosters a positive mindset to
undertake challenges with the confidence that one can succeed. However, in
other circumstances, a shift from optimism best serves the goal of prepared-
ness by directing thoughts and actions toward assessing and responding to
changes in the local environment. Of course, when danger has passed or
worst-case scenarios become less dire, shifts toward optimism can also serve
the need for preparedness by directing energy toward goal attainment.
Finally, a pessimistic outlook can facilitate preparation for possible unde-
sired outcomes. As the moment of truth draws near, pessimism directs
cognitions and activity toward avoiding undesired outcomes and minimizing
their consequences. (Sweeny et al., 2006, pp. 302–303)
Adjustment of expectations downward may occur for many reasons, such as the
gathering or noticing of new information (e.g., because of greater scrutiny or anxiety,
or both) or because individuals change their level of representational specificity or con-
strual level. As events become closer in time, more concrete rather than abstract con-
struals may sharpen an individual’s focus on events that are more likely to happen
(compare with the discussion of temporal effects on construal level in the third section
of Chapter 3). In an especially illustrative study, Shepperd and colleagues (1996) found
that whereas 4 months prior to graduation college seniors were optimistic about their
salary predictions for their first position after graduation, at 2 weeks prior to gradua-
tion they were realistic. Shifts in predictions have also been found with respect to test
performance scores, with the overly optimistic predictions of performance a few weeks
before the examination decreasing immediately after the exam (to approximately the
objective level of performance), and also again slightly decreasing immediately before
feedback (to somewhat below objective levels of performance). The magnitude of the
downward shift from optimism also has been found to be greater if the outcome is
personally consequential or important compared with if it is of less importance.
In a recent brain imaging study, Sharot and colleagues (2007) found that individu-
als higher in trait optimism as measured by the Life Orientation Test-Revised (Scheier
et al., 1994) tended to more strongly expect positive events to happen closer in the
future than negative events, and they tended to experience them with a greater sense
of preexperiencing. These researchers also found that the imagination of negative
future events was associated with reduced brain activity in the amygdala and rostral
anterior cingulate cortex compared with that observed during imagination of positive
future events and all past events. These findings raise the possibility that “the optimism
bias may be related to a reduction in negative future thought,” and that “expecting
positive events, and generating compelling mental images of such events, may serve
an adaptive function by motivating behaviour in the present towards the future”
(Sharot et al., 2007, p. 104). However, as noted by Schacter and Addis (2007b), in a
commentary on these intriguing behavioral and neuroimaging findings, an important
remaining question for future work concerns how the reduction of activity in the
amygdala and anterior cingulate when thinking of future negative events might be
influenced by changes in the likelihood or imminence of a negative event. As demon-
strated by Shepperd and colleagues (1996), overoptimism may become tempered as
the “moment of truth” nears, and it will be important to examine whether both
subjective and neurophysiological indices of emotional responsiveness and vivid
imagining of possible future events show changes in parallel with the temporal
modulation of overoptimism.
Mirroring the findings with respect to a general sense of optimism toward the
future, research has shown that individuals are frequently also overconfident in
particular decisions or judgments that they make (e.g., Fischhoff, Slovic, & Lichtenstein,
1977; Lichtenstein, Fischoff, & Phillips, 1982; Stankov, 1998; see Keren, 1991, 1997,
for review). Overconfidence occurs when, on average, the amount of confidence
expressed in relation to a group of decisions (as indicated as a percentage) is higher
than the accuracy of those decisions (as a percentage). In addition, individuals tend to
show modestly similar patterns of overconfidence or underconfidence across different
sorts of judgments. For example, in research in our lab, participants showed corre-
lated patterns of overconfidence in a novel paradigm that used the same stimuli to
elicit both conceptually based general-knowledge decisions (e.g., Which is larger, India
or China?) and sensory-perceptual decisions (Which physically manipulated word
appeared larger on the computer screen?). Across three experiments we found an
average across decision-task correlation of .62 for ratings of confidence, and .53 for
participants’ level of over/underconfidence (Kvidera & Koutstaal, 2008). Other
investigators have likewise reported significant positive across-task correlations using
tasks such as Raven’s Progressive matrices, vocabulary, and line-length judgment
(e.g., Stankov, 1998; Stankov & Crawford, 1996). These outcomes suggest that some
of the determinants of confidence ratings relate to relatively stable within-individual
differences that are independent of the particular decision domain.
Aspects of the particular task context may also modulate whether over- or under-
confidence is observed. For example, the magnitude of the over- or underconfidence
shown by individuals often varies with their level of decision or performance accuracy
on a task, or task difficulty. If the task is relatively difficult (individuals achieve scores
below about 65% or so), then participants tend to be more overconfident. However, if
the task is quite easy (individuals achieve scores above about 78%), then underconfi-
dence rather than overconfidence may be observed (e.g., Brenner et al., 1996). This
pattern is called the “hard-easy” effect.
Some researchers also have proposed that the processes contributing to confidence
judgments may differ for different sorts of tasks (e.g., Bjorkman, Juslin, & Winman,
1993; Runeson, Juslin, & Olsson, 2000). Specifically, tasks that are highly sensory-
perceptual in nature are thought to more frequently elicit either underconfidence or
good accuracy-confidence correspondence, whereas conceptual tasks that depend on
higher order processing more often lead to overconfidence. However, the evidence for
such a “dual-process account” is countered by other findings suggesting that confi-
dence in perceptual and conceptual decisions may reflect similar underlying processes.
For instance, using the paradigm described earlier that allowed us to use the same
stimuli to elicit both conceptual and perceptual decisions, we observed the hard-easy
effect for both sorts of decisions (Kvidera & Koutstaal, 2008; see also Andersson,
2009). In addition, after matching for levels of performance across the decision types,
we found overconfidence for perceptual decisions together with neither over- nor
underconfidence in conceptual decisions.
The magnitude of overconfidence in judgments that is observed also varies depend-
ing on the point in time at which confidence judgments are elicited, specifically whether
confidence judgments are assessed immediately after each decision, or, instead, for a
larger number of previous decisions, such that one retrospectively estimates one’s
overall or aggregate level of performance. Whereas overconfidence is frequently
observed when individuals are asked to give their confidence ratings in their decisions
on a case-by-case or item-by-item basis, immediately after each decision, overconfi-
dence is typically less pronounced (and sometimes absent) when individuals are asked
to provide judgments regarding how well they had performed on a larger set or series
of items (e.g., Gigerenzer et al., 1991; Griffin & Tversky, 1992; May, 1986, 1987, cited
in Brenner et al., 1996).
We recently demonstrated this differential pattern of overconfidence for one or a
few, but not for many, immediately prior decisions, using a within-subject design, in
which we asked for participants’ confidence ratings after they had answered varying
numbers of two-alternative, forced-choice, general-knowledge questions (Bjornberg &
Koutstaal, in preparation). Whereas participants demonstrated significant overconfi-
dence if we asked for their confidence ratings immediately after they had answered
only one or two of the general-knowledge questions, they did not show overconfi-
dence when they were asked to make their confidence ratings for larger numbers of
prior decisions. Furthermore, overconfidence significantly linearly decreased across
the number of prior decisions (1–2, 3–4, 5–6, or 7-plus) for which confidence ratings
were required. There was also a tendency for the decrease to occur earlier for individu-
als with comparatively lower semantic short-term memory (conceptual span) scores
than for individuals with relatively higher conceptual span scores.
The latter finding is consistent with the hypothesis that one contributor to the dif-
ference in overconfidence for one or a few, versus many, prior decisions involves differ-
ent sources of evidence—and different levels of specificity—on which the two sorts of
judgments are based. Confidence ratings regarding one or a few immediately prior
decisions might be based on what Kahneman and Tversky (1977/1979) termed the
“inside view.” When decisions are made using the inside view, individuals focus on the
case at hand or the uniqueness of the current decision for coming to a conclusion. The
informational source accessed during item-by-item or “local” confidence judgments is
likely an individual’s short-term or working memory, and participants may focus pri-
marily on the specific decision they have just made. In contrast, persons taking an
“outside view” utilize distributional data when making a decision, while to a great
degree ignoring the unique details or specifics of the case at hand. This view is more
likely to be adopted when participants rate their confidence in a large number of prior
decisions (“global” confidence judgments). In this case, the informational source
accessed might include an individual’s longer term memory, such as her knowledge of
how she generally performs on similar tasks or her general sense of her level of knowl-
edge in the task domain.
The distinction between the inside versus outside views is best illustrated by an
example given by Griffin and Tversky (1992) involving an individual’s predictions
concerning one specific outcome versus the estimated frequency with which one is
likely to be correct in the long term:
A sportscaster, for example, can be asked to assess his confidence in the pre-
diction of each game as well as the number of games he expects to predict
correctly. According to the present account, these judgments are not expected
to coincide because they are based on different evidence. A judgment of
confidence in a particular case, we propose, depends primarily on the balance
of arguments for and against a specific hypothesis, e.g., the relative strength
of two opposing teams. Estimated frequency of correct prediction, on the
other hand, is likely to be based on a general evaluation of the difficulty of
the task, the knowledge of the judge, or past experience with similar prob-
lems. Thus, the overconfidence observed in average judgments of confidence
need not apply to global judgments of expected accuracy. […] Evidently,
people can maintain a high degree of confidence in the validity of specific
answers even when they know that their overall hit rate is not very high.
(Griffin & Tversky, 1992, p. 431)
Since most decisions are based on confidence assessments of a particular

case—rather than across multiple decisions—the tendency for individuals to be
overconfident in their item-by-item assessments remains a genuine cause for
concern and caution. As observed by Griffin and Tversky (1992, p. 431–432), “The
tendency to prefer an individual or ‘inside’ view rather than a statistical or ‘outside’
view represents one of the major departures of intuitive judgment from normative
theory.”
Notably, whereas clinically depressed individuals also may show overconfidence on
item-by-item assessments, their global retrospective assessments of their perfor-
mance tend to be excessively underconfident—perhaps reflecting the biases of negative
self-schemata from longer term memory (Fu, Koutstaal, et al., 2005). This may parallel
evidence indicating that depressed individuals often feel certain that positive events
will not occur and that negative events will. For example, S. M. Andersen, Spielman,
and Bargh (1992) found that moderately depressed college students and also partici-
pants with major depression (S. M. Andersen & Limpert, 2001) tended to show auto-
maticity in their predictions about the future, whereas nondepressed individuals did
not. Nondepressed individuals showed a clear reduction in how rapidly they responded
to future event predictions if they concurrently had a high cognitive load. In contrast,
depressed individuals showed much less of a cost to their speed of responding to
future event possibilities, suggesting that their future event predictions were made
relatively automatically. Additional findings likewise suggest that depressed individu-
als show depressive predictive certainty—a tendency to be certain either of the occur-
rence of negative outcomes or the nonoccurrence of positive outcomes (e.g., S. M.
Andersen & Schwartz, 1992).
Trying Not: Intentional Forgetting, Deliberate

Thought Suppression, and Flexible Thinking
Is it possible to deliberately not think of or not remember an experience that we find
emotionally disruptive or otherwise unsettling, by intentionally excluding such
thoughts from our awareness? Or are such efforts doomed to fail? Even worse—are
they paradoxically likely to exacerbate rather than alleviate the problem, magnifying
rather than minimizing the intrusiveness of the thoughts or images and their
unwelcome hold on our consciousness?
Intriguingly, there is strong evidence to support both the idea that intentional
thought suppression and intentional forgetting indeed may be possible, and there is
evidence to suggest that sometimes our efforts in this direction bring about the pre-
cise opposite of the hoped-for outcome. Understanding and articulating the circum-
stances under which each outcome is likely to be observed has important implications
for cognitive functioning and our ability to adaptively shape and focus our thinking.
We will first consider experimental paradigms that have provided strong evidence for
the successful deliberate exclusion of unwanted thoughts and images from thinking
and memory. Thereafter, we will turn to consider when and why such efforts may,
instead, yield paradoxical effects of increasing rather than decreasing the accessibility
of the would-be banished thoughts.
A highly informative paradigm that has been used to experimentally examine
the ability to intentionally suppress a habitual or predominant action or motor
response—rather than an internal thought—is the so-called go/no-go task. In this
task, participants typically are presented with two types of stimuli, including one set
of stimuli (e.g., the letters A, Y, L, P) to which the participant is to respond, or “go.”
These “go” stimuli usually occur quite frequently. There is also a second stimulus
(e.g., the letter X) that occurs relatively rarely to which the participant is to withhold
responding or “not go.” This paradigm has provided insights into the psychological
and neural processes that are affected in individuals with impairments in cognitive
control, such as persons with frontal lobe lesions and persons with attention-deficit/
hyperactivity disorder (e.g., A. A. Aron & Poldrack, 2005). To examine whether similar
cognitive control and suppression techniques could be applied internally to
one’s memories and thoughts, as well as to external stimuli and motor responses,
M. C. Anderson and Green (2001; cf. M. C. Anderson, 2003) modified the go/no-go
paradigm to examine go/no-go processes in thinking—thus the “think/no-think
paradigm.”
The first phase of the think/no-think paradigm is designed to initially ensure that
individuals have formed specific memories that, later, can either be accessed and
thought about, or blocked from access and suppressed. In this phase, participants are
presented with pairs of associates (cue-target pairs), such as word-word pairs or word-
picture pairs, and are asked to memorize them until they can accurately generate each
of the targets in response to the corresponding cues. Then, in the next phase, the
think/no-think manipulation is applied. In this phase, only the cues from the previ-
ously learned paired associates, and no targets, are presented. For some of the cues
the participants are instructed to try to think of and remember the target and to say
the target out loud; for other cues, they are instructed not to think of the correspond-
ing target. Specifically, they are asked to not allow the associated memory to enter
consciousness at all, even though the potent reminder cue remains clearly visible for a
number of seconds (e.g., 4 seconds). Some of the cues are presented only once and
others are presented multiple times. Importantly, not all of the previously memorized
cue-target pairs are presented in this phase: The cues for some of the previously
learned items are never presented in this second phase, thereby later providing a
“baseline” measure against which either the benefits of the “think” manipulation or
the detrimental effects of the “no-think” manipulation can be assessed. Finally,

memory for all of the cue-target pairs is assessed.
In their initial examination of the think/no-think paradigm, using word-word
pairs, M. C. Anderson and Green (2001) found that the intervening think/no-think
phase significantly affected the level of memory recall for the items, relative to the
baseline measure. Perhaps not surprisingly, for the items in the think condition,
memory recall was enhanced compared to the baseline items. More important,
memory for the no-think items was suppressed below baseline. This detrimental effect
of deliberately not thinking of the items, such that their level of recall is decreased
below baseline, is initial evidence for a form of active suppression or inhibition of the
items, and it is sometimes referred to as a “negative control” effect (e.g., Levy &
Anderson, 2008). The magnitude of the suppression effect (for the no-think items)
and the enhancement effect (for the think items) increased with the number of times
that the cues had been presented during the think/no-think phase. The degree of dis-
placement from their expected “mnemonic fate” as predicted by the baseline items
was greater for those items that were presented frequently (8 or 16 repetitions) during
the think/no-think phase than for those items that had been presented only once.
Notably, additional findings showed that the emergence of the suppression effect
did not require that the memory retrieval cues be the same cues as were initially
learned. The suppression effects were also observed when, rather than providing the
originally studied retrieval cues at the time of final testing, other not previously pre-
sented but semantically associated cues were presented (for example, if the originally
learned pair was ordeal-roach, the new probe might be insect-r_____). The robustness
of the suppression effect, such that it was also present even when retrieval was tested
via these “independent cues” that were not themselves originally directly associated to
the target, suggests that it was the target itself that was rendered less accessible to
recall, rather than only the association between the cue and the target (e.g., M. C.
Anderson & Green, 2001; M. C. Anderson & Spellman, 1995; S. K. Johnson &
Anderson, 2004; see Levy & Anderson, 2002, for review).
Other research using the think/no-think paradigm has further supported the
existence of such flexibly controlled inhibitory processing (see Levy & Anderson,
2008, for review) and has demonstrated that deliberate suppression may also be
applied to materials that have emotional content. Using recognition rather than recall
testing at the final test point, and face-word pairs, B. E. Depue, Banich, and Curran
(2006) found that both enhancement and suppression effects were greater for
emotional target words such as “deformed” and “corpse” than for neutral word targets
such as “carriage” and “lantern.” A similar pattern was found for paired stimuli
comprised of faces and emotionally laden pictures of scenes (e.g., a serious traffic
accident): After controlling for baseline levels of recall, memory for emotional infor-
mation was particularly enhanced in the “think” condition but also particularly
reduced in the “no-think” condition.
Using a version of this task and emotional stimuli during functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning, Depue and colleagues (B. E. Depue, Curran, &
Banich, 2007) further demonstrated that during memory suppression, activation in
brain regions involved in processing components of the memory representation was
below the level observed during baseline visual fixation trials. Several regions in right
prefrontal cortex that are known to be important to cognitive control (including BA 8,

9/46, 47, and BA 10), showed greater activity during no-think trials than during think
trials. When the researchers attempted to identify brain regions that both responded
above baseline for think trials, and below baseline for no-think trials, they found that
several brain regions involved in representing the visual characteristics of the stimuli
(BA 17, BA 18, and BA 37 or the fusiform gyrus) as well as the pulvinar nucleus of the
thalamus—important in gating and modulating attention toward or away from visual
stimuli—showed this pattern. These sensory processing regions that are normally
active when memories are being retrieved showed attenuated activity when memories
were being deliberately suppressed or excluded from consciousness but increased activ-
ity during attempts to deliberately recollect associated targets on the think trials.
The precise pattern of activity in coordinated brain regions for the think and no-
think trials also changed across the duration of the think/no-think session, such that
different patterns were observed early on in the attempts at suppression (the first 3 of
12 presentations of the cue) versus later in the attempts at suppression (e.g., the 9th
to 12th presentations of the cue). Whereas during the initial attempts at suppression,
a region in right inferior frontal gyrus (cf. Aron, Robbins, & Poldrack, 2004) was highly
active in suppressing sensory-perceptual components of the memory representation
(e.g., in occipito-temporal cortex), after a number of suppression attempts, right
middle frontal gyrus appeared to exert modulation on aspects of the emotional and
memory representation in the hippocampus and amygdala. These changes might
reflect that effective suppression was now operating at an earlier stage of the evoca-
tion of a memory, before individuals had reinstated a representation of the visual and
sensory features of the to-be-suppressed target.
Only one brain region remained active throughout all of the attempts at suppres-
sion versus recollection and that was the anterior portion of prefrontal cortex, BA 10.
As further developed in Chapter 9, this region is known to be involved in such aspects
of higher order cognition as monitoring one’s internal state and coordinating higher-
level goals, and the patterns of correlation between it and the other frontal regions
suggested that this region acted to modulate the other frontal regions (right inferior
frontal gyrus and right middle frontal gyrus). Summarizing these findings, Depue
et al. (2007) note:
Our findings suggest that the suppression of emotional memory involves at

least two pathways with staggered phases of their modulatory influence. The
first pathway involves cognitive control by right inferior frontal gyrus over
sensory components of memory representation, as evidenced by reduced
activity in the fusiform gyrus and pulvinar. This finding is consistent with
computational models that posit that activation and inhibition of the thala-
mus is a critical means of gating working memory information […]. A second
pathway involves cognitive control by right middle frontal gyrus over
memory processes and emotional components of memory representation
via modulation of the hippocampus and amygdala. The overall timing of
these suppression effects appears to be orchestrated by a modulatory
influence of BA10, first over right inferior frontal gyrus, then over right
middle frontal gyrus. (B. E. Depue et al., 2007, p. 218)
The successful selective suppression of the no-think items in the think/

no-think paradigm, and also the brain evidence pointing to below baseline activity
in memory-related perceptual and emotional processing regions for the no-think
items, is conceptually consistent with evidence from a further experimental proce-
dure. Research using the paradigm known as list-cued or block-cued “directed
forgetting” also has demonstrated that individuals can inhibit some items from
memory retrieval. In the typical version of this paradigm, individuals first study a list
of words or other stimuli but then are told that those items were “for practice” and so
should be forgotten; they are then presented a second list of items that they are asked
to remember.
In this experimental procedure it has often been found that the “to-be-forgotten”
words are less likely to be retrieved on the final test. More important, it has also been
shown that performance on the second (to-be-remembered) list benefits from the
forget instruction. Performance on the second (to-be-remembered) list after the
instruction that the first list is to be forgotten is similar to that found when only one
to-be-remembered list was ever presented. It is as though the potential interference or
competition from those items had been substantially reduced or essentially elimi-
nated by the instruction that they could be forgotten (e.g., Bjork, 1989). However,
unlike the findings with the think/no-think paradigm, these retrieval inhibition
effects in the list cued directed forgetting procedure are typically found only in tests of
free or cued recall, and they do not clearly emerge on recognition tests that re-present
the to-be-forgotten items (e.g., Basden, Basden, & Gargano, 1993; see data from
Koutstaal, 1996, summarized in Koutstaal & Schacter, 1997b). Additionally, although
these findings from directed forgetting support the existence of “a controllable
inhibition process,” it is one “limited in scope to an immediately preceding temporal
interval” (M. C. Anderson & Green, 2001, p. 368). In contrast, the findings from the
think/no-think paradigm argue that there is “a controllable inhibition process that
can be flexibly targeted to a specific prepotent memory after intervening memories
have been acquired” (M. C. Anderson & Green, 2001, p. 368).
The convincing demonstrations of the flexible and deliberate exercise of inhibition
or suppression in the think/no-think paradigm are both surprising, and very
important, not only for practical but also for theoretical reasons. In particular,
these demonstrations run counter to evidence that sometimes the intention to
suppress information has the paradoxical effect of increasing the degree to which
the unwanted images or thoughts are present in awareness. Sometimes attempted
thought suppression has “ironic consequences” (Wegner, 1994; Wegner et al., 1987;
see Geraerts & McNally, 2008; Koutstaal & Schacter, 1997b; Wenzlaff & Wegner, 2000,
for reviews). For example, persons who are asked not to think about a particular object
or topic, such as a white bear, may initially succeed in their attempts to suppress such
thoughts, but then eventually they may show a “rebound” effect, such that they think
more frequently about the to-be-suppressed topic than do individuals who never
attempted to suppress thoughts regarding it. In addition, in direct contrast to the
outcomes found with the think/no-think paradigm, many thought suppression stud-
ies that have varied the emotional valence of the to-be-suppressed target have found
that, all else being equal, suppression is less (not more) effective for emotional than
for neutral materials. Indeed, Wenzlaff and Wegner (2000) concluded their review of
this thought-suppression research with a statement that appears directly at odds with
that reached from the think/no-think paradigm. They remark:
What has compelled the interest of the scientific and clinical communities is
that suppression is not simply an ineffective tactic of mental control; it is
counterproductive, helping assure the very state of mind one had hoped to
avoid. The problem of thought suppression is aggravated by its intuitive
appeal and apparent simplicity, which help mask its false promises. (Wenzlaff
& Wegner, 2000, p. 83)
How can these conflicting outcomes with the think/no-think versus thought
suppression paradigm be understood, and what are the implications of these diver-
gent findings? Considering the think/no-think paradigm versus the typical thought
suppression paradigm, there are several differences in the situational and cognitive
task structure that may be central in accounting for the widely differing outcomes.
First, in the think/no-think paradigm, there are many discrete items, or pairs of items,
and, during the critical think/no-think phase, the experimentally provided instruc-
tions continually direct the individual to actively attempt to retrieve and think about
some of these items, and not to retrieve others. Thus the task itself requires ongoing
cognitive control and engagement, as the person responds to now this particular
presented cue and accompanying instruction (either thinking or not thinking about
the corresponding target as indicated), and then the next cue, in an ongoing, changing
but guided interaction. Second, each instance of attempted suppression of the no-
think items is relatively time limited (on the order of a few seconds) before the next
item is presented.
In contrast, the usual thought suppression paradigm involves instructions to sup-
press only one concept (e.g., Don’t think about a white bear), or one interlinked epi-
sode (e.g., Don’t think about a videotaped car accident that you just watched). The
instructions also pertain to a more prolonged period of time, usually several minutes
rather than merely seconds, and—with one exception, noted later—there are often
very few ongoing changing environmental demands beyond the instruction to try to
suppress all thoughts of the to-be-suppressed topic. The exception concerns the
instructions as to what one is to do if, despite one’s best efforts, the to-be-banished
thought nonetheless stealthily makes it way back into awareness. To measure the
degree to which individuals are able to abide by the thought suppression instructions,
there is often (though not always) a requirement to indicate in some manner (e.g., by
ringing a bell) each time that the to-be-suppressed thought nonetheless intrudes into
consciousness.3 This then sets up a paradoxical requirement: To diligently and consci-
entiously fulfill the requirement to report (and also immediately expel) each intrusion
of the thought, one needs to remember to “be alert for” any occurrences of the
thought—which will heighten its accessibility and increase the likelihood that,
eventually, the thought recurs.
Thus, the “theory of ironic processes” (e.g., Wegner, 1992) postulates that the
process of thought suppression involves two mechanisms: First, an intentional oper-
ating process that seeks thoughts and associations that will promote the desired state
(that is, thinking about anything other than the unwanted thought), and second, a
more subterranean and shadowy “ironic monitoring process” that remains in the
background rather than foreground of awareness and that explicitly searches for
mental contents that might signal a failure (or imminent failure) of the intended
suppression.
The operating process is effortful and conscious, whereas the monitoring

system is usually unconscious and less demanding of mental effort. The
monitoring process is ironic in the sense that it opposes the overall goal of
suppression by remaining vigilant for occurrences of the unwanted item.
Despite its ironic nature, this vigilance is necessary for successful mental
control because it alerts the operating process of the need to renew distrac-
tion when conscious awareness of the unwanted thought becomes immi-
nent. (Wenzlaff & Wegner, 2000, p. 68)
A crucial difficulty for the successful deployment of this two-process approach

arises when there are factors, such as stress or fatigue or the ingestion of alcohol, that
can disrupt the effective and continuous functioning of the intentional operating pro-
cess. Although the intentional process is weakened at such times, the ironic automatic
monitoring process may continue unabated, resulting in heightened sensitivity to pre-
cisely the sorts of associations, images, and thoughts that one was seeking to avoid.
This two-process account is not without limitations and its critics. For example,
Navon (1994) suggests that “the notion of a monitoring process that increases the
activation of unwanted contents is both functionally implausible and theoretically
gratuitous” and argues that “it seems more parsimonious to conceive of paradoxical
effects as failures in operation than as flaws in design” (Navon, 1994, paragraph 17).
An alternative account might be phrased, as Navon (1994) suggests, in terms of the
automatic activation of concepts in relation to goals:
Attention is to a considerable extent determined by activations generated

automatically by stimuli […] It is likely to be drawn to an object to the extent
that the latter is related to some unsatisfied need. It is also likely to be drawn
to context-relevant objects […]. The simplest criterion for context relevance
is recent activation. Now, any deliberate attempt to refrain from thinking
about something must address the to-be-avoided concept. That, of course,
necessarily activates that concept. The activation may be especially high
because of the relevance of the attempt itself to the need or because of the
anxiety associated with the fear of failure. The rest follows in a straightfor-
ward way. (Navon, 1994, paragraph 5)
However, the intricate and intimate relation between the to-be-avoided topic and
goals is not so “straightforward,” as further articulated by Navon:
Of course, with some effort, the to-be-avoided object can be kept away
from focal attention. Its mandatory activation, or its presence in peripheral
attention, however, hampers the ability to meet the goal of banning that
object from focal attention. The spread of activation […] to related concepts
complicates the problem because it primes a set of potential triggers for

revived activation. Furthermore, as with every goal deemed important, one
occasionally stops to review its success. Unlike with every other goal, how-
ever, in this case the review itself (“How nice! For ten minutes I haven’t been
thinking of pink elephants”) entails failure. Even when the goal is success-
fully met for a while, there seems to be a rebound effect, namely, greater-
than-usual attention to the to-be-avoided object after the inhibition is
relieved. […] These findings suggest that the activation itself is not avoided;
rather, during the inhibition period it waits for its processing. What has been
put on the agenda may be pushed downwards in the queue but it is probably
hard to remove […] Alternatively, the activation may facilitate a later activa-
tion in response to the right prompt, which may result in focal attention to
the object at that time. (Navon, 1994, paragraph 6)
Another, related, possible difference between the (multiple item) think/no-think

versus the more global (single item or single episode) “don’t think of X” thought-
suppression paradigms concerns the object of the attempted control of thinking. The
latter paradigm, but not the former, appears particularly likely to induce a self-sustain-
ing feedback loop. In a review of the sources of cognitive vulnerability to emotional dis-
orders, Mathews and MacLeod (2005) point to the role of a certain form of circularity
in fueling and sustaining adverse thinking patterns and negative mood, such that in
different emotional disorders, “negative mood is particularly likely to persist if repeti-
tive ideation is focused on the adverse implications of the state itself.” To illustrate:
… insomnia is thought to be maintained by worry about the consequences

of lack of sleep […]; anxiety in [Generalized Anxiety Disorder] by a focus on
the negative consequences of worry […]; and depressive episodes by rumi-
nation on the symptoms and reasons for feeling depressed. […] In each case,
the focus of ideation on negative implications is believed to set up a self-
sustaining feedback loop. Accordingly, repeated negative ideation may char-
acterize vulnerability to many different emotional disorders, consistent with
the frequent comorbidity among them, while shifts in focus between differ-
ent types of cognitive content may influence which mood or symptoms cur-
rently dominate. (Mathews & MacLeod, 2005, p. 177)
Earlier, in Chapter 2, we saw just such a self-sustaining feedback loop in the model
proposed by J. M. G. Williams and colleagues (Fig. 2.3) in explaining the links between
abstract rumination, and other factors both directly and indirectly leading to overly
general autobiographical memory retrieval and impaired problem solving in clinical
depression.
Finally, an important question concerns the neuropsychological or other individual
difference factors that may contribute to effective suppression in the think/no-think
paradigm or related paradigms, and also in real-world circumstances that might be
broadly similar to it in terms of their cognitive demands and structure. The neuroim-
aging results alluded to earlier and also other findings (e.g., M. C. Anderson, Ochsner
et al., 2004) suggest that memory suppression is supported by a network of executive
control regions, including dorsolateral and ventrolateral cortex, anterior cingulate

cortex and other regions. In addition, findings have shown that individual differences
in the extent to which particularly lateral prefrontal cortex is activated during task
performance predicts the amount of memory inhibition that is observed. Several fur-
ther studies aimed at addressing this question are the focus of current research. For
example, Bell and Anderson (cited in Levy & Anderson, 2008) found that there was a
strong relation between a measure of complex working memory span (e.g., Kane &
Engle, 2002), and the effectiveness of memory suppression, with individuals with
greater working memory span showing greater memory suppression. Additionally, to
the extent that suppression in the think/no-think paradigm draws on executive control
abilities, it might be predicted that memory suppression would be attenuated in per-
sons with reduced executive control, such as some older adults. Initial findings appear
to support this prediction (M. C. Anderson et al., cited in Levy & Anderson, 2008).
More positively, and in line with some of the early behavioral findings using the
list-cued directed forgetting technique, there is evidence that selective (task-relevant)
forgetting can free up cognitive control resources to enable target remembering, by
reducing the memory competition between the to-be-remembered items versus the
no-longer-relevant items (cf., Bjork, 1989; M. C. Anderson, 2003). This work involved
the use of another inhibition paradigm, the retrieval practice paradigm (e.g., M. C.
Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). In this paradigm, each cue typically is initially associ-
ated with several target words, and some of the initially studied items are repeatedly
retrieved but other studied items are not practiced (retrieved). B. A. Kuhl and colleagues
(2007) showed that repeated retrieval of the practiced items was accompanied by
dynamic reductions in the engagement of functionally coupled brain regions that help
to detect mnemonic competition (anterior cingulate cortex, e.g., Carter & van Veen,
2007; MacDonald et al., 2000) and that help to resolve such competition through
selection or inhibition (dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex). Furthermore,
these researchers found that the magnitude of the reductions in these regions with
increasing practice on the to-be-remembered items significantly correlated with the
magnitude of later forgetting of the competitors of the targets.
Specifically, dividing the participants into those who showed a high versus low level
of suppression, based on a median-split procedure, it was found that activity in the
anterior cingulate cortex showed a very different pattern for the two groups.
Participants who were high suppressors showed high levels of activation in anterior
cingulate during the initial retrieval practice phase (the first few presentations of a
given item for practice) that then decreased with increasing retrieval practice. In con-
trast, participants who were low suppressors showed little change across the retrieval
practice trials: They did not show above-baseline activation for the first trials or a
decrease with repeated trials. These data are consistent with an interpretation such
that the high suppressors initially experienced more mnenomic competition that
they then resolved through suppression, and that the changing pattern in anterior
cingulate cortex charted this changing pattern of competition. Importantly, the
changes in anterior cingulate also covaried significantly with changes in right dorso-
lateral prefrontal cortex, which itself correlated significantly with enhanced retrieval
of the targets. Thus, conflict detection in the anterior cingulate seemed to trigger
recruitment of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, contributing to the facilitation of
the target memories by “helpfully biasing” processing toward task-relevant represen-

tations (e.g., Egner & Hirsch, 2005).
Overall, then, there is no simple “prognosis” that can be given as to whether “trying
not” to think of a given topic, or to intentionally forget an experience, is likely to suc-
ceed or to fail. The prognosis for the success versus failure of the enterprise will depend
on multiple factors relating to one’s other ongoing cognitive engagements during the
attempted suppression, the number of attempts at suppression, individual differences
in cognitive control, and the degree to which failure to suppress sets up a “vicious
circle” of concern about what that failure entails. Nonetheless, the starkly contrasting
outcomes from the think/no-think procedure (leading to successful inhibition of to-
be-banished memories even though they were initially well encoded) and the more
open-ended “white bear” thought suppression procedure (typically leading to initial
suppression but then a paradoxical rebound of the to-be-banished thought into aware-
ness) indicate that the amount of concurrent processing and directed attention that
are required by ongoing task demands (considerable in the case of the think/no-think
procedure, but minimal in the thought suppression procedure) may be particularly
important. In the next section, we further examine the puzzling predicaments that
some forms of self-monitoring of our cognition, or our “thoughts about thoughts,”
may engender—and how oftentimes we eagerly seek a respite from such self-aware-
ness, in states of absorption or complete immersion “in the flow” of a challenging and
rewarding activity.
Absorption, Flow, and “HypoEgoic” Self-Regulation:

The Controlled Losing of Control and the Melding of
Thought-Emotion-Action
Careful and close self-monitoring is essential to the successful performance of many
actions. Close self-monitoring is typically highly beneficial in situations in which we
must resist the temptation to perform a habitual or prepotent action and instead per-
form a novel or less familiar activity—such as taking a detour to avoid a newly begun
road construction project when driving along an often-traveled route, or during proof-
reading, where we must systematically and thoroughly attend to the physical text on
the page, rather than to the meaning of the words that we are “scanning.” Yet close and
continuous self-monitoring is not always beneficial. Some of the behaviors that we
deliberately and self-consciously monitor give rise to frustration, anxiety, or unease
precisely because they have come to be accompanied by an excessive amount of self-
attention, or of self-conscious awareness and monitoring. Sometimes we fail in our
intended actions not because we are paying insufficient attention but because we are
paying too much attention or are “trying too hard,” in a very direct and literal way.
A good example of such problematic behaviors is “choking under pressure,” in
which one fails to perform up to one’s current level of ability precisely under circum-
stances when maximal performance is desired, such as during a high-stakes competi-
tion or championship (e.g., Baumeister & Showers, 1986; Beilock & Carr, 2001;
B. Lewis & Linder, 1997; Masters, 1992; Mobbs et al., 2009). Thus, in golf, people may
refer to the so-called putting “yips,” or to the “bricks” in basketball free throw shooting
(Beilock & Carr, 2001). Substantial disruption of the skilled performance of complex
tasks may be instigated by a number of factors that increase self-conscious attention
to the task at hand—such as, paradoxically enough, supportive audiences (J. L. Butler
& Baumeister, 1998) or instructions. Wegner and colleagues (Wegner, Ansfield, &
Pilloff, 1998) found that participants who were instructed not to overshoot a golf putt
became more inclined to do just that.
Other examples include test anxiety, stuttering, depressive rumination, and some
forms of insomnia. For instance, Harvey (2003) found that instructing participants to
deliberately suppress thoughts about a particular (self-selected) topic prior to going to
sleep led participants to report that they took longer to fall asleep and experienced
more restless sleep than if participants were instructed not to try to control their
thoughts but simply to relax and let thoughts come and go. Notably, this effect was
observed not only among insomniacs but also among normally good sleepers.4 In this
and similar situations (e.g., Ansfield, Wegner, & Bowser, 1996), heightening the
amount of attention focused on controlling our thoughts and behaviors may exacer-
bate rather than alleviate the problem, undermining instead of facilitating our efforts
at self-control.
Under these and other conditions that can result in paradoxical effects of self-
control, individuals may attempt to deliberately forego efforts at deliberate conscious
control so as to respond more spontaneously, naturally, or automatically. Leary,
Adams, and Tate (2006) use the term “hypoegoic self-regulation” to designate such
cases in which people attempt to self-regulate precisely by abandoning direct efforts to
control their behavior.
One creative approach, designed to minimize an individual’s detrimental attempts
to exercise excessive control in one particular context—the game of golf—involves
what is known as “speed golf.” This is meant to deliberately change the conditions of
the game, so that thinking too much and trying too hard is not possible because of the
necessity to respond rapidly. Christopher Smith, who set a world speed-golf record,
observed, “In speed golf the subconscious takes over.” “It knows how to do every-
thing—at least in an experienced golfer it does, because it’s done it thousands of
times.” The difficulties arise when the conscious mind tries to take over too much,
particularly after an especially poor shot.
We hit bad shots because we’re human. Even Tiger Woods hits terrible shots
sometimes. But most players, instead of chalking that up to being human
and trusting the mind-body system to do it better the next time, allow the
conscious to step in and try to fix things, by telling us to take the club back
this way or move the body that way. But the moment you start thinking con-
sciously about how to do things, that destroys your ability to perform.
(Newport, 2008, Wall Street Journal, p. W4)
On the one hand, the notion of hypoegoic self-regulation appears to be self-

contradictory: “In what sense can self-regulation—which typically assumes deliber-
ate, intentional, and conscious self-control—involve a hypoegoic state that involves
little self-attention or deliberate control over one’s behavior?” On the other hand, it
may seem less paradoxical if one thinks of the initial intentional act as one that sets the
conditions for later spontaneity. An analogy with some forms of prospective remember-
ing, discussed earlier (see the first section of Chapter 5), may be helpful here.
Sometimes an individual’s initial deliberate control in forming an implementation
intention sets up the conditions for the later “automatic” triggering of the desired
behavior through the form of an “if, then” conditional rule. Similarly, when the
achievement of a hypoegoic state is desired, it is possible that one takes deliberate
steps to set the later conditions for less controlled processing.
Hypoegoic states may be facilitated by intentionally and consciously taking

steps that will reduce the degree to which one’s behavior is under deliberate
executive control. At the time those steps are taken, the individual is acting
consciously and deliberately (and thus may be said to be in an egoic state),
but the ultimate self-regulatory goal is to reduce deliberate self-control and
to function hypoegoically. (Leary, Adams, & Tate, 2006, p. 1804)
Several interrelated theoretical accounts partially illuminate the conditions that

help to foster hypoegoic actions. Notably, these share a focus on the ways in which the
level of specificity with which we approach our actions, and think about “what we are
doing,” can substantially affect behavioral outcomes.
One of these perspectives is that proposed by action identification theory. As we
saw previously (in Chapter 3 and Chapter 5), action identification theory argues that
there is an optimal default level of specificity at which we can frame our actions within
a given domain or task to operate most efficiently. If we move to an overly concrete
and detailed level, when we have, for instance, a high level of expertise and practice at
a given task, this may adversely affect our performance. Likewise, if we move to an
overly high level of action identity or an excessively abstract construal that is “inflated”
above that required by our level of mastery, this may provide insufficient guidance for
the required actions. Action identification theory also postulates that there is
a tendency to move to higher levels of identification, if possible. Such higher levels will
involve less detailed step-by-step monitoring and guidance of actions, with relatively
greater emphasis on broader goals or objectives. Thus, an important assumption of
action identification theory is that hypoegoic actions, particularly actions undertaken
and sustained at a relatively high level of action identification, with little self-con-
scious attention to detailed implementation of an individual’s hoped-for ends, occur
relatively often and frequently support both behavioral flexibility and efficiency.
Other related perspectives that make somewhat similar distinctions include the
contrast between deliberative versus implemental mindsets (e.g., Gollwitzer, 1999,
discussed in Chapter 5) and construal level theory (e.g., Freitas et al., 2004; Trope &
Liberman, 2003, 2010; considered in the third section of Chapter 3), according to
which various—sometimes apparently incidental—factors, such as temporal or
spatial distance, may foster the adoption of a relatively more abstract versus concrete
mindset. In addition, there are also conditions under which individuals may
spontaneously or naturally find themselves in hypoegoic states, such as while engaged
in highly practiced tasks and under conditions of what has been termed “flow”
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1996) during which individuals become deeply absorbed and
engaged in pursuing an activity, with little awareness of the passage of time

and intense attention on an unfolding task (e.g., Bakker, 2005; H. Chen et al., 1999;
S. A. Jackson & Marsh, 1996; Keller & Bless, 2008; Pekala, Wenger, & Levine, 1985;
Shin, 2006).
According to Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 1996), and also more recent characteriza-
tions (Keller & Bless, 2008), a crucial determinant of whether the experience of
flow will emerge is the compatibility between an individual’s level of skills in a given
domain and the level of task demands that he or she is facing. In particular, the flow
experiential state as characterized by Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi (2002), involves
seven different aspects, such that (1) the individual is in a state of intense and focused
concentration on what she or he is doing, (2) there is a merging of action and aware-
ness, (3) the person experiences a loss of reflective self-consciousness, and (4) feels a
deep sense of control or self-efficacy. In addition, (5) the individual’s temporal experi-
ence may be distorted, such that, for example, hours seem to pass like seconds,
(6) worries and ruminative thoughts disappear, and (7) the individual finds the
activity highly rewarding in and of itself.
Drawing on these three theoretical perspectives, together with observations of
the conditions under which hypoegoic states appear to emerge naturally, Leary and
colleagues (2006) single out two important characteristics of hypoegoic states. First,
during this state, the individual is highly self-aware for only a relatively small propor-
tion of the time; hypoegoic states are most often accompanied by an absence of
self-awareness or self-consciousness. Second, the person is largely focused on the
present moment, rather than the past or future and, often, on comparatively concrete
aspects of his or her situation. Individuals in hypoegoic states are not typically focused
on highly abstract or distant concerns, such as global evaluations of their overall
success or failure in their current pursuit, or on existential questions (e.g., What does
it all mean?).
More specifically, Leary et al. (2006) posit that there are three conditions under
which hypoegoic states are relatively more likely to occur. The first, and most fre-
quently conducive to such states, involves a combination of a low frequency of self-
related thoughts and (to the extent that they occur) highly concrete self-thoughts. In
contrast, although less common, hypoegoic states may also sometimes occur in condi-
tions involving a low frequency of self-related thoughts in combination with relatively
more abstract self-thoughts or with more frequent self-thoughts that are concrete.
Based on these characteristics, Leary et al. (2006) further suggest that people may
take one of two general approaches to intentionally promote hypoegoism. These are
schematically summarized in Figure 7.1. First, we may intentionally adopt steps that
will lead to a decrease in self-awareness. For instance, we may repeatedly perform an
action, so that it becomes highly automatic, or engage in techniques such as medita-
tion for which an explicit aim is reducing self-conscious awareness. This route is shown
in the left-hand side of Figure 7.1. Second, we may deliberately try to increase the level
of concreteness in our thinking, by inducing a concrete mindset or by practicing mind-
fulness, particularly “an open, undivided observation of what is occurring both inter-
nally and externally” that involves “the state of being attentive to, and aware of, what
is taking place in the present” (K. W. Brown & Ryan, 2003, p. 823 and p. 822; also see
the first section of Chapter 3). The right-hand side of Figure 7.1 depicts this route.
Preemptive strategies to promote hypoegoic states
(enacted intentionally and hyperegoically)
Repetition and practice Inducing concrete mindsets
Meditation Mindfulness and

present-focused awareness
Paradoxical tactics
Decreases frequency of Increases concreteness

self-awareness of self-relevant thoughts
Increased frequency of
hypoegoic states
Increased behavioral control by

nonconscious, automatic processes and
fewer negative consequences of
conscious self-regulation
Figure 7.1. Schematic Representation of Possible Paths to Hypoegoic

Regulation, or States Involving Little Self-Attention or Deliberate
Control Over One’s Behavior. Adapted from Leary, M. R., Adams, C. E., & Tate,
E. B. (2006, p. 1813), Hypoegoic self-regulation: Exercising self-control by diminishing
the influence of the self, Journal of Personality, 74, 1803–1831, with permission from
John Wiley and Sons. Copyright 2006, John Wiley and Sons.
As posited by both action identification and construal level theory (cf. Chapter 3
and Chapter 5), more concrete mindsets can be encouraged through focusing our
attention on precisely how actions are to be performed—the immediate mechanics
and specifics of doing—rather than why the action is important, or the broad objec-
tives or implications of the action. Yet this focus also needs to be at the right level for
one’s degree of skill and expertise, and for the complexity of the task at hand. If one
becomes too explicitly involved in the steps of a highly learned, well practiced, and
now “largely automatic” complex proceduralized behavior, such as playing the piano,
this frequently interferes with, rather than improves, performance. For complex pro-
cedures that are very well learned, neither a focus that is extremely general (related to
the implications and consequences of the action) or self-conscious (focused on the

consequences for the self, or one’s image in the eyes of an audience), nor a focus
that is too minutely or narrowly task-focused (involving step-by-step aspects of
a well-learned action), will yield optimal performance. Rather, pressure-induced
attention to the steps of a well-learned, complex proceduralized skill is highly likely to
disrupt execution of the skill (Beilock & Carr, 2001). Like the temperature of Goldilocks’
porridge, the level of specificity with which we attend to tasks must be “just right” for
us (for our size, strength, and skill level).
Concrete mindsets also may be fostered through an emphasis on mindfully paying
attention to the particular circumstances that we are in, at the present moment, at
precisely this point in time, rather than abstractly fretting about the more distant past
or worrying about possible events or outcomes in the future (K. W. Brown & Ryan,
2003). Finally, paradoxical tactics, such as deliberately stopping one’s efforts to control
an undesired behavior, such as speech anxiety, may also enable more concrete mind-
sets that, in turn, allow desired hypoegoic states to emerge. Paradoxical tactics involve
letting go of the need to control—so as to allow a more spontaneous and natural evolu-
tion of a behavior (e.g., DeBord, 1989). Paradoxical interventions may prove especially
effective in cases characterized by a recursive structure, such as “fear of fear.”
To illustrate, Ascher and Schotte (1999) found that individuals who had a simple
fear of public speaking did not markedly benefit from an intervention that involved
paradoxical intention: They showed faster reductions in subjective discomfort during
public speaking when given an intervention that did not include paradoxical intention
directions. In contrast, individuals who also had a “fear of fear”—that is, recursive
anxiety about speaking, particularly including self-reported fears of the “catastrophic”
effects of physiological arousal on public speaker performance, such as passing out—
did benefit from a paradoxical instruction. This instruction required them to deliber-
ately attempt to magnify, not minimize, the most prominent aspects of their fear-related
physiological (sympathetic) responses. Persons with fear of fear showed faster improve-
ment when, paradoxically, they were instructed not only to try to relinquish control,
and to accept whatever physiological and cognitive experiences ensued, but also to try
to sustain and hold onto the most unpleasant of the symptoms that they experienced.
Although there is as yet no complete theoretical account of this differential
effectiveness of paradoxical intention for individuals with simple fears versus those
also experiencing “fear of fear,” a promising potential explanation involves the
two-component model of mental control suggested by Wegner and colleagues and
introduced in the preceding section (e.g., Wegner, 1994; Wegner, Schneider, Carter, &
White, 1987). According to this account, when an individual wishes to exercise
cognitive control over a given thought or content (e.g., to suppress thoughts relating
to a particular topic or event), then active, effortful control processes are set in motion
that attempt to conform with this goal. However, concurrently, a less direct and effort-
less monitoring process is set in motion, the purpose of which is (in accordance with
the goal) to detect instances of the to-be-suppressed thoughts. When an unwanted
thought does occur, the monitoring process helps to bring that thought into conscious
awareness so as to enable control over the incompatible cognition.
This process will often prove effective—that is, effortful control processes will
successfully expel the detected thought and actively redirect thinking in another
direction. Yet the success of such controlled operations will depend on the overall level
of capacity in the system, including the presence of other stressors and so on. If too
few resources are available, then the to-be-excluded thought will emerge and remain
within awareness, “capturing” thinking. It is further suggested that, in individuals
with fear of fear, a considerable amount of their attentional and control efforts are
directed inward, toward trying to control their inner emotional and physiological
state, so as to prevent the catastrophic loss of control that they fear, rather than
outward, toward understanding, mastering, and responding to the external situational
demands they are facing (e.g., delivering a public talk). The additional demands on
their attention and the efforts focused on controlling their inner state results in a
depletion of control resources that, in turn, makes the intrusion of, and capture by,
further unwanted thoughts more likely.
In persons with fear of fear, paradoxical instructions may help to reverse this
negative spiral, because now—given the explicit instructions and intentions to delib-
erately enhance and fully experience the most uncomfortable symptoms—the auto-
matic monitoring will focus on thoughts that are inconsistent with this new goal,
including thoughts that are calming or that are neutral and would enable distraction
from the discomfort. Thus, these thoughts may have an increased likelihood of enter-
ing awareness under the paradoxical instructions, so they may ultimately lead to a
more positive experience for the person. Although speculative, these and other benefi-
cial outcomes from the use of paradoxical intentions argue that the best way to “control
control” or “thoughts about thoughts” is not always direct. Sometimes we must let go
of control to gain (renewed) control. We need oscillatory range in the level of process-
ing control that we exert, not only to gain the unique benefits derived from less directly
controlled, more spontaneous or automatic cognition but also in order to gain the
most from controlled cognition itself.
Working Well with the Unconscious: Incubation and

Complex Multicomponential Decision Making
The previous section provides evidence and arguments for the advantages—and even
sometimes the necessity—of moving toward relatively less controlled, more spontane-
ous processing so as to more effectively engage in desired behaviors such as public
speaking, falling asleep in a timely fashion, and performing at one’s optimal skill level in
competitive situations. Earlier chapters also have argued for the importance of moving
toward less controlled processing modes for enabling the spontaneous emergence of
ideas during nonfocused attention, or “mind popping” (G. Mandler, 1994) as discussed
in the final section of Chapter 3. Here we will turn to two related issues: first, the role of
both conscious and unconscious thought during periods of “incubation” in promoting
new approaches to a problem (e.g., Orlet, 2008; Sio & Ormerod, 2009) and, second,
more recent and also more controversial claims that unconscious thinking, or “delibera-
tion without attention,” may lead to more “normatively correct” decisions than does
“deliberation with attention,” at least for decisions that are highly complex and involve
numerous factors that must be appropriately weighted in our overall judgment.
When we are attempting to solve a difficult or puzzling problem, we sometimes

abandon the effort and turn our attention elsewhere—only to find that the solution
(or a clue to the solution) unexpectedly emerges into our awareness during this interim
task. Such so-called incubation effects (Wallas, 1926) may be observed in problem
solving if an impasse has been reached, and one takes a break away from the problem
(e.g., I. Yaniv & Meyer, 1987).
Although empirical support for incubation has been somewhat mixed, a recent
meta-analysis of 117 studies, including a total of 3,606 participants, reached the con-
clusion that incubation effects, do, indeed, occur. Of the 117 studies, 85 studies (73%)
reported positive effect sizes, and across studies the unweighted unbiased mean effect
size estimate (Cohen’s d) was 0.41, with 95% confidence interval bounds of 0.28
and 0.54 (Sio & Ormerod, 2009; see also Dodds, Ward, & Smith, 2011). There was,
however, also substantial heterogeneity in the magnitude of the effect sizes, and
moderator analyses revealed that beneficial incubation period effects were more
likely to be observed for divergent thinking tasks than for linguistic or visual insight
problems. Additionally, relatively lower cognitive load tasks during the incubation
phase, and longer preparation periods—prior to the incubation period—also were
associated with stronger incubation benefits.
Several different theoretical accounts of positive incubation effects have been
suggested, and each has met with at least some empirical support. Some investigators
have proposed that incubation effects are attributable to continued conscious but
covert work on the problem; that is, that the problem is reflected on during the
intervening interval, “a kind of mental time-sharing [. . .] that is forgotten after the
solution is reached” (e.g., Browne & Cruse, 1988, p. 179). In contrast, other investiga-
tors have variously emphasized the role of the intervening time and context change in
enabling the deactivation or forgetting of misleading approaches or memory blocks
(e.g., S. M. Smith & Blankenship, 1989, discussed further later), the possible contribu-
tion of unconscious processes such as persistent semantic activation (e.g., K. S. Bowers
et al., 1990; Ellwood et al., 2009; I. Yaniv & Meyer, 1987), or “implicit thoughts”
(J. Dorfman, Shames, & Kihlstrom, 1996), and the potential of intervening events to
introduce new and possibly “helpful” information (e.g., Seifert et al., 1995). Still other
accounts, including the early formulation articulated by Wallas (1926), allow for
gradations of effort:
The Incubation stage covers two different things, of which the first is the
negative fact that during Incubation we do not voluntarily or consciously
think of a particular problem, and the second is the positive fact that a series
of unconscious and involuntary (or foreconscious and forevoluntary) mental
events may take place during that period. (Wallas, 1926, p. 86)
An early study by Browne and Cruse (1988) using a visual-spatial segmentation

problem yielded evidence apparently consistent with the conscious work proposal.
Participants who were given a demanding cognitive task during the interval (memo-
rizing difficult text for later recall) showed decreased incubation effects, whereas an
intervening unfilled relaxation phase and longer work periods were associated with
increased incubation effects. In addition, participants reported reflecting on the
problem during the intervening period significantly more often in the relaxation
condition than in the demanding intervening task condition. More recently, Sio and
Ormerod (2009) interpreted their meta-analytical finding that incubation effects for
linguistic problems were increased when the intervening tasks imposed a light cogni-
tive load, compared to either a heavy cognitive load or rest, in terms of the greater
opportunities a light cognitive load might afford for unfocused or diffuse attention
(e.g., Mendelsohn, 1976; G. Mandler, 1994; Martindale & Dailey, 1996; see also the
earlier discussion of unfocused attention in the final section of Chapter 3).
During an incubation period, low demand tasks may occupy part of the
problem solver’s attention, preventing the focused concentration that yields
strong associates. Resting during an incubation period may allow individuals
to continuously work on the problem, whereas performing high demand tasks
may shift attention entirely to that interpolated task, leading to a narrow
rather than diffused attentional focus. (Sio & Ormerod, 2009, pp. 107–108)
The relation between an intervening task and the possible beneficial effects of
forgetting or deactivation of misleading approaches or cues has also received support.
One study (S. M. Smith & Blankenship, 1989) used an ingenious method of both
increasing the likelihood of observing initial impasses in problem solving and system-
atically probing the forgetting of misleading cues. The researchers presented word-
picture puzzles to participants, with many of the puzzles accompanied by a valid and
helpful clue, but a few (critical) items accompanied by a misleading cue. The mislead-
ing cue increased the number of unsolved critical items. It was then possible to exam-
ine performance on the puzzles when they were initially unsolved and after varying
delays that were either filled or unfilled with other activities. It was also possible to
probe memory for the misleading cue.
According to the “forgetting fixation” hypothesis (S. M. Smith & Blankenship,
1989), incubation is often helpful because it enables individuals to forget problem
approaches that are incorrect, but that individuals may have become “fixated” on
during their initial problem-solving attempts. This hypothesis predicts that obtaining
the solution of a problem that was earlier accompanied with a misleading cue is most
likely to be accompanied by forgetting of the earlier misleading cue. An example
problem is “timing tim ing” for which the solution is “split second timing.” The critical
item, for which a misleading cue was provided, was “you just me” accompanied by the
clue, “besides,” whereas the correct answer was “just between you and me.” After the
participants attempted to solve each of the problems, they were unexpectedly given
the problems a second time. However, for some participants the second encounter
with the problem occurred immediately, whereas for others it occurred after a 5-minute
or 15-minute delay (either filled with a different task or unfilled).
The key findings were that participants in the delay groups showed a greater
increase in problem solving for the critical item than did participants in the immedi-
ate testing condition, and that these groups also showed a higher level of forgetting of
the misleading clue than did the control group. Several further experiments likewise
demonstrated greater improvements in solving previously unsolved problems if
participants were precluded from working continuously on the problem and instead,
were asked to perform some other task in between, or simply rested, before returning
to the problems. Furthermore, these increases in solution rates for the problems were
accompanied by decreased recall of the misleading clues.
A more recent large-scale Internet-based investigation of problem solving
(Vul & Pashler, 2007) similarly concluded that interpolated time between problem-
solving attempts primarily helps individuals to reach the solutions to unsolved prob-
lems by reducing memory for incorrect problem approaches—especially incorrect
paths that are suggested via misleading clues. Indeed, this investigation found
evidence only in support of incubation as a source of forgetting of misleading
approaches, with no evidence of beneficial effects of interposed time between solution
efforts for unsolved problems if misleading clues had not been presented.
Other demonstrations of incubation similarly suggest that it may, at least in part,
be attributable to the dissipation of forms of fixation, sometimes generated spontane-
ously or naturally. For instance, tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs; e.g., R. Brown &
McNeill, 1966; James, 1890/1981; Maril, Wagner, & Schacter, 2001) occur when
individuals are temporarily unable to retrieve knowledge (e.g., items of general
knowledge or rare words in response to a brief definition) that they subjectively feel
they do possess. In an early diary study, Reason and Lucas (1984) found that 59% of
the naturally occurring TOTs that they observed involved the intrusion of at least
one “blocking” word that was provokingly similar to the correct word, but that was
incorrect. A subsequent laboratory study suggested that such TOTs may be more likely
to be spontaneously resolved—through the individual successfully retrieving the
heretofore elusive information—after there is an interposed interval during which
the individual is presented with other unrelated questions than if probed again
immediately (H. Choi & Smith, 2005). This likewise appears to support the impor-
tance of dissipating inappropriate retrieval strategies or diminishing the accessibility
of “blocking” interlopers as contributors to incubation.
However, it could be argued that the comparatively simple types of problem-
solving tasks that Vul and Pashler (2007) investigated—namely anagrams and remote
associate problems—and similarly also TOTs, are perhaps not ideally suited to reveal-
ing the beneficial effects of less deliberate, more unconscious interposed processing
on highly complex multicomponent or ill-defined problems that may allow for
multiple solutions (cf. Penney et al., 2004). In future research, it will be important to
use similarly high-powered studies to examine whether there are benefits of inter-
posed rests between solution attempts for other, more complex types of unsolved
problems. Furthermore, although incubation-like phenomena for some problems may
predominantly reflect one mechanism (e.g., forgetting of misleading problem
approaches), other instances involving incubation-like phenomena may arise mainly
from somewhat different mechanisms.
One such mechanism involves incidental encounters with new problem-relevant
information. Whereas many laboratory tests of incubation preclude the possibility of
exposure to new problem-relevant information, incubation for “real-life” problems
may often involve the surreptitious recognition of possible solution paths to ongoing
problems that emerges when we are exposed to potentially problem-relevant informa-
tion. Real-life problems frequently involve the setting of goals for which the associ-
ated task has not yet been completed. Such “open goals” may be highly relevant to
complex forms of incubation.
Emphasis on the role of incubation in fostering the recognition of new solution-

relevant information is also consistent with accounts that underscore the role of the
gradual spread and buildup of problem-related semantic activation during incubation,
thereby sensitizing the individual to problem-related concepts (e.g., J. Dorfman,
Shames, & Kihlstrom, 1996). For instance, I. Yaniv and Meyer (1987; see also Sio &
Rudowicz, 2007) proposed a “memory-sensitization hypothesis” to account for their
findings from a retrieval of rare words paradigm—particularly their observation that
words that were not successfully retrieved, but that were rated as “known” by partici-
pants, were responded to more quickly during later incidental tasks than were control
words. According to this hypothesis:
The initial unsuccessful attempt to solve a problem may partially activate

stored, but currently inaccessible, memory traces critical to the problem’s
solution. Then, during a subsequent intervening period of other endeavors,
the activation may sensitize a person to chance encounters with related
external stimuli that raise the critical traces above threshold and trigger
their integration with other available information. As the incubation period
increases, the probability of solution could increase as well, even if the resid-
ual activation level remains constant or declines somewhat, because there
would be more and more opportunities over time for relevant stimulus
encounters. (I. Yaniv & Meyer, 1987, p. 200)
In line with this possibility, in the relatively more complex situation of 9- to

12-year-old children attempting to reason about the factors relevant to floating and
sinking objects, Howe, McWilliam, and Cross (2005) found strong evidence to support
the opportunistic use of newly encountered information, with no evidence for the
“set-breaking” mechanism suggested by the fixation forgetting hypothesis. Similarly,
in a series of three studies using remote associate problems, Moss, Kotovsky, and
Cagan (2007) found clear evidence for the assimilation of problem-relevant informa-
tion that was presented implicitly, even when participants remained unaware of the
relation between the novel material and the problem. Participants were more likely to
later solve previously unsolved remote associate problems if they had made a lexical
decision to the target (answer) word at an intervening stage—even though they had
no warning that the unsolved problems would later be re-presented to them. In con-
trast, simply seeing the answer without a prior problem-solving attempt, that is,
seeing the hint before the problem was presented and thus without the presence of an
“open goal,” did not help problem solving to a similar extent.
Together, these studies clearly argue against the strong claim that the best explana-
tion for incubation effects always involves the dissipation of fixation. Not all of the
effects can be attributed to a decrease in interference arising from the reduced
activation or accessibility of a previously unsuccessful problem approach. Rather,
there is evidence in favor of both reduced fixation, and also other mechanisms, such as
opportunistic encoding of information in relation to “open questions.”
The factors that contribute to “incubation” can be conceptually differentiated from
a somewhat broader and more encompassing question concerning the role of uncon-
scious thinking in complex decisions more generally—independent of whether an
impasse or block in one’s problem-solving efforts has occurred. In recent years, several
experiments have been reported that have been interpreted as evidence for the
counterintuitive conclusion that unconscious thought leads to normatively better
decision-making performance for complex problems than does conscious thought.
However, the most parsimonious and satisfactory interpretation of these findings
continues to be a matter of considerable debate.
In one series of experiments, Dijksterhuis (2004) systematically manipulated
the amount of time that participants were allowed to reflect on complex decisions,
such as choosing an apartment. Participants were presented with a description of four
hypothetical apartments, each characterized by 12 or 15 different attributes, some
positive, some negative, and were asked to form an impression of the apartments so
as to be able to choose between them at a later time. The primary manipulation
concerned what happened after the description of the hypothetical apartments. One
group of participants, the immediate decision group, was asked to make their choices
immediately, with essentially no time for either deliberate or nondeliberate thinking.
Another group of participants, the conscious deliberation group, was given 3 minutes
to deliberately evaluate the options before deciding which of the apartments was best.
Yet a third group—the key comparison group, the “unconscious” deliberation group—
was told that they needed to make a choice, but was then immediately given an atten-
tion-demanding working-memory task for an interim 3 minutes, before being asked
to directly make the choice. In contrast to the immediate decision group that was
given no deliberation time at all, and also to the second group given the opportunity
to attentively deliberate, the last group of participants was given an opportunity to
think only “without deliberate attention.”
The surprising outcome was that participants in the “unconscious” deliberation
group apparently made better choices than did either the immediate choosers or the
intentional deliberators. The unconscious deliberation group showed a greater differ-
ence in their attitudes toward the best apartment (defined as the apartment possess-
ing the most positive features and the fewest negative features) and the worst
apartment than did participants in either of the other two groups. Additionally, only
in the unconscious deliberation group was the difference in attitudes toward the best
compared with the worst apartment significantly greater than zero. Similar outcomes
were obtained in two follow-up experiments that modified the way the descriptions of
the hypothetical apartments were presented (e.g., grouped together by apartment
rather than intermixed), and that involved choosing a hypothetical roommate rather
than an apartment.
In attempting to understand these outcomes, and, more generally, the circum-
stances under which unconscious or at least minimally controlled or only intermit-
tently controlled thinking might prove superior to deliberately controlled cognitive
processing, several considerations are important. One of these is the relatively low
capacity of conscious awareness or working memory. The average capacity of working
memory is currently estimated to be approximately four items, or fewer, if unassisted
by semantic long-term memory and other forms of support.5 In some decision-mak-
ing contexts these capacity limits might lead individuals to consider only a subset of
relevant information before making decisions.
When the choices are relatively simple, involving few attributes, then deliberative
reasoning may surpass nondeliberative choice. Further work by Dijksterhuis et al.
(2006) contrasted participants’ choices of a car, from a set of four hypothetical cars,
when each car was characterized by only 4 aspects or by 12 aspects, and again follow-
ing deliberation either with, or without, conscious attention. When the cars were each
characterized by only 4 aspects, then participants in the deliberation-with-attention
condition more often chose the most desirable car (defined as the one characterized by
the largest percentage of positive attributes). In contrast, when each of the cars was
characterized on 12 different aspects, the deliberation-with-attention group proved
significantly less likely to choose the most desirable car. Congruent with the capacity
interpretation, there also was a significant complexity by deliberation condition
interaction, such that “unconscious” deliberation yielded more optimal decisions for
the complex stimuli, whereas “conscious” deliberation had a slight (nonsignificant)
advantage for decisions regarding the simple stimuli. A similar interaction was
observed in a further study, using the same conditions, but with the difference in
attitudes toward the best and worst car as the dependent measure.
The moderating influence of stimulus complexity on the outcomes of deliberative
versus nondeliberative choice has also been demonstrated on other, more naturalistic
measures of decision satisfaction. One study (Dijksterhuis et al., 2006, Study 3) found
that correlations between the amount of thought that students reported engaging in
concerning purchased products and their degree of satisfaction with the product
differed depending on the complexity of the product. Whereas there was no correla-
tion between post-choice satisfaction and amount of thought for products of medium
complexity, r(18) = –.03, for simple products, there was a significant positive correla-
tion, r(15) = .56, p < .03, but for complex products, there was a significant negative
correlation, r(16) = –.56, p < .03.
Another important factor that may contribute to whether there are benefits of
deliberate versus less deliberate decision-making concerns the appropriate weighting
of different features or attributes of a given choice. In most decision-making contexts,
some characteristics of an object, person, or service are more important than are others,
and so should be counted more strongly than other characteristics in deciding for a
choice (if the feature is a positive characteristic) or against it (if the feature is a negative
characteristic). However, there is evidence that, under some conditions, deliberate and
conscious considerations of information may less than optimally weight information,
unduly weighting some considerations (either positively or negatively) relative to other
considerations. (See note 10 in Chapter 1, at the end of this volume, for a characteriza-
tion of heuristics as designed to reduce one or more of the effortful steps involved in
applying the “weighted additive rule” and its variants in reaching a decision.)
Seminal experiments by T. D. Wilson and Schooler (1991) showed that explicit and
analytical consideration of one’s reasons for a choice does not necessarily enhance the
quality of one’s decisions. Rather, in two quite different domains, in one case taste rat-
ings of five different strawberry jams, in the other, the selection of college courses,
these researchers found that encouraging individuals to explicitly think about the rea-
sons for their choices led to less optimal choices. In both cases, explicit encouragement
to consider the reasons for their choices resulted in a decreased correspondence between
the ratings of experts and those made by the intentionally and explicitly deliberative
choosers. For instance, the five brands of strawberry jams or preserves were selected
based on Consumer Reports magazine rankings from seven expert sensory panelists,
rating each of 16 different sensory characteristics, such as sweetness, bitterness, and

aroma. Overall, the five jams that were tasted had received ranks of 1st, 11th, 24th,
32nd, and 44th by these experts. The ratings of the strawberry jam tasters in the con-
trol group, who did not analytically consider the reasons for their ratings, were clearly
and positively correlated with those of the experts (Spearman’s rank correlation r = .55)
and this average correlation was significantly greater than zero. In contrast, the corre-
sponding correlation in the reasons condition was only r = .11, and not significantly
greater than zero.
These differences in rankings may have arisen, in part, because deliberate and
explicit decision makers tended to focus on the particular reasons they had brought to
mind, rather than more holistic or more even-handed and comprehensive evaluations.
Some evidence for more idiosyncratic weightings of factors in the reasons condition
was provided by analyses of the intercorrelations between each participant’s ratings of
the five jams in the reasons versus control condition. Whereas the ratings across the
jams were correlated across participants in the control condition (average inter-
correlation of .55, indicating moderate agreement across individuals in the ratings),
the corresponding correlation for the ratings for control participants was significantly
lower (average intercorrelation of .18). Although one might suppose that experts also
would focus on reasons, unlike in the students’ case, the experts, who were trained
sensory panelists with considerable experience in tasting food items, were provided,
in advance, with a list of criteria to consider, and so were probably less likely to be
excessively swayed by isolated features.
Other recent findings have suggested that the differences between the conscious
and unconscious thought conditions in paradigms such as that used by Dijksterhuis
et al. (2006) may also arise from the detrimental effects of requiring too much con-
scious deliberation—or conscious deliberation for a fixed (experimenter-determined)
amount of time rather than a more naturally determined or self-paced duration—and
may also depend on how the “best” option is characterized. Payne and colleagues
(2008; see also Rey et al., 2009) found that when the “best” option was one that simply
had the largest number of positive outcomes, then participants in both a condition
involving self-paced conscious thought, and one involving unconscious thought, out-
performed participants assigned to an arbitrarily fixed period of conscious thought.
However, when the magnitudes of the payoffs involved in the alternative options also
differed—and not just the sheer number of positive and negative outcomes—then
participants in a self-paced conscious thought condition chose the option with the
highest expected value significantly more often than either participants in a fixed-
time conscious thought group or participants in an unconscious thought group.
Additional findings from two research groups have questioned the appropriateness
of construing the task, in some experimental conditions aimed to explore the effects
of deliberation on decision making, as involving decisions that are made after a period
of deliberation (whether with or without attention). Both Lassiter and colleagues
(2009) and Newell and colleagues (2009) have proposed that the unconscious thought
paradigm can be more parsimoniously explained in terms of a distinction between
“on-line” versus “memory-based” judgments (Hastie & Park, 1986). Whereas on-line
judgments are made on the basis of information that is still in working memory, mem-
ory-based judgments require the retrieval of decision-relevant attribute information
from long-term memory. Lassiter and colleagues (2009) explain how this distinction
could account for the (apparent) advantage of the unconscious deliberation condition,
focusing on the encoding instructions given to participants:
We contend that participants given the preacquisition instructions “to form

an impression” effortfully integrate decision-relevant information as it is
being acquired (i.e., generate on-line judgments) and, by necessity, default to
their memory of these reasonable first impressions after a distraction period
that prevents any postacquisition, conscious deliberation […]. Participants
permitted and encouraged to think carefully after receiving decision-relevant
information, however, do not default to the online impressions they formed.
Instead, we argue that they interpret the instructions to “think carefully” as
a mandate to recall specific decision-relevant information encountered
during the acquisition stage (i.e., individual attributes) and effortfully for-
mulate a memory-based judgment on the spot. However, because these par-
ticipants are asked to form impressions from the outset, and the large
amount of information originally presented is unorganized and available for
examination only briefly, their subsequent memory of the attribute informa-
tion, and thus, their memory-based judgments are likely to be impaired. The
net result is that participants who are distracted from attending to decision-
relevant information during the postacquisition period ironically manifest
seemingly better judgments (by accessing the stored impressions they had
earlier formed on-line) than do those who presume they are to attend to and
ruminate on whatever diminished amount of relevant (attribute) informa-
tion they can recall to make their evaluations. (Lassiter et al., 2009, p. 672)
In line with this alternative interpretation, Newell et al. (2009, Experiment 4)

found that, compared with participants in immediate choice and conscious choice
conditions, participants in an unconscious thought condition showed a particularly
pronounced “recency of presentation” effect—more often choosing the option for
which more of the positive attributes were presented later in the acquisition phase.
This recency effect was observed in all three conditions, but it was most pronounced
in the unconscious thought condition, consistent with the suggestion that partici-
pants engage in online updating of the options (that is then strongly influenced by the
order in which information is presented).
Likewise in line with this interpretation, Lassiter and colleagues (2009) found that
manipulating the instructions for the preacquisition phase markedly altered the out-
comes that were observed. Whereas a preacquisition instruction to “form an impres-
sion” yielded the outcome found by Dijksterhuis and colleagues—with the mean
strength of preference for the option (car) with the most positive attributes greater
following a period of distraction than following a period with the instruction to think
carefully—the reverse pattern was found when the preacquisition instruction was to
“memorize” the attributes. Under these conditions, the “think carefully” condition
showed the higher mean strength of preference for the option with the most positive
attributes, yielding a significant preacquisition instruction by postacquisition condi-
tion interaction.
In other recent work, Thorsteinson and Withrow (2009) provide evidence that
encouraging note-taking during the acquisition phase might modestly help to boost
choice performance, and LeRouge (2009) found evidence suggesting that distraction
before a decision may be especially beneficial to individuals who adopt a holistic or
configural processing orientation rather than a feature-based processing orientation.
More recently, Strick, Dijksterhuis, and van Baaren (2010) countered with other
evidence supporting the notion that unconscious thought effects do take place
“off-line,” not “on-line”—with the further suggestion that the extent to which benefits
of unconscious thought are observed depends on the extent to which the encoding
conditions promote thorough and organized information encoding.
Three additional remarks might be made regarding unconscious thought effects on
complex decision making. First, a recent meta-analysis of 17 experiments, including a
total of 888 participants, has suggested that, overall, there is little evidence for an
advantage to normative decision making deriving from unconscious thought, but
that, “the true effect in the population may be anything between a moderate benefit
after unconscious thought to a slight advantage following conscious thought” (Acker,
2008, p. 301; also see Waroquier et al., 2009). Second, as noted earlier, the question of
the role of unconscious thought in paradigms, such as that used by Dijksterhuis and
colleagues, can be distinguished from the question of whether time away from a previ-
ously fully attempted, but still unsolved, complex problem, might be beneficial to
problem-solving performance. As we have seen, the meta-analysis of Sio and Ormerod
(2009) showed that “incubation time” is generally indeed helpful, although, depend-
ing on circumstances, these benefits may arise through one or more of several distinct
mechanisms.
Third, Halberstadt and Catty (2008, p. 756) have suggested that a key feature
of the cognitions that are most susceptible to detrimental “reasons analysis” effects is
their experiential nature: “Subjective feelings states, including both emotional
responses and pseudo-affective reactions such as familiarity and cognitive fluency, are
not only useful decision making tools, but are also likely to be underweighted under
analytic conditions.” These investigators suggested that reasons analysis will tend to
impair judgments specifically under three conditions. Those three circumstances are:
(1) if there is a subjective cue (e.g., familiarity) that is correlated with high-quality
judgments, (2) if the decision maker normally uses the cue as a basis of his or her
judgment (regardless of whether he or she is aware of doing so, or of the predictive
validity of the cue), and (3) if the cue is underused or underweighted under analytic
conditions.
It is instructive to keep these three conditions in mind when evaluating if a given
problem-solving situation might benefit from additional emphasis on controlled pro-
cessing, or instead, from a greater stress on spontaneous or automatic forms of pro-
cessing. Also, given that, in many situations, both controlled and more spontaneous or
automatic processing may yield helpful guidance, we may want to explicitly remind
ourselves of the availability of multiple strategies. As we saw in the work of Ark and
colleagues (2006, 2007), discussed in Chapter 3, for the perceptual diagnosis task that
they examined, explicit direct instructions to use both automatic similarity-based pro-
cesses and controlled feature-based search led to more effective use of combined strat-
egies and yielded significant gains in classification accuracy.
Movements between Higher Level and Lower Level

Goals: Opportunistic Design
We have seen that one of the possible mechanisms that contributes to the benefits of
time away from a complex problem, often following an impasse in one’s solution
efforts, is the “opportunistic encoding” of information in relation to the “open ques-
tion” regarding a way forward on the unsolved problem. Notably, responsiveness to
unresolved or open questions may help to explain apparent “deviations” in the think-
ing processes that have been observed during creative design tasks and in the attempts
of experts to solve complex, ill-defined problems. In a detailed consideration of the
think-aloud protocols of highly experienced computer programmers solving a com-
plex problem, Guindon (1990) observed multiple shifts in the level of abstraction at
which the programmers operated across the session. The problem involved designing
an elevator-calling algorithm for a building with a number of elevators. The shifts in
level of specificity during this task are shown in Figure 7.2 and 7.3, which conceptually
portray the design process of two individual designers (Designer 1 and Designer 2,
respectively). Shown on the y-axis are the types of design activities that the designer
engaged in, plotted across time (x-axis) from the beginning of the session. The broad
Lift scenario
+ + + + + ++ + + ++
Requirement
Design activities
Solution high
Solution medium
Solution low
R
15 30 45 60 75 90
Time (minutes)
Figure 7.2. Shifts in Design Activities and Levels of Abstraction of an

Individual (Designer 1) Solving a Complex Problem Across Time. In the
figure, plus signs indicate newly inferred or added requirements; light bulbs indicate
sudden discovery of partial solutions or requirements. The region near the end of the
90-minute session marked by “R” indicates the period of solution review. Reprinted
from Guindon, R. (1990, p. 319), Designing the design process: Exploiting
opportunistic thoughts, Human-Computer Interaction, 5, 305–344, with permission
from Taylor & Francis. Copyright 1990, Taylor & Francis.
Lift scenario
++ +
+ + + + +
Requirement
Design activities
Solution high
Solution medium
Solution low
R
15 30 45 60 75 90
Time (minutes)
Figure 7.3. Shifts in Design Activities and Levels of Abstraction of a

Second Individual (Designer 2) Solving the Same Complex Problem as
Designer 1 (Shown in Fig. 7.2). Symbols and abbreviations are as for Figure 7.2.
Reprinted from Guindon, R. (1990, p. 320), Designing the design process: Exploiting
opportunistic thoughts, Human-Computer Interaction, 5, 305–344, with permission
types of activities include scenarios relating to the main problem, understanding and
elaboration of the requirements, and development of the design solution at high,
medium, or low levels of abstraction. In the figures, “light bulbs” indicate sudden
insights experienced during the task.
As noted by Guindon, both designers:
… frequently departed from top-down, breadth-first decomposition of their

solutions. The designers expanded their solutions by rapidly shifting between
levels of abstraction and developing low-level partial solutions prior to a
high-level decomposition. Moreover, the designers interleaved problem
specification, that is, the inference of new requirements, with solution
development throughout the session. In other words, designers interleaved
problem structuring with solution development. (Guindon, 1990, p. 320)
Nonetheless, although they shifted frequently between levels of abstraction, the

designers also showed some evidence of partially following a top-down process and of
clustering of problem-solving activity into related subgroups of activity. For instance,
Designer 2 (see Fig. 7.3) had successive clusters of high-level solution development,
medium-level, and then low-level solution development. The deviations from top-down
solutions appeared to be “opportunistic” and—critically from the perspective of the
iCASA framework—also seemed to reflect the triggering of automatic rules or associa-
tions, linking particular aspects of the problem with possible solutions or specifications.
Compared with goal-directed behaviors, these “data-driven” applications of

knowledge (rules or associations) are thought to involve little cognitive cost (e.g.,
W. Visser, 1990), and reliance on such associations has been proposed as possibly
central to the human ability to solve ill-structured problems. Guindon (1990) argued
that the behavior of the designers supported such linking of automatic data-driven
processing with the solution of ill-structured problems:
Information that becomes the focus of attention—partial solutions, prob-

lem domain scenarios, requirements, and external representations—can
trigger knowledge rules. As these data-driven rules are applied, the problems
become better structured. In fact, the data-driven recognition of partial
solutions is advantageous. The designer increases the number of constraints
on the solution and decreases the daunting size of the solution problem
space at very little cognitive cost. (Guindon, 1990, p. 329)
Opportunistic design involves multiple contextually determined (data-driven)

movements between levels of specificity. As shown in the actual behaviors undertaken,
“opportunistic design is design in which interim decisions can lead to subsequent deci-
sions at various levels of abstraction in the solution decomposition.” In addition, deci-
sions at any one level of abstraction may pull one toward working on problems at either
a higher, or lower, level of specificity: “A decision at a given level of abstraction may
influence subsequent decisions at higher or lower levels of abstraction, specifying
actions to be taken at different times during the process” (Guindon, 1990, p. 336).
Subsequent theorists have both supported and contested certain aspects of
Guindon’s (1990) claims and interpretation. On the support side, based on a detailed
observational study of a mechanical engineer defining the functional specifications for
the machine operations of a factory automation cell, W. Visser (1990, p. 276), con-
cluded that, although the engineer had a hierarchically structured plan, he used it in an
opportunistic way. More specifically W. Visser (1990) concluded that the engineer used
the hierarchically structured plan “only as long as it was profitable from the point of
view of cognitive cost. If more economical cognitive actions arose, he abandoned it.”
On the contrary side, some cases of apparent “opportunism” might reflect a “depth
first” strategy, and opportunistic behavior might be less frequent and dominant than
Guindon suggests (Ball & Ormerod, 1995). Additionally, the amount of opportunism
demonstrated may depend both on the extent to which the problem is well defined at
the outset (opportunism may be more prevalent and more productive for ill-defined
problems) and also on the design approach used. For example, in a comparison of the
strategies adopted by expert computer programmers with procedural training versus
experts with object-oriented training, N. Pennington, Lee, and Rehder (1995) found
that there were more instances of opportunism shown by the procedural experts than
by experts in object-oriented programming. Although both groups of experts showed
opportunism, the object-oriented programmers showed a greater tendency to return
to parts of the design on which they had previously been working and were not
“as blatantly opportunistic as the procedural experts” (p. 195). Object-oriented
programmers also were found to move to the most detailed level of design earlier than
did procedural designers.
Nonetheless, theorists concur with the fundamental observation that designers

need to work in a context that allows for mixed modes of approach—both breadth-first
and depth-first: “The key point is that expert design environments need to be flexible.
Where environments impose an inflexible design approach on experts, they can impair
the solution development process” (Ball & Ormerod, 1995, p. 148, emphasis in
original). Similarly, based on the actual working design choices of a mechanical
engineer, W. Visser (1990, p. 277) concluded that the results constituted: “a strong
argument for tools that allow the problem solution to be abandoned at a certain level
[of abstraction], in order to process solution elements at another level, and to possibly
resume the solution state at the abandoned level. However, such tools should not
impose such a resumption either.”6
Other research suggests that similar movements between levels of specificity
likewise occur during decision making by users of a database. When the data were
structured hierarchically, most users tended to use the data in a hierarchically
top-down manner for some of the time; however, these top-down search strategies
were “punctuated by opportunistic episodes where attributes are accessed as the
need arises, rather than in a completely organized hierarchical manner” (Archer, Head,
& Yuan, 1996, p. 614). Given evidence that decision makers tend to prefer to use less
effortful decision-making strategies and place a high value on effort minimization
(e.g., Todd & Benbasat, 1993), these authors also argue that the evidence for such
movements between top-down and opportunistic search should dissuade those
who design data interfaces from choosing systems that lock the user into a uniform
top-down or other built-in strategy.
Clearly, hierarchical data structures can be helpful in decision making based on
data retrieval. Yet constraining users to one particular approach might “interfere with
their tendencies towards branching into opportunistic episodes” (Archer et al., 1996,
p. 614) and could adversely affect the decisions made if this, in turn, diminishes the
amount of information that is accessed. Providing a flexible interface also might better
accommodate individual differences in the preferred search approaches of different
users and also their responses to different categorization approaches that emphasize
more analytical versus more holistic forms of processing, such as alphabetical
lists versus differing category and subcategory formats (S. Y. Chen, Magoulas, &
Dimakopoulos, 2005).
At a broad level, these outcomes regarding both the processes of design and of data
search nicely converge with the evidence that we considered, in the fourth section of
Chapter 3, demonstrating that adopting both a highly controlled feature-based ana-
lytic strategy and a more automatic holistic familiarity-based strategy led to improved
accuracy of decision making in a diagnostic task compared to using either strategy
alone (Ark et al., 2006, 2007). The findings reviewed here similarly suggest that, at
least under some conditions, more optimal forms of both convergent and divergent
thinking might be achieved by adopting intermixed modes of processing and varying
levels of specificity, rather than exclusively, or too rigidly and too narrowly, using one
or the other alone. Excursion 7 (“Goals, Making and Finding, and Oscillatory Levels of
Control”) further expands on the role of opportunistic exploration in creative and also
innovative endeavors, such as strategic planning. As suggested there, several artists
point to ways in which they highly deliberately allow a degree of permeability and
plasticity in their aims and goals as they interact with the material world, flexibly
shifting between “making” versus “finding.” In this approach, and depending on
context and other demands, aims become something that have multiple origins, in
our selves and in what the world offers.
Encountering Diversity in the Thoughts

and Views of Others
Creatively adaptive thinking and decision making are clearly influenced by the diver-
sity and range of thoughts and differing perspectives that we encounter as we work on
a given problem. Ideas and approaches suggested by others may introduce new aspects
and raise new considerations that, were we left to think on our own, might never occur
to us. A key contributor to the value of ideas we meet with through our interactions
with others arises from the diversity of others. We may differ from each other in many
ways, including demographic characteristics, cultural identities and ethnicity, training
and expertise, and in “functional diversity,” characterized by Hong and Page (2001,
2004) as involving differences in how individuals represent problems (“perspectives”),
and in their problem-solving approaches (“heuristics”).
Our intuitions concerning the benefits to be derived from access to diverse
problem-solving approaches and varying viewpoints suggest that groups of diverse
problem solvers can outperform groups of more homogeneous problem solvers. Notably,
mathematical models of how functional diversity in group-composition influences
problem solving support this intuition (Hong & Page, 2004). Nonetheless, the empirical
evidence for the effects of diversity on problem solving and performance is mixed and
complex. Evidence for both positive effects of diversity, such as increased creativity and
innovation, as well as for negative effects, such as decreased group cohesiveness and
increased conflict, is inconsistent (Van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007). Additionally, a
tremendous range of factors may moderate the effects of diversity on performance.
Among these are task difficulty (C. Bowers, Pharmer, & Salas, 2000), the amount of
time individuals have been in the group (e.g., W. E. Watson, Kumar, & Michaelsen,
1993), maintenance versus changes in group membership (e.g., Nemeth & Ormiston,
2007), the strength and consistency with which “minority” views are advanced and
defended within the group (e.g., De Dreu & West, 2001; Nemeth & Kwan, 1987), and
the extent to which differences in opinion lead to cognitive conflict or affective conflict
(Amason, 1996), to list only a few. Both meta-analyses and narrative reviews of the
extant evidence conclude that a “main effects approach is unable to account for the
effects of diversity adequately” (Van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007, p. 518).
Given the mixed and inconclusive findings, Van Knippenberg and Schippers (2007;
Van Knippenberg, De Dreu, & Homan, 2004) have argued against relying on various
typologies of diversity, such as that between social category diversity (that empha-
sizes how similarities and differences between group members form the basis for
categorizing the self and others into groups) versus informational/functional
diversity (that focuses on diversity-associated variation in task-relevant knowledge,
skills, and abilities, and opinions and perspectives). They suggest that both the
social categorization and the information/decision-making perspective have failed to
provide reliable evidence for links between a given type of diversity and either positive
or negative diversity effects. Rather, these investigators propose that all dimensions
of diversity may “in principle elicit social categorization processes as well as informa-
tion/decision-making processes, because all dimensions of diversity in principle pro-
vide a basis for differentiation and may be associated with differences in task-relevant
information and perspectives” (Van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007, p. 521). Similarly,
in an earlier review, K. Y. Williams and O’Reilly (1998, p. 81) emphasized the natural
tendency of individuals to use categories to simplify the world of experience, and thus
took the position that “for our purposes, the effects of diversity can result from any
attribute people use to tell themselves that another person is different.”
Adopting an alternative approach, D. A. Harrison and Klein (2007, p. 1200) have
argued that an undifferentiated notion of “diversity” itself may be a source of the con-
ceptual and empirical inconclusiveness. They suggest that “diversity is not one thing
but three things”—and that the “substance, pattern, operationalization, and likely
consequences of those three things differ markedly.” One sense of diversity is that of
separation, involving differences in position or opinion among the members of the
group on a given continuum, and reflecting disagreement or opposition. A second
sense (perhaps that often assumed in using the term diversity) is that of variety,
involving differences in the kinds or categories of information, knowledge, or experi-
ence that the group members possess. Third, diversity may also involve disparity—as
in differences in status or pay or access to valued social and other resources that the
group members may have.
D. A. Harrison and Klein (2007) propose that different theoretical perspectives,
and quite different predicted outcomes, might best fit instances of diversity in these
different cases. Informational processing accounts emphasizing the importance of
variety and selection in thinking and problem solving may most readily be applied to
“variety,” with predicted outcomes of higher levels of variety leading to “greater
creativity, innovation, higher decision quality, more task conflict, and increased unit
flexibility.” Notions of attraction based on similarity and social categorization might
more closely apply to that of separation, with predicted outcomes of “reduced
cohesiveness, more interpersonal conflict, distrust, and decreased task performance.”
The third sense of diversity, that of “disparity” might be better accounted for by yet
another theoretical perspective relating to distributive justice and equity (or injustice
and inequity), with high within-group or within-team disparity anticipated to lead to
“more within-unit competition, resentful deviance, reduced member input, and
withdrawal” (D. A. Harrison & Klein, 2007, p. 1203).
Taken together, it is clear that simple unconditional conclusions regarding the
benefits or drawbacks of diversity in team and group membership thus are not possi-
ble. The theoretical and intuitive case for the benefits of variation in perspective and
problem-solving approaches is strong (e.g., Simonton, 2003; see also the discussion
of “learning to vary” in the final section of Chapter 5), and positive effects on
performance outcomes such as decision comprehensiveness have been documented
(e.g., T. Simons, Pelled, & Smith, 1999). Nonetheless, numerous conditions may work
against the emergence of such potential benefits, leading to weak or detrimental
effects (see the references and reviews cited earlier, and also Herring, 2009; Horwitz
& Horwitz, 2007, for representative findings and further discussion).
In Chapter 10 we will consider longitudinal and epidemiological evidence regarding

the conceptually related questions of the beneficial effects of multiple and varied
social interactions and leisure pursuits on sustaining adaptive cognitive function,
particularly in older individuals. Here, however, it might be noted that another broad
indirect source of evidence supporting the role of diversity of views and stimulating
environments in creative flourishing derives from the fields of geography and
economics. Examination of the patterns of geographical movement of creative
individuals reveals that such individuals often move to environments that have
a creative milieu—involving frequent face-to-face interactions among entrepreneurs,
artists, intellectuals, students, and others that provoke and promote new ideas,
artifacts, products, and services (Landry, 2000; Wojan et al., 2007).
The idea that individuals continuously shape and modify their physical and interper-
sonal environments to meet cognitive and creative growth needs also has been empha-
sized in the developmental literature. In Chapter 6, for example, we encountered notions
that early increased stimulation seeking may predict later openness to experience/intel-
lect, and Raine et al. (2002) specifically hypothesized that “young stimulation seekers
create for themselves an enriched environment that stimulates cognitive development”
(Raine et al., 2002, p. 663). Other studies (e.g., Leung & Chi-yue, 2008; see also Maddux
& Galinsky, 2009) similarly provide evidence that not only the composition of the groups
and organizations to which individuals belong but also individual psychological charac-
teristics, such as openness to experience, will need to be taken into account in any com-
prehensive treatment of how, why, and when encountering diversity in the views and
knowledge of others promotes, versus detracts from, adaptively creative functioning.
Looking Back
The current chapter might be seen as a hinge between the first and second parts
of the book that concentrated on concepts and categorization versus motivation
and emotion, respectively. In the initial sections of this chapter we explored the
surprisingly powerful influences of our “metacognitive” assumptions regarding the
nature of thinking, knowledge, and intelligence on how we respond to challenges and
to the experiences of failure or success—and whether and how we are likely to under-
take remedial efforts that will both overcome immediate shortcomings and also help
to build longer term competencies. Although “beliefs about beliefs” may appear to be
highly abstract and conceptual, we saw that epistemological beliefs are closely
intertwined with motivational and emotional processes. Such intertwining was also
demonstrated in the factors, such as anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty or of
ambiguity, that contribute to the quality and extent of our “data gathering” and
evidence assessment (for example, “jumping to conclusions”).
We also considered factors relating to our ability to accurately assess the outcomes
of our own behaviors, and our level of confidence in our decisions. Here, for example,
we focused on the likelihood of our accuracy in such metacognitive assessment for
immediately prior individual decisions (when much of the relevant information
contributing to the decision is likely still available within working memory, and we
may be inclined to adopt an “inside view” that focuses on the specific case at hand)
versus across a larger number of previous decisions (involving retrospective

assessments that may draw on longer term memory, that may be more broadly based
and schematic experiences in a domain, and where we may be more likely to take an
“outside view” involving distributional information across a wider range of cases).
Overconfidence (greater confidence than is warranted given our actual decision
accuracy) was found to be more likely in the former, than in the latter, case. We also
looked at more encompassing dispositional tendencies toward adopting a stance of
optimism versus pessimism, and the circumstances under which each might help to
foster adaptive responding and resilience, or contribute to feelings of despair.
In subsequent sections, we turned our attention toward both cases of successful
loss of undesirable levels of self-consciousness, through immersion in challenging
and rewarding activities and leading to “hypoegoic” states such as “flow,” and to frus-
tratingly unsuccessful periods of attempting to “control control.” Fruitless efforts to
discontinue thinking certain thoughts so as to be able to fall asleep, and “choking
under pressure” and therefore failing to perform at one’s best, despite high levels of
expertise or practice, provided vivid examples of unsuccessful efforts to “control con-
trol.” We also saw the importantly and surprisingly different outcomes associated with
two forms of attempted thought suppression—the think/no-think paradigm versus
paradigms akin to the “white bear” thought suppression approach. Some of the key
cognitive and procedural differences that might help to account for the directly con-
trasting outcomes of successful inhibition in the former case, and failed suppression
in the latter, were noted. The increased likelihood that a would-be banished thought
would “rebound” into awareness precisely during those times that our cognitive
resources are diminished through fatigue, stress, or other factors, was also noted.
In the final two sections of the chapter, we turned to look at the dynamic intersec-
tions of our thinking and creative processes with “external” supports and enticements.
The “opportunistic” capitalizations shown by two different computer programmers in
response to incidental or serendipitous encounters with new information that might
add constraints during a complex design process were concisely and clearly captured
in graphic form (see Figs. 7.2 and 7.3). Problem solvers often show multiple but not
entirely unprincipled “oscillations” between differing levels of specificity during prob-
lem solving, broadly following a more abstract overall plan but also adroitly taking
advantage of specific concrete circumstances that may emerge on the path to
a solution, sometimes branching off to complete subgoals and sub-subgoals, so as to
“aptly” reduce cognitive effort.
In the final section, we briefly took up the complex question of when and how
diversity in the people and groups we interact with influences creatively adaptive
thinking. Diversity among project team members may promote the incorporation of
not only “diverse” but also divergent, and sometimes discrepant, viewpoints into our
plans and projects, and both desirable forms of “variety” and undesirable forms of
“separation” or “disparity” may emerge. Returning to the analogy of this chapter as a
“hinge,” these later sections also have provided an initial window onto some of the
topics of Part III, particularly the role of our ongoing social and physical environments
in beneficially channeling and spurring, but sometimes also undermining and
forestalling, mental agility.
Excursion 6: Uncertainty versus Equivocality

Some problem-solving or problematic situations arise from a state of “uncertainty,”
which can be resolved by acquiring or filling in the missing information. However,
many important situations that confront us, also asking us to respond and act, are
not of this form. Rather, it may be that the situation really is open to more than one
interpretation or construal—it is a situation that is “equivocal,” rather than only, or
primarily, “uncertain.”
In such situations, it is not that we could form just any interpretation; there are
many “facts of the matter” that must be accommodated and that will thus rule out a
large number of construals. Nonetheless, when we add together all of the “facts of the
matter” that we have, and any further “facts” that we can imagine obtaining, they do
not, of themselves, sum together to force us to reach one interpretation. Further, in
many problem-solving or problematic situations that we face, the situation itself may
be partially changed by how we “query” it and act or interact with it.
The difference between situations that predominantly involve uncertainty and
those that also involve equivocality can be understood through a comparison of two
different versions of the “game of 20 questions.” In the game of 20 questions as it is
usually played, one person or group secretly think of, and agree upon, a specific object.
Then the questioner attempts to ascertain the object that has been thought of by
asking a series of systematic and increasingly focused questions.
But imagine a somewhat different game, as characterized by the physicist
John Wheeler (Daft & Weick, 1984). In this other game, there is no one generally
agreed-upon and “known answer” at the outset of the game but several—a different
one for each player apart from the questioner, known only to each player. Nonetheless,
any new answers provided to the questioner must themselves be consistent with
the answers that were provided previously. Thus, if necessary, the players will
need to change their (as yet undivulged) answers to conform to the answers that already
have been given to the questioner. In this version of the game of 20 questions, the ques-
tioner’s own queries and also each of the prior answers of the other players will sig-
nificantly shape (although not entirely determine) the answer that is obtained.
This latter version of the 20 questions game is often closer to the types of situa-
tions that we daily encounter, in scientific, professional, economic, and social con-
texts, and that demand our agile thinking. These are situations in which the behavior
of the other “players” in the game is constantly changing what is (or can be) a good or
possible answer for us to provide, and where our own previous actions may have a
returning influence on the situation. These are situations where an overly rigid and
dogged persistence in attempting to reach a predefined and predetermined goal often
will yield primarily frustration and wasted opportunities. Instead, in such situations
we may need to adopt our goals and aims, and also our “readings” of the context in
which they are to be pursued, in a more provisional way, leaving them open to
revision—and re-visioning—as events and processes unfold. Tolerance of ambiguity
and openness to new information may prove especially stalwart and sustaining
characteristics in the face of equivocal situations of this sort.
Excursion 7: Goals, Making and Finding,

and Oscillatory Levels of Control
Agile thinking partly originates in how our goals or purposes in thinking and
engaging with the world are formed, held, and maintained. Rather than a precisely
defined “problem” and “problem space” as is characteristic in some (although perhaps
not many) situations involving highly directed thinking or structured and step-by-
step problem solving, our goals when we are being fully agile thinkers may be more
fluidly and only broadly and partly rather than fully specified. Although there may be
specific tasks, or components of tasks, that are held to be essential, and that also may
be completed in a highly controlled and directed way, this “top-down” analytic mode
of processing will not remain invariably in place. It will be called upon—but then
stepped out of—at multiple points. Rather than unilateral impositions on the world,
aims become something that have multiple origins, both in our selves and in what the
world offers.
Agile thought needs both control (top-down directives, limits, and constraints)
and spontaneity, allowing for the “inputs” of chance and circumstance that could never
have been anticipated. Agile thinking needs “oscillatory range” in our overall mode of
cognitive processing, embracing both highly controlled and intuitive or perceptual
modes, together with more intermediate modes.
Many of our significant objectives often are best (most beautifully, most satisfy-
ingly, most completely) accomplished by an admixture of the two means of creativity
that in the world of the arts have been called “making” and “finding” (Shiff, 1986).
Making is what we bring to our projects, in our ideas, our hopes, and our plans. Finding
is what the world “discovers” to us, in the process of approaching or attempting to
realize our ideas. Finding includes both new material possibilities deriving from our
physical and perceptual interchange with the medium, and new ideas or connections
that arise out of our interactions with the medium. Too exclusive attempts to “make”
often will narrow and stultify our aims, and preclude our ability to benefit from the
freshness and the often surprising forms of congruence that are generated when we
are receptive to, and actively embrace, newly surfaced “finds” never explicitly con-
ceived as part of our goals. Yet too exclusive an emphasis on “finding” has hazards of
its own, including excessive indirection, distractibility, and inconclusiveness.
There are many indications from artists and creative individuals that they
engage in an “interstepped” combination of tenacious goal persistence and flexible
goal adjustment. Several illustrative quotations follow:
I sometimes begin drawing with no preconceived problem to solve, with only

a desire to use pencil on paper and only to make lines, tones and styles with
no conscious aim. But as my mind takes in what is so produced a point arrives
where some idea becomes conscious and crystallizes, and then control and
ordering begin to take place. (Henry Moore, 1955, p. 77)
I never know whether I’m going to work in color or in black and white in
advance. It’s the subject, the occasion, the place, the circumstances that lead
me to decide and I try to decide as late as possible. (Jeff Wall, 2005, np)
Sometimes you have a very clear idea from the very beginning but very often,
and I think this is even the better situation where, the idea of the project
grows over the time and becomes more visible like a photographic paper—
where the image reveals itself over the time. (Jacques Herzog, 2005, np)
I would like that when I go back to work not to know what the end is going
to be. (Eva Hesse, 2006, p. 304)
You explore each project, and you don’t know what’s going to come out at the
end, and so it’s like an adventure. (Alison Brooks, 2005, np)
I was lucky on those islands […]; sometimes poems do not get written so
easily. Inner recesses of the mind are not at your beck and call. Perhaps there
are small elves in the head, privileged guests living there and continually busy
with their own affairs. The only connection the conscious mind has with
them is when they permit a collaboration, which perhaps neither the con-
scious nor the unconscious was capable of alone. (Al Purdy, 2000, p. 595)
Over the years, one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that my work
is much smarter than I am. Although I think I know what I’m working on,
the work is silently, persistently, trying to tell me what it’s truly
about—which is often more complicated and contradictory and chaotic than
I first saw or thought or intended. At this point, I often feel somewhat
uncomfortable and confused and frustrated, which I’ve also learned over
the years, probably means I’m on the right path. The key, for me at least,
is to listen deeply to what the work is trying to tell me without trying to
smooth out its paradoxes or rough edges. Often these contradictions contain
the true energy of the work, its necessary tensions, what I’d even go so far as
to call its “life.” So, by looking intently and listening long and hard to the
work—as I continue to photograph and weave in new work—eventually
the work lets me know when it’s done, or perhaps a better way of saying it:
the work lets me know when it’s done with me. (Rebecca Norris Webb,
2009, np)
… art happens. It happens when you have the craft and the vocation and are
waiting for something else, something extra, or maybe not waiting; in any
case it happens. It’s the extra rabbit coming out of the hat, the one you didn’t
put there. (Margaret Atwood, 1982, p. 347)
Here an analogy with research on strategic planning of organizations also is useful:

Although planning and vision are undeniably necessary, in a constantly changing
complex environment, there are severe limits on what can be planned without the
plan itself becoming obsolete or an unwieldy and unrealistic misfit. Instead, there is
an iterative interaction between the equivalent of “thought” and planning, and action,
with receptivity to the consequences of the action. The precise and ultimate “strategic
direction” of the organization then may not be something that was ever explicitly spelled
out in the mind of any one person or group of persons, but something that emerged
over time, as individuals acted, evaluated the consequences of their actions, acted
again in accord with the new information in hand, and so on.
For instance, in an extensive analysis of the planning practices of 656 firms,
researchers (Brews & Hunt, 1999) found that effective strategic planning involved
both formal planning (which might be seen as akin to the artist’s “making”) and what
is known as “incrementalism” (akin to the artist’s “finding”). Formal planning involves
a deliberate, rational and linear process in which the ends to be achieved are specified
first, and the means to attain them second. In contrast, in incrementalism, either the
ends and means are specified simultaneously, or they are intertwined. Furthermore,
the ends are seldom stated in formal documents or announced and, if they are, they
are stated in broad, general, and nonquantified terms. Means are allowed to develop
and evolve over time, in response to “learning” by the organization and individuals
within it.
Brews and Hunt (1999) argue that good planning encompasses both formal plan-
ning and incrementalism: “specific plans may represent the ‘intended’ strategy while
the inevitable incremental changes that follow as intentions become reality represent
the emergent, or ‘realized’ part of the firm’s ‘deliberate’ strategy. Both are necessary
and neither is sufficient” (p. 903). Similarly, other research suggests that, particularly
in highly dynamic complex industries, such as the computer products industry,
both strategic planning and “autonomous decisions”—made by managers in response
to changing environmental conditions without appeal to higher approval—jointly
contribute to strong financial performance (T. J. Andersen, 2000; see also Langley
et al., 1995).
Thus both at the individual level and that of groups, teams, or organizations, dis-
covering and realizing the best balance between “making” and “finding” with regard to
our aims is a delicate ever-renewed (and renewing) dance. Extremes towards either
side may lead to less than ideal outcomes. Too much emphasis on making may lead us
to insularity and rigidity, arising from our imperviousness to changing circumstances
and new opportunities; too much emphasis on finding may leave us flitting here,
there, and now there, subject to the vagaries of chance and contingencies over which
we exert too little control.
Part Three
BRAIN AND ENVIRONMENT

8
Brain Bases of Levels of Specificity
and Levels of Control, Part 1
The Frontal Cortex, and Beyond
A better understanding of the neurochemistry of prefrontal

cortical function will advance not only the treatment and
understanding of the abnormal mind, but also that of the usually
adaptive, but at times inflexible and unfocused, “healthy” mind.
—T. W. Robbins (2005, p. 140)
An organism that was not able to protect intentions and goals

from interfering stimuli and prepotent but inadequate responses
would suffer from distractibility and impulsivity; an organism
that was not able to flexibly switch a currently active cognitive
set would suffer from perseveration and behavioral rigidity.
—G. Dreisbach et al. (2005, p. 483)
Each of the following four chapters focuses on how the brain—through and during
our ongoing interactions with our mental, physical, and social environments—enables
and supports flexibly adaptive thinking. The current chapter and the next one
(Chapters 8 and 9) are paired or “companion” chapters that consider experimental
research, mainly from cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, on the neural
contributors to levels of specificity, levels of control, and their interrelations in
enabling agility of mind. The subsequent two chapters (Chapters 10 and 11) are also
paired, and they survey a wider range of evidence (longitudinal, epidemiological, and
observational as well as experimental) concerning the crucial and continual interfaces
with our broader environment that create “brain paths to agile thinking.” From the
perspective of the iCASA framework, as conceptually summarized in Figure 1.2 in
Chapter 1, together these four chapters shift our focus to the two outermost dimen-
sions—brain substrates and our wider experiential environment—within which our
mental representational landscape is always situated. We now turn to focus on how
both brain and environment contribute to both representational accessibility across
the various domains (concepts, perception, action, and emotion) and our movements
across both levels of control and levels of specificity.
337
338 BRAIN AND ENVIRONMENT
Characterized in broad brushstrokes, the current chapter focuses predominantly

on the relatively more controlled and abstract ends of the levels of control and levels
of specificity continua. Evidence will be considered at several levels, including that of
neural systems (e.g., the frontal-parietal network) and also, although less extensively,
neurochemical and neurophysiological levels. We begin this chapter with an overview
of ways in which the frontal cortex is uniquely situated to play an adeptly adaptive and
abstract representational role. Subsequent sections focus on evidence from single-cell
recordings for the flexible abstract representation of categories and rules, neuroimag-
ing evidence for hierarchical and functional distinctions within the frontal cortex, and
neurochemical and neuroanatomical contributors to three forms of cognitive flexibil-
ity, including set shifting, reversal learning, and task switching. Neuropsychological
and lesion evidence for cognitive flexibility of a more “spontaneous” form, such as
typically called on in tasks of fluency and divergent thinking, is then considered.
A final section takes up the interrelated topics of goal neglect, fluid intelligence, and
working memory, and underscores the need to go “beyond frontal cortex” to consider
the dynamic and continually changing interactions of frontal regions with parietal
and occipitotemporal cortex.
Abstraction and Flexibility, Adaptability and Control:

The Role of the Prefrontal and Frontal Cortex
The prefrontal cortex has long been known to be crucially important to enabling the
flexible control of behavior by intentions and goals, and to the representation of the
rules and strategies that guide our actions (e.g., Passingham, 1993; see Bunge, 2004;
E. K. Miller & Cohen, 2001, for review; also see Fig. 2.1 in Chapter 2 for a schematic
diagram, illustrating the role of the prefrontal cortex, with connections to the basal
ganglia and sensory and motor cortex, in flexibly adaptive cognitive control). A prom-
inent feature of damage to prefrontal cortex is difficulties in adaptively switching
between different abstract rules in response to changing circumstances. “Inflexibility
of behavior,” “inability to switch spontaneously from one mode of action to another,”
and “persistence of inappropriate sets in the face of mounting errors” (Milner, 1963,
p. 108) were documented by several early observers of patients with frontal lesions
on tasks such as multiple-choice problems. Such difficulties have, however, been
especially clearly shown on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task.
In this much-used task, simple stimuli that vary on several dimensions, such as
their color and shape, must be classified or “sorted” by the test-taker according to to-
be-inferred rules (e.g., the cards should be placed into piles on the basis of their color,
or their shape, or based on the number of stimuli shown). Crucially, the rule that the
test-taker is to follow is changed once he or she has successfully determined the rule—
but the test administrator does not directly state that the rule has changed. Instead,
the feedback provided is altered, such that if the test-taker continues to use the
“old” (no longer operative) categorization rule, feedback that his or her response is
“incorrect” is given (e.g., Milner, 1963; Owen et al., 1991; Stuss et al., 2000). Difficulties
in switching from one classification rule (e.g., sorting on the basis of the shape of the
stimuli while ignoring any differences in their color and number) to another (e.g., now
B ra i n B a s es of Level s of S pecificity and Lev e l s of C on t rol , Part 1 339
sorting on the basis of color, while ignoring the other two dimensions of shape and
number) are shown by individuals with prefrontal damage even when they can readily
state the possible categories for sorting. Despite knowing and being able to state what
the possible bases for sorting the stimuli are, the patients get “stuck” in using one
sorting rule, perseveratively continuing to respond on the basis of a categorization
rule that was previously relevant but is no longer correct.
In contrast, other findings from individuals with damage to the frontal cortex have
demonstrated a phenomenon that seems to be the opposite of such perseverative and
inflexible persistence: Such patients may also show what Duncan and colleagues
termed “goal neglect.” In goal neglect, individuals “can say exactly what it is that they
should do, yet show no apparent attempt to do it” (J. Duncan et al., 1996; J. Duncan
et al., 2008, p. 131). Although the patients can state and remember what they are to
do, it is as though those requirements just “slip from their mind” and they fail to act
in accordance with what they know.
Thus, under some conditions, it seems that prefrontal lesions make the individual
too inflexible—so that he or she does not adapt to changing circumstances and contin-
ues to adhere to rules that are no longer appropriate. Yet, under other conditions, such
individuals seem to be too readily distracted, without sustained guidance by the rules
and goals of the task. Duncan et al. (1996) summarize the multiple forms of disrup-
tion to action and decision that may emerge as a consequence of lesions to frontal
cortex, noting that deficits are frequently observed in the organization of many differ-
ent kinds of behavior:
Coherent, goal-directed behavior is distorted by irrelevant or ill-judged intru-

sions or by an apparent neglect of task demands; active search for a path
towards a task’s goals—so characteristic of normal human behavior—is
replaced by performance that seems passive, inert, stereotyped, or frag-
mented […]. Such deficits can be revealed in almost any behavioral domain,
from stimulus categorization […] to maze learning […], picture description
to solving puzzles, [and from] story recall to regard for social conventions
[…]. In different contexts the patient may appear perseverative or distract-
ible, rigid or inappropriate, passive or impulsive and disinhibited. (J. Duncan
et al., 1996, p. 258)
Although several factors contribute to these varied and sometimes apparently

contradictory impairments of functioning, central to characterizing and understand-
ing the difficulties observed are both the level of specificity at which the goals and
purposes of action are framed, and the level of control the individual has over his or
her activities.
For a complex behavior or set of behaviors, there may be multiple differing levels of
control operative at any one time, with more general goals and strategies specified at
a higher level, and often maintained for a longer period of time, and more detailed,
more transient or changing (“how to”) steps specified at a lower level. Thus, executive
control has frequently been characterized within a hierarchical framework, in which
regions within the prefrontal cortex represent the general task demands or task goals
in a relatively “abstract” form that guides “lower level” information processing in a
top-down manner. Key functions of the frontal lobes are the “shaping of behavior
by activation of action requirements or goals specified at multiple levels of abstraction”
(J. Duncan et al., 1996, p. 293, emphasis added) and guiding or enabling appropriate
alternations between “active,” “controlled,” or “voluntary” modes of control, and forms
of responding that are more “passive,” “automatic,” or “stimulus-driven” (p. 263).
These basic notions of levels of specificity and levels of control are common to
many different proposals of action and self-regulation, such as the early Test-Operate-
Test-Exit model proposed by G. A. Miller, Galanter, and Pribram (1960), the self-regu-
lation model of Carver and Scheier (e.g., 1990, 2003), and the models of the
hierarchical control of particular actions described by Vallacher and Wegner’s (1987,
1989) action identification theory (considered in Chapter 3 and also in Chapter 5).
Similarly, in the “supervisory attentional system” proposed by Shallice and Burgess
(1996; R. Cooper & Shallice, 2000) there is a distinction between a “high-level” system
that is particularly called upon in situations that involve novelty or the nonroutine:
This system is “concerned with the development of strategies for tackling novel tasks
using processes of abstraction and generalisation, monitoring implementation of the
strategy, and correcting errors” (G. Cohen, 2000, p. 7). In the model proposed by
Shallice, Burgess, and colleagues, whereas the supervisory attentional system is
thought to provide top-down control mechanisms of action processing, a second
“lower” level, involving “contention scheduling” of a hierarchy of schemas, is called
upon in routine situations, allowing for more automatic activation of the needed sche-
mas for well-learned and well-practiced actions.
There are several important functional-anatomical characteristics of the prefrontal
cortex, and also several characteristics of individual neurons within prefrontal cortex,
that could enable an inherently flexibly adaptive—and abstract—representational
role. At the functional-anatomical level, the prefrontal cortex receives and sends pro-
jections to most of the cerebral cortex and also to the major subcortical systems,
including the hippocampus, amygdala, cerebellum, and the basal ganglia. The connec-
tivity and integrative capacity of this region is immense, characterized by E. K. Miller
and Buschman (2008) as a “hub of cortical processing, able to synthesize a wide range
of external and internal information and also exert control over much of the cortex.”
Furthermore, although different subdivisions of the prefrontal cortex have distinct
patterns of connectivity (for example, orbital prefrontal cortex is extensively inter-
connected with limbic regions that are particularly involved in emotion and memory,
whereas lateral prefrontal cortex is extensively connected with sensory and motor
cortex), nonetheless, there are:
prodigious connections both within and between [these] subdivisions,

ensuring a high degree of integration of information […] Additionally, the
heavy reciprocal interconnections between regions provide an infrastructure
ideal for abstract learning—one that can act as a large associative network
for detecting and storing associations between diverse events, experiences,
and internal states. After learning, such a network can complete or “recall”
an entire pattern given a subset of its inputs, an ability that may allow for a
given situation to be recognized as a specific instance of an internal model of
a more abstract one. (E. K. Miller & Buschman, 2008, pp. 421–422)
At the level of single cells, recordings from prefrontal neurons in monkeys have
shown that such neurons have the ability to sustain their activity across delays of
multiple seconds, thereby providing the opportunity to encode and maintain goal-
related information across time. Munakata and O’Reilly (2003) propose that a general
principle for why the prefrontal cortex should develop more abstract representations
than posterior cortex—and thus “facilitate flexible generalization to novel environ-
ments” is because “abstraction derives from the maintenance of stable representa-
tions over time, interacting with learning mechanisms that extract commonalities
over varying inputs” (p. 10). Neurons in prefrontal cortex also can represent an
extremely wide range of types of information, from different modalities, and demon-
strate remarkable plasticity, and they can, with training, come to represent multiple—
and often abstract—rules or contingencies. Prefrontal neurons have been shown to
support same/different rule learning (Wallis, Anderson, & Miller, 2001; Wallis &
Miller, 2003; further considered in the next section) and to encode other forms of
abstract information, such as perceptual categories (Freedman, Riesenhuber, Poggio,
& Miller, 2002, also considered in the next section), numbers (e.g., Nieder, Freedman,
& Miller, 2002), the value of choice outcomes (e.g., Montague & Berns, 2002),1 behav-
ioral strategies (Genovesio et al., 2005), and intentional sets (Mansouri et al., 2006).
As we will see, the relation between levels of control and levels of specificity in
prefrontal cortex has been an intense focus of research in recent years, and several
different accounts of the structuring principles of the frontal cortex in relation to dif-
fering forms of “abstraction” have been offered. Although they differ in multiple
respects, an important divergence between the proposed accounts involves whether
they emphasize regional differences in the forms of processing operations that are per-
formed, or the type of mental representations that are present in the different regions.
On the one hand, accounts that posit processing hierarchies “require that superor-
dinate levels, operating over longer time scales, asymmetrically modulate subordinate
processing.” On the other hand, accounts that posit representational hierarchies
“require that superordinate representations form abstractions over subordinate
representations favoring generality over detail and allowing information to be
inherited asymmetrically from higher to lower levels” (Badre, 2008, p. 193). Processing
approaches take the view that cognition in prefrontal cortex “can be described in
terms of performance without specifying the representation that underlies these
‘processes’” (J. N. Wood & Grafman, 2003, p. 140). In contrast, representational
approaches—similar to the approach that has been adopted for trying to understand
the functions in posterior cortical regions, such as the representation of words, faces,
and objects in occipital and temporal cortex (considered in Chapter 9)—posit that
there are representations in prefrontal cortex that store elements of knowledge:
When activated, these representations correspond to a unique brain state

that is signified by the strength and pattern of neural activity. The represen-
tation is a “permanent” unit of memory that can be modified by repeated
exposure to similar knowledge elements; it is a member of a local psycho-
logical and neural network that is composed of many similar representa-
tions. Accordingly, “processes” in cognition are a set of representations that,
when activated, remain activated over a period of time—a possibility that is
supported by data showing sustained firing by [prefrontal cortex] neurons.

(J. N. Wood & Grafman, 2003, p. 140)
From the point of view of representational accounts, there is not a sharp divide
between representations and processes, insofar as the sustained activation of sets of
representations is what “processes” are. For example, the success of goal maintenance,
or its failure, involves patterns of activation in sets of representations that are either
maintained as needed, or not.
In an analytical review of different perspectives on human prefrontal cortex,
J. N. Wood and Grafman (2003) systematically evaluated several prominent theories
of frontal function and classified them as taking mainly a processing versus represen-
tational perspective, or as “hybrid” accounts encompassing both processing and
representational aspects. They grouped two theories as processing accounts: the
adaptive coding model proposed by J. Duncan (2001) and the model of attentional
control proposed by D. A. Norman and Shallice (1986) and Shallice and Burgess (e.g.,
1996). Three were hybrids of processing and representational views: the somatic
marker hypothesis of Damasio and colleagues (e.g., Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, &
Damasio, 1997), Fuster’s temporal organization account (1997, 2001), and the work-
ing memory model of Goldman-Rakic (1987, 1995). Three were grouped as represen-
tational: a connectionist model of cerebral cortical function more generally (not only
prefrontal function) proposed by Burnod (1991), E. K. Miller and Cohen’s (2001)
guided activation theory, and their own structured event complex theory (Grafman,
2002; J. N. Wood & Grafman, 2003; also see J. N. Wood & Grafman, 2003, for
additional discussion).
Several further distinctions, apart from that between processing operations versus
representations, also become relevant when one attempts to understand the relations
between levels of abstraction and control within the prefrontal cortex. One concerns
the question of what it is, more precisely, that the “abstraction” is an abstraction of.
Many forms of action control involve temporal abstraction: “the use of a single repre-
sentation to span and unite a sequence of events” (Botvinick, 2008, pp. 201–202).
Also often involved is what has been termed policy abstraction—“the use of a single
representation to cover an entire mapping from stimuli to responses” (Botvinick,
2008, p. 202), such as “turning off the light” regardless of whether that end is accom-
plished by flicking a switch, pulling a chain, or turning a dimmer knob.2 Both temporal
abstraction and policy abstraction also are related to the further notion of state
abstraction, or the “treatment of nonidentical stimuli or situations as equivalent”
(Botvinick, 2008, p. 207), as, for example, when we ignore whether words are printed
in uppercase or lowercase letters because this is not relevant to our purposes—and
thus is also related to category representations.
Another relevant distinction derives from the functional or behavioral origins
of particular associations or subgroupings of lower level with higher-level goals. It is
possible to differentiate between an instrumental structure of multicomponent behav-
iors, defined by means-ends relations, involving goals and subgoals in a part-whole
structure, versus a correlational structure, focusing on the statistical co-occurrence of
particular subunits. Using an example provided by Botvinick (2008), the action of
placing money into a safety deposit box can be decomposed into several goal and
subgoal portions (e.g., get the key, unlock the door, deposit money, lock the door).
However, some of these relations are common across different instrumental goals. For
example, the sequence of “get the key, unlock the door, and open the door” occurs not
only in the context of placing money in a safety deposit box but across a range of other
circumstances such as removing money from the box, checking the contents of the
safe, or securing or removing other valuables such as documents or jewelry.
Thus, particular sequences of behavior may become associated with one another
not only through their connections to a particular instrumental goal but also through
frequent co-occurrence across differing instrumental goals. Although there is a close
relationship between correlational and instrumental organization, these two forms of
organization can be differentiated from one another and may have differing effects on,
for example, the nature of the associations that we learn, and our memory for events
(e.g., Saffran & Wilson, 2003; Zacks et al., 2007). Botvinick (2008) suggests that
whereas goal-directed behavior may rely on instrumental structure, habit-based
behavior may rely on correlational structure, as when, for example, behaviors may be
triggered directly by particular environmental contexts or sequences without media-
tion of goal representations (e.g., Botvinick & Plaut, 2006; W. Wood & Neal, 2007).
Lastly, there is a strong relation between the requirements for effectively instanti-
ating action control in the right order and at the right times and working memory
capacity. O’Reilly and Frank (2006; Botvinick, 2008) enumerated three properties that
are essential to the effective control of hierarchically structured action: (1) the ability
for higher level representations to remain relatively stable in their level of activity
across varying lower level or fine-grained events, involving “robust maintenance”;
(2) the ability to rapidly and effectively select and then deselect subactions as required,
involving “rapid updating”; and (3) the ability to selectively update representations
depending on the relevant steps in the sequence of unfolding actions and their
success/failure, or “selective updating.” More generally, E. K. Miller and Cohen (2001)
propose that a key function of prefrontal cortex is “to acquire and actively maintain
patterns of activity that represent goals and the means to achieve them (‘rules’)
and the cortical pathways needed to perform the task (‘maps’—together ‘rule maps’)”
(E. K. Miller & Buschman, 2008, p. 422, emphasis in original).
We will here look at levels of control and specificity in the prefrontal cortex at
several converging levels of analysis. Based on neurophysiological recordings in the
awake behaving monkey, the crucial role of individual neurons in prefrontal cortex in
coding and maintaining a representation of rules will be demonstrated. At the systems
level, we will focus on recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies
that have sought to characterize regional differences in levels of abstraction and con-
trol functions in frontal cortex in humans. We will also consider neuropsychological
and individual differences analyses, using combined behavioral, lesion and neuroim-
aging methods to map the relations between maintaining and updating goals, and
measures of fluid thinking requiring the flexible coordination and updating of multi-
ple goals and subgoals. Our consideration of the relations between updating goals,
working memory, and fluid thinking will also point to the necessity for considering
the dynamic reciprocal interactions between frontal cortex and posterior regions,
including parietal cortex and the sensory-associative cortical regions that represent
the multiple forms of information on which working memory can operate.
Single Neurons and Flexible Abstract Representation

of Categories and Rules
Single-cell recordings in the awake behaving monkey undoubtedly provide one of the
most cogent sources of evidence for the central role of the prefrontal cortex in enabling
the flexible representation of abstract rules. From the many investigations that might
be considered here, beginning with the classic report of Fuster and Alexander (1971)
to many more recent studies, we will focus on two: the first involving the learning (and
flexible unlearning) of a novel visual categorization task, reported by Freedman,
Riesenhuber, Poggio, and Miller (2002), and the second involving the learning of an
abstract same/different rule, reported by Wallis, Anderson, and Miller (2001).
In their study of visual categorization, Freedman et al. (2002) trained monkeys to
categorize a very large and varied set of computer-generated pictorial stimuli, involv-
ing more than 1000 different instances, as either “cats” or “dogs.” The stimuli were
created using a morphing system that permitted the “morphing” of the pictured
objects into a large number of different specific shapes, drawn from six prototype
images (three species of cats and three breeds of dogs), and enabled precise definition
of the category boundary between the two classes of stimuli (see Fig. 8.1, upper panel).
Cats were to be designated as “cats” if the pictured stimulus was comprised of more
than 50% of cat characteristics, but as “dogs” if the stimulus was comprised of more
than 50% of dog features (see Fig. 8.1, lower panel). This morphing procedure allowed
the creation of some stimuli that, although visually very similar to one another, were
nonetheless from different categories, and contrariwise, produced other stimuli that,
although visually quite dissimilar, nonetheless belonged to the same category. The
training began with highly distinct (prototype) images for each category (e.g., an
image that was 100% dog), but then progressively introduced morphed exemplars
from the categories that were more difficult to classify (e.g., exemplars that were 80%
or 60% dog).
Using single-cell recordings, the activity in individual neurons of the prefrontal
cortex was recorded while the monkeys performed a delayed match-to-category task.
In this task, the animal had to judge whether two successive stimuli were from the
same category. At the beginning of each trial, the monkeys first grasped a metal bar
and focused on a small dot or visual fixation point at the center of a computer screen.
They were then presented with the sample stimulus (for 600 ms), followed by a delay
of 1 second, and then the second choice stimulus appeared (for 600 ms). If the choice
stimulus was from the same category as the sample stimulus (e.g., the sample stimu-
lus was a dog and the choice stimulus also was a dog), then the monkey had to release
the bar (“match” trials). If the sample and choice stimulus were from different catego-
ries (“nonmatch” trials), the monkey was required to continue holding the bar until a
further delay had occurred and a final (always matching) stimulus was presented at
which point the monkey released the bar. Recordings of neural activity focused only
on the first categorization decision.
The monkeys were very accurate at making this two-choice categorization decision
(mean accuracy of approximately 90%). Accuracy was also high even when the pre-
sented stimuli were degraded, such that the pictures of the cats and dogs appeared
(a) C2
C1 C3
“cats”
2-category boundary
“dogs”
D1 D3
D2
3-category boundaries
(b)
100% CI 80% CI 60% CI 60% DI 80% DI 100% DI
Figure 8.1. Examples of the Stimuli and Stimulus Classification Schemes

used in the Classification Experiments of Freedman et al. (2002). Shown in
(a) are the six prototype images, with the three cat prototypes above, and the three dog
prototypes below, the two-category boundary (shown with horizontal broken line). Also
shown, separated by the dotted black vertical lines, is the differentiation of the stimuli
according to the new three-category classification rule on which one of the monkeys was
subsequently trained. The lower panel (b) provides an example of the morphs that were
created across two of the prototypes (i.e., C1 and D1 in the upper panel). Reprinted from
Freedman, D. J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., & Miller, E. K. (2002, p. 931), Visual
categorization and the primate prefrontal cortex: Neurophysiology and behavior,
Journal of Neurophysiology, 88, 929–941, with permission of the American Physiological
Society. Copyright 2002, American Physiological Society.
without either the head or the tail shown (mean accuracy of approximately 80%),
suggesting that the monkeys had learned to classify the stimuli not on the basis of an
individual feature but rather on the basis of a combination of features.
Many individual neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex of the monkeys showed
activity that seemed to reflect the monkey’s decision as to whether the—sometimes
ambiguous and difficult to classify—stimulus they were seeing was a “cat,” according
to the rules, or a “dog.” That is, single neurons in prefrontal cortex coded the classifica-
tion outcome of whether the stimulus was a cat or a dog, and typically showed relatively
similar patterns regardless of whether the stimulus was a “pure” instance of the
category (e.g., 100% cat) or a less pure instance (e.g., only 60% cat).
Figure 8.2 graphically presents the firing activity of two of the neurons that
showed a classification-related role. One of these neurons (shown in the upper panel)
was especially responsive to stimuli in the dog category—regardless of whether the
stimulus was 100% dog or also included an admixture of some features that were
cat-like. With regard to when it tended to be most active, this neuron showed promi-
nent activity during the delay period between the initial presentation of the sample
and also before the required choice. The second neuron (shown in the lower panel) was
especially responsive to stimuli in the cat category. This neuron showed heightened
activity in the latter portion of the sample period (when the first stimulus was still
displayed), continuing into the early portion of the delay phase. Approximately one-
quarter of some 400 randomly selected neurons were found to show such stimulus
selective effects, and of these nearly three-quarters showed main effects of category,
preferentially responding to either cats or dogs.
It is important to note that this learned categorization by individual neurons in
prefrontal cortex was not an inevitable or necessary occurrence for the animals
to learn to classify the stimuli. In principle, it might have been the case that, rather
than single neurons coding the to-be-learned categories, this information was only
(or predominantly) coded across a large set or ensemble of neurons—and it is known
that the encoding of stimuli in other areas of the brain, such as that for faces in
temporal cortex, may involve a more broadly distributed coding approach (e.g., Rolls,
2007; see also Kriegeskorte et al., 2008). However, classification at the level of the
single neuron, and classification that is not highly responsive to stimulus similarity
per se, may substantially contribute to the rapid—and ultimately highly flexible—
categorization of unfamiliar stimuli or stimuli that must be classified on the basis of
newly learned or rapidly changing contingencies.
Additional evidence in favor of such adaptively flexible categorization was provided
by efforts to train one of the monkeys who had learned the cat–dog categorization
task on a new and different three-category classification rule for the same set of stimuli
(the three-category stimulus classification is shown with the vertical bars in Fig. 8.1).
After the monkey had been trained on this new unrelated three-category classification
task, about 65% of the 103 neurons that were recorded from were found to be visually
responsive, and of these approximately 25% were stimulus selective. For example, the
neuron depicted in Figure 8.3 was differentially responsive to the new category “C”
compared with either category “A” or category “B” (upper panel), particularly increas-
ing responding to stimuli from category C toward the end of delay period and into the
early portion of the choice phase. Notably, this neuron did not differentiate between
the—now irrelevant—categories of dogs versus cats (see Fig. 8.3, lower panel). This
same pattern of “updated classification behavior” was found across all 103 neurons,
such that whereas now information about the three-category scheme was coded by all
of the neurons, there was no longer detectable information about the previously
learned, but now irrelevant, distinction between the categories of dogs versus cats.
However, not all neurons responded only to the two- or the three-category differ-
entiation: Some neurons responded to more abstract aspects of the classification tasks.
In particular, one set of neurons was observed that responded on the basis of whether
A Fixation Sample Delay Choice
13
Dog 100%
Dog 80%
Dog 60%
Fining rate (Hz) 10
4
Cat 100%
Cat 80%
Cat 60%
1
−500 0 500 1000 1500 2000
Time from sample stimulus onset (ms)
B Fixation Sample Delay Choice
70 Cat 100%
Cat 80%
Cat 60%
60 Dog 100%
Fining rate (Hz)
Dog 80%
Dog 60%
50
40
30
20
−500 0 500 1000 1500 2000
Figure 8.2. Single Neuron Activity in the Two-Category Classification

Task. Examples of the activity (firing rate, in Hz) of two single prefrontal neurons, as
a function of time from sample stimulus onset (in ms), and experimental phase
(fixation, sample, delay, choice) recorded during the two-category classification task.
The neuron in the upper panel (A) demonstrated greater activity to dogs than to cats
during the delay phase, with this pattern found for the neuron’s average activity at all
three morphing levels (i.e., 100%, 80%, and 60% dog). In contrast, the neuron in the
lower panel (B) demonstrated greater activity to cats (for all three morphing levels)
than to dogs, particularly in the late sample and early delay phases. Reprinted from
Freedman, D. J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., & Miller, E. K. (2002, p. 935), Visual
categorization and the primate prefrontal cortex: Neurophysiology and behavior,
Journal of Neurophysiology, 88, 929–941, with permission of the American Physiological
Society. Copyright 2002, American Physiological Society. Note: See the insert for a
347
A Fixation Sample Delay Choice
10
Category A
Category B
Fining rate (Hz) 8 Category C
0
−500 0 500 1000 1500 2000
B Fixation Sample Delay Choice

10
CATS
8 DOGS
Fining rate (Hz)
0
−500 0 500 1000 1500 2000
Figure 8.3. Single Neuron Activity in the New Three-Category

Classification Task. Example of the activity (firing rate, in Hz) of a single
prefrontal neuron, as a function of time from sample stimulus onset (in ms), and
experimental phase (fixation, sample, delay, choice) recorded during the new three-
category categorization task, learned after the two-category task. As shown in the
upper panel (A), this neuron now demonstrated greater activity to Category C than to
Category A or B, particularly late in the delay phase and the early part of the choice
phase. In contrast, as shown in the lower panel (B), the same neuron no longer
responded differentially to the no-longer-relevant cat versus dog category distinction.
Reprinted from Freedman, D. J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., & Miller, E. K. (2002,
p. 937), Visual categorization and the primate prefrontal cortex: Neurophysiology and
behavior, Journal of Neurophysiology, 88, 929–941, with permission of the American
Physiological Society. Copyright 2002, American Physiological Society.
348
the presented choice stimulus matched (or did not match) the sample stimulus.
Whereas approximately 9% of all of the 395 prefrontal neurons that were recorded
from in the two-classification task responded to the category of the choice stimulus
(dog vs. cat), some 11% of the neurons responded to the match/nonmatch status of the
stimulus. Some of these neurons responded predominantly to match trials, regardless
of whether it was a “dog/dog” or “cat/cat” trial, and others predominantly fired on
nonmatch trials (“dog/cat” or “cat/dog” trials). Stated differently, these neurons were
signaling information about the relation between the sample and the choice stimulus,
not about the individual identity or classification of the stimuli.
These neurons that coded the relational (match/nonmatch) status of the sample
and choice stimuli were observed in the context of a relatively concrete, albeit difficult,
visual classification task, in which the monkeys were required to differentiate between
cats (or, often, only predominantly “cat-like” stimuli) and dogs or dog-like creatures.
An important question, however, is whether such an abstract classification rule as the
match/nonmatch rule could be learned more directly by the monkeys, and whether
neurons in the prefrontal cortex would represent this abstract rule across a wider
range of stimuli, that varied across time.
In other work that aimed to address this question, Wallis, Anderson, and Miller
(2001) attempted to directly train two monkeys to flexibly switch between using the
matching rule versus nonmatching rule on a trial-by-trial basis. The trial was a match
trial if the stimulus shown on the sample and the test display was exactly the same
(identity match), whereas a mismatch trial occurred if the sample and test display dif-
fered. The experimenters provided cues as to whether the rule for the upcoming trial
was to respond on the basis of a match or, instead, on the basis of a mismatch, between
the two stimuli. The rule that was to be used on each trial was signaled to the monkeys
by one of two cues (e.g., for Monkey A, either a drop of juice or a blue background
indicated that the match rule should be used, whereas no juice or a green background
indicated that the nonmatch rule should be used; for Monkey B, a high vs. low audi-
tory tone and juice vs. no juice cues indicated the match vs. nonmatch rules, respec-
tively). The rule instruction cue for each trial was briefly presented (for 100 ms)
concurrently with the sample stimulus.
In addition, four different objects were used on each day of training and testing.
Changing the objects every day required the monkeys to learn the rules separately
from (abstracted from) the particular stimuli that they were shown. Furthermore, the
use of four different objects on each day made it impossible for the animal to accurately
predict the upcoming stimulus that would follow the presentation of the sample stimu-
lus (nonmatches could be any one of the three other stimuli that were operative that
day), and also necessitated that the animal remember both the current sample stimu-
lus and the current rule (matching rule or nonmatching rule) in order to perform well.
Activity was recorded from a total of 492 neurons, located in the dorsolateral,
ventrolateral, and orbitofrontal prefrontal cortex. Nearly 40% of the neurons showed
activity that reflected the currently operative rule (match/nonmatch) for the trial,
showing very similar levels of activity regardless of the specific sample that was
presented. Furthermore, a subset of 69 neurons showed an especially high level of
abstraction, responding only on the basis of whether the rule indicated for a given trial
was match or nonmatch, without regard to the modality of the instructional cue (e.g.,
a visual cue vs. a gustatory/taste cue), thus suggesting supramodal coding of the rules.
These findings were replicated and extended in another study (Wallis & Miller,
2003), in which the monkeys were asked to apply the match/nonmatch rules to
stimuli that differed on every trial. The observation of similar findings under these
varying conditions further supports the notion that the monkeys had learned general,
abstract rules, and that their successful application of the rules was not constrained
to the sensory details of either the stimuli or the instruction cues that were used to
indicate which rule was currently in place. Thus, the animals could flexibly, adaptively,
and highly efficiently apply the match/nonmatch rule to novel cases. The researchers
concluded:
The capacity for abstraction is an important component of higher cognition;

it frees an organism from specific associations and gives it the ability to
generalize and develop overarching concepts and principles. The ability of
PFC [prefrontal cortex] neurons to group cues into behavioural categories
that are dependent on abstract rules is consistent with observations of a loss
of flexibility after PFC damage and with the ability of PFC neurons to form
perceptual categories. […] The prevalence of rule activity is not inconsistent
with studies showing the role of the lateral PFC in working memory […] or
the orbital PFC in processing affective information […] but it does suggest
that the abstraction of rules and principles may be an important prefrontal
function. (Wallis, Anderson, & Miller, 2001, p. 956)
In line with these and other findings, Duncan (2001) proposed an “adaptive coding
model” of prefrontal cortex, central to which is the idea that:
… throughout much of prefrontal cortex—certainly including much of the

lateral surface—the response properties of single neurons are highly adapt-
able. Any given cell has the potential to be driven by many different kinds of
input—perhaps through the dense interconnections that exist within the
prefrontal cortex. […] In a particular task context, many cells become tuned
to code information that is specifically relevant to this task. In this sense, the
prefrontal cortex acts as a global workspace or working memory […] onto
which can be written those facts that are needed in a current mental pro-
gram. It is exactly this adaptability that is reflected in the large proportions
of frontal neurons that are found to code events in whatever arbitrary task a
monkey carries out. The same adaptability is reflected in the imaging finding
that the same overall patterns of prefrontal recruitment are associated with
widely different cognitive demands. (J. Duncan, 2001, p. 824)
Building on this notion, Duncan (2001) argued that adaptive coding implies both
selective attention or a selective emphasis on currently relevant inputs and a deem-
phasis on nonrelevant inputs, and further implies that adaptive coding assumes a key
role in the control of processing:
Subjectively, a selective prefrontal focus on task-relevant information, with

its accompanying dominant representation in sensory, motor, memory,
motivational and other systems, would correspond to the state of controlled,

active attention to this information, or, equivalently, to controlled, active
maintenance in working memory. In this way, the prefrontal cortex carries
out a central function in configuring a flexible cognitive system to address specific,
current concerns. (J. Duncan, 2001, p. 825, emphasis added)
Nonetheless, there was one unexpected outcome from the follow-up study of Wallis
and Miller (2003) and also of a further study from this group (Muhammad, Wallis, &
Miller, 2006). This unanticipated outcome concerned the predominant location of the
neurons that responded earliest to the match/mismatch rules. Based on the findings
of the effects of prefrontal cortical lesions on categorization performance in human
patients, it was anticipated that, in the monkeys, the neurons that coded the match/
mismatch rule would predominantly be found in prefrontal cortex rather than in the
more posterior region of frontal cortex comprising the premotor cortex. However, this
was not the pattern that was observed in either study. In both studies (Muhammad,
Wallis, & Miller, 2006; Wallis & Miller, 2003), although there certainly were neurons
in prefrontal cortex that coded the match/mismatch rules, there were relatively
stronger match/mismatch rule effects in premotor cortex than in prefrontal regions.
Given the abstract nature of the represented rule, this outcome also is apparently
contrary to many recent neuroimaging findings with humans—to be considered in
the following section—that strongly suggest that comparatively abstract rules are
represented in relatively anterior regions of the prefrontal cortex, whereas specific
rules (e.g., concrete stimulus-response associations) are represented in the more
posterior regions of frontal cortex, including premotor cortex.
The likely explanation for this outcome is important, and it very clearly shows the
necessity of considering not only the level of specificity of the representations involved
(abstract vs. specific) but also the level of practice or experience that has been acquired
with respect to the relevant task (level of control). In these studies, the monkeys were
highly familiar with the rules and had performed the tasks for many months. In con-
trast, the difficulties that animals show (Dias, Robbins, & Roberts, 1997) and that
people with prefrontal lesions show in adaptively learning and using abstract rules or
categorizations are most clearly observed for tasks which are novel and are not highly
practiced or familiar (Shallice, 1982; Shallice & Burgess, 1996; however, see also Allain
et al., 1999; Zanini, 2008).
Additionally, there is neuroimaging and neurophysiological evidence that the
relative importance of prefrontal cortex in sustaining task performance may change as
a function of increasing practice on a task. For example, neurons in prefrontal cortex
respond more vigorously when an animal is initially learning a novel and reversing cue
association in which it must first learn to associate a given stimulus with a response
(e.g., to look toward the right in response to instruction cue A) but then, later, to do
the reverse (e.g., to now look toward the left in response to cue A), than when it is
responding on the basis of an already-learned, nonreversing cue-response association
that the animal has known for days or weeks (Asaad, Rainer, & Miller, 1998).
In humans, positron emission tomography (PET) and fMRI studies have shown
that prolonged performance of tasks such as repeatedly generating verbs in response
to nouns may lead to decreases in brain activation in the prefrontal cortex as the task
becomes increasingly familiar and “automatic,” and the responses increasingly stereo-
typed and habitual (e.g., Buckner, Koutstaal et al., 2000; Raichle et al., 1994). Changes
in the relative amount of activity in prefrontal cortex, with a comparative increase in
premotor cortex activity (dorsal premotor cortex, BA8B) for well-learned compared
with novel task rules, also have been shown (Boettiger & D’Esposito, 2005). Thus, it
may be the case that, as suggested by Wallis and Miller (2003, p. 1804), prefrontal
cortex “plays a greater role in rule acquisition but then, with increasing practice, the
task becomes more strongly encoded in ‘downstream’ motor system structures.” This
interpretation is, then, consistent with the multilevel perception-action hierarchy that
has been proposed by Fuster (e.g., 2004, 2006, 2009; see also Chapter 1 and Fig. 1.5),
in which although prefrontal cortex is “at the apex” of the hierarchy, nonetheless, for
relatively simple or for highly familiar, well-learned behaviors, sensory-to-motor trans-
formations can occur at relatively lower levels, including the premotor cortex.
Neuroimaging Evidence for Hierarchical

and Functional Distinctions within Frontal
and Prefrontal Cortex
Recent neuroimaging studies, particularly two elegantly analytical studies by Koechlin
et al. (2003) and Badre and D’Esposito (2007), have provided strong evidence for a
hierarchical ordering of control within the frontal cortex. These studies demonstrated
remarkable systematic mappings between the level of abstraction involved in a given
rule or representation and the regions of frontal cortex most involved in representing
that rule—particularly the degree to which different cortical regions along the ante-
rior-to-posterior axis were involved, from the most anterior regions in the prefrontal
cortex (most abstract) to those more posterior, and closer to motor and premotor
cortex (least abstract).
Koechlin and colleagues (2003; see also Kouneiher, Charron, & Koechlin, 2009)
proposed that the control of executive processes involves distinct areas of prefrontal
cortex, depending on whether the control occurs at a relatively lower level (e.g., in
response to a simple sensory stimulus) or at a higher level (e.g., depending on the
particular context and the status of one’s current and ongoing goals). According to
this model, the central executive system involves a multistage cascade architecture in
which “each stage maintains active representations that are controlled by higher
stages and that exert control on representations in lower stages” (p. 1184). In their
fMRI study designed to test this proposal, Koechlin et al. (2003) manipulated three
nested levels of processing control, which they characterized as involving stimulus
control, contextual control, and episodic control. The three levels and proposed hierar-
chy of control are diagrammed in Figure 8.4.
The first (lowest) level involved sensory control in which motor actions are selected
in response to particular perceptual stimuli. For example, in one session for this level,
participants were shown squares that were either green or white. White squares were
distractors and participants were required to respond to green squares by making a
left button key-press. This comprised the simplest stimulus control condition. In a
Episode Rostral Episodic

LPFC control
Contextual Caudal Contextual

signals LPFC control
Stimulus Premotor Sensory

cortex control
Past event Stimulus Motor Time

& context response
Figure 8.4. Functional Model of the Multistage Cascade Architecture

Proposed by Koechlin et al. (2003), Indicating Three Levels of Control
(Episodic, Contextual, and Sensory) and Corresponding Brain Regions
as a Function of Time (X-Axis). Note that, in the terminology used in the text,
rostral LPFC corresponds to anterior lateral prefrontal cortex and caudal LPFC
corresponds to posterior lateral prefrontal cortex. The cascade from comparatively
more anterior to comparatively more posterior regions is indicated with the
increasingly thick arrows, indicating cumulative contributions to cognitive control.
Reprinted from Koechlin, E., Ody, C., & Kouneiher, F. (2003, p. 1181), The architecture
of cognitive control in the human prefrontal cortex, Science, 302 (Nov. 14), 1181–1185,
with permission from the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS). Copyright 2003, AAAS.
slightly more advanced level, but still involving stimulus control, participants were
shown squares that were green, red, or white, and they needed to make a left button
key-press response for green squares, a right button response for red squares, and to
ignore white (distractor) squares.
In contrast, at the second level, involving contextual control, selection of an appro-
priate stimulus-response association depended on an external contextual signal. For
example, here participants were shown letters in one of two different colors (white or
green). If the letter was green, then participants were to respond by deciding whether
the letter was a vowel or a consonant.
In the third condition, involving temporal or episodic control, control depended on the
temporal episode in which the stimuli occurred; this condition required the monitoring
of ongoing events and ongoing internal goals. For example, here participants were
shown letters in one of three colors (yellow, blue, or cyan), and the color of the letters
signaled which tasks they were to perform: cyan signaled that they were to ignore the
letters, yellow indicated that they were to perform the consonant/vowel judgment
task, and blue indicated that they were to perform an uppercase/lowercase judgment.
These researchers predicted that the three levels of control—episodic, contextual,
and sensory control—would make cumulative contributions to cognitive control, such
that brain activity during tasks requiring these levels of control would gradually sum
up from anterior lateral prefrontal cortical regions to more posterior and premotor
frontal regions. Consistent with this broad framework, using motor and cognitive
tasks designed to tap these three levels (including those described earlier, and con-
ceptual replication conditions of each), Koechlin et al. (2003) found that the
most posterior region of frontal cortex, that is, premotor cortex, was activated
for all three manipulations. In contrast, lateral prefrontal cortex/anterior premotor
cortex was activated for the sensory and context levels, and the most anterior
region of anterior lateral prefrontal cortex was activated for the episodic level only.
These three regions of frontal cortex are schematically shown in the lower panel of
Figure 8.6.
The theoretical account proposed by Koechlin et al. (2003) focuses on levels of
control (rather than representation). In contrast, according to the account proposed
by Badre and D’Esposito (2007), the anterior to posterior axis of the prefrontal cortex
“comprises a representational hierarchy, in that the character of processing at all levels
of the hierarchy is the same (i.e., computationally uniform)” (p. 2083); more specifi-
cally, “the functional gradient along the anterior-to-posterior axis of the PFC derives
from a representational hierarchy ranked by the abstractness of the representation to
be selected, rather than by the control signal” (p. 2084).3
In an extensive and analytically powerful fMRI experiment involving four “mini-
experiments,” Badre and D’Esposito (2007) used a classing rule to define four levels of
competition between the representations to be selected, from more concrete to increas-
ingly abstract. These four levels, further characterized later, involved competition
among (1) manual responses (e.g., the motor aspects of a key-press response), (2) sets
of perceptual feature-to-response mappings, (3) perceptual dimensions that comprise
a set of relevant perceptual features, and (4) sets of contextual cue-to-dimension map-
pings. They predicted that, as the competing representations became more abstract,
activation would systematically progress along the anterior-to-posterior axis, starting
from the premotor cortex (for manual responses) up to the most anterior regions of the
prefrontal cortex (for the contextual cue-to-dimension mappings).
Importantly, in addition to the manipulation of these four levels of representa-
tional competition, there was a further parametric manipulation of the degree of control
(that is, how much control) that was needed to achieve accurate performance. The
number of possible competing responses was parametrically varied from a single
potential response (one relevant response, involving no competition), to an intermedi-
ate amount of competition (two possible responses), to a high level of competition
(four possible responses). This allowed analysis of the amount of competition present
within each level of abstraction. Thus, whereas the hierarchical level of control was
assessed by the locus of the activation along the anterior-to-posterior axis, the amount
of competition between responses was assessed by the level of activation within a given
locus (i.e., point along the axis). Stated differently, as the number of possible competing
responses increases, there should be an increasing need for control to “decide” or
“adjudicate” among the alternatives, leading to increased activation. However, accord-
ing to the proposed account, the location of this activity will differ depending on the
level of abstraction involved. For tasks involving purely manual responses, activity
should be located in premotor cortex, whereas for tasks requiring contextual cue-to-
dimension mappings activity should be found in anterior prefrontal cortex.
For the most concrete level of the hierarchy, involving manual responses, during
fMRI scanning, participants were shown colored squares one at a time, and all four
colors mapped to one response (no competition), or two colors mapped to one response
whereas two other colors mapped to another response (some competition), or each of
four colors mapped to a different response (maximum competition). The task demands
in this experiment were quite concrete (nonabstract) inasmuch as there was only one
cue dimension that was relevant throughout (color) and the cue features (individual
colors) were always relevant to the response that was to be given. Thus, there was very
little competition at higher levels of the hierarchy concerning the task (e.g., partici-
pants did not need to consider which dimension was relevant, or whether the dimen-
sion was relevant in one context but not in another).
For the second level of the hierarchy, correct responses were conditionalized on the
presence of a second feature. As in the manual response level, participants were shown
colored squares one at time and were required to make responses to each stimulus.
However, now each colored square also contained a difficult-to-name object, and the
rules mapping to the responses depended on a further dimension of the objects (either
texture or orientation, in a between subjects manipulation) that could take one of four
values. For example, for the orientation dimension, the feature could be up, down,
left, or right. On each trial, one particular feature (e.g., “up”) was relevant. If the
relevant feature was presented, then participants were to make a positive response,
pressing a particular key. If, however, the relevant feature was not presented, then
participants were to make a negative response. In addition, the cuing as to which
feature was relevant depended on the color of the square that surrounded the object.
Therefore, in order to determine how to respond, the participant needed to consider
both the color of the square and the particular feature of the object, considering these
two factors in conjunction in order to make a response. As in the response experi-
ment, four color-to-feature mappings were relevant to each block of trials, but now
rather than the colors mapping directly to the correct responses, they now mapped to
relevant object (orientation or texture) features that then cued the correct response.
Also, as in the response experiment, the amount of competition was systematically
manipulated by varying the number of feature-to-response sets that were relevant:
one, two, or four feature-to-response sets were relevant.
In the experiment just described, the required correct responses were conditional
on the particular conjunction of color and feature (orientation or texture) that was
present; however, these dimensions (either color and orientation, or color and
texture) were always relevant, and no additional higher order constraints or rules
needed to be taken into account. This differed in the next level of the hierarchy, in
which participants were again shown colored squares one at a time. Now, however,
each square contained two objects, and participants were required to compare the two
objects along one of four possible dimensions—texture, orientation, shape, or size—
and to indicate with a key-press whether the two objects matched or did not match
along this particular dimension. The color of the square surrounding the objects cued
participants as to which dimension was relevant for that trial. In some blocks only one
dimension was potentially relevant, in other blocks two dimensions, and in others all
four dimensions were potentially relevant. The color-to-dimension mapping remained
the same across all conditions.
The final experiment involved contextual cue-to-dimension mappings. In this

experiment, a particular contextual cue (i.e., a particular colored square) represented
the “context” for the task, involving different dimensions of the match/nonmatch
task. Unlike in the previous experiment, only two dimensions were always relevant,
but the contextual cue varied in how it related to the dimensional mappings. In the
minimal response competition blocks, the contextual cue (e.g., blue) was associated
with entirely consistent color-to-dimension mappings, so that any one color always
mapped to the same dimension within these blocks. In contrast, in the competition
blocks, the contextual cue was associated with color-to-dimension mappings that were
not always consistent across blocks (e.g., whereas orange mapped to shape in 50% of
the blocks, in the other 50% of the blocks orange mapped to a different dimension,
such as size; in the highest level of competition, a given color mapped to a given
dimension on only 25% of the blocks).
Region of interest analyses of the neuroimaging data showed that, as expected,
increased response competition in the manual responses mini-experiment was associ-
ated with increased activity in dorsal premotor cortex. Furthermore, as expected,
activity in this region increased as the number of possible responses increased. For
each of the other mini-experiments, likewise as expected, the locus of the observed
brain activity was increasingly anterior, as the classing rule increased in abstractness.
Specifically, anterior dorsal premotor cortex was most sensitive to feature competi-
tion, a still more anterior region in the inferior frontal sulcus was sensitive to dimen-
sion competition, and the most anterior region, frontal polar cortex, was sensitive to
context competition. Summarizing these outcomes, Badre and D’Esposito concluded,
These results provide strong empirical support for the hypothesis that cogni-
tive control is organized in a representational hierarchy along the rostro-
caudal [anterior-posterior] axis of the frontal lobes. Furthermore, these
results suggest that levels of the representational hierarchy, and so subre-
gions of the PFC [prefrontal cortex], may be differentiated by the level of
abstraction at which the representations that guide action must be selected
over competition. Abstraction is defined based on a classing rule whereby
more abstract representations generalize across a class or set of representa-
tions at subordinate levels. (Badre & D’Esposito, 2007, p. 2094)
The pattern of activation found, and as characterized by the representational

hierarchy account, is schematically diagrammed in Figure 8.5d. The figure also
schematically contrasts several other theoretical accounts of the anterior-posterior
gradient in the prefrontal cortex. Shown are accounts based on differing working
memory demands, involving (from more anterior to more posterior regions) abstract
plans/schema/internal monitoring, domain-general monitoring, and domain-specific
monitoring (panel a); accounts that focus on relational complexity, involving (from
more anterior to more posterior regions) second-order relationships, first-order rela-
tionships, and concrete features (panel b); and the cascade model of Koechlin et al.
(2003) involving different levels of control depending on whether the control signals
involve branching control, episodic control, contextual control, or sensory control
(panel c).
(a) (c) Sensory

control
Domain-specific
maintenance
Contextual
control
Domain-general
monitoring
Episodic
control
Abstract plan/schema
/internal monitoring Branching
control
(b) (d)
RRRRRRRR RRRRRRRR
Concrete features
(F1 and F2) Response conflict
F F F F F FF F
First-order relationships Feature conflict

F1 = F1 D D D D
Dimension conflict
Second-order relationships C C
(F1 = F1) ~= (F1~= F2) Context conflict
Figure 8.5. Characterization of Four Theoretical Accounts of the

Anterior-to-Posterior Gradient in the Prefrontal Cortex. Shown are
theoretical accounts based on (a) differing working memory demands, (b) increasing
relational complexity, (c) differing levels of control/control signals, and (d) differing
sources of response conflict at varying levels of representational abstraction.
Reprinted from Badre, D. (2008, p. 195), Cognitive control, hierarchy, and the
rostro-caudal organization of the frontal lobes, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12,
193–200, with permission from Elsevier. Copyright 2008, Elsevier. Note: See the
insert for a full-color version of this image.
To directly contrast the outcomes of the experiments by Koechlin et al. (2003) and
those of Badre and D’Esposito (2007), Badre (2008) superimposed graphic depictions
of the peak locations of brain activation on an inflated brain surface in a common
coordinate space (Talairach space). These peak locations are shown in Figure 8.6b.
In the figure, activations are shown as 8 mm spheres (this level of smoothing or spatial
averaging was within the spatial smoothing kernel used in each of the experiments).
Also shown in this composite rendition are the different levels of abstraction of the
experimental manipulations from first-order abstraction (closest to motor cortex) to
fourth-order abstraction (anterior prefrontal cortex).
The remarkable convergence of the two studies is clear. The actual extent of the
activations, from the whole-brain analyses of the Badre and D’Esposito (2007) study
are shown in Figure 8.6a. Shown at the right of Figure 8.6 are the activation time
courses (percent signal change in the fMRI BOLD response), in the three regions
corresponding to the first-order (response), second-order (feature), and third-order
(dimension) manipulations in the 2007 study. The three time courses within each
region correspond to the parametric manipulation of the level of response conflict or
competition within the task (low, medium, high conflict). As can be seen, in each of
the three regions, activation was greatest when response competition within the task
was greatest. The final bar graph, at the lower right, presents the average percent
(a)
(i) (ii) PMd
% Signal change
0.4
0.2
PMd −0.2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
TR (sec)
prePMd
prePMd 0.2
% Signal change
0.1
IFS
FPC 0
−0.1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
IFS TR (sec)
0.6
% Signal change
0.4
0.2
(b) 0
1st order
2nd order abstraction −0.2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
abstraction a b TR (sec)
3rd order
FPC
abstraction
Mean epoch % SC
0.1
4th order c
abstraction
f
e d
0
g
Episodic
control Low Medium High
Contextual
control Conflict: High
Badre and Desposito Medium
(2007)
Koechlin et al. (2003)
Low
Figure 8.6. Levels of Abstraction in the Frontal Cortex. Whole-brain

analyses showing the anterior-to-posterior gradient of activations for the different
levels of abstraction in the Badre and D’Esposito (2007) study (a), and the peak
locations of brain activation in the experiments by Koechlin et al. (2003) and those of
Badre and D’Esposito (2007), superimposed on an inflated brain surface in a common
coordinate space (b). Reprinted from Badre, D. (2008, p. 198), Cognitive control,
hierarchy, and the rostro-caudal organization of the frontal lobes, Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, 12, 193–200, with permission from Elsevier. Copyright 2008, Elsevier. Note:
See the insert for a full-color version of this image.
signal change in the most anterior prefrontal region of the brain, for the fourth-order
(context) manipulation, averaged across each of the epochs or sessions in which the
three levels of conflict (low, medium, high) were present.
These findings very clearly demonstrate the intersection of representational levels
of specificity and levels of control at multiple levels of specificity and multiple levels of
control (low to high response conflict) in frontal cortex. Whereas the predominant
location of the frontal brain activity evoked by a given task changed depending on the
level of abstraction that was needed to encode and apply the task rules appropriately,
the level of activation in a given region depended on the extent to which applying the
rule (at whatever level of abstraction) occurred in the face of many competing alterna-
tives, with greater (higher amplitude) activation in the face of many than in the face of
few competing possibilities. Notably, although in the studies we have considered, the
evidence for an anterior-to-posterior gradient in the representation of increasingly
abstract rules involved explicit experimenter-provided instructions concerning the
rules, a similar pattern has been observed when participants were asked to learn
task rules at differing levels of abstractness through feedback, rather than explicit
instructions (Badre, Kayser, & D’Esposito, 2010). Participants were given trial-by-
trial feedback to learn a task that had only first-order policy rules (i.e., only one-to-one
mappings) and a task that was, in addition, governed by a second-order policy rule
(i.e., there was also a rule about the one-to-one mappings that could be inferred or
learned). Whereas the task with only a first-order policy rule recruited a more
posterior frontal region (dorsal premotor cortex), the task with a “rule about rules”
additionally recruited a more anterior region (pre-premotor cortex). Examination of
participants’ performance across the task further indicated that early activation in the
pre-premotor cortex, but not in the dorsal premotor cortex, was positively correlated
with the acquisition of the second-order rule and that activity in pre-premotor cortex
for the first-order only rules task may have decreased when the higher-level search for
rules yielded no such rules.
We next turn to consider the neural correlates in humans of switching between
rules in response to external cues (during set shifting, reversal learning, and task
switching), and of the spontaneous (rather than reactive) changes in our task sets that
often enable agility of mind. Here, findings from neuropsychology, and also neuro-
chemical investigations especially focusing on the role of the neurotransmitters
serotonin and dopamine, will prove especially informative.
Neurochemical and Neuroanatomical Contributions

to Three Forms of Cognitive Flexibility: Set Shifting,
Reversal Learning, and Task Switching
Within the laboratory, the behavioral and neural correlates of cognitive flexibility
have been assessed by several different sorts of tasks, each of which draw on at least
partially distinct processes. Two broad forms of cognitive flexibility that have been
differentiated include set shifting and reversal learning; we begin by considering
these; a related form of cognitive flexibility, that of task switching, will be considered
later in this section. The following section will consider neuropsychological and lesion
evidence related to what has been termed “spontaneous flexibility,” though additional
forms of spontaneous flexibility are further considered in Chapter 9.
SET SHIFTING AND REVERSAL LEARNING

In set shifting individuals must alter the rules that they are currently using to guide
their behavior, particularly where these rules are “at the level of an attentional
set (a learned predisposition to attend to one dimension—e.g., shape or [color]–of
multidimensional stimuli)” (Swainson et al., 2000, p. 597). Often tests of set shifting
involve following a new rule that is the opposite of a previously followed rule, such
that “attend to A, ignore B” becomes “attend to B, ignore A.” Set shifting in this sense
is a central aspect of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (see, for example, the first
section of Chapter 2, with regard to AJ’s high level of perseverative errors on this task)
and other sorting tasks (e.g., the color/shape game conducted with preschoolers,
discussed in the fourth section of Chapter 1). It also is a key component of several
other tasks, such as the intradimensional/extradimensional attentional set-shifting
task from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). This
task requires the test-taker to shift responding within a stimulus dimension (e.g.,
from one color to another color) versus between stimulus dimensions (e.g., from color
to shape) as a function of changing patterns of reinforcement (e.g., Purcell et al., 1997;
Robbins et al., 1998).
Reversal learning at a conceptual level seems broadly similar to set shifting. However,
rather than involving a reversal of the individual or organism’s attentional set, rever-
sal learning involves a reversal of stimulus-reinforcement associations, such that the
learned reinforcement contingency “choose A, not B,” must become “choose B, not A.”
Reversal learning has been characterized as a form of “affective shifting” in which the
person or organism must update associations between stimulus and reinforcement to
accord with changing contingencies (e.g., Fellows & Farah, 2003, 2005).
Set shifting may occur within an already relevant stimulus dimension, called an
intradimensional shift (e.g., from yellow to red, in the case of color, or vice versa), or
between stimulus dimensions, including to a previously irrelevant dimension, an
extradimensional shift (e.g., from yellow to circles, involving a shift between the stim-
ulus dimensions of color vs. shape). An important difference between extradimen-
sional set shifting and reversal learning is that whereas reversal learning involves only
a change in exemplar, not in category, extradimensional set shifting requires a change
in category: “The extra-dimensional shift is representative of higher-order processing
because it requires taking a fundamentally new approach to solving a task that entails
a new strategy” (Ragozzino, 2007, p. 356).
Patients with prefrontal lesions may show selective disruptions of shifts that are
extradimensional but not intradimensional (Owen et al, 1991; 1993), suggesting that
they may have difficulties in rejecting higher order but not lower order rules (Wise
et al., 1996). Compared with healthy young adults, healthy older adults may also show
impairments in extradimensional but not intradimensional set shifting (Owen et al.,
1991).
Reversal learning appears to depend on the integrity of ventromedial regions of
the prefrontal cortex. Using a simple computerized card game with “play money”
stakes, Fellows and Farah (2003) compared the performance of individuals with
predominantly dorsolateral versus ventromedial prefrontal lesions to that of controls.
Participants were dealt two cards at a time from packs of different colors and were
asked to choose one of the two cards. One of the packs consistently yielded a win of
$50, whereas the other consistently yielded a loss of $50, and feedback was given after
each trial. If participants correctly chose the winning pack for eight consecutive trials,
then the payoff reinforcement contingencies were switched; this procedure occurred
for a total of 50 trials, allowing for up to five reversals of the payoff relation.
Whereas the patients with frontal lesions and the controls did not differ in the aver-
age number of errors that they made on the first associative learning block, the groups
clearly diverged after the reversal of the rewards, with patients with ventromedial pre-
frontal lesions making significantly more errors. In addition, the extent (volume) of
lesion damage in ventromedial regions was positively correlated with the number of
reversal errors, but errors did not correlate with lesion volume overall (total lesion
volume). Across groups, there also was a significant negative correlation between the
frequency of reversal errors on this task and the day-to-day functional abilities of the
patients, suggesting that impairments in the ability to learn new evaluative or affec-
tive contingencies might be related to flexible adaptability in everyday behavior.
A subsequent study (Fellows & Farah, 2005) extended these findings, using two
versions of a gambling task. One of these versions required reversal learning and was
similar to what has become known as the Iowa Gambling Task, in which decks that are
initially highly rewarding are in the long-term highly punitive. The second version,
however, did not require reversal learning. It was a shuffled version of the Iowa
Gambling Task, in which participants experienced the losses associated with each deck
in the first few choices, thereby preventing the formation of an initial preference for
the deck that was, in the long-term, more risky and costly. The results showed that the
degree of impairment on the simple reversal-learning task was significantly positively
correlated with improved performance on the “less beguiling” shuffled variant of the
gambling task. Thus, those individuals who had performed most poorly on the simple
reversal task benefited the most from being presented the version of the gambling
task that did not require them to “unlearn” the proclivity to choose the deck that,
though initially highly rewarding, was most disadvantageous in the longer term.
Lesions to ventromedial cortex also may influence other forms of decision process-
ing, beyond those involved in reversal learning. For example, in an ingenious study in
which participants were asked to choose one apartment from a number of alternatives,
Fellows (2006) found clear evidence for a different approach to information gathering
in the ventromedial lesion group compared with either controls or individuals with
dorsolateral frontal lesions. Using a computerized interface to present a “decision board,”
participants were asked to successively query for information about the apartment
options. They could ask for information either by comparing the different apartments
on the basis of a given attribute (e.g., noise level) or by considering several attributes for
each apartment individually (e.g., various aspects of Apartment A). Whereas both con-
trols and patients with lesions to dorsolateral frontal cortex predominantly requested
information on an attribute basis (e.g., comparing several apartments on the attribute
of their size), the ventromedial lesion patients mainly requested information for
a given alternative, that is, one apartment at a time, rather than across attributes.
The latter decision strategy of considering one alternative at a time may reflect a
tendency toward “satisficing” (seeking an acceptable or “good enough” alternative that
meets the minimal requirements necessary to achieve a goal) rather than “maximiz-
ing” (seeking the best alternative). The tendency to engage in maximizing in normal
individuals has been associated with the desire to avoid regret—leading people to con-
tinue to search even after a satisfactory alternative has been identified, so as to
decrease the likelihood of later regret should they have failed to identify and consider
a more appealing alternative (B. Schwartz et al., 2002).
Notably, the different groups did not differ in the total amount of information they
requested, before reaching a choice, or in the amount of time that they spent before
their choice. Given the complex nature of the alternatives, there was no single “right”
or “wrong” answer. However, the “modal” choices for the ventromedial lesion group
did differ from the modal choices for the other two groups, and significantly differed
for multidimensional choices involving four apartments and six attributes per apart-
ment. In addition, although the overall total amount of information considered did
not differ between the groups, there was a large amount of variability in the amount
of information considered. Whereas for the simplest choices (involving two apart-
ments, characterized on four attributes) the other groups considered almost all of the
information available this was not true for nearly half of the ventromedial patients.
Indeed, nearly one-third of the ventromedial patients only examined information
about one of the alternatives before choosing it. Although additional research is
needed to determine the reasons for the different pattern of choices in the individuals
with ventromedial lesions, these findings converge with other evidence that damage
to ventromedial cortex is associated with impairments in the ability to evaluate
options (e.g., Bechara et al., 1997; 2005) and with impairments in “flexibly represent-
ing the context-specific value of stimuli more generally” (Fellows, 2006, p. 950).
Deficits in reversal learning—a task that requires the flexible updating of stimulus-
reinforcement associations—are one clear instance of such impairments in flexible
context-specific representation.
At the neurochemical level, the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine are
strongly implicated in enabling flexible and context-appropriate cognitive control.
First considering serotonin, dysregulation in serotonergic function has been found to
contribute to several disorders in which cognitive inflexibility is often a prominent
characteristic, including depression, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disor-
der (OCD). For example, patients with OCD have been found to show response time
(but not accuracy) deficits in reversal learning and these deficits positively correlated
with the severity of OCD (Valerius et al., 2008). Acute depletion of tryptophan—
which is an essential amino acid precursor to serotonin—in humans may impair
performance on visual discrimination reversal tasks, on which orbitofrontal cortical
lesions also disrupt performance (Fellows & Farah, 2003).
Acute tryptophan depletion also has been found to adversely affect performance on
a probabilistic task of reversal learning (Evers et al., 2005). In this modified version of
the reversal-learning task, participants were asked to choose between the same two
abstract patterns on each trial, trying to infer the current rule on the basis of feedback
given after each trial. However, the feedback was also occasionally misleading so that
correct responses were sometimes responded to as though they were incorrect, and the
participant had to infer the current rule in the face of such probabilistic feedback.4
Growing evidence suggests that serotonin is particularly involved in modulating the
processing of aversive signals, consistent with its implicated role in anxiety and mood
disorders, such as OCD and depression, that involve heightened sensitivity to threat-
related stimuli, punishment, or negative feedback. In healthy volunteers, dietary deple-
tion of tryptophan has been found to decrease the effects of positively valenced words,
for example, slowing responding to words such as “joyful” and “success” (F. C. Murphy
et al., 2002). Daw and colleagues (2002) proposed that whereas rapid phasic modulation
of dopamine is crucial in the processing of reward signals (discussed further later),

serotonin plays a similar function with regard to the processing of aversive or punish-
ment signals. Specifically, these researchers proposed that whereas the fast phasic
release of dopamine (through the firing of dopamine cells in the ventral tegmental area
and substantia nigra pars compacta of the basal ganglia), signals upcoming rewards,
phasic release of serotonin (perhaps from the dorsal raphe nucleus in the brain stem)
signals a prediction error for upcoming punishment.
In line with this proposal, using a reversal-learning task in which participants were
asked to predict whether a designated stimulus would lead to punishment or reward,
Cools et al. (2008) showed that acute tryptophan depletion differentially improved
participants’ ability to predict choices that would be associated with punishment. In
contrast, it did not influence their ability to predict choices associated with reward,
and it also did not affect their ability to flexibly alter responding based on unexpected
outcomes (changing feedback). Tryptophan depletion appeared to selectively enhance
learning and/or memory for specific stimulus-punishment contingencies, so that
whereas individuals in the control condition made more errors in predicting punish-
ment than in predicting reward, tryptophan depletion reduced this “reward predic-
tion” advantage and rendered individuals almost equally adept at predicting which
stimuli would lead to punishments as at predicting rewards.
Dopaminergic function also has repeatedly, if not always apparently straightfor-
wardly, been linked to several aspects of cognitive flexibility. For example, Braver,
Cohen, and colleagues (e.g., Braver, Cohen, & Barch, 2002; J. D. Cohen, Braver, &
Brown, 2002) have systematically articulated the relation between phasic versus tonic
dopaminergic activity in prefrontal cortex and cognitive control. Effective and appro-
priately flexible cognitive control frequently demands the ability to both appropriately
encode relevant contextual cues regarding the task at hand and to either maintain—or
update—those cues as needed (cf. Fig. 2.1).
In their computational model of cognitive control, Braver and colleagues postulate
that a primary neural mechanism that modulates such context processing is the pro-
jection of the midbrain dopamine system into the lateral prefrontal cortex. This dop-
aminergic projection is hypothesized to modulate both the representation and
maintenance of context information within lateral prefrontal cortex. Whereas phasic
bursts of dopamine activity trigger the updating of context representations by signal-
ing the presence of salient or “reward predicting” information in the environment,
tonic levels of dopamine help to maintain the current contextual information, per-
haps by altering how responsive the neurons in prefrontal cortex are to local inputs
that help to maintain the current context. Thus, these researchers propose that phasic
increases of dopamine in prefrontal cortex—elicited by stimuli that predict
reward— serve as a “gating signal” that triggers the updating of working memory, and
facilitates a change in cognitive set. Similarly, Robbins (2005, p. 142) concludes
that data from studies manipulating dopamine levels in both the rat and the marmo-
set are consistent with the hypothesis that prefrontal cortex dopamine, through the
D1 receptor, “serves to stabilize representations, and therefore when the transmitter
is depleted attention tends to be more labile.”
Findings from individuals with Parkinson’s disease, a condition in which degenera-
tion of dopaminergic neurons is the core pathology (Dauer & Przedborski, 2003), and
from pharmacological manipulations in healthy individuals, also point to the neces-

sity for rapid contextually appropriate modulation of the levels of dopamine, and the
potential for both over- and undermodulation. Frank (2005) has proposed a model
according to which dopamine “dynamically modulates activity in an already modula-
tory [basal ganglia], as [dopamine] levels change in response to different behavioral
events.” According to this proposal, a network of regions in the frontal cortex can
either facilitate or suppress the execution of commands; however,
… one of the network’s key emergent properties is that a large dynamic

range in [dopamine] release is critical for [basal ganglia]-dependent learning.
That is, the [dopamine] signal has to be able to increase and decrease sub-
stantially from its baseline levels in order to support discrimination between
outcome values of different responses. (Frank, 2005, p. 52)
In Parkinson’s disease, this “dynamic range” is restricted, thereby leading to a range

of cognitive deficits. Although Parkinson’s disease patients show impairments in
learning tasks that tap the nonintentional, implicit learning of associations through
trial and error, such as sequence learning and probabilistic learning (e.g., in what has
come to be known as the weather prediction task), they do not show deficits on implicit
learning tasks that are entirely observational, and that do not depend on trial-and-
error learning (e.g., Reber & Squire, 1999; Vriezen & Moscovitch, 1990). These find-
ings suggest that it is particularly feedback-mediated learning that is disrupted in
Parkinson’s disease. Frank (2005) suggests that high tonic levels of dopamine in med-
icated Parkinson’s disease patients might diminish responsiveness to phasic dips in
dopamine during negative feedback. “This by-product of dopaminergic medication
may eliminate an important aspect of the natural biological control system—namely,
the ability to quickly unlearn previously rewarding behaviors” (Frank, 2005, p. 53).
Whereas the phasic dip in dopamine might enable healthy individuals to unlearn a
prepotent association when the contingencies change in reversal learning, the
“overdose” of dopamine in the ventral striatum of medicated Parkinsonian patients
might preclude such unlearning.
The effects of changes in dopamine level also appear to depend on the particular
cognitive task used to assess cognitive flexibility and the regions of prefrontal cortex
most strongly recruited for performing the task. For instance, whereas Parkinson’s
disease patients given dopaminergic medication (L-Dopa) showed improved spatial
planning and self-ordered spatial working memory as a result of the medication-
related increase in dopamine, they showed a comparative decrease in performance
accuracy while on the medication rather than off medication for other tasks related to
cognitive flexibility that are also known to be influenced by dopamine, such as reversal
learning (Swainson et al., 2000). These differential effects may arise because reversal
learning depends on different (more ventral) prefrontal circuitry that is less severely
affected by Parkinson’s disease. Administration of L-Dopa might thus help to alleviate
deficits in dopamine in one circuit, and so enhance performance, but lead to excessive
levels of dopamine in another comparatively “healthy” circuit, and thus impede per-
formance. Robbins (2005) therefore argues that the classic “Yerkes-Dodson Principle”
may apply at different levels to different frontostriatal loops, with the orbitofrontal
loop in Parkinson’s disease patients more vulnerable to possible “overdosing” than the
dorsolateral loop.
Similar differential effects on behavioral performance also have been reported in
healthy normal individuals, with pharmacologically increased availability of dopamine
(through administration of the D2 dopamine receptor agonist bromocriptine) leading
to improvements on a spatial working memory span task, but impairing certain aspects
of reversal learning (Mehta et al., 2001). These impairments in reversal learning were
particularly prominent when the task was novel, perhaps because dopamine turnover is
already increased in novel situations (Feenstra et al., 1995). Mehta and colleagues
concluded that regions of the cortex thought to be critical for reversal learning—
including the ventromedial/orbital prefrontal cortex (e.g., Dias et al., 1996) and the
inferotemporal cortex (Swainson et al., 2000)—“are also ‘overdosed’ in normal volun-
teers when the situation and tasks are novel to them” (Mehta et al., 2001, p. 19).
Likewise, in a review of a variety of drugs that can enhance cognition, de Jongh and
colleagues (2008) similarly noted the potentially facilitatory—or detrimental—effects
of dopaminergic promoting substances, including bromocriptine, d-amphetamine, and
pergolide, on cognitive function. Although each of these dopaminergic agonists has
been found to improve cognition in healthy volunteers, particularly working memory
and executive function, a number of studies have also indicated that the beneficial
effects may be restricted to individuals with a low baseline working-memory capacity,
whereas high-span individuals may show no improvement, or even get worse.
These studies thus provide convergent support for an earlier proposal, forwarded
by G. V. Williams and Goldman-Rakic (1995), that the relation between levels of
dopamine in prefrontal cortex and working memory performance may follow an
“inverted U” function: neither too much, nor too little, is ideal. These researchers
developed an innovative approach in which they combined single-cell recordings in
the monkey with the focal application of D1 antagonists to neurons in prefrontal
cortex that appeared to act as “memory fields” during a working memory task. These
“memory field” neurons have been found to increase firing when the monkeys must
retain the location of a target during a delay period between the presentation of the
target and the response. In addition, different neurons have been shown to encode
different target locations, and, notably, failures of the neurons to maintain their
activity during the delay period are robustly associated with errors on the behavioral
task—suggesting that these neurons provide the cellular basis for working memory.
When applying selective D1 receptor antagonists on to these neurons, G. V. Williams
and Goldman-Rakic (1995) found that, below a certain dosage level, the antagonists
enhanced the delay period activity of the cells whereas high dosage levels essentially
abolished activity in those neurons. These enhancement effects were highly specific to
the precise target position information that the neuron encoded and also included
selective facilitation of inhibitory processing in two inhibitory memory cells.
G. V. Williams and Goldman-Rakic (1995) concluded that these findings provided
“evidence of a unique dopaminergic modulation” that can be “extraordinarily precise,
affecting a specific component of the neuron’s afferent (excitatory and inhibitory)
input without affecting its general excitability.” More broadly, they concluded that
these outcomes argue that “there is an optimal level of D1 receptor occupancy for
the generation of memory fields.” Under task conditions that require a high level of
motivation, cortical dopamine levels may already be elevated toward the high end of
the normal range. If so, then blocking a portion of D1 receptors may prevent their
supraoptimal (excessive) activation. Collectively, these findings “emphasize how finely
tuned is the dopaminergic regulation of cortical processing, and may help to explain
the vulnerability of these processes to dopamine dysfunction in conditions of stress,
ageing, drug use and disease” (G. V. Williams & Goldman-Rakic, 1995, p. 575). Perhaps
also, given the acute sensitivity of dopaminergic regulation to the combination of
task, motivational, and physiological factors, it may be less surprising to us that a
diverse range of conditions can exert marked effects on tasks that place high demands
on an individual’s cognitive flexibility.
Intriguingly, a third neuromodulatory input to the prefrontal cortex and basal
ganglia—that of noradrenaline (also called norepinephrine)—likewise plays a key role
in cognitive flexibility. For example, Kehagia et al. (2010, p. 202) recently proposed
that “task switching may exhibit distinct neurochemical profiles depending on the
abstraction of the rule that governs a task set, similarly to those during attentional
set-shifting.” Whereas switching between simple stimulus-response mappings
“governed by lower order rules” may rely on dopamine, similarly to reversal learning
and intradimensional set shifting, switching between higher order rules “pertaining
to categories of stimuli” may have a noradrenergic substrate, similarly to extradimen-
sional set shifting. The role of norephinephrine, particularly in relation to adaptive
responding to novelty, will be considered in a later part of Chapter 9.
TA S K S W I TC H I N G
Although set shifting and reversal learning provide highly informative and useful
measures of cognitive flexibility, in order to obtain a more direct measure of flexible
intentional cognitive control, many researchers have adopted task-switching para-
digms (e.g., Monsell, 2003). In these paradigms, participants typically are asked to
perform one of two different tasks, in response to instructional cues that either cue
them to switch from the current task to the second, not currently performed, task
(“switch” trials), or to continue (“stay”) with the task they are currently performing.
This basic paradigm can allow examination of a surprisingly large number of questions
relating to the relative “costs” to response time or accuracy that ensue from the neces-
sity to switch tasks, and a systematic characterization of when, how, and if individuals
are able to prepare, in advance, for an upcoming change in tasks (often referred to as
“task set reconfiguration”).
In general, findings have shown that performance is slower and less accurate on
trials that require a switch than on trials where the same task is repeated from an
earlier trial (e.g., Allport & Wylie, 2000; R. D. Rogers & Monsell, 1995). Nonetheless,
the magnitude of the “switch costs” that are observed can be altered by a large number
of factors, such as the amount of time between the instructional cue to switch tasks
and the presentation of the stimulus requiring a response, and whether the stimulus
that is presented has previously or recently been associated with the “old” (potentially
interfering) task or the “new” (currently relevant) task.
There is growing evidence that responses to a particular stimulus may be modu-
lated by multiple aspects of the “history” of one’s experiences with that stimulus
(see also the discussion of theoretical perspectives on automaticity in Chapter 1). For
example, a stimulus may elicit an inappropriate “task set” or a stimulus may be responded
to more slowly if the current decision regarding the stimulus (e.g., “yes” to a given
semantic classification task) differs from that made on a previous occasion (e.g., “no” to
the same semantic classification question or a slightly different question; e.g., Race,
Badre, & Wagner, 2010). Although this sort of stimulus-to-decision binding (Dobbins
et al., 2004) was initially proposed to be highly specific to a particular stimulus (Schnyer
et al., 2007), other evidence suggests that such rapid binding of a stimulus with a deci-
sion, perhaps into an “event file” (Hommel, 1998, 2004) or “integrated stimulus-response
episode” (Waszak, Hommel, & Allport, 2003), can generalize to other semantically or
categorically related items, facilitating subsequent processing if the decision is the same
across the tasks, but leading to no facilitation or even detracting from performance if
the decision differs (Denkinger & Koutstaal, 2009; Waszak et al., 2004).
These and related findings (e.g., Horner & Henson, 2009) suggest that largely
automatic associative linkages between cognitive events may arise at multiple levels
of abstraction, not only with respect to the particular stimuli that we encounter
(e.g., different exemplars of an object, such as different benches, or different umbrel-
las) but also at the level of the decisions we make, such that an affirmative response
“yes” to one question in regards to a stimulus subsequently might automatically
influence our speed and accuracy of responding to another (even quite unrelated)
question concerning that same or a similar stimulus that likewise requires either an
affirmative “yes” or a negative “no” response. That is, learning including automatic
learning or associative binding is continuously occurring at multiple levels of abstrac-
tion and at multiple levels of our ways of interacting with the world, including not
only stimulus processing but also our decisions and the particular ways in which we
express our decisions via concrete motor responses in the world (e.g., by pressing one
key, rather than another key). Such continuous learning, at multiple levels of an
experienced event (stimulus, cognitive decision, motor response) and at multiple
levels of abstraction, may then influence the ease with which, and the accuracy with
which, we will be able to “switch” between different tasks, with differing or partially
overlapping task requirements and stimuli (see also Coane & Balota, 2010, for discus-
sion and application to our experiential encounters with words in differing contexts).
Automatic associative learning is thus one factor that clearly may influence task
switching. Here, however, we will focus on two quite different examples of compara-
tively transient or immediate term influences on task switching performance. We first
consider the effects of momentary inductions of positive affect, which also has been
linked with alterations in dopaminergic levels, on task-switching indices of cognitive
flexibility. Next, we will consider a recent study that sought to examine the behavioral
and neural correlates of spontaneous, rather than experimentally manipulated,
moment-to-moment changes in cognitive flexibility and to assess how such changes
might impact the ease with which participants responded to instructional cues to
either maintain the current task or to switch to a new task.
The frequently beneficial effects of mild positive affect on tasks tapping cognitive
flexibility, such as verbal fluency, categorization, and various forms of problem solving
were considered in Chapter 6. According to a neuropsychological theory of positive
affect that has been developed by Ashby, Isen, and colleagues (1999), the cognitive
and behavioral effects of positive affect are mediated by changes in dopamine func-
tion. For example, these researchers propose that positive affect influences creative
problem solving, in part, through increased dopamine release in the prefrontal cortex
and anterior cingulate cortex that then improves cognitive flexibility through enhanc-
ing the ability to overcome dominant responses. Nonetheless, not all studies have
found that the inducement of positive affect leads to behavioral benefits, and some
studies have reported the opposite pattern, with positive mood impairing perfor-
mance on tasks such as the Stroop color-word task, in which participants must switch
between reading color words and naming the color of the ink in which the words are
printed (Phillips et al., 2002; see R. L. C. Mitchell & Phillips, 2007, for integrative
review and discussion, and for additional evidence that, perhaps due to the “inverted
U” function relating dopamine to optimal functioning, mild positive mood may impair
not only switching but also updating and planning).
To examine the relation between positive mood and cognitive control more
analytically, Dreisbach and Goschke (2004; see also Dreisbach et al., 2005; Dreisbach,
2006) developed a task that would permit separate assessments of the effects of posi-
tive mood on the maintenance versus switching of cognitive sets. They hypothesized
that whereas positive affect would bolster the ability to switch between cognitive sets,
if needed, and thus reduce perseverative behavior, at the same time this increased
flexibility would be accompanied by an increase in distractibility, such that the
attention of individuals in a positive mood might be more likely to be “captured” by
irrelevant (to-be-ignored) novel stimuli. The participants’ momentary mood was
manipulated by the presentation of emotional pictures that were positive, neutral, or
(in a follow-up experiment) negative. Notably, the presentation of the pictures was
relatively brief, and directly preceded each of the task trials.
The task involved several phases. First, participants were presented a series of
stimuli (pairs of letters or pairs of digits) on the computer screen, with instructions to
respond to target stimuli that appeared in one color (e.g., black letters) while ignoring
distracter stimuli that simultaneously appeared in the other color (e.g., white letters).
Then participants were assigned to one of two switched task conditions, with all par-
ticipants tested in each condition. In one of the conditions, the participants were
asked to respond to stimuli in a new color while ignoring distracters that appeared in
the previous target color. In this condition, the researchers hypothesized that the
increased cognitive flexibility arising from a positive mood should facilitate the disen-
gagement from the previous task rules by inducing a bias toward novel stimuli, thereby
leading to a decrease in switch costs. In contrast, in a second condition, for the new
task that the participants were asked to perform, the targets were presented in the
previously to-be-ignored color, whereas the distracters appeared in the new color.
Here, increased cognitive flexibility should again bias attention toward novelty but
now that bias would have the effect of making the task more difficult—because the
novel stimuli are in this condition irrelevant to the new task.
The results strongly supported their predictions. In the condition that required
responding to the new color, the positive affect manipulation reduced the response
time costs of responding to incompatible stimuli compared with the costs shown by
participants in a neutral mood. However, contrariwise, in the condition where the
targets were in a previously familiarized color, positive mood increased the costs of
responding to incompatible stimuli compared to that shown by participants in the

neutral mood manipulation. A further experiment, using not positive but negative
emotional stimuli, had no such effects, with those in the negative condition perform-
ing similarly to those in the neutral condition.
These contrasting effects of positive affect on performance—such that briefly
presented positive emotional pictures facilitated performance if the task required
switching, but interfered with performance if the task required maintaining attention
on stimuli characterized by an already familiar task dimension and ignoring
novel stimuli—are a powerful demonstration of the contextually dependent effects of
cognitive flexibility. These results show, in normal healthy adults, how both persevera-
tion and distractibility may arise from alterations in affect, presumably linked, at least
in part, to dopaminergic function in prefrontal cortex. They also parallel similar find-
ings reported in patients with frontal lobe lesions, with both increased perseveration
and increased distractibility sometimes observed depending on circumstances.
More broadly, the effects of positive mood perhaps indicate that positive affect is
an “appraisal signal indicating the absence of danger or obstacles in the pursuit of
current goals, thereby promoting less focused, explorative modes of thought and
behavior” (Dreisbach & Goschke, 2004, p. 351), whereas negative affect and aversive
stimuli may encourage avoidance of mistakes and so foster more analytic and closely
focused processing. This suggestion coheres very well with our earlier consideration,
in Chapter 6, of the possible functional role of positive affect and with the central
postulates of the “broaden and build” theory of Fredrickson (1998, 2001, 2004).
In the final section of Chapter 9, we will return to the topic of novelty and exploration,
focusing on the role of a further neurotransmitter—norepinephrine or noradrena-
line—in adaptive responding to novelty, and also additional motivational and person-
ality intersections with fluid thinking.
The findings we have reviewed thus far clearly demonstrate the acute sensitivity of
prefrontal cortex to fluctuations in dopamine—whether induced through pharmaco-
logical, mood, or other changes—with corresponding modulations of cognitive flexibil-
ity. What are the determinants and brain correlates of moment-to-moment but
spontaneously arising—rather than exogenously induced—changes in cognitive flexi-
bility? If our internal “representational landscape” is in nearly constant flux, dynami-
cally changing as a function of not only external but also multiple internal factors, do
those changes then modulate our ability to adeptly respond to changing task demands
as signaled, for instance, by changing (externally derived) instructions? And, if so, could
an individual’s pattern of brain activity before a task-switch or a task-stay cue was pre-
sented predict how adeptly he or she would be able to switch in response to the cue?
To begin to answer this question, Leber and colleagues (2008) examined brain
activity in participants during the 1.5 seconds immediately before a task cue (either
switch or stay) was presented, to determine whether any brain regions reliably
predicted response times on the upcoming switch versus stay trials. If there were
spontaneous fluctuations in one’s level of cognitive flexibility, then this should mani-
fest itself in the magnitude of task-switching costs, such that sometimes (in moments
of optimal flexibility) response time switch costs would be minimal or nonexistent,
whereas at other times (in moments of less-than-optimal flexibility) response time
switch costs might be considerable. Does the pattern of brain activity in any region of
cortex before one receives an instruction cue to either switch or stay—that is, before
one knows what the immediately upcoming task requirements will be—systematically
relate to, or predict, one’s performance on that task?
Leber and colleagues (2008) found that the answer was clearly “yes.” A pattern of
decreasing switch costs with increasing neural activity during the brief (precue)
window was observed in a number of brain regions, including medial and lateral
prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and right
anterior insula—all regions that previously have been reported as involved in task
switching and the maintenance of task sets (Dosenbach et al., 2006; see also the
discussion in the “Between Tasks” section of Chapter 9 on the causal role of right
insular cortex and anterior cingulate in triggering hierarchical control). Subcortical
structures, including the basal ganglia and superior colliculus, also showed this
pattern, with increasing pretrial neural activity systematically related to enhanced
task performance on the switch trials, suggesting improved task set reconfiguration
on the trials demanding a switch in task. Equally notably, however, there was evidence
that this increased activity in some regions was associated with slower (not faster!)
responses on trials that then required staying with the current task, rather than
switching. These findings again suggest, consistent with proposals by several theo-
rists, that there is a trade-off between cognitive flexibility and cognitive stability: Here,
the increased ability to respond quickly and accurately to a trial requiring a switch in
one’s current task set was accompanied by a moderate (though in some instances,
statistically significant) decrease in the effectiveness (speed) with which one responded
to a task that was the same (repeated) from a previous trial.
Spontaneous Flexibility: Neuropsychological

and Lesion Evidence
Each of the forms of flexibility we considered in the previous section, including set
shifting, reversal learning, and task switching, might be seen as drawing upon what
Eslinger and Grattan (1993, p. 18) termed “reactive flexibility,” or “the readiness to
freely shift cognition and behavior according to the particular demands and context of
a situation.” These researchers differentiated such (externally prompted) reactive flex-
ibility from a more internally prompted form of what they termed “spontaneous flexi-
bility,” involving the “ready flow of ideas and answers, often in response to a single
question” and closely connected with the notions of fluency and divergent thought and
production. Spontaneous flexibility “usually requires some form of bypassing auto-
matic and habitual responses and strategies in order to attend to other features and
aspects of knowledge” (Eslinger & Grattan, p. 18) and is well illustrated by such tasks
as letter and category fluency, design fluency, and ideational fluency (e.g., the Alternative
Uses Task). Reactive flexibility, in contrast, involves the ability to adaptively change
responding on the basis of externally derived cues for change, such as a change in rein-
forcement or feedback as in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test or reversal learning.
To evaluate the contribution of different brain regions to spontaneous versus reac-
tive flexibility, Eslinger and Grattan (1993) examined 30 patients who had recently
suffered focal structural brain lesions. In the vast majority of cases the lesions were a
result of a single cerebral vascular accident. They placed participants into one of three
groups based on the predominant location of their lesion: frontal lesion, basal ganglia
lesion (i.e., caudate nucleus, putamen, and anterior limb of the internal capsule), or
posterior lesion. They found that the frontal lesion and basal ganglia lesion groups
showed marked and comparatively similar impairments in flexibility on the Wisconsin
Card Sorting Test. On this “reactive flexibility” task both patients with frontal lesions
and those with lesions in the basal ganglia showed a large number of perseverative
errors and difficulty in shifting set in response to the changing externally provided
feedback cues that followed changes in the (currently operative) categorization rules.
In contrast, the two lesion groups differed on the “spontaneous flexibility” measure
provided by the Alternative Uses Task. On this measure, the frontal lesion group was
severely impaired, but the basal ganglia lesion group was only moderately impaired
(performing similarly to the posterior lesion group) at generating alternative uses.
On the Alternative Uses Task, the frontal lesion patients provided many
responses, but these were of low accuracy. Frontal patients had difficulty in suppress-
ing responses that were salient but conventional uses of the objects. All of the basal
ganglia lesion patients that were tested had focal structural damage to the dorsolat-
eral head of the caudate, to the anterior limb of the internal capsule, and to the rostral
portion of the putamen; however, selective damage to the putamen alone did not
impede set shifting in one patient. Given these findings, Eslinger and Grattan (1993)
argued that “it is the region of the head of the caudate and anterior limb of the
internal capsule, together with their major projection site in the globus pallidus, that
provide the subcortical neural architecture for reactive flexibility” (p. 25) and that
“abnormal activation in bilateral frontal-basal ganglia circuits may underlie some of
the extreme forms of inflexible or rigid cognition” (p. 26).
Eslinger and Grattan (1993) suggested that the reason that the frontal lesion
patients were particularly impaired on the measure of spontaneous flexibility
(accuracy rate of 12% compared with 60%–89% accuracy in the other groups) was
that the Alternative Uses Task required the individual to “access various classes and
categories of knowledge in novel ways, bypassing more automatic or conventional
strategies.” In particular, the Alternative Uses Task appeared to be mediated by
frontal-cortical interactions rather than frontal-striatal interactions, and it draws on
multiple processes:
The conventional uses of objects are obviously of higher salience than more
remotely associated and less common alternate uses. Successful spontane-
ous flexibility, therefore, may require several elements. Objects need to be
represented as ideas rather than concrete stimuli, and strategic transforma-
tions of knowledge must be formulated to supersede the most prominent
semantic linkages and re-define the possible functions of an object. (Eslinger
& Grattan, 1993, p. 25)
Further evidence for the importance of the distinction between reactive versus
spontaneous flexibility—and the key role of dopaminergic modulation in both—was
provided by an imaginative approach adopted by Tomer and colleagues (2007). These
researchers sought to evaluate effects of dopamine on spontaneous flexibility (assessed
by the Alternative Uses Task) versus reactive flexibility (assessed by the intra/extradi-
mensional set-shifting task from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated
Battery, Robbins et al., 1998) in individuals with Parkinson’s disease. However, these
researchers also capitalized on the observation that, in many individuals with
Parkinson’s disease, the onset of their illness is asymmetric. Often the disease first
more severely affects motor functions on either the left side of the body (reflecting
greater loss of dopamine in the right cerebral hemisphere) or the right side of the body
(reflecting greater loss of dopamine in the left hemisphere).
Consistent with previous studies, Tomer et al. (2007) found that, relative to
controls, individuals with Parkinson’s disease were impaired on both the spontaneous
and reactive flexibility tasks. However, asymmetric onset of the disease modulated the
effects on spontaneous flexibility. The left-onset group, who thus had greater loss of
dopamine in the right hemisphere, showed greater impairment on the spontaneous
flexibility measure, generating fewer correct responses and also making significantly
more errors on the Alternative Uses task than did the other groups. These results are
consistent with neuroimaging findings (Vandenberghe et al., 1999) that this or
similar tasks may be more strongly mediated by the right than the left hemisphere
(see also the section on “Brain Correlates of Insight Problem Solving” in Chapter 9).
In addition, medicated patients with right-sided onset (reflecting greater dopamine
loss in the left hemisphere) showed more errors on the reactive flexibility task, par-
ticularly more reversal errors. Thus, both medicated patients with right-sided onset
and medicated patients with left-sided onset showed more errors, but on different
tasks. Given the evidence for the acute sensitivity of cortical regions to an optimal
level of dopamine (reviewed earlier in this chapter), Tomer and colleagues (2007) pro-
posed that, for patients with asymmetric symptoms: “relatively early in the disease
process when dopamine deficit in the less-affected hemisphere is mild [. . .], optimal
dopaminergic medication (as determined by improved motor function) may involve
over-medication of the less-affected hemisphere.” On this interpretation, for example,
the errors on the Alternative Uses task in the left-onset group may have resulted from
a “hyper-dopaminergic state” in the left hemisphere, perhaps reflecting the patient’s
difficulties in maintaining and imposing the appropriate task set.
Other tasks of verbal fluency—such as letter and category fluency in which
participants are asked to generate words that, for example, begin with particular
letters (e.g., F, A, S) or belong to specific categories (e.g., animals, fruits, different types
of weather)—have been argued to draw on both automatic processes and strategic,
controlled processes. Automatic retrieval processes are proposed to be comparatively
more important in the production of words “within clusters,” that is, groups of words
that share semantic or other features. For example, the production rate of words
within a category or cluster tends to be quite constant, “consistent with the view that
the retrieval of words within semantic or phonological fields (or clusters) proceeds
relatively automatically [. . .] without much central executive involvement” (Rende
et al., 2002, p. 311). In contrast, controlled central-executive dependent processes
are proposed to be more important during strategic search for words that meet the
specified constraints (e.g., the instructions for the letter fluency task often state
that the words should not be proper nouns such as the names of cities or places) and
when attempting to identify new subcategories of potential candidate words and in
strategically switching between clusters to maximize one’s performance (e.g., see

Troyer, 2000; Troyer et al., 1997).
Using a dual-task paradigm to experimentally manipulate the availability of
controlled processing resources, Rende et al. (2002) also argued that their results
were consistent with a two-component process model of verbal fluency. Requiring
participants to perform a secondary task at the same time as the verbal fluency task
reduced the number of words that participants were able to produce and also the
number of switches that were made. However, the secondary task did not affect the
cluster size (that is, the number of words given within a particular cluster), suggesting
that retrieval processing within a given cluster is comparatively more automatic
(at least for some clusters, though perhaps not for clusters that are relatively unfamil-
iar or unusual, such as animals associated with sports teams as a “category”).
Troyer et al. (1997; see also Unsworth et al., 2011) proposed that whereas
clustering relies on temporal lobe processes such as verbal memory and word storage,
the ability to switch between clusters or subcategories relies on frontal lobe functions
such as strategic search, cognitive flexibility, and set shifting. Although both switch-
ing and clustering were equally highly correlated with the total number of words
generated on a semantic (category) fluency task, switching was more highly correlated
than was clustering with the total output for a letter (phonemic) fluency task.
Additionally, when young adults were asked to perform category and letter fluency
tasks under full attention versus while also performing a secondary task (finger
tapping), divided attention resulted in significantly fewer words generated on the
letter fluency task, and also significantly fewer switches between clusters for this task,
perhaps because the “clusters” in this task are not highly salient and so require focused
attention. However, findings from patients with unilateral frontal lobe lesions (Baldo
& Shimamura, 1998) have pointed to significant and equivalent impairments arising
from frontal lobe damage on both semantic category fluency tasks and letter fluency
tasks. Taken together, these outcomes suggest that the frontal lobes are important in
the efficient retrieval and development of strategies for both fluency tasks that have a
substantial semantic component and for tasks that are more phonological in nature.
As we saw in Chapter 2, asking participants to engage in a version of the Alternative
Uses task for a brief period of time (10–15 minutes) significantly improved their sub-
sequent performance on a series of insight problems compared with participants in
control conditions (e.g., simple word association; Chrysikou, 2006). Recent research
from our own laboratory (Wen, Butler, & Koutstaal, in preparation) has replicated
these findings in younger adults and also has extended this paradigm to healthy older
adults, showing that for older individuals, too, engagement in this task can signifi-
cantly enhance solution rates on problems characterized as most often solved by
insight. Thus, successful performance on insight problems that may themselves
require a form of spontaneous flexibility—particularly overcoming a predominant
way of conceptually framing a problem—may be bolstered by fostering a mental pro-
cessing mode that involves both automatic and controlled processes and repeated
alternations between them. In the following chapter we will consider another impor-
tant situational factor—involving our level of relaxation versus stress and its relation
to the levels of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline (also called norepinephrine)—
that likewise may be important in fostering spontaneous flexibility.
Goal Neglect, Fluid Intelligence, and

Working Memory: Beyond Prefrontal Cortex
to Dynamic Anterior-Posterior and
Across-System Interactions
How we respond to novelty is an essential aspect of the flexible control of behavior, as
is strongly apparent in the responses shown by individuals with prefrontal lesions. On
the one hand, as a consequence of frontal damage, newly introduced or changed task
requirements may not be appropriately taken into account, leading to perseveration or
inflexible persistence in a task set when requirements have changed. On the other hand,
if the same task or operations are performed repeatedly, so that it is possible to rely on
highly habitual or overlearned sequences of behavior or operations, then individuals
with frontal lesions may be able to perform even quite complex tasks well. Additionally,
if there are clear and frequent external prompts, reminders, or guides to the activity,
then individuals with frontal lesions also may perform well. However, they are less
likely to do well if little support is provided for sequencing, choosing, and selecting
actions and the situation places high demands on internally generated spontaneous
organization of activity. If the task is relatively unfamiliar and requires the individual
with frontal lesions to adaptively respond to changing rules or circumstances, then the
likelihood that some of the requirements will be overlooked is increased.
A clear demonstration of the conditions under which damage to the prefrontal
cortex might interfere with adaptive and flexible coordination of several tasks, or mul-
tiple subgoals and requirements, is provided by a pioneering study, conducted by
Shallice and Burgess (1991). These investigators tested three patients who had
prefrontal cortical lesions but who still achieved intelligence scale scores well above
the mean (full scale intelligence test scores of 130, 121, and 127) on two open-ended
tasks. The tasks required the patients to perform a number of simple activities, the
first within an office setting (the Six Elements task) and the second within a small
shopping area of a street that the patients did not know (the Multiple Errands task).
In the Multiple Errands task, for instance, the patients were instructed that they
were to buy specified items (e.g., a loaf of brown bread) and to acquire information of
various sorts. In carrying out these errands, they were to act in accordance with several
simple rules, such as that they should not enter a shop other than to buy something,
they should take as little time as possible (without excessively rushing), and that they
should inform the experimenter of any purchased items. In addition, they were to
meet someone at a specified place 15 minutes from the time at which they received the
instructions and began the errands. Once the patients and their matched controls
were able to verbally repeat the rules (indicating they had understood and remem-
bered them), they were taken to the shopping area to undertake the multiple errands.
Compared with their controls, each of the three patients made many more errors
on this open-ended task, such as using inefficient strategies (e.g., entering the same
shop more than once), breaking the rules (e.g., not informing the experimenter of a
purchase), and task failures. Overall, the three patients had total errors of 12, 23, and
17, whereas the controls, on average, made 4.6 errors.
Yet goal neglect is not unique to individuals with brain damage: It can sometimes
be observed in everyone, and in some situations can occur quite frequently. In the
Multiple Errands task, for example, all of the patients, but also 5 out of the 9 control
participants failed to follow one of the task rules by neglecting on at least one occasion
to tell the experimenter when they had purchased an item in a shop. Failures to
consistently abide by all of the “rules” for a given context were also apparent in
the average number of errors on the Multiple Errands task made by the control
participants.
Recent work suggests that goal neglect is more likely to be observed if the activity
that we are currently attempting to perform differs in some respects from one that we
had performed in the same situation earlier, so that there are competing alternatives
for guiding what we might do (J. Duncan et al., 2008), particularly if the situation is
such that one of the responses we need to make is much more frequent than another
response (Kane & Engle, 2002). Another key determinant of whether goal neglect
occurs is the level of complexity of the task, including all of the facts, rules, and
requirements involved (J. Duncan et al., 2008; J. Duncan, 2010). As the complexity of
the overall “task model” incorporating these components increases, it becomes
increasingly likely that one of the task components will be “lost” from consideration—
and thus that one’s further actions will be based on this more simplified model that
lacks an important constraint for correct task performance.
The likelihood that individuals will show goal neglect on an experimental task is
strongly positively correlated with their performance on novel abstract reasoning
tasks that provide measures of “fluid intelligence,” such as series completion or
progressive matrices in the Cattell Culture Fair test (J. Duncan et al., 1996; J. Duncan
et al., 2008). Using a relatively simple task in which individuals were required to switch
between one rule and another rule, Duncan et al. (1996) found that goal neglect was
quite common in individuals who scored more than one standard deviation below the
mean on the Culture Fair Test, but it was absent in those scoring more than one
standard deviation above the mean. Tasks such as progressive matrices and series
completion themselves represent problems in which a number of different situational
constraints or rules must first be identified (based on the particular problem pre-
sented), and then must be “kept in mind” in working memory as one evaluates what
the next item in the series might be that would appropriately conform to all of those
constraints (Carpenter, Just, & Shell, 1990; Kane & Engle, 2002; see Fig. 9.4 for a
related example and the section on “Analogical and Relational Thought” in Chapter 9
for additional discussion).
This ability to keep multiple aims and constraints in mind has been termed “execu-
tive attention” by Kane and Engle (2002, p. 638), and it has been characterized by
these authors as the “psychological core of the statistical construct of fluid intelli-
gence, or psychometric Gf.” More specifically, they define “executive attention” as “a
capability whereby memory representations are maintained in a highly active state in
the presence of interference” where these representations “may reflect action plans,
goal states, or task-relevant stimuli in the environment.” This capability is especially
critical under conditions of interference or response competition that could yield
incorrect retrieval, and that therefore “set the occasion for relying on active mainte-
nance of information” (p. 638).
A particularly clear demonstration of the interrelations between the ability to

resist interference and fluid intelligence in healthy adults is provided by an innovative
individual differences neuroimaging study performed by J. R. Gray, Chabris, and
Braver (2003). These investigators first tested 48 individuals on a challenging visual-
spatial measure of fluid reasoning (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices), and then,
during fMRI scanning, examined functional brain activity as they performed
a difficult working memory task—the three-back task. In this task, participants
saw a series of either all words or all faces, with a new stimulus presented about
every 2 seconds. Their task was to indicate as quickly and accurately as possible
whether the current stimulus matched or did not match the stimulus seen three items
previously (thus “three back”). Notably, some of the trials on the three-back task
were quite difficult because the stimulus was the same as a recently seen stimulus
that was not, however, “three back” but instead was either a two-back, four-back, or
five-back match. These trials involved “lures” that could create a high level of response
interference—demanding a precise evaluation of just when, exactly, the items had
been presented—and so would require particularly high cognitive control to be
responded to correctly. In contrast, other nontarget trials on the three-back task were
not recently seen, and so they involved little interference and were comparatively less
difficult.
To evaluate the relation between fluid intelligence and neural activity in this work-
ing memory task, J. R. Gray et al. (2003) examined patterns of brain activity on the
task as a function of whether individuals achieved overall scores that were within the
upper 50% versus lower 50% of the scores on the fluid intelligence measure. The key
finding was that group differences on the working memory task between those who
achieved higher versus lower fluid intelligence emerged most strongly for the
high-interference trials of the three-back working memory task. Although there was
also a significant modest positive correlation between fluid reasoning and working
memory performance even for the easier (nonlure) trials, the correlation was greater
on these highly demanding and conflict-rich trials, and the fluid intelligence measure
continued to predict performance on the lure trials even after statistically controlling
for accuracy on the nonlure trials.
Analyses of the neuroimaging data collected during the three-back task revealed a
significant positive correlation between the fluid intelligence test scores and the mag-
nitude of event-related brain activity in several regions, particularly in left prefrontal
cortex (Brodmann Areas 46/45) and bilateral parietal cortex (Brodmann Area 40).
These positive correlations remained even after statistically controlling for several
other factors (such as brain activity within that region on both correct nonlure and
correct target trials from the same scanning session), indicating that there was
“a robust and specific covariation” (J. R. Gray et al., 2003, p. 317) between fluid
reasoning scores and brain activity on the lure trials. In addition, statistical mediation
analyses revealed that the correlation between fluid intelligence and behavioral
performance on the high-interference trials was nearly entirely attributable to the
differences in brain activity in these regions on those trials. Lure-trial activity in any
one of these regions (that is, left prefrontal, left parietal, or right parietal cortex)
explained up to 92% of the shared variance between fluid intelligence and accuracy;
taken together, all three regions explained more than 99.9% of the relation.
In this study, not only prefrontal cortex but also bilateral parietal cortex played an
important role in mediating task performance on the difficult (high interference)
working memory trials, and bilateral parietal cortex was likewise a strong predictor of
the relation between fluid intelligence and behavioral performance on those trials.
A recent large-scale investigation of both structural and functional activity correlates
of this same fluid intelligence task (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices), versus a
crystallized intelligence measure that draws on longer term knowledge (the Wechsler
Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised), likewise demonstrated that the frontal-parietal
network assumes a particularly important role in novel on-the-spot problem solving
(Y. Y. Choi et al., 2008; K. H. Lee et al., 2006). These researchers found that functional
activity differences, particularly in the frontal-parietal network, were correlated with
performance on the fluid-reasoning task. In contrast, structural differences (cortical
gray matter thickness), particularly in left temporal cortex, in regions that may be
involved in processing semantic information (to be discussed in Chapter 9), were
especially strongly correlated with the measure of crystallized intelligence. Multiple
linear regression analyses showed that whereas the overall amount of variance
explained by the structural brain correlates was greater for the crystallized measure
(37%) than for the fluid measure (22%), the reverse was true for the measure of fluid
intelligence. Functional correlates explained more of the variance in fluid on-the-spot
reasoning (31%) but less of the variance in crystallized (20%) intelligence.
In each of these studies, and in several further investigations (e.g., Colom et al.,
2007; Geake & Hansen, 2005; Prabhakaran et al., 1997), not only prefrontal cortex
but also bilateral parietal cortex played a significant role in mediating task perfor-
mance on working memory and fluid intelligence tasks. Although, thus far in this
chapter, we have predominantly focused on the key role of the prefrontal cortex in
enabling flexible cognitive control, the prefrontal cortex clearly does not operate
alone. There is very strong evidence for the important interactive relations between
prefrontal regions and parietal cortex (the frontal-parietal network) in sustaining
flexible online manipulation and updating of information, and also, more broadly, for
interactions between prefrontal regions and other posterior regions such as occipital-
temporal cortex, involved in representing diverse forms of stimuli such as objects,
words, faces, and scenes.
Interactions between frontal and parietal cortex during tasks requiring working
memory and reasoning have long been noted. Based on a review of 37 neuroimaging
studies using tasks probing fluid and crystallized intelligence, reasoning, and games
such as chess, Jung and Haier (2007, p. 138) proposed a “parieto-frontal integration
theory.” In this theory, they suggest that interactions between association areas within
parietal and frontal cortex—“when effectively linked by white matter structures”—
such as the arcuate fasciculus (a white matter tract that connects the temporal and
frontal language zones)—“underpins individual differences in reasoning competence
in humans, and perhaps in other mammalian species as well.”
A graphic summary of the key brain regions that their review identified as
implicated in reasoning tasks is presented in Figure 8.7. The dark circles represent
predominantly left hemisphere associations and the light circles represent predomi-
nantly bilateral associations; the white arrow represents the white matter fiber tract
of the arcuate fasciculus.
Figure 8.7. Interactions Between Frontal and Parietal Cortex in Fluid

Thinking and Intelligence. Schematic depiction of the primary brain regions
that a meta-analysis found to be associated with comparatively higher performance on
measures of intelligence and reasoning, and that, together, are part of the parieto-
frontal integration theory proposed by Jung and Haier (2007). The circled numbers
indicate Brodmann areas; dark circles indicate predominantly left hemisphere
associations, light circles indicate predominantly bilateral associations; the white arrow
schematically indicates the arcuate fasciculus, a white matter fiber tract that
connects the temporal and frontal language zones. Reprinted from Jung, R. E., &
Haier, R. J. (2007, p. 138), The parieto-frontal integration theory (P-FIT) of
intelligence: Converging neuroimaging evidence, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30,
135–187, with permission from Cambridge University Press. Copyright 2007,
Cambridge University Press.
Notably, this network, identified as commonly observed across various tasks

involving higher order complex reasoning, is also very similar to that found in many
studies examining attention, working memory, and episodic memory. As incisively
argued by Naghavi and Nyberg (2007, p. 162), in a commentary on the Jung and Haier
(2007) review, the distribution of the frontal-parietal network in posterior and ante-
rior parts of the brain, together with “its connectivities and functional specializations”
is such that the frontal-parietal network might be thought of as a “backbone, located
at the top of the hierarchical organization of the brain, by which the otherwise
fragmented pieces of information as well as sensory-motor and cognitive processes
are integrated and managed.” Despite the apparent diversity of the various functions
that have been found to correlate with activity in the frontal-parietal network, includ-
ing, as noted, not only higher order reasoning but also attention, working memory,
and episodic memory, Naghavi and Nyberg (2007) argued that these functions might,
nonetheless, “fit into a unifying conceptual framework for integration and control of
information.” Such a capability for integration and control “is critical for optimal
recruitment of internal resources to exhibit goal-directed behavior relevant to
ever-changing environmental requirements.” Such integration and control processes

encompass a wide variety of operations, among them:
… multimodal convergence of behaviorally relevant information in coherent

representations; selective enhancement or inhibition of specific representa-
tions through feedback mechanisms; maintenance of information in a buffer
system via sustained activity; and manipulation of information according to
the cognitive demands. All of these processes should be carried out by a
central system that has extensive access to both sensory and motor repre-
sentations, and the fronto-parietal network is at an ideal site in the brain to
subserve this end. Nodes of the fronto-parietal network are thoroughly and
reciprocally connected with each other, as well as with other association
cortices and subcortical areas, a property that allows widespread access to
perceptual and motor representations at different levels. With this unique
connectivity pattern, on the one hand, and specialization in a wide variety of
higher-order processing operations, on the other hand, the fronto-parietal
network can function as the source of integration and top-down control in
the brain, orchestrating perception, thought, and action in accordance with
internal goals. (Naghavi & Nyberg, 2007, p. 162)
More recently, J. Duncan (2010) has similarly proposed that the “multiple-demand”
pattern of frontal and parietal activity is observed across a variety of tasks in which
the task goal is achieved by a series of focused stages or subtasks. Including particu-
larly cortex in and around the posterior part of the inferior frontal sulcus, the anterior
insula and adjacent frontal operculum, the presupplementary motor area and adjacent
dorsal anterior cingulate, and regions in and around the intraparietal sulcus, this
network is recruited to enable “focus on the specific content of a current cognitive
operation, rapid reorganization with changing context, and robust separation of
successive task stages” (J. Duncan, 2010, p. 177). Findings from single-cell data,
reviewed by Duncan, increasingly point to such reorganization arising from transi-
tions between changing coalitions of active neurons during different task epochs, such
that “in complex behaviour, transitions from one step to the next are managed by
corresponding transitions among widely distributed, largely independent patterns of
prefrontal activity” (Duncan, 2010, p. 174). Much of the single-cell data have come
from recordings in the posterior part of the lateral prefrontal cortex of the monkey;
similar data from possible homologs of other “multiple-demand” regions, such as the
intraparietal sulcus, are greatly needed.
In line with this emphasis on the important contribution of the functional
connectivity between frontal and posterior cortices, a recent study has also docu-
mented differences in functional connectivity that correlate with general measures of
intelligence—even under conditions when no specific task is being performed (see also
the section on “Between Tasks” in Chapter 9). Song and colleagues (2008) examined
spontaneous brain activity during a resting state in 59 healthy adult individuals, in
relation to their scores on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. They found that the
strength of the functional connectivity between the frontal, parietal, occipital, and
limbic lobes was significantly correlated with intelligence scores. In addition, stepwise
linear regression analyses demonstrated that both the functional connectivity

within the frontal lobe, and between the frontal lobe and posterior brain regions, were
predictive of differences in intelligence across participants. They concluded that
“consistent or reciprocal activity in the network, both under specific task conditions
and in the resting state, would be a likely intrinsic mechanism for supporting
intelligent behavior” (Song et al., 2008, p. 1174). Furthermore, they proposed that
brain activity in this network, characterized by the interaction between multiple brain
regions, “appears to be relevant to intelligence differences even in the resting state
and in the absence of explicit reasoning or working memory demand, which could
reflect an underappreciated aspect of the intrinsic brain functional organization that
is associated with intelligence (p. 1175).”
A subsequent investigation of brain network connectivity in healthy individuals
during the resting state, using the technique of graph analyses, has provided clear
convergent support for this suggestion. Van den Heuvel and colleagues (2009) found
that there was a strong association between a measure of the “global efficiency” of
intrinsic (resting state) brain connectivity and a combined measure of verbal and
performance intelligence (assessed by a translated version of the Wechsler Adult
Intelligence Scale-III). Specifically, a connectivity index of the characteristic path
length, known as L, gives “the average number of connections that have to be crossed
to travel from each node to every other node in the network and provides information
about the level of global communication efficiency of a network” (Van den Heuvel
et al., 2009, p. 7620). These researchers found strong associations between the mea-
sure of full-scale intelligence and individual normalized path length in medial prefron-
tal gyrus (Brodmann area 9/10, r = –.75), precuneus/posterior cingulate gyrus
(BA 7/31, r = –.55), and bilateral inferior parietal regions (BA 39/40, r = –.72 and
r = –.68, for left and right inferior parietal, respectively). Significant negative correla-
tions were also observed in left superior temporal cortex (BA 22/40, r = –.69) and left
inferior frontal gyrus (BA 44/45, r = –.68). The correlations were most strongly appar-
ent for the performance intelligence subscale assessing nonverbal knowledge and rea-
soning. Notably, as we will see in Chapter 9, and as remarked by Van den Heuvel, three
of these regions—medial prefrontal gyrus, precuneus/posterior cingulate gyrus, and
bilateral inferior parietal regions—have been reported by Buckner and colleagues
(2009) to form “functional hubs within the cortical brain network.” Furthermore:
This is important, since efficient hub nodes are more likely to have a stronger
effect on global network efficiency than less connected peripheral nodes.
Interestingly, these frontal and parietal regions overlap the often reported
functional default mode network, a dynamic resting-state network that is
suggested to play a key role in processes of human cognition, like the inte-
gration of cognitive and emotional processes […] monitoring the world
around us […] and mind wandering […]. Furthermore, also the structural
dynamics of these parietal and frontal brain regions have been previously
linked to intelligence. (Van den Heuvel et al., 2009, p. 7621)
The specific representational contributions of posterior cortical regions also need

to be taken into account. An increasing body of evidence emphasizes that short-term
or working-memory reflects the temporary activation of long-term representations

(e.g., J. R. Anderson, 1983; Cowan, 1995; Fuster, 2006; Oberauer, 2002; Ruchkin et al.,
2003), distributed in regions such as temporal and temporo-occipital cortex. Such
temporary activation can pertain to any of the many sorts of information that we can
represent and remember, such as our longer term knowledge of particular places,
faces, or objects. On these accounts, activity in prefrontal cortex during working
memory tasks, including that shown in recordings from single neurons over delay
periods, reflects the operation of central executive processes, including processes that
are needed for keeping the representations within the focus of attention (e.g., Jonides
et al., 2008; Ranganath & D’Esposito, 2005; Ruchkin et al., 2003). However, crucially,
on these accounts, the representations that are being “focused on” are in posterior
cortical regions, the location of which varies depending on the nature of the content
that is involved.
For example, in several studies, face-specific activity in the delay phase of working
memory tasks that involve faces as stimuli was localized to regions of inferior tempo-
ral cortex that are believed to also subserve the perception and long-term retention of
faces (e.g., Druzgal & D’Esposito, 2003). Particularly persuasively, Lewis-Peacock and
Postle (2008) recently demonstrated a similar point across several different stimulus
types but using the highly sensitive methodology of multivoxel pattern classification
analysis (MVPA) of fMRI data.
This pattern classification approach to analyzing functional neuroimaging data was
developed based on the recognition that there may be substantially more information
in the response of a brain region than is captured by the usual method of finding the
overall mean response (overall activation increase or overall activation decrease) in a
cortical region as a function of the study’s various experimental conditions (e.g.,
Haxby et al., 2001; Haynes & Rees, 2006; K. A. Norman et al., 2006). Analyses of the
full spatial pattern of neural activity at each voxel of the brain across many spatial
locations simultaneously, using multivariate pattern classification techniques, can
detect small but consistent variations in the selective responses of the brain region to
particular types of stimuli or conditions. Such techniques aim to assess the representa-
tional role that a brain region assumes and can be used to uncover more complex pat-
terns that a given region may play in representing certain classes or sorts of stimuli.
Adopting this multivariate pattern classification approach, Lewis-Peacock and
Postle (2008) first trained a computer network pattern classifier to differentiate
between those regions of the brain that were activated as participants engaged in
long-term memory processing of three types of stimuli, including pictures of famous
people, famous locations, and common objects. They then tested for the reinstate-
ment of these patterns during the short-term retention of the same stimuli in a work-
ing memory task. Specifically, participants first learned paired associations between a
small subset of the total stimulus set, including some associations within categories
(e.g., learning to associate two famous people) and some across categories (e.g., learn-
ing to link a famous person C with a famous location, or a specific object). Then, after
participants had reached a high level of accuracy on this task, they were given the
same task in the scanner but now with a delay between the presentation of the cue
(e.g., Person C) and the presentation of a probe stimulus. The participants’ task was to
indicate whether the probe stimulus was correct (that is, the probe matched the paired
association to the cue that they had learned earlier) or incorrect (the probe did not
match what they had associated earlier).
If the computer network pattern classifier—trained only on brain activity data
gathered during the long-term memory task—nonetheless was able to successfully
differentiate between the categories of stimuli (i.e., famous people vs. famous
locations vs. common objects) in brain activity data gathered during the short-term
memory task, this would provide strong evidence that the delay-period activity in the
short-term task was substantially similar to that from the long-term task. This out-
come would then persuasively make the case that the working memory task produced
the temporary reinstatement of long-term memory activity. And this is exactly what
was observed.5
An integrative but somewhat speculative overview of the complex dynamic interac-
tions between cortical regions in supporting short-term memory (and the many
potential sources of memory failures) is provided in Figure 8.8. Taken from a recent
review of short-term memory by Jonides and colleagues (2008), the diagram is multi-
faceted and complex, but it depicts very well the dynamically integrative cognitive and
neural processes involved in the processing and neural representation of an item in
memory over the course of a few seconds, during which the individual must keep track
of additional new incoming information. Figure 8.8 also helps to integrate findings
relating to sustained activity-related representation, such as the single-cell recordings
in the studies of visual categorization in the monkey discussed earlier in this chapter,
and more durable “long-term” representations of objects and knowledge located in
posterior association regions of cerebral cortex (to be discussed in Chapter 9).
In Figure 8.8, the cognitive events occurring across time are represented at the
top of the figure. The bottom of the figure delineates the task events (e.g., when each
stimulus is presented, and the delays between them). The middle region of the figure
depicts the corresponding neural events. The y-axis (discussed more fully later) broadly
represents the “extent and basis of neural representation.” In the cognitive task that is
here illustrated, three stimulus items, such as novel shapes, are presented, one after
the other, and the participant’s task is to remember the first shape. An initial novel
shape is presented for 700 milliseconds, followed by a 2-second delay, then the second
stimulus appears, followed by a delay, and then likewise the third stimulus, also
followed by a delay. Last, a probe appears, during which memory for the first item
must be accessed and evaluated.
The colored layers in the middle of the figure indicate the extent to which different
brain areas contribute to the representation of the item over time, including: prefron-
tal control systems (shown as dark gray), parietal attentional systems (light gray),
posterior high-level perceptual systems (dark purple), posterior low-level perceptual
systems (light purple), and medial-temporal binding systems (pink). The changing
depth of the layers represents the changing extents to which the ongoing represen-
tational processes draw upon a given cortical region. Additionally, the diagram differ-
entiates between representations sustained by active neuronal firing, such as single
cells in prefrontal cortex (shown by solid layers), and memory supported by short-
term synaptic changes (shown by hashed layers). According to this proposal, whereas
neuronal firing supports the perceptual encoding and active maintenance of a stimu-
lus representation that is within the focus of attention, short-term synaptic plasticity,
Prefrontal control systems Posterior high-level perceptual systems Representation by active neuronal firing
Parietal attentional systems Posterior low-level perceptual systems Representation by synaptic changes
Medial-temporal binding systems
Retrieval and COGNITIVE

Encoding Maintenance in focus Highly available representation out of the focus, degraded by interference and decay
maintenance in focus EVENTS
5 Iconic memory
at stimulus offset 6 Active maintenance mediated
by frontal-parietal systems;
decay caused by stochastic drift
12 Cue-based parallel retrieval,
3 Speed-accuracy trade-off subject to proactive interference
in perceptual encoding
9 Focus shifts to second
stimulus; first stimulus 13 Frontal-parietal mediated
Extent and basis of neural representation

pattern ceases active firing active maintenance of
retrieved pattern
7 Reuse of perceptual systems

for STM and imagery, mediated
by frontal-parietal systems
2 Active MTL role in NEURAL

1 binding in STM EVENTS
Retroactive interference caused by disruption

10
of short-term synaptic enhancement by active
neural patterns of second and third stimuli
11 Decay of representation outside
of focus caused by decay of
short-term synaptic enhancement
8
4
TASK
Stimulus Delay Second stimulus and delay Third stimulus and delay Probe
EVENTS
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000

Time (ms)
Figure 8.8. The Neural Bases of Short-Term Memory. Schematic overview of the complex and dynamic interactions between multiple
brain regions involved in supporting short-term memory for the first of three visually presented stimuli in a short-term memory probe paradigm,
and involving both representation by active neuronal firing, and representation by synaptic change. See text for detailed explanation. Reprinted
from Jonides, J., Lewis, R. L., Nee, D. E., Lustig, C. A., Berman, M. G., & Moore, K. S. (2008, p. C-1), The mind and brain of short-term memory,
Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 193–224, with permission from Annual Reviews. Copyright 2008, Annual Reviews. Note: See the insert for a
or perhaps residual active firing, supports the representation of information that is

not currently in the focus of attention.
The y-axis in the figure is not precisely labeled or quantified: Jonides et al. (2008,
p. 215) suggest that, psychologically, perhaps it corresponds to “a combination of
availability (largely driven by the dichotomous nature of the focus state) and accessi-
bility (driven by a combination of both firing and plasticity).” At the neural level, they
propose that perhaps it corresponds to “some measure of both firing amplitude and
coherence and potential firing amplitude and coherence” (with coherence broadly
referring to the extent to which individual neurons continue to fire or respond in
synchrony with one another).
In Figure 8.8, the circled numbers correspond to the many different neural process-
ing steps that might be involved in mentally representing just the first of the three
stimulus shapes in the working memory task across time. Systematically walking
through the time course and the different steps shows that even for this relatively
simple task many different cortical regions contribute to the representation of the item
across time, with the relative contributions of each region changing as the external
stimulus conditions and the individual’s focus of attention shifts. Additionally, across
time, different mechanisms (short-term active firing of neurons and synaptic plastic-
ity) assume changing levels of responsibility for the representation of the stimulus.
Beginning with the point—at (1)—at which the stimulus is first presented, the
figure schematically shows that there is a rapid emergence of activity (active firing) in
posterior perceptual regions, involving the representation of the item both at the
lower level of visual features (shown in solid pale purple in the figure) and at higher-
level, more abstract levels (show in solid darker purple in the figure). There is also (2)
a rapid onset of representations of the association between the item and its context, or
item-context binding—here, the contextual timing information regarding the item,
such as that it is the first presented item—drawing on the medial-temporal lobes
(shown in solid pink). For some brief period of time, say, the first few hundred milli-
seconds during which the stimulus remains on display, (3) the quality of the percep-
tual information that is encoded continues to improve. In addition, and concurrently
with these processes that reflect active neuronal firing driven by the stimulus, (4) very
short-term synaptic plasticity across cortical areas also begins to encode both the
item’s perceptual features and its association to the context (cross-hatched regions
shown in lighter and darker purple and pink, respectively).
When the presentation of the first stimulus is terminated, and the first delay period
begins, there is (5) a brief period during which the stimulus remains in iconic memory
(shown in the figure as a translucent pale pink vertical bar). At this point, there is also
(6) increased reliance on the active firing of neurons in prefrontal control systems
(shown in dark gray) and parietal attentional systems (shown in light gray), as the indi-
vidual seeks to keep the no-longer-visible stimulus in working memory. This active
firing diminishes over the delay period, perhaps due to stochastic drift, such that, with
time, and without a form of “reset,” variability in the firing rates of individual neurons
causes them to fall increasingly out of synchrony with one another, or perhaps due to an
increased likelihood from interference from other representations. During this phase,
(7) both higher order and lower order posterior perceptual systems again contribute to
sustaining the representations in short-term memory and imagery. In addition, during
this phase, (8) contributions from short-term synaptic potentiation, reflecting the
changing connection weights between brain regions, also occur in parallel, helping to
sustain both the representation of the item, and the item-context association.
When the second of the three stimuli is presented (9), the focus of attention rapidly
shifts to the new stimulus, and the active firing of the neural pattern of the first target
stimulus ceases. At this point, (10) the memory for the first stimulus is entirely reliant
on the changed synaptic connection weights and is vulnerable to disruption from the
active neural patterns relating to the second and third stimuli that are presented.
Additionally, as the first item remains outside of attentional focus, (11) other biochem-
ical processes may contribute to the decay of short-term synaptic enhancement.
Presentation of the probe, signaling to the participant that his or her memory for
the first item must now be accessed and evaluated, initiates (12)—a cue-based retrieval
of the target. This entails both strategic processes relying on active firing in frontal
and parietal regions and also a reinstantiation of representations of the target in
higher and lower order posterior perceptual regions and of the item-context associa-
tions in medial-temporal regions.
In this complex and interactively dynamic portrayal of the many cognitive and
neural processes that contribute to ongoing thinking (see Jonides et al., 2008, for
additional elaboration), “working memory” is not viewed as a specialized system or
set of subsystems, each involving different sorts of content (e.g., spatial information
or verbal or phonological information). In this view, working memory involves the
flexible directing of attention to different sorts of information that can be stored in
multiple areas of posterior cortex. According to a similar account of working memory,
proposed by Postle (2006):
… working memory functions are produced when attention is directed to

systems that have evolved to accomplish sensory-, representation-, or action-
related functions. From this perspective, working memory may simply be a
property that emerges from a nervous system that is capable of representing
different kinds of information, and that is endowed with flexibly deployable
attention. Predictions about the nature of representations contributing to
short-term retention of any particular kind of information are made by
considering the nature of the information that is to be remembered, and the
mental processes that are afforded by the task that is being performed.”
(Postle, 2006, p. 29)
This view of working memory as an “emergent property” of the mind/brain

proposes two principles, both of which are important to the iCASA framework. First,
the successful retention of information in working memory will be supported by the
various brain regions that are involved in representing that type of information in
situations that do not involve working memory, such as semantic memory, object
perception, and so on. Second, “humans opportunistically, automatically, recruit as
many mental codes as are afforded by a stimulus when representing that stimulus in
working memory”—and these “codes” will vary in the level of specificity and type of
information they represent, such as associations with a previous experience, the name
of the object, or semantic content, and the context in which the object was presented,
and so on. Furthermore, the number of different ways in which information is repre-
sented may influence the different types of operations and sorts of problem-solving
activities that we can apply, so that “the ability to represent an item (or a piece of
information) in multiple codes, despite the unimodal channel by which it may have
been perceived, should facilitate one’s ability to manipulate or transform the repre-
sentation of this information” (Postle, 2006, p. 31). Thus, “thinking with our senses”—
involving our efforts to imaginatively link and richly interconnect stimuli and events
in multiple modalities—may be an essential contributor to working memory capacity,
and thereby to fluid and flexible thinking more generally.
The contributors to an “agile mind” potentially involve all areas of the brain that
contribute to representational, sensory, or action-related functions. This perspective
also suggests that the functional connectivity between prefrontal cortex and posterior
regions should be an important determinant of working memory performance
(Sakai et al., 2002) and that how effectively we encode information may play a central
role in boosting flexible thinking (e.g., Bor et al., 2003; Rypma & D’Esposito, 1999).
In addition, this view is entirely consistent with recent evidence reported by Jaeggi
and colleagues (2008) showing that training individuals in tasks that challenge their
current level of working memory capacity—through multimodal training that is
systematically titrated to the individual’s current capacity—significantly bolstered
their performance on a standardized measure of fluid intelligence. That research,
together with several other studies documenting the benefits of attentional and
working memory training on flexible thinking, is highlighted in Chapter 11. Now,
however, we turn, in the next “companion” chapter, to also explore some of the neural
bases that enable comparatively more spontaneous (rather than controlled) and more
specific (rather than abstract) modes of thinking that are equally fundamental to our
“agile minds.”
9
Brain Bases of Levels of Specificity
and Levels of Control, Part 2
Concepts and Intuition, Resilience, Novelty,
and Exploration
The moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high up

over the deserts of Santa Fe, something stood still in my soul,
and I started to attend. There was a certain magnificence in the
high-up day, a certain eagle-like royalty. . . In the magnificent
fierce morning of New Mexico one sprang awake, a new part of
the soul woke up suddenly, and the old world gave way to a new.
—D. H. Lawrence (1927, p. 142)
Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake,
A composing as the body tires, a stop
To see hepatica, a stop to watch
A definition growing certain and
A wait within that certainty, a rest
In the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake.
—Wallace Stevens (“Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,”
1954/1990, p. 386)
A companion to the preceding chapter, this chapter continues to concentrate on

experimental findings from cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology that help to
illuminate the neural bases of levels of representational specificity, levels of control,
and their interrelations in enabling agility of mind. However, we now turn our
attention (largely, although not exclusively) to research regarding processes that are
comparatively less controlled and more spontaneous. We also direct somewhat greater
attention toward the relatively more specific or concrete, rather than predominantly
abstract, end of the representational content continuum.
This is a multipart chapter that considers not only the neural substrates of cogni-
tive factors, but also of emotional and motivational factors, that may facilitate or
impede our mental agility. We begin by considering the bases of the representation of
387
semantic knowledge and concepts in the brain. Although much remains unknown,
conjunctive findings from neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and cognitive-behav-
ioral studies have provided crucial insights into the nature of concrete (and multi-
modal) representations of concepts, and abstract (and amodal) representational
networks and their interrelations in our brain. Subsequent sections focus on the
networks involved in enabling analogical and relational thought, and in intuition and
insight. Turning to broader cognitive effects that arise from fluctuations in our level
of current arousal, or stress, the contributions of noradrenaline/norepinephrine in
the process of accessing semantic knowledge that is only remotely or more distantly
related to a problem or task at hand are highlighted.
These sections are followed by a consideration of the importance of the nature of
brain activity and the patterns of brain connectivity that are present during times of
“nondirected” and “spontaneous” thinking. Activity in what has come to be termed
the “default network” is increasingly recognized as an important player in adaptively
creative cognition and imagination. Research focused on the functional roles of this
network is providing an essential corrective to a too unilateral emphasis on directed
and intentional processing in enabling optimal mental agility. This section, together
with the previous sections of the chapter, explicitly aims to counter the heavier
weighting on deliberate and controlled processing that was true of Chapter 8. Titled
“Between Tasks: Thinking about the Past, Imagining the Future, and our Ever-Active,
Salience-Detecting and Network-Changing Minds,” the section also explores recent
proposals regarding what brain regions or network(s) of brain regions might assume a
role in switching between the central executive versus default networks. It highlights
accounts that right frontoinsular cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex may be
part of a salience-detecting network that “unites conflict monitoring, interoceptive-
autonomic, and reward-processing centers” (Seeley et al., 2007, p. 2352)—and so may
be optimally situated to orchestrate such switching.
The last three sections of this chapter bridge forward, to the continual interactive
influences of our broader environment in shaping our minds and brains that are the
topic of Chapters 10 and 11, and also backward to earlier chapters on motivation and
emotion. Two sections explore the brain bases of “bouncing back” or resilience, and of
adaptive responding to novelty, respectively. The section on resilience draws attention
to the top-down influence of ventral medial prefrontal cortex, the role of serotonergic
function, and the mechanisms by which physical exercise and certain early experi-
ences may promote resilience to stress; the section on adaptive responding to novelty
focuses especially on the role of the locus coeruleus–norephinephrine system in
novelty, reward, and exploration. The final section turns our attention to the dynamic
interplay of cognition, emotion, and motivation that determine behavioral approach
versus behavioral avoidance. The sorts of stimuli and the types of situations that a
person chooses to approach and what, instead, he or she seeks to avoid, is multiply
determined: by temperament, and learning, and environmental opportunity, as well
as by his or her sensitivity to differing sorts of rewards and risks. This then, provides
an especially fitting jumping-off point for Chapters 10 and 11 that focus on how
our day-to-day and our longer term (monthly, yearly, lifelong) choices of social,
cognitive, educational, and leisure pursuits either promote, or diminish, “brain paths”
to mental agility.
Thinking with Our Senses: The Concrete and

Multimodal—and Abstract and Amodal—Brain Bases
of Conceptual Representation
A central claim of this book is that mental representations are not entirely abstract or
symbolic but are grounded in perception, action, and feeling, and so, too, therefore, is
thinking—and creatively adaptive thinking. Chapter 4 outlined a wide array of find-
ings that supported this claim from a cognitive and behavioral perspective, relating to,
for example, the important representational roles of gestures and of so-called epistemic
objects and actions in facilitating complex thinking, and the close and reciprocal
connections between what we perceive and our thinking and reasoning, such as the
role of immediate sensory-perceptual input, in hypothesis generation and insight
during problem solving. Here, we turn to a consideration of some of the key observa-
tions from neuroimaging and neuropsychology that demonstrate the essential role of
the brain regions that are involved in sensory-perceptual and motor processing in
representing mental concepts. We also underscore points of both agreement and of
ongoing debate regarding the complex question of “where” conceptual knowledge or
semantic memory is “found” in the brain.
Let’s begin with some of the key points of general (albeit not universal) agreement.
One point of agreement across nearly all current theoretical accounts of semantic
memory is that much of the “content” of our semantic knowledge relates not only to
language but also to perception and action—and is represented in brain regions that
overlap, either in whole or only in part, with the regions that support perceiving and
acting. This, in turn, means that our knowledge of concepts is widely distributed across
the neural networks of the brain, because the neural regions that support action and
sensation (e.g., seeing, hearing, and taste) are themselves widely distributed. To
“know” what a grapefruit is, for example, is to be able to bring to mind certain visual
features such as its size, shape, and its color, as, for instance, that it is round, typically
somewhat larger than an orange, and often yellow with a delicate blush of pink
(drawing on the posterior occipital and occipital-temporal regions that analyze visual
form and color). It is also to be able to call upon other sensory features of a grapefruit,
such as its probable weight in one’s hand (involving parietal and premotor cortex), its
fragrant scent and the subtle gradated flavors of its taste (drawing on a complex
network of regions such as the orbitofrontal cortex and insula), as well as associative
and linguistic information about a grapefruit, such as what it is called and other
descriptions that we could use (e.g., “citrus fruit”), relying on language regions (the
perisylvian language zone, including Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, with connections
extending across frontal, temporal, and parietal cortex).
Several sources of evidence broadly support this view. As briefly noted in Chapter 4,
convergent findings derive from studies of memory for recent events and of mental
imagery. In the case of memory, findings show that corresponding sensory-perceptual
processing regions become activated when we recollect or recall earlier encountered
events experienced in a given modality. Thus, auditory association processing regions
are active when we recall environmental sounds from memory, whereas visual object
processing regions are active when we recall pictures that we have seen, even when
there is, before us, no pictorial information but only a word that is the referent of a
previously seen picture (e.g., Polyn et al., 2005; M. E. Wheeler, Petersen, & Buckner,
2000). Neuroimaging findings have also shown that the brain regions that are acti-
vated during visual mental imagery partially overlap with those that are activated
during actual perception (e.g., Grèzes & Decety, 2001; Kosslyn et al., 1999; Kosslyn,
Thompson, & Alpert, 1997; Mechelli, Price, Friston, & Ishai, 2004; O’Craven &
Kanwisher, 2000), suggesting that both mental imagery and vivid recollection of past
experiences may involve a form of “mental simulation” or “mental reenactment”
(see Gallese & Lakoff, 2005 and Kent & Lamberts, 2008, for review and discussion).
Direct explorations of the role of sensory-motor cortices in the representation of
concepts also support the view that concepts are, at least in part, represented in brain
regions that overlap with the regions that support perceiving and acting (e.g., Chao,
Haxby, & Martin, 1999; R. F. Goldberg, Perfetti, & Schneider, 2006; Martin, 2007;
Martin et al., 1995; Simmons, Martin, & Barsalou, 2005; Tranel et al., 2003;
see Thompson-Schill, 2003, for review). When we access and use concepts, neural
networks that code salient sensory-perceptual properties of the relevant objects, such
as an object’s color (Martin et al., 1995) or taste (e.g., Simmons, Martin, & Barsalou,
2005) are activated. For example, R. F. Goldberg et al. (2006) showed that when
participants were asked to determine whether concrete words possessed a given prop-
erty for each of four modalities, including color (Was it green?), sound (Was it loud?),
touch (Was it soft?), or taste (Was it sweet?), different brain regions were activated in
each case. Compared with a control task, in which participants were shown nonwords
(pseudowords) and asked to determine whether they contained a specific letter, during
the retrieval and verification of tactile knowledge (touch) a region in somatosensory
cortex (postcentral gyrus) was activated whereas during attempted retrieval of
information about the taste of objects a region in orbitofrontal cortex, known to be
involved in representing special aspects of taste and smell, such as flavor identity, was
activated. Similarly, different regions were activated for the verification of whether
the object was associated with a loud sound (auditory association cortex in the left
superior temporal sulcus, just inferior and posterior to primary auditory cortex) and
whether it was green (left middle temporal cortex, Brodmann area 37). Brain regions
involved in enabling our physical and motor interactions with objects, such as grasp-
ing, also are activated when we access concepts of tools or artifacts such as “hammer”
(e.g., Beauchamp & Martin, 2007; Martin, 2007; Moro et al., 2008; but see also Bedny
et al., 2008, discussed later), or our mental notions of everyday objects such as light
bulbs, globes, and buttons (Yee, Drucker, & Thompson-Schill, 2010).
Depending on the particular task paradigm, some of these findings might reflect
postconceptual processing such as strategic imagery. However, combined functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalogram (EEG) findings
reported by Kiefer and colleagues (2008) suggest that related perceptual information
also may be activated quite early in the process of conceptual access, and perhaps
largely automatically at least in some cases. They found that words that had been inde-
pendently rated as clearly possessing sound- or acoustic-related features (e.g., tele-
phone) elicited more activity in the auditory association areas of the left posterior
superior/middle temporal gyrus than did words that were not rated as having promi-
nent acoustic-related features. The amount of activity increased linearly as a function
of the rated relevance of the acoustic features to the words and was shown to partially
overlap with the regions of brain activity found when participants actually heard
both real sounds and acoustic noise. Notably, this differential activity in auditory
processing regions was found for visually presented words, during a word/nonword
lexical decision task that did not direct the participant’s attention to auditory
features, and the event-related potential (ERP) recordings showed that activity in
auditory-association cortex emerged quite early—beginning at about 150 ms after
word onset. The regions that showed differential activation by the conceptually related
acoustic features were in higher order auditory association cortex (not primary or
secondary auditory cortex), leading Kiefer and colleagues (2008) to emphasize that
this form of implicit and perhaps automatic activation of acoustic conceptual knowl-
edge seems to involve a partial reinstatement of brain activity from early perceptual
experience. Such partial reinstatement differs from actual perception or highly vivid
imagery, which is accompanied by a clear subjective phenomenal experience and
involves activation in primary and secondary auditory cortex.
To assess whether a given word or concept is associated with particular sensory
properties, such as sound or color, most experiments have relied on subjective ratings
provided by persons during a stimulus norms collection phase (either conducted by
the experimenters themselves or in large-scale normative work published by other
investigators), or on lists of the sensory-perceptual and other properties that people
generate in response to particular words or concepts (e.g., Cree & McRae, 2003;
K. McRae, Cree, Seidenberg, & McNorgan, 2005). Notably, however, there is at least
initial evidence to suggest that modality-specific activations in brain regions might
also emerge when, rather than using subjective ratings from participants concerning
the types of perceptual-motor features that are associated with a given noun, extremely
large sets of text are used, in combination with computational modeling techniques,
to extract more abstract intermediate semantic features. Textual analyses might be
used to determine, for example, how often a given word, such as “celery,” occurs within
about five words of the word “taste” or variants such as “tastes” and “tasting” in a
trillion-word text corpus. In a pioneering exploration by T. M. Mitchell, Just, and
colleagues (2008) such intermediate semantic features, computationally derived from
text alone, were found to predict that a verb such as “eat” would be associated with
neural activity in gustatory cortex, whereas a verb such as “run” would be associated
with activity in cortical regions related to body motion.
A further and related important point of generally broad agreement regarding the
complex question of “where” conceptual knowledge is “found” in the brain is that—for
at least a comparatively small number of concept or object categories, predominantly
involving concepts or objects that, from an evolutionary standpoint, may have high
levels of importance to our adaptive functioning—processing is preferentially special-
ized in particular brain regions. Although the precise characterizations of why, and
how, such specialization develops are less well agreed, several classes of objects appear
to have specialized processing regions. There is extensive evidence relating to the
specificity of visual object representation in posterior cortex, including particularly
regions that are specialized for the representation and processing of the categories of
faces (the fusiform face area; e.g., Kanwisher, McDermott, & Chun, 1997; Kanwisher,
2000; Rhodes, Byatt, Michie, & Puce, 2004), parts of the body (the extrastriate body
area; e.g., Downing, Jiang, Shuman, & Kanwisher, 2001; Spiridon, Fischl, & Kanwisher,
2006), places (the parahippocampal place area; e.g., R. Epstein, Harris, Stanley, &
Kanwisher, 1999; R. Epstein & Kanwisher, 1998), and, somewhat more controver-
sially, visual word forms (e.g., L. Cohen et al., 2000; L. Cohen & Dehaene, 2004; Yarkoni
et al., 2008; but see also Price & Devlin, 2003, 2004). Neuropsychological evidence has
also repeatedly shown that lesions to the brain may give rise to disproportionate
impairments that concern either a particular modality or type of knowledge (e.g.,
visual or perceptual knowledge or function-related knowledge about how objects are
used and manipulated) or to category-specific semantic deficits (see Devlin et al.,
1998; Mahon & Caramazza, 2009, for review). In the latter case, patients show dispro-
portionate impairments in the ability to access and use conceptual knowledge relating
to one or more broad categories of concepts, most often the categories of animals,
fruits/vegetables, nonliving things, or other people (conspecifics), but this impair-
ment is then general, rather than modality specific. For instance, a patient may be
generally impaired in naming and answering questions about living animate things,
but not for nonanimals (e.g., artifacts, such as furniture or tools).
Innovative research on the ways in which nonhuman primates may represent
semantic knowledge has further pointed to across-species similarities in certain
higher order categorical differentiations between broad classes of concepts.
Comparisons of visual object category selectivity in the human versus monkey
(macque) inferior temporal cortex (Kiani et al., 2007; Kriegeskorte et al., 2008), using
analyses of representational dissimilarity based on fMRI in humans and single-cell
recordings in the monkey, suggest that at least broad categorical divisions between
animate and nonanimate things, and between bodies and faces, are also found in these
primates (raised in human houses, and then in zoos, before being brought to the labo-
ratory). Kriegeskorte et al. (2008, p. 1138) suggest that these behaviorally important
categorical distinctions “are so basic that their conservation across species appears
plausible,” such that evolution and individual development lead to a “common code”
of representational features in primate inferior temporal cortex. This common code
appears to involve both distinctions between key categories, and more continuous
similarity-based distinctions of individual exemplars within category clusters.
Thus, that particular cortical regions are differentially involved in the representa-
tion and processing of certain classes of stimuli, such as faces, is broadly accepted.
Nonetheless, ongoing points of debate and investigative effort concern both the
number and types (or origins) of the constraints that lead to these forms of represen-
tational specialization (e.g., Cree & McRae, 2003) and the precise role of learning or
expertise in such specialization (e.g., McKone, Kanwisher, & Duchaine, 2007). At least
partially overlapping regions in the fusiform face area may, for example, be recruited
during other tasks that require fine-grained within-category perceptual discrimina-
tions, as might be demonstrated by expert birders or car buffs—or even experts in
differentiating between entirely novel and newly learned individual entities and fami-
lies of creatures, such as so-called greebles (e.g., Gauthier et al., 1999; Gauthier et al.,
2000; Tarr & Gauthier, 2000. However, see Behrmann et al., 2005, for a surprising
finding showing that training a man with impairments in face and object recognition
to discriminate between greebles led to improvements in his recognition of greebles
but substantially increased his response times for recognizing individual faces of
people with no improvements in accuracy, suggesting that the greeble training

worsened rather than improved face recognition performance).
There is also continuing debate concerning just where, and how, relatively more
abstract concepts are represented and the extent to which concepts may be “abstracted
away” from more “primary” sensory-motor features (see, for example, Pexman et al.,
2007; Whatmough et al., 2004, for reviews and Binder et al., 2009; and J. Wang et al.,
2010, for meta-analyses). Holding the broad type of concept to be examined constant
(all animals) but varying whether the relevant properties to be verified were ones that
might be directly experienced when interacting with the animal (e.g., “Has four feet?”
or “Has fur?”) versus comparatively more “abstract” properties that one typically
would learn through teaching or reading (e.g., “Can be trained?” or “Lays eggs?”), R. F.
Goldberg, Perfetti, et al. (2007) found that the more abstract questions led to greater
activation in several regions of left prefrontal cortex. This pattern of greater activation
for the comparatively more abstract questions, observed in left ventral prefrontal,
frontopolar, and dorsolateral frontal regions, remained even when confining consider-
ation to a subset of trials, chosen for each participant individually, that yielded closely
matched response times, suggesting it was not simply an outcome of differences in the
difficulty of responding. Using a synonym judgment task, in which participants were
required to select the word (e.g., “goal” or “cause”) most similar to a given target (e.g.,
“aim”), Noppeney and Price (2004) also identified an area in left inferior frontal gyrus
as more activated by abstract concepts than by other types of semantics relating to
color (e.g., “silver, gray, gold”), sounds (e.g., “humming, buzzing, howl”), or hand
movements (e.g., “knit, draw, scrawl”). In addition to left inferior frontal gyrus, two
regions in the left anterior temporal pole and a region in left middle/superior tempo-
ral gyrus were more active for abstract than for the visual, auditory, or motor-move-
ment judgments, even when comparing easier abstract judgments against difficult
sensory-perceptual judgments.
A recent meta-analysis (J. Wang et al., 2010) of regions recruited during the
processing of abstract versus concrete words, including 19 different fMRI or PET
studies and a total of 303 participants exposed to a range of different tasks such as
semantic similarity decisions, categorization, and lexical decision, found several foci
that were consistently more often activated for abstract than for concrete words, and
other regions that consistently demonstrated greater activity for concrete than for
abstract words. Abstract words consistently demonstrated greater activation than
found for concrete words in the left anterior temporal lobe, including several foci in
the left middle and left superior temporal gyrus, as well as in left inferior frontal
gyrus. In contrast, concrete concepts relative to abstract concepts, consistently elic-
ited activation in left precuneus and posterior cingulate, and also in left fusiform and
parahippocampal gyrus. Another recent and extensive meta-analysis using a different
technique (Binder et al., 2009) pointed to a number of broadly convergent findings;
thus, abstract or predominantly “verbal” concepts were consistently associated
with activation in left inferior frontal gyrus and also left anterior superior temporal
sulcus whereas concrete or predominantly “perceptual” concepts were consistently
associated with activation in several regions, including left mid-fusiform gyrus, and
left posterior cingulate, as well as the angular gyrus bilaterally. Yet a number of indi-
vidual studies on the representation of abstract versus concrete concepts show clearly
differing outcomes (e.g., Pexman et al., 2007, found a large number of widely distrib-
uted regions in temporal, parietal, occipital, and frontal cortex, as well as precuneus
and posterior cingulate, to be more active for abstract than for concrete concepts, with
no regions more highly activated for concrete than for abstract concepts).
Many neuroimaging studies have shown that comprehension of verbs denoting
actions, such as “kick,” leads to increased activity in several regions of the posterior
lateral temporal cortex, including in, or near, a region of the brain that processes visual
motion (MT+), and the right superior temporal sulcus, important for the perception
of biological motion. On the one hand, these findings suggest that understanding
action verbs may activate visual-motion representations (e.g., H. Damasio et al., 2001;
Martin et al., 1995). On the other hand when Bedny and colleagues (2008) attempted
to test this account directly, they found that, although several regions of posterior
lateral temporal cortex showed greater activation to words that described actions than
to words that described objects, these regions did not overlap with visual-motion
regions. Additionally, activity was not greater for verbs that were independently rated
as having high levels of visual motion features (e.g., “to run”) than for verbs referring
to mental actions (e.g., “to think”), and it was equally low for nouns denoting animate
animals (e.g., “the cat”) that typically move and inanimate natural objects (e.g., “the
rock”) that do not.
A possible account of these findings is that developed by Kable, Chatterjee,
and colleagues (Kable, Kan, Wilson, Thompson-Schill, & Chatterjee, 2005; Kable,
Lease-Spellmeyer, & Chatterjee, 2002). These investigators have proposed that there
may be a concrete to abstract organizational gradient in motion representations.
According to this account, comparatively more concrete representations of visual
motion are represented in relatively more posterior occipitotemporal cortex, close to
human motion processing areas (MT/MST), whereas more abstract propositional
action information may be represented closer to the middle temporal gyrus. Using a
semantic judgment task in which participants were asked to choose which of two
presented action concepts (e.g., “shoveling” or “listening”) was most similar to a target
concept (e.g., “digging”), Kable et al. (2002) found there was greater activity for
judgments that involved action concepts, than for judgments that involved objects,
bilaterally in human motion areas (MT/MST) and in nearby areas of the middle tempo-
ral gyrus. However, this was found only when the task was performed using pictures
that depicted the relevant actions, and not for words that referred to actions. In addi-
tion, the neural activations in occipitotemporal cortex were found to be comparatively
more posterior when the task was relatively more difficult and likely required detailed
visual processing of the alternatives (Kable et al., 2005) but were more anterior (com-
pared to the human MT/MST homolog) when comparing activation for predicate meta-
phors that do not literally imply motion, such as “The man fell under her spell,” than for
literal motion sentences, such as “The child fell under the table” (Chen et al., 2008).
These and related findings suggest that both aspects of the way that conceptual
knowledge is probed (e.g., through pictures vs. words) and the specificity of the concep-
tual knowledge that is needed in order to meet task requirements (e.g., relatively effort-
less coarse-grained vs. more difficult detailed discriminations, or more metaphorical
vs. more literal interpretations) may modulate the extent to which comparatively more
abstract versus more perceptually anchored associative brain regions are recruited for
conceptual knowledge retrieval and judgments. These findings also fit well with other
cognitive-behavioral evidence relating to the sensory-perceptual grounding of concepts
(e.g., Solomon & Barsalou, 2004)—discussed previously in Chapter 4— showing that
the precise nature of a task (e.g., whether unrelated vs. semantically associated lures
are used) can influence whether the task is performed primarily through sensory-per-
ceptual simulation or predominantly on the basis of lexical-associative knowledge.
Returning to emphasize a point made in Chapter 4: “Although we have such richly
linked sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor networks of meaning, about simple
objects such as chairs and watermelons, sometimes we bring to mind only very small
and restricted subsets of what is there. Sometimes we make little connection to the
sensory-perceptual features, traversing the deep world of meanings largely through a
suspended ‘surface-net’ of words and associations between words.”
Another important ongoing point of debate concerns the question of whether our
knowledge of concepts is then entirely distributed, such that these distributed brain
regions, and their interconnections, comprise the entire neural basis of semantic
memory. Whereas according to some views, these modality-specific regions and their
various interconnections comprise the entire semantic network, other views argue
that there are both modality-specific and “amodal” regions that integrate and/or point
to or “index” conceptual features from across the various modalities. In the conceptual
topography theory proposed by Simmons and Barsalou (2003), for example, although
modality-specific knowledge is represented in sensory-motor areas, there are also
across-modality “convergence zones,” for example, in the anterior ventromedial tem-
poral lobe (in particular, in perirhinal cortex). As in the convergence zones earlier sug-
gested by A. Damasio (1989; see also Meyer & Damasio, 2009), these cross-modality
convergence zones are thought to integrate and bind complex combinations of con-
ceptual features.1
Similarly, and in contrast to the “distributed-only view,” in the “distributed-plus-
hub” view proposed by Patterson and colleagues (2007), the sensory, motor, and lan-
guage-specific aspects of conceptual knowledge are necessary, but not sufficient. This
account proposes that, in addition to the various modality specific regions and their
interconnections, there also is a further amodal region, or “hub,” located in the ante-
rior temporal lobes. According to the distributed-plus-hub view, “in addition to direct
neuroanatomical pathways between different sensory, motor and linguistic regions,
the neural network for semantic memory requires a single convergence zone or hub
that supports the interactive activation of representations in all modalities, for all
semantic categories” (Patterson et al., 2007, p. 977).
A schematic depiction of the “distributed-only” and “distributed-plus-hub” views is
provided in Figure 9.1. Whereas on both views, the cortical semantic network is
broadly distributed, and partly organized in accordance with the neuroanatomy of
sensory, motor, and linguistic systems, the views differ in the forms of connectivity
they propose. As characterized by Patterson and colleagues, the distributed-only view
(panel a) involves connections between modality-specific cortical regions (shown in
green) that can be “gated” by the current task demands. For example, if the partici-
pant’s task were to name a visually presented line drawing of a familiar object, then
activation would flow from a representation of the object’s shape to its name (right-
side panel). In the distributed-only view, the associations between different pairs of
(a) Distributed-only view Gating architecture

Action Sound Name Action Colors Motion
Motion
Task
Words Shape Task-

dependent
Shape Color representation
(b) Distributed-plus-hub view Convergent architecture
Name Action Colors Motion
Task-
dependent
representation
Task-
independent
representation
Task
Shape
Figure 9.1. The Representation of Semantic Knowledge in the Brain.

A schematic depiction of the distributed-only view of conceptual representation,
involving a gating architecture (a) versus the distributed-plus-hub view of conceptual
representation, involving a convergent architecture (b). Reprinted from Patterson,
K., Nestor, P. J., & Rogers, T. T. (2007, p. 977), Where do you know what you know?
The representation of semantic knowledge in the human brain, Nature Reviews
Neuroscience, 8, 976–987, with permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Copyright
2007, Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Note: See the insert for a full-color version of this image.
attributes (e.g., sound and action) are encoded in multiple different neuroanatomical
pathways. In contrast, in the distributed-plus-hub view (panel b), each of the modal-
ity-specific regions also is connected to a shared, amodal “hub” in the anterior tempo-
ral lobes (shown in red in panel b, with connections from this region to each of the
modality-specific regions shown in red). In addition, at this “hub stage,” it is proposed
that the associations between different pairs of attributes, such as shape and name,
shape and action, or shape and color, “are all processed by a common set of neurons
and synapses, regardless of the task” (Patterson et al., 2007, p. 977). This network is
thus a “convergent network” rather than a “gating network.”
The single most important source of evidence in support of the distributed-plus-
hub view comes from neuropsychology—and involves the nature of the impairments
shown by patients with “semantic dementia,” or the temporal variant of frontotempo-

ral dementia (earlier briefly characterized in note 2 in Chapter 2). Patients with
semantic dementia show a progressive deterioration in their ability to both produce
and understand the names and meanings of objects, concepts, and people, and in their
knowledge of the uses or functions of objects, together with relatively preserved
cognitive function on assessments that do not rely on conceptual knowledge; thus,
until late in the disease they may show reasonably normal performance on measures
of short-term and episodic memory, visuospatial function, and so on.
Notably, this semantic memory impairment is quite global in that it is manifested
across multiple different sorts of probes of conceptual knowledge, such as naming
pictures of objects, categorizing or drawing pictures of objects, responding to verbal
descriptions, matching pictures or words based on thematic associations, or associat-
ing a characteristic sound with an object or animal (e.g., Bozeat et al., 2000). The
impairment is also observed across multiple different output modes, such as speaking,
writing, and attempting to appropriately physically interact with tools or artifacts
such as a screwdriver or a toaster (although, as noted in Chapter 2, at least in some
cases, patients may be able to rely on highly specific autobiographical or episodic
knowledge to compensate for some loss of conceptual knowledge for specific objects
that they use regularly).2
Additionally, as already observed from the earliest investigations of semantic
dementia (e.g., Warrington, 1975), knowledge about highly general or “superordinate”
level concepts appears to be less affected, and to be preserved longer across the course
of the disease, than is knowledge about comparatively more specific (either “basic”-
level or “subordinate”-level) concepts. For example, whereas healthy individuals are
most likely to name a picture of a duck as “duck” (e.g., Rosch et al., 1976), patients
with semantic dementia might name it “bird,” or (as the disease progresses) “animal”
or perhaps overextend a common name such as “dog” to cover several types of animals
(e.g., Hodges, Graham, & Patterson, 1995; M. F. Schwartz, Marin, & Saffran, 1979).
Other observations similarly suggest that, as the disease progresses, and the concep-
tual semantic system is increasingly compromised, “what is retained is increasingly
restricted to the general and typical” (T. Rogers & Patterson, 2007, p. 451).
A highly visually persuasive example of this progressive loss of semantic knowl-
edge, or increasing loss of what has been termed “semantic acuity” (e.g., Pobric et al.,
2007), is provided by the drawings that patients with semantic dementia may provide
(e.g., Bozeat et al., 2003). If shown a line drawing of an animal such as a camel or a
seal, and then, after a 10-second delay, asked to draw what they had been shown, the
drawings of these patients often become more “prototypical” of animals in general.
The seal’s flippers, for example, might be omitted and be replaced by legs, the distinc-
tive hump (or humps) on the back of the camel might be missing in the patient’s draw-
ing, and new elements that are prototypical of animals in general, but not possessed
by a particular animal, might be inappropriately introduced (a frog might be given a
tail, or a duck be pictured with four legs—thus the title of the 2003 paper by Bozeat
and colleagues reporting these findings). There also frequently is considerable consis-
tency in the conceptual items that show impairment, such that patients tend to show
similar impairments for a given concept across different modalities and across time
(e.g., Bozeat et al., 2000).
This selective but also multimodal impairment in semantic knowledge in persons

with semantic dementia is associated with atrophy of the anterior temporal lobe
(particularly near the temporal pole), usually bilaterally, but often more pronounced
on the left than the right side. Both functional neuroimaging studies, using positron
emission tomography (PET) and volumetric structural imaging studies, have shown
that the functional and anatomical abnormalities in semantic dementia primarily
involve the anterior and inferior portions of the temporal lobes (e.g., Mummery et al.,
2000; Nestor et al., 2006) as well as left anterior fusiform (Mion et al., 2010) . Although
fMRI studies of healthy individuals performing semantic tasks most often report
activations primarily in left inferior prefrontal and temporoparietal regions, and rela-
tively seldom3 report anterior temporal lobe activations, this may be due to technical
difficulties relating to susceptibility to “signal dropout” and distortions in this region
using fMRI (Devlin et al., 2000, M. Visser, Embleton et al., 2010, M. Visser, Jefferies,
& Lambon Ralph, 2010). Methodological factors, such as the inadvertent subtraction
of semantic activation due to the use of low-level baseline or comparison conditions
(e.g., rest or passive fixation) that themselves tend to evoke conceptual processing
associated with task unrelated thinking (Binder et al., 1999, Visser, Jefferies, &
Lambon Ralph, 2010) may also work against the observation of anterior temporal
lobe activations. (See the later section on “Between Tasks.”)
Consistent with this suggestion, research with healthy adults using other brain
imaging modalities, such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) and repetitive transcra-
nial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), provides convergent evidence that this region is
critically important in semantic processing. Taking advantage of the excellent timing
resolution provided by magnetoencephalography, Marinkovic et al. (2003; see also
Fujimaki et al., 2009) showed that presenting words in an auditory format versus a
visual format during a semantic (size judgment) task initially engaged modality-
specific regions. However, activation then converged on the anterior temporal and
inferior frontal regions, predominantly on the left, at between 250 ms (auditory pre-
sentation) and 400 ms (visual presentation) after word onset.
Interfering with functional processing in the left anterior lateral temporal area
through the application of low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimula-
tion (rTMS) also was found to lead to temporary impairments in semantic processing
in healthy individuals without neurological impairment (Lambon Ralph, Pobric, &
Jeffries, 2009; Pobric et al., 2007). Application of rTMS led to significantly longer
reaction times, and to significantly lower accuracy, on an object naming task that
required participants to name pictured objects at a specific level (e.g., “robin”) relative
to naming them at a general level (e.g., “bird”). Repetitive TMS also led to significantly
increased reaction times in a synonym-judgment task compared with a number-
judgment task (Pobric et al., 2007).
More recently, Pobric and colleagues (2010) demonstrated differential patterns in
the extent to which repetitive TMS interfered with the naming of objects, depending
on whether stimulation was applied to the left anterior temporal lobe or to the left
inferior parietal lobule. Previous (offline) repetitive TMS to the left anterior temporal
lobe in normal participants led to a category-general impairment in basic-level naming
of pictured objects during a subsequent task. Impairments in object naming after
stimulation to the left anterior temporal lobe were observed regardless of the specific
type of object that the participant was asked to name. In contrast, stimulation to left
inferior parietal lobule—known to be involved in representing information about
human-made objects and tools that can be manipulated—elicited a category-specific
naming impairment. Stimulation to the left inferior parietal lobule led to significantly
slower naming times for objects that were highly manipulable, but it did not signifi-
cantly slow the naming of objects that were low on this “manipulability” dimension.
As observed by Pobric et al. (2010, p. 967), these results, “fit squarely with the hub-
and-spoke model of semantic memory” and provide support for the conclusion that
both the amodal hub of the anterior temporal lobe and modality-specific association
“spokes” contribute to semantic representations:
Because the ATL hub is involved in the translation and deeper encoding of
pan-modal information sources, the representations become modality
invariant […] and thus they are involved in conceptualization for all types of
category. In contrast, modality specific information contributes only to the
subset of concepts that are experienced in that modality. Unlike other modal-
ity specific areas, [the inferior parietal lobule] is an ideal test region given
that there is an almost binary division of praxis experience between manipu-
lable objects and other concepts. (Pobric et al., 2010, p. 967)
Another particularly informative study used a “specially tailored” combination of

three approaches to more sensitively examine the distributed-plus-hub view. T. Rogers
et al. (2006) first defined regions of interest in the anterior temporal lobe based on
structural brain images of semantic dementia patients, finding the anterior temporal
regions that were most severely and consistently affected by the disease in six patients
with semantic dementia (Mummery et al., 2000). They then examined activity in these
same regions, in healthy adults, during PET scanning—but during a task that was
designed to especially challenge semantic classification by requiring highly precise
versus relatively less precise (more general) object classification decisions. Significantly
greater activation in these anterior temporal lobe regions was found when partici-
pants were asked to classify pictures of objects and animals at a highly specific level
(e.g., as a robin or kingfisher), than when they classified the pictures at a more inter-
mediate level (e.g., as a bird) or a highly general level (e.g., as an animal). This effect
was observed bilaterally, and both for animate objects (animals: birds and dogs) and
inanimate objects (vehicles: automobiles and boats).
The observation that the anterior temporal lobes were especially taxed by tasks
that required very specific recognition or classification of a stimulus was expected, and
predicted, based on the distributed-plus-hub view of semantic representation and
processing (e.g., T. Rogers et al., 2004). As we have seen, according to this account, the
systematic degradation of detailed semantic information observed in semantic
dementia arises because the atrophy of the anterior temporal lobes disrupts the medi-
ating connections between the various perceptual, motor, and language representa-
tions that are part of the cortical semantic network (see Fig. 9.1b). Additionally,
however, based on computational modeling of the semantic network (e.g., McClelland
& Rogers, 2003), it was predicted that this disruption would be greatest for
tasks requiring differentiation between items that are conceptually closely related
(e.g., a robin and a kingfisher) because these objects are represented with quite similar
patterns of activity in the anterior temporal lobe. In contrast, there would be less
disruption for discriminating between conceptually unrelated items (e.g., a robin and
a yacht) because these are represented with dissimilar patterns of activity.
According to the distributed-plus-hub view (e.g., T. Rogers & Patterson, 2007),
whereas the neural representations in modality-specific regions of the brain capture
similarity based on relevant surface or sensory-perceptual features (e.g., similar visual
shapes), neural representations in the anterior temporal cortex instead capture simi-
larity based on conceptual features, even if the conceptually similar items do not share
many similar surface features (e.g., a flamingo and a hummingbird). On this account,
items that are “the same kind of thing” are represented as similar—even if they differ
greatly in visual appearance, and so on. Given that conceptually similar things are
represented by very similar patterns of activity across distributed neurons, naming a
particular bird as a “robin” requires the anterior temporal lobe hub to:
… instantiate the robin representation almost exactly, as the name does not
apply to other kinds of birds, many of which nevertheless have representa-
tions that are very similar to the robin. To name the same item “bird,” how-
ever, the robin pattern need not be instantiated exactly. Because the name
applies to all birds and all birds share similar representations, it is only neces-
sary for the hub to find a representation that is sufficiently “bird-like” to acti-
vate the name. Thus, small distortions of the “robin” representation—perhaps
resulting from anterior temporal lobe atrophy—will prevent the network
from retrieving the robin’s specific name (and other properties that differenti-
ate it from other birds) without disrupting the retrieval of properties that are
common to birds. A similar explanation extends to the interpretation of the
functional imaging results, if one assumes that a stronger metabolic response
in the anterior temporal lobe occurs in tasks that require the differentiation of
highly overlapping representations. (Patterson et al., 2007, p. 984)
Stated differently, the overlapping manner in which similar concepts are repre-
sented in the semantic system, leads to a greater likelihood that, following disruption
of the system through disease or other means, highly specific conceptual discrimina-
tions will be impaired, even though more general (less specific) discriminations can
still occur. Whereas under normal conditions, the conceptual similarity structure
“promotes semantic generalization and induction,” when anterior temporal regions
are damaged, then “the same principle of semantic organization militates against
retrieval of properties idiosyncratic to a specific concept”:
Because such properties are not shared by closely neighboring concepts, the
intermediating representations in the anterior temporal cortex must be spec-
ified with great precision in order to generate the correct response elsewhere
in the cortical network. As these representations degrade in semantic demen-
tia, it becomes increasingly difficult to settle upon precisely the right pattern,
and hence, to retrieve detailed semantic information. For more general infor-
mation, the anterior temporal lobe system can yield the correct response, so
long as it finds itself in the right representational ballpark, because all neigh-
boring representations will tend to produce the same correct response in the
rest of the network. (T. Rogers et al., 2006, pp. 209–210)
The computational model developed by T. Rogers and colleagues also led to a pre-
diction that, while contrary to what would be expected on many models of semantic
memory organization, is consistent with the pattern of changes in representational
level of specificity found in semantic dementia. In healthy adults—and also in chil-
dren—a “basic-level” advantage is very often observed, such that we can more rapidly
and more accurately identify objects at a “basic” level (e.g., as a dog, or a cat) than at
either a superordinate level (e.g., as an animal) or at a subordinate level (e.g., as a
golden retriever). Although many different theoretical accounts have been forwarded
for this pervasive and highly reliable effect (e.g., Jolicoeur, Gluck, & Kosslyn, 1984;
G. L. Murphy & Smith, 1982; Rosch et al., 1976), it appears to be at odds with the
findings from semantic dementia patients, who do not consistently show a basic-level
advantage but may name and classify items at a superordinate level (e.g., animal).
T. Rogers and Patterson (2007) predicted that, in healthy adults, the basic-level
advantage could be eliminated if conditions were such that they needed to respond
on the basis of a poorly specified semantic representation—such as might be true of
individuals in the relatively more advanced stages of semantic dementia.
In line with this prediction, when healthy adults were required to make semantic
classification decisions exceedingly rapidly, using what is known as a response dead-
line procedure, this was just the outcome that was observed. Participants first were
shown a name of an object, with the name at a subordinate, basic, or general category
level, and then were shown a matching or nonmatching color photograph and were
asked to decide whether the photograph matched the name. A series of regularly
spaced beeps presented after the name, at one of three tempos, prompted participants
to respond at one of three different deadlines (individually titrated to their perfor-
mance rate in an earlier control task): slow, medium, or fast. When participants were
required to respond very quickly, then—as predicted, and consistent with the findings
from patients with semantic dementia—participants were the most accurate for the
general category decisions, and least accurate for the specific decisions, with accuracy
for the basic-level decisions intermediate between these superordinate and subordi-
nate levels. These results are shown in Figure 9.2, separately for the three deadline
speeds (slow, medium, and fast). In contrast, when no deadline was imposed (shown as
“Exp. 1” in Fig. 9.2), then the usual “basic level” advantage in accuracy was observed.
A schematic depiction of why the connectionist model predicted these outcomes is
shown in Figure 9.3. In the diagram, each point indicates the representation of
a particular item (which, in the parallel distributed model, is itself a “point” in a mul-
tidimensional space of multiple neuron-like processing units). The proximity between
the points indicates the degree of conceptual similarity between the corresponding
representations: thus, a canary is close to other instances of birds but less close to
other sorts of animals. Because it applies across a very broad range of semantically
related items, the superordinate name (e.g., “animal”) normally begins to activate
earlier than the basic-level name. However, the broadly spaced representations for
animal (shown within the larger area designated by the broken line in the left-hand
RTs for all trials meeting deadline Accuracy for all trials meeting deadline
1100
General 2.90 General
1000 Basic Basic
Specific
2.70 Specific
900
2.50
RT (ms)
800 2.30
d’
700 2.10
600 1.90
500 1.70
400 1.50
Exp 1 Slow Med Fast Exp 1 Slow Med Fast
RTs for trials consistently meeting deadline Accuracy for trials consistently meeting deadline
1100 2.90
General General
1000 Basic 2.70 Basic
Specific Specific
900 2.50
RT (ms)
800 2.30
d’
700 2.10
600 1.90
500 1.70
400 1.50
Exp 1 Slow Med Fast Exp 1 Slow Med Fast
Figure 9.2. Specificity of Object Categorization Under Time Pressure.

Response time (RT) and discrimination accuracy for categorization decisions at three
levels of representational specificity given different response deadlines. Top panel:
Reaction times (left) and discrimination accuracy (right) for categorization at three
levels of representational specificity (general, basic, or specific) under conditions with
no response deadline (here designated as “Exp1”) and under conditions involving a
slow, medium, and fast response deadline. Lower panel: The same data, but discarding
from all conditions any stimulus that failed to meet the required deadline in any
condition. Note particularly the greater discrimination accuracy for the most abstract
“general” level at the fastest deadline. Reprinted from Rogers, T. T., & Patterson, K.
(2007, p. 463), Object categorization: Reversals and explanations of the basic-level
advantage, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 451–469, with
permission from the American Psychological Association. Copyright 2007,
American Psychological Association.
panel of Fig. 9.3) do not foster a lot of generalization across one another. Therefore,
the name “animal,” although it begins to be activated first, also activates quite slowly.
In contrast, the basic-level name (e.g., “bird”) does not begin to activate quite as early.
Yet it lives in a “neighborhood” with many other nearby conceptually similar instances
(that is, many other types or instances of birds). Therefore, although activation of the
name “bird” begins a bit later than activation of “animal,” it accelerates more rapidly
and reaches full activation sooner than does the superordinate name (see right panel
of Fig. 9.3). A highly specific subordinate name, such as “canary,” does not begin to be
activated until the internal representational state is quite close to the correct repre-
sentation, leading to the most slowly activated response.
Internal representation Name activation
Threshold
Canary
Bird
Animal
Canary
Bird
Animal Time
Figure 9.3. Object Naming and Levels of Specificity. Schematic depiction

illustrating why the parallel distributed processing model of Rogers et al. (2006)
predicts that the usual basic-level naming advantage will not be apparent under highly
speeded (time-pressured) conditions, and the basis for the theory’s prediction about
the time course of activation for names at different levels of specificity. See text for
additional details. Reprinted from Rogers, T. T., & Patterson, K. (2007, p. 461), Object
categorization: Reversals and explanations of the basic-level advantage, Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 451–469, with permission from the American
Psychological Association. Copyright 2007, American Psychological Association.
Stated more precisely:
When a visual stimulus appears, the model’s semantic representation state

begins to move from some neutral point toward the appropriate representa-
tion (e.g., a particular canary), as illustrated in the left panel [of Fig. 9.3]. The
right panel shows the predicted activation of different names over this time
span. To reach the end state, the system’s internal representation first begins
to pass through the region of the space to which the general name applies so
that the general name begins to activate soonest: but because general-name
learning does not benefit greatly from similarity-based generalization, the
label is slow to activate. Some time later, the representation reaches the area in
which the basic name applies, and the corresponding name begins to activate.
Because basic-level clusters promote similarity-based generalization and mini-
mize interference, the name activates more rapidly. The specific name does not
begin to activate until the internal state is very close to the correct representa-
tion, so this is the last name to activate (T. Rogers & Patterson, 2007, p. 471).
Collectively, these findings argue that, despite the frequent absence of activation
differences in the anterior temporal lobes during semantic memory tasks when using
fMRI, there is very strong convergent evidence from other brain imaging methods and
from neuropsychological investigations (e.g., see also Lambon Ralph et al., 2010) that
these regions play a critical role in semantic memory—most likely involving amodal
or more abstract multimodal associative connections of concepts. Nonetheless, the
precise nature of these relatively abstract associative knowledge connections remains
to be more fully explored, and the full empirical picture is not as entirely unmixed as
thus far portrayed. Three interrelated questions, in particular, need to be addressed, to
more fully integrate the distributed-plus-hub view with additional neuropsychologi-
cal, neuroimaging, and other findings that, at least on the surface, seem not fully con-
gruent with the account.
First, as elaborated in the following paragraphs, additional work is needed to exam-
ine possible subclassifications within more abstract concepts or socially relevant con-
cepts that might differentially call upon some subregions of the anterior temporal
lobes. Second, additional work is needed to articulate the relations between anterior
temporal lobe amodal semantic representations and the considerable evidence, from
neuroimaging, neuropsychology, and comparative neuroanatomy, for the involvement
of these regions in socioemotional processing (Olson et al., 2007; L. A. Ross & Olson,
2010). Third, these regions are also implicated in the processing of “unique” entity
information, such as that required in identifying and recognizing individual people
and landmarks (e.g., H. Damasio et al., 1996; Gorno-Tempini & Price, 2001; Tranel,
2006; Tsukiura et al., 2008). For instance, patients with semantic dementia that has
predominantly affected the left versus right temporal cortex also frequently show
deficits in recalling people’s names versus faces, respectively (e.g., Snowden et al.,
2004; Gainotti, 2007), and anterior temporal lobe resection surgery may lead to simi-
lar effects (Gloser et al., 2003; Tippett et al., 2000).
Simmons and colleagues (Simmons et al., 2010; Simmons & Martin, 2009) have
presented evidence that the anterior temporal lobes are particularly involved in the
representation of social knowledge. Based on findings from a neuroimaging study in
which individuals learned facts about people, buildings, or hammers (Simmons et al.,
2010), these investigators argue that, rather than acting as a domain-general hub, the
anterior temporal lobes work together with other regions frequently implicated in
social cognition, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior superior temporal
sulcus, the amygdala, and the precuneus/posterior cingulate, to support learning of
facts about others. Other researchers (e.g., Zahn et al., 2007) have provided neuroim-
aging evidence that the right superior anterior temporal lobe is involved in the repre-
sentation of abstract concepts that have social conceptual content (e.g., concepts such
as honor-brave) compared with concepts describing general animal functions (e.g.,
nutritious-useful); activity in this region further correlated with the richness of the
detail with which social concepts describe social behavior (Zahn, Moll, Paiva et al.,
2009; see also S. Green et al., 2010).
Activation in the anterior temporal lobes also has been frequently reported under
conditions in which individuals seek to infer the mental states or emotions of others
(see Olson et al., 2007, Table 3, for neuroimaging studies showing temporal pole acti-
vation in tasks involving mentalizing or theory of mind), or, indeed, when they engage
in inference processes relating to the animacy and intentionality of movements
depicted by abstract geometric shapes (e.g., Castelli et al., 2000; L. A. Ross & Olson,
2010). Furthermore, lesions to the anterior temporal lobe do not only lead to concep-
tual impairments but also to marked changes in social behavior (Zahn, Moll, Iyengar,
et al., 2009). Based on an extensive review of both nonhuman primate and human
findings, Olson and colleagues (2007, p. 1718) argue that the temporal pole has a role
in both social and emotional processing, including theory of mind and face recogni-
tion, “that goes beyond semantic memory” and propose that “the temporal pole binds
complex, highly perceptual inputs to visceral emotional responses.”
In line with these arguments, it might be noted that one of the few fMRI studies
that reported greater activation in the left anterior temporal pole for abstract words
than for concrete words (Noppeney & Price, 2004) involved a contrast between seman-
tic judgments for groups of abstract words that were arguably predominantly socioe-
motional in content (e.g., “conceit,” “arrogance,” “pride”; “wicked,” “evil,” “wrong”) and
concrete words with largely single-modality referents (e.g., “silver,” “gray,” “gold”; “par-
allel,” “cube,” “oval”). The comparative importance of the referential content of the
abstract words (denoting objects, events, or characteristics with high vs. with low
socioemotional relevance) versus the concrete words (denoting predominantly single
modality vs. more complex multimodality objects or actions) in these results is not
known, and it is one of the questions currently being explored in our lab using fMRI in
combination with multivoxel pattern analyses (Hoversten et al., in progress) that may
prove less susceptible to signal dropout than are more traditional fMRI analysis
approaches.
On the one hand, it is possible that, from a broader, more encompassing perspec-
tive, the unique entities, socioemotional processing, and amodal hub accounts are in
agreement. Amodal integration across modalities may also plausibly include integra-
tion of highly perceptual inputs with visceral emotional responses, and the processes
leading to identification of unique identities, such as a particular person, also involve
integration of input from multiple modalities—such as auditory or vocal expression—
that, likewise, is represented across several neural regions (e.g., Haxby et al., 2000).
Furthermore, the failure to experience expected socioemotional and visceral emo-
tional responses when seeing a highly familiar person, such as one’s spouse or parent,
may be associated with experiences of empathic disconnection and have been linked
to syndromes such as Capgras, in which the affected individuals believe that a seem-
ingly familiar person has been “replaced” by a look-alike imposter (Hirstein &
Ramachandran, 1997). Consistent with their subjective reports, despite conscious
recognition, individuals with this syndrome may show no autonomic response (change
in skin conductance response) to familiar compared with nonfamiliar faces (H. D. Ellis
et al., 1997; Hirstein & Ramachandran, 1997). Such disturbances in experienced
emotional connectedness to highly familiar faces, and related feelings of emotional
disconnection, have been associated with lesions or metabolic changes in the tempo-
ral lobe (e.g., Hudson & Grace, 2000; Lipson, Sacks, & Devinsky, 2003).
On the other hand, it is possible that more finely differentiated analyses, using
techniques such as single-cell recordings and fMRI adaptation paradigms that can, in
principle, uncover the neural composition of individual voxels (Bartels et al., 2008;
Goebel & van Atteveldt, 2009) will reveal interspersed but still spatially organized
subsets of neurons within the anterior temporal lobe relating to different combina-
tions of across-modality information. Neurons that prefer particular modalities, or
combinations of modalities, and also neurons that show multisensory interactions,

such as superadditive or subadditive response summation, may occur in smaller
spatial clusters of the anterior temporal lobes, such as has been observed in superior
temporal association cortex (Dahl et al., 2009).
Equally important: Clearly, the anterior temporal lobe region does not act alone.
It is, rather, one key part of a larger neural network, and it works in concert with
regions in left prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal cortex that are involved in the
control processes that access and manipulate semantic representations. Numerous
neuroimaging studies provide evidence for the involvement of prefrontal and tem-
poroparietal regions in the selection and manipulation of semantic (and also episodic)
information. Left inferior/ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, in particular, appears to be
consistently recruited in tasks that require high levels of control or selection related to
the processing of word or object meaning, or goal-directed access to semantic knowl-
edge (e.g., Thompson-Schill et al., 1997; A. D. Wagner et al., 2001).
On the one hand, A. D. Wagner and colleagues (2001) proposed that the left
prefrontal cortex is engaged whenever the retrieval of semantic information is nonau-
tomatic—that is, when the individual must exert some degree of control over the
retrieval process. On the other hand, Thompson-Schill et al. (1997) proposed that
the region is not involved in the retrieval attempt itself, but in the selection between
different competing alternatives. More recently, Badre, Wagner, and colleagues (Badre
et al., 2005; Badre & Wagner, 2007) have reviewed evidence consistent with a two-
process account of left ventrolateral prefrontal contributions to controlled processing.
They proposed that whereas a more anterior prefrontal region is responsible for the
controlled retrieval of semantic information that is not automatically activated during
a retrieval attempt, a more posterior region (mid-ventral-lateral prefrontal cortex) is
involved in postretrieval selection among simultaneously activated competing alter-
natives, regardless of whether those representations were activated through auto-
matic or controlled processing. In line with predictions based on this two-process
account, Badre et al. (2005) found that controlled retrieval tasks were associated
with coupled activation in lateral temporal cortex, reflecting the attempt to activate
long-term representations in the conceptual store, whereas postretrieval selection—
involving an attempt to resolve competition between already active mental represen-
tations—did not show such coupling.
Findings reported by Gold, Balota, and colleagues (2006), using a semantic priming
paradigm, appear to similarly support a two-process account (see also Souza, Donohue,
& Bunge, 2009). In this paradigm, target words (e.g., “spoon”) were preceded by a related
word (e.g., “fork”), an unrelated word (e.g., “coat”), or a neutral baseline word (e.g.,
“blank”). In addition, the length of time between the prime and the target was manipu-
lated (brief vs. long), so as to either allow predominantly only automatic processes to
contribute to the priming effect (brief delay of 250 ms between the prime and the target)
or to allow contributions from both automatic and controlled strategic processes (a
longer 1000 ms delay between the prime and target, during which plausible associates
might be anticipated or generated by the participant, with these anticipations helping
performance on the related word trials but not in the neutral or unrelated word trials).
Under the long delay conditions that would allow strategic processing, an anterior
prefrontal cortical region showed similar levels of activation for both the unrelated
and neutral prime conditions, together with reduced activation—reflecting facilita-

tion of processing—for the related primed items. That is, activation in this anterior
prefrontal region followed the pattern of related < neutral = unrelated. In contrast, a
more posterior region in ventral-lateral prefrontal cortex showed increased activation
in the unrelated prime condition that required the greatest selection among active
competitors, and inhibition of an inappropriate response. Stated differently, brain
activity in this posterior prefrontal region followed the pattern of unrelated > neutral =
related.
These results thus point to different specialized roles for anterior versus posterior
left inferior prefrontal cortex. Whereas anterior left inferior prefrontal cortex is
particularly involved in the “strategic retrieval of lexical-semantic representations
from long-term memory,” posterior left inferior prefrontal cortex is particularly
involved in “selecting task-relevant lexical-semantic representations from among
competitors” (Gold, Balota et al., 2006, p. 6531). Additionally, Gold, Balota, and
colleagues (2006) found that left middle temporal cortex showed facilitation from
the prime relatedness (that is, brain activity following the pattern of related prime
< neutral) regardless of the length of delay between the prime and target. This latter
finding is consistent with both automatic processing and controlled processing effects
contributing to semantic retrieval from temporal cortex.
The subsequent section further examines the role of prefrontal regions in complex
semantic processes such as relational reasoning and the assessment and completion
of analogies. Here, however, it should also be noted that a similar relative selectivity
in the regions involved in controlled retrieval versus selecting from among several
(already activated) competing representations has been found to apply in domains
beyond semantic memory, including episodic and working memory, and also tasks
such as task-switching, that demand flexible and adaptive alternations between tasks
that require following different rules (see Badre & Wagner, 2007; Danker, Gunn, &
Anderson, 2008, Wendelken et al., 2008, for review and discussion).
Two final closely related sets of observations should be noted. First, an especially
informative source of neuropsychological data regarding the role of prefrontal and
temporoparietal regions in conceptual selection and control derives from another
group of patients who, like semantic dementia patients, show impairments in seman-
tic knowledge, but evidence a quite different pattern of deficits. Stroke aphasia
patients, or patients who show language impairments following cerebral vascular acci-
dent, also show clear impairments on tasks involving semantic knowledge. However,
in contrast to what appears to be broadly characterized as a “storage” disorder in
semantic dementia, the stroke aphasia patients appear to show more of an “access” or
“control” disorder. Unlike semantic dementia patients, for instance, stroke aphasia
patients were found to perform better on a picture-naming task when they were also
provided with letter or phonemic cues regarding the relevant name, and they experi-
enced particular difficulties on a task requiring focusing on relevant associations from
among competing associations and rejecting distractors (Jefferies & Lambdon Ralph,
2006). Additionally, it was only when tasks placed similar demands on conceptual
knowledge that the stroke aphasia patients tended to show consistent errors
with respect to a given concept (that is within-task item consistency), whereas seman-
tic dementia patients showed both within-task and between-task item consistency.
The semantic impairments in stroke aphasia patients also were correlated with the
degree of executive dysfunction they demonstrated (for example, as shown by perfor-
mance on a complex visuospatial reasoning task), whereas semantic impairment and
executive dysfunction were not strongly associated in semantic dementia.
These differing patterns of impairment led Jefferies and Lambdon Ralph (2006) to
propose that “semantic cognition”—involving “our ability to use semantic knowledge
efficiently and accurately in all situations (i.e., all verbal and non-verbal receptive and
expressive activities)—requires two interacting elements.”
The first is a set of amodal semantic representations that are formed through
the distillation of information arising in various association areas specific to
particular input or output modalities […]. The anterior lobes are strongly
connected to all the cortical association areas […] and are thus a prime loca-
tion for this type of amodal data reduction. (Jefferies & Lambdon Ralph,
2006, p. 2143)
The second is that of “semantic control”:
Although we know many different things about objects, the aspects that are
relevant for a particular task or context vary. Therefore there has to be flexi-
bility in the information being activated by the underlying amodal concept
to produce task-appropriate behaviour. (Jefferies & Lambdon Ralph, 2006,
p. 2144)
As concisely summarized by Pobric and colleagues, it appears that there is

a “division of labor” such that:
… core semantic representations are reliant on the anterior temporal lobes

whereas semantic control—like other forms of executive control—is reliant
on prefrontal-temporoparietal circuitry […]. In the undamaged system these
regions interact to support flexible, temporally extended semantic behavior
(semantic cognition). With impairment to the anterior temporal lobe, core
semantic representations become degraded and patients are unable to activate
all of the information associated with a concept. […] Multimodal comprehen-
sion deficits can also emerge after damage to the prefrontal-temporoparietal
controls systems. In these circumstances the patients are unable to reliably
shape or control the aspects of meaning that are relevant for the task at hand
or are critical at specific moments during temporally extended tasks. (Pobric
et al., 2007, p. 20139)
One final and related question of debate and continuing investigation concerns
the consistency in our concepts and associated neural representations across tasks,
across time, and across persons (e.g., Hoenig et al., 2008; Tranel, 2006 4). As noted in
Chapter 4, and also earlier in this section in the discussion of the representation of
concepts involving action (E. Chen et al., 2008; Kable et al., 2002; Kable et al., 2005),
the exact requirements of the task may modify the extent to which perceptually salient
properties are used or accessed. Recent work, for example, has shown that the extent
to which motor-related regions related to the mental representation of arm and leg
movements are recruited during the processing of action verbs depends on the context
(Raposo, Moss, Stamatakis, & Tyler, 2009). Greater activation in the relevant (arm vs.
leg) motor regions was observed when words were presented alone (e.g., “kick”) than
when the same words were presented embedded within brief literal sentences (e.g.,
“kick the ball”). However, activation was found, instead, in frontotemporal language
processing regions, and not in motor or premotor cortices, when nonliteral idiomatic
sentences (e.g., “he kicked the bucket”) were presented. This suggests that motor/pre-
motor related activation, in part, depends on factors such as how much emphasis is
placed on the relevant actions. More broadly, these and related findings suggest that
“access and integration of meaning is a flexible process, which depends on the senten-
tial context and [. . .] on the information that one needs to extract from the represen-
tations as a function of the cognitive task at hand” (Raposo et al., 2009, p. 395).
More enduring, cross-situational individual differences in how concepts are pre-
dominantly accessed, such as with accompanying perceptual information or primarily
in abstract lexical or verbal format, also need to be taken into account (cf. the discus-
sion in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of overly abstract or lexical processing in individuals
with clinical depression and excessive worry or rumination). For example, Kraemer,
Rosenberg, and Thompson-Schill (2009) found that individuals with self-reported
visual versus verbal styles of processing showed correspondingly correlated differ-
ences in activity in modality-specific processing regions of the brain during a task that
presented information in the “nonpreferred” modality. Individuals who scored rela-
tively higher on a tendency toward verbalization showed increased activity in a region
involved in phonological processing (left supramarginal gyrus) during trials in which
they needed to decide which of two pictured shapes (e.g., a picture of a green dotted
triangle or a picture of a red striped circle) was more similar to an earlier presented
shape (e.g., a picture of a red striped triangle); this pattern of brain activity in indi-
viduals prone to using a verbal processing style was not observed on trials in which
lists of words denoting the relevant features of the target (e.g., the words “orange,
circle, dots”) and the two alternatives (e.g., the words “circle, plaid, orange” versus
“dots, green, square”) were presented.
One interpretation of these findings is that those individuals with a verbal process-
ing style may have “recoded” the pictorially presented information into a verbal
format. Consistent with this interpretation, a contrasting pattern was found in indi-
viduals who scored relatively higher on a tendency toward using a visualization pro-
cessing style. These individuals showed increased activity in a visual processing region
of occipitotemporal cortex (right fusiform) during the verbal (word list) trials, but not
during the trials involving pictures—suggesting that these participants were recoding
the words into pictorial format.
Collectively, these and the other findings reviewed in this section emphasize that
the instantiation of semantic concepts in the brain is dynamically sculpted by multiple
factors, including not only the nature of the concept that is to be brought to mind, or
the particular task demands at hand, but also by more enduring predispositions in
how an individual spontaneously or most frequently processes meaningful informa-
tion. The findings have underscored the many levels of representational specificity
that are involved in our “mental world” of concepts—not only “modality-specific”

versus “amodal” but differing cross-modal and multimodal combinations—and also
new and growing evidence for the notion of “gradients” of specificity in temporal-
occipital and temporal-frontal cortex.
The continuum of “levels of specificity,” like that of “levels of control,” can refer to
many different dimensions of concepts, actions, emotions, and perception, such as
how we interpret words or phrases, with much versus little associative connectedness
to sensory-perceptual or motor actions, or, as we saw earlier in Chapter 8, to the level
of abstractness of a rule that must guide our behavior (e.g., ranging from a simple
stimulus-to-response mapping, to very complex higher order contingencies involving
consideration of events across time and across space).
It is, in no small part, the immense scope of representational “acuity” that is possi-
ble across the many concepts that we possess that enables humans to be the superbly
agile thinkers that they so often are—and thus conditions that interfere with or
constrain that scope correspondingly constrain creatively adaptive thought. In the fol-
lowing sections we turn to additional neural contributors to the vast scope of represen-
tational specificity that support, first, our ability for relational thinking, including the
recognition of “patterns” and analogical thinking and reasoning, and then, in the next
several sections, our ability to become attuned to semantic or associative information
that is only remotely or very broadly associated with a given content.
Analogical and Relational Thought:

Brain Correlates of Fluid Reasoning
In the previous section, we saw that neuropsychological findings from the temporal
lobe variant of the progressive disorder of frontotemporal dementia (i.e., semantic
dementia) provided crucial evidence regarding one of the brain regions involved in the
representation of concepts in the brain. Curiously, the other main form of this progres-
sive disorder, the frontal variant, characterized by progressive damage that is initially
confined predominately to the prefrontal cortex but later by increasingly extensive
anterior cortical damage, provided a significant impetus for another centrally impor-
tant hypothesis concerning how we use and relate conceptual knowledge. This was the
hypothesis that prefrontal cortex is especially important in those forms of complex
thought that require the integration of relations—that is, integrating information about
the forms of correspondence or mappings between multiple items or entities. Such
relational integration is pivotal to the successful execution of many complex forms of
on-the-spot fluid reasoning and problem solving, such as transitive inference, and the
detection and understanding of both visuospatial and verbal analogies.
Some problems or situations, such as transitive inference problems, involve only a
single relation, as in “John is taller than Bill.” These single relation situations can be
readily understood either on the basis of perception or of linguistic analyses (if pre-
sented in sentence format). Multiple relations, if presented in an ordered, systemati-
cally increasing or decreasing fashion, can also be quite readily understood, in that
they simply require a one-by-one linking of the relations (given “John is taller than
Bill” and “Bill is taller than David” we can readily infer that “John is taller than David”).
In contrast, situations that require the integration of two or more relations that are
presented in a nonordered fashion cannot be readily understood in this way and
appear to require higher order reasoning. To infer the heights of the three respective
individuals from the statements, “Jane is taller than Mary,” and “April is taller than
Jane,” we need to keep in mind the relations of both Jane to Mary, and of April to
Jane, at the same time.
In an important neuropsychological assessment of relational reasoning, Waltz,
Knowlton, Holyoak, and colleagues (1999) contrasted the performance of patients
with the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia with that of patients with the
temporal variant (i.e., semantic dementia patients), and matched control participants,
on several reasoning tasks. They used both a measure of deductive reasoning and a
measure of inductive reasoning that placed varying demands on the need to integrate
relational information. The measure of deductive reasoning involved a set of transi-
tive-inference problems, such as the height problems given earlier, that required par-
ticipants to evaluate either ordered (Level 1) or scrambled/nonordered (Level 2)
transitive inference problems involving three, four, or five people. The measure of
inductive reasoning was a visuospatial progressive matrices or pattern completion
task that similarly manipulated the number of relations that the participant needed to
simultaneously consider in order to select the appropriate alternative from six choices
(see Fig. 9.4 for an example). The simplest problems involved no relations and could be
solved by simple visual pattern matching (Fig. 9.4A), whereas one-relation problems
(Fig. 9.4B) required the test-taker to take into account a change in one stimulus dimen-
sion (e.g., spatial orientation, here involving reflection along the x-axis). Two-relation
problems (Fig. 9.4C) required that the problem solver take into account changes in
two dimensions (e.g., both the texture-pattern of the stimulus, here involving a solid
A B C
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
4 5 6 4 5 6 4 5 6
Figure 9.4. Visuospatial Relational Reasoning. Illustration of visuospatial

pattern-completion problems that require simultaneous consideration of varying
numbers of relations for successful completion: 0, 1, or 2 relations for A, B, and C,
respectively. The correct responses for the three problems are, respectively, Choice 1,
Choice 3, and Choice 1. Reprinted from Waltz, J. A., Knowlton, B. J., Holyoak, K. J.,
Boone, K. B., Mishkin, F. S., Santos, M., Thomas, C. R., & Miller, B. L. (1999, p. 121), A
system for relational reasoning in human prefrontal cortex, Psychological Science, 10,
119–125, with permission from Sage Publications. Copyright 1999, Sage Publications.
or checked pattern, and the shape of the stimulus, here involving the removal or
nonremoval of the upper-right quadrant from the depicted shape).
The results for both the transitive inference and the visuospatial pattern reasoning
tasks showed a markedly different pattern of performance in the three groups
(those with the frontal vs. temporal variants of frontotemporal dementia vs. normal
controls). On the one hand, the individuals with frontal damage performed quite
similarly to both the temporal lobe patients and to the normal controls when either
the transitive inference items were systematically ordered (Level 1) or the matrices
problem required consideration of only a single relation, or no relations. On the other
hand, the performance of the frontal damage patients was markedly impaired relative
to both the temporal lobe patients and the controls on the trials where multiple
(binary) relations needed to be simultaneously integrated, and it was not possible to
solve the task by processing one relation at a time. The frontal patient group was
unable to solve the two-relation transitive inference problems at a rate better than
chance performance. In contrast, the individuals with temporal damage were able to
solve these multirelational problems—even though, as expected, they showed signifi-
cant deficits on tests of semantic knowledge. Together, these dissociations, and other
findings, led Waltz and colleagues (1999, p. 123) to hypothesize that “the integration
of relations is a specific source of cognitive complexity for which an intact prefrontal
cortex is essential.”
Further neuropsychological and computational findings (e.g., R. G. Morrison et al.,
2004) and several neuroimaging studies (e.g., Kroger et al., 2002; Wharton et al.,
2000, discussed later) have provided strong convergent support for the central impor-
tance of prefrontal cortex—especially rostrolateral prefrontal cortex or lateral
Brodmann area 10, also known as the frontal pole—in relational integration. More
broadly, this region appears to be important in a wide variety of types of tasks in
which “the application of one cognitive operation (such as a rule) on its own is not
sufficient to solve the problem as a whole, and the integration of the results of two or
more separate cognitive operations is required to fulfill the higher behavioural goal”
(Ramnani & Owen, 2004, p. 190. See also Gilbert et al., 2006a, 2006b; Halford et al.,
1998, for review, and the section on “Neuroimaging Evidence for Hierarchical and
Functional Distinctions within Frontal and Prefrontal Cortex” in Chapter 8.)
To take one specific example, Christoff and colleagues (2001) found that, in healthy
adults, the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex was differentially activated when partici-
pants attempted to solve visuospatial progressive matrices problems involving two
relations compared with only one or no relations. Greater activity in this region was
not simply a matter of greater difficulty for the former problems. Christoff et al. (2001)
found that even after using a within-subject matching procedure to equate the three
different conditions on approximate response times and accuracy rates, activation in
left rostrolateral prefrontal cortex was specific to the 2- versus 1-relational compari-
son, and it was not found in the comparison of 1- versus 0-relational problems.
Studies by Kroger et al. (2002) and Bunge et al. (2009) pointed to similar conclu-
sions. Using a parametric manipulation of relational complexity, in which participants
needed to consider 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 relations in a given matrix problem, Kroger and
colleagues (2002) demonstrated that, although regions in parietal and dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex showed increased activity both as a function of increasing relational
complexity and added distractors, a region in anterior left prefrontal cortex that
extended into BA 10 was selectively responsive to increasing relational complexity.
This more anterior left frontal region was particularly activated for the highest levels
of relational complexity and was insensitive to the number of distractors that were
present. More recently, using an analytically powerful paradigm involving identical
stimulus displays across conditions and a judgment task that always required a deci-
sion regarding the presence versus absence of a match, Bunge, Helskog, and Wendelken
(2009) likewise provided evidence that left rostrolateral prefrontal cortex assumes a
fundamental role in the integration of disparate visuospatial relations.
Each of these studies involved visuospatial stimuli. However, another important
form of relational reasoning is verbal analogical reasoning. In analogical problems, we
must find (or “abstract”) a higher order relation between a given (often familiar) rep-
resentation and another (sometimes novel) representation, finding a way in which the
two representations correspond to one another (Gentner, 1983; Holyoak & Thagard,
1989. See also the section on “Analogies, Similarities, and Such” in Chapter 3, as well
as Excursion 2, which considers the role of subcognitive mechanisms in analogical
thinking.) Bunge and colleagues (2005) contrasted the brain regions that were
recruited when participants decided whether two successive pairs of words were
semantically analogous to one another (e.g., “bouquet–flower” and “chain–link”)
versus a control task in which they decided if the two words in the second pair were
semantically associated with one another (e.g., “note–scale,” followed by “rain–
drought”). An instruction cue presented after the first pair of words and before the
second pair directed participants as to which task they should perform.
In agreement with the findings using visuospatial analogical materials, a region in
left frontal polar cortex (BA 10/11) was particularly responsive to the task manipula-
tion. This region demonstrated greater activity during the analogy task that required
relational integration than during the semantic association task that did not require
relational integration (see also Green et al., 2010). In contrast, a region in anterior left
inferior prefrontal cortex was more responsive to the degree to which the words within
a pair were strongly semantically associated with one another. This left anterior pre-
frontal region showed greater activity during trials involving words that were compara-
tively weakly associated with one another—and so were more difficult to retrieve. These
latter findings are consistent with the proposal, outlined in the previous section, that
anterior left inferior prefrontal cortex assumes an important role in retrieving relevant
semantic knowledge about and associations between stimuli. The pattern in frontal
polar cortex coheres with an interpretation in which an essential role of this region is to
help to integrate multiple retrieved relations (subsequent to their retrieval).
In the foregoing study by Bunge and colleagues (2005) the two pairs of words were
presented successively in time. Thus, in order to perform the analogical reasoning
task, the participants needed to keep the first word pair in working memory while
comparing it with the second word pair. A subsequent study (Wendelken et al., 2008),
in which all of the relevant terms that needed to be relationally integrated were pre-
sented together, extended and replicated these findings. Regions in bilateral (ventral)
rostrolateral prefrontal cortex were more active during a task in which participants
were asked to compare the two relations (e.g., Is shoe to foot as glove is to hand?–
“yes”) than in a task in which they were asked to complete a relation (e.g., Shoe is to
foot as glove is to WHAT?”–“hand”). In the first task, one must retrieve the semantic
relationship that links each pair of terms, and then compare, map, or integrate those
relationships. In contrast, one can complete the second task by first retrieving the
relation between the first two items, and then using this retrieved relation to com-
plete the second word pair. Greater rostrolateral prefrontal cortical activation in the
former task than the latter is thus strong support for this region being particularly
important for the comparison of relations.
Together, these findings, and additional neuroimaging findings from developmen-
tal comparisons in humans (e.g., Wright et al., 2008) support the important role of
rostrolateral prefrontal cortex in comparing or evaluating relational information.
Such a role is consistent with neuroanatomical connectivity evidence that this most
anterior region of prefrontal cortex primarily interacts with other prefrontal cortical
regions, rather than with the posterior cortical regions that support conceptual knowl-
edge, and also with evidence relating to the cellular and dendritic properties of this
region. As underscored by Ramnani and Owen:
One important distinguishing feature of the [anterior prefrontal cortex],

even in comparison with other areas of supramodal (prefrontal) cortex, is
that the number of dendritic spines per cell and the spine density are higher
than in other comparable areas of the cortex, but the density of cell bodies is
markedly lower. […] This indicates that the computational properties of
[anterior prefrontal cortex] are more likely than those of comparable areas to
involve the integration of inputs. (Ramnani & Owen, 2004, p. 186)
Furthermore, as we have already seen, in Chapter 8, particularly in the consider-

ation of neuroimaging evidence for hierarchical and functional distinctions within
regions of frontal and prefrontal cortex, such a conclusion is also entirely consistent
with anterior prefrontal cortical regions assuming an especially pivotal role in the
processing of highly abstract information.
Accessing Remote Alternatives: The Role of

Noradrenaline/Norepinephrine
In the previous section, we have focused on system-level functional neuroanatomical
contributors to complex relational thinking, especially in the context of an explicit
task, requiring the identification of “analogous” visuospatial or verbal patterns
shared across stimuli. However, not all forms of creatively adaptive thinking involve
such a deliberate “top-down” explicit search for patterns. Sometimes mental agility
depends, instead, on the making or emergence of less explicitly guided associative
connections. Notably, the ease with which such associative connections may emerge
can be modulated by our physiological state, such as our current level of arousal,
whether we are feeling stressed, and even, as we will see, by our current posture—
whether we are sitting or standing, versus reclining.
Evidence from several sources has pointed to an important role of the neurotrans-
mitter noradrenaline/norepinephrine, which influences alertness and arousal, and also
reward processing, in modulating cognitive flexibility. The noradrenergic system seems

to be particularly important in situations that require “the capacity to inhibit a domi-
nant response when it represents a non-optimal or inappropriate solution to a prob-
lem, and to enable access to more remote alternatives” (J. K. Alexander et al., 2007,
p. 468). High levels of situational stress and arousal may be associated with increased
activity in the noradrenergic system, leading to increased responding to salient stimuli,
increasing the likelihood of dominant, nonflexible responding and leading to decreases
in cognitive flexibility (e.g., Berridge & Waterhouse, 2003; Easterbrook, 1959).
In an early study, Martindale and Greenough (1973) demonstrated that high levels
of arousal impaired individual’s performance on the compound remote associates
task. In this task, participants are asked to produce a word that is distantly related to
each of three other words. As an illustration, “age,” “mile,” and “sand” are all associated
to the concept of “stone”—as in “stone age,” “mile stone,” and “sand stone.” Other
early work suggested that anxiety or stress tended to interfere with the production of
more creative, and especially less obvious consequences on the Consequences Test
(Hinton, 1968). In the latter task, which is sometimes used as a measure of divergent
thinking, participants are asked to imagine the various different consequences that
might ensue if a new or unusual state of affairs were to be true (e.g., What would
happen if people no longer needed to sleep or wanted sleep?).
More generally, accessing remote or nonobvious representations has been viewed
as a core aspect of creative processing as in H. J. Eysenck’s (1993) construal of “event
horizons” or “association horizons” (e.g., Dailey, Martindale, & Borkum, 1997;
Mednick, 1962. See also the evidence of heightened representational flexibility associ-
ated with accessing the so-called extension memory system proposed by the personal-
ity systems interaction theory, as in the work of Baumann and Kuhl, 2005, discussed
in Chapter 6.) To take the example of the word “foot,” an individual with a very narrow
horizon might include as a possible response the very highly frequently associated
word “shoe,” but a person with a somewhat wider horizon might include the words
“hand” and “leg,” and someone with a still wider horizon might include “soldier” and
“sore.” Persons with the very widest horizons might include responses that only they
(uniquely) provide.
We may use this concept [of association horizon] to formally categorize our
notion of relevance. Relevance is differentially defined for each person, under
each set of circumstances, in terms of his or her event horizon. A person with
a wide horizon will consider some words, concepts, memories, or whatever
to be relevant, but a person with a narrow horizon might consider the same
items irrelevant, and the relative position of that person’s horizon may be
measured in terms of the commonness or remoteness of his or her associa-
tions. A creative person will have a wide horizon, an uncreative person a
narrow one. The horizon will determine the search process, in the sense that
no one will go outside his or her horizon because what is outside is not con-
sidered relevant. (H. J. Eysenck, 1993, pp. 151–152)
Tasks such as solving anagrams and compound remote associates may require a
broad search throughout the lexical/semantic network (Mednick, 1962) and thus have
been used as measures of both insight and cognitive flexibility. Beversdorf and
colleagues showed that administering the drug propranolol—a central and peripheral
beta-adrenergic antagonist often used to counteract test or performance anxiety
(e.g., J. R. T. Davidson, 2006; Drew et al., 1985)—significantly facilitated anagram
performance latencies compared with when adrenergic agonists were administered
(Beversdorf et al., 1999), and also compared with when a beta-adrenergic antagonist
that has only peripheral nervous system effects (nadolol) was given (Beversdorf et al.,
2002). However, in neither of these experiments were the beneficial effects of propra-
nolol significantly greater than those observed for placebo.
Further research revealed that beneficial effects particularly emerged under condi-
tions of a stressor (J. K. Alexander et al., 2007). Individuals were asked to solve ana-
grams and compound remote associates either under conditions of stress (involving
public speaking and arithmetic tasks) or without stress (performing reading and
counting tasks) and either with placebo or propranolol. Stress impaired performance
on the measures of cognitive flexibility (compound remote associates and anagrams),
but cognitive flexibility was significantly improved under propranolol relative to pla-
cebo. Physiologic measures (e.g., heart rate) confirmed that the stress-inducing tasks
were associated with increased heart rate and that as expected propranolol reduced
heart rate in both the control and stress conditions. In contrast, neither a measure of
visuospatial memory (a complex figure task) nor a task assessing visual-motor coordi-
nation and processing speed (a grooved pegboard test) was affected either by stress or
by propranolol. Given this apparent specificity to measures of cognitive flexibility,
these researchers propose that their findings suggest that the noradrenergic system
may serve to modulate “the neural circuitry that may play a role in [. . .] creativity and
insight.” (J. K. Alexander et al., 2007, p. 475)
A double-blind within-subject study by H. L. Campbell et al. (2008) further under-
scores the moderating role of stress in determining the relation between beta-
adrenergic blockade and cognitive flexibility. These researchers found that a moderate
(40 mg) beta-adrenergic blockade was beneficial for particularly difficult anagram
tasks (defined as items that showed the lowest third of performance in the placebo
condition) and also for participants who, overall, found the tasks more difficult
(those who scored in the slowest third overall in response times). Neither weaker nor
stronger beta-adrenergic blockades (20 mg and 60 mg, respectively) yielded benefits
and, indeed, acted to impede performance on easy problems and for participants who
were already able to solve the problems. A broadly similar pattern of outcomes was
obtained for compound remote associate problems, and, intriguingly, for verbal
fluency tasks (letter fluency and category fluency) and also for visuospatial analogical
reasoning as assessed by Raven’s Progressive Matrices. In contrast, no effects were
found on a measure of set shifting, assessed with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
(WCST).
As suggested by H. L. Campbell and colleagues (2008) this difference in how the
different tasks were affected by beta-adrenergic blockade might reflect a difference
between “constrained flexibility,” involving shifting between a limited number of
options, as required by the WCST, and “unconstrained flexibility,” involving a search
through many different options, as required for the anagram, fluency, and remote
associates problems. However, it is also possible that the failure to observe effects on
the WCST reflected decreased power to detect effects because, given concerns about
test-retest effects, the WCST, unlike the other tasks, was administered on a between-
subjects rather than a within-subjects basis. In addition, and perhaps more impor-
tant, as we saw in Chapter 8, whereas the card-sorting task provides a measure
of reactive flexibility, requiring adaptability to changing external cues, the other
measures more strongly tap spontaneous flexibility.
Beversdorf et al. (1999, p. 2767) speculated that findings on the beneficial effects
of propranolol might also help to explain some instances of everyday insight.
Sometimes we repeatedly approach a difficult problem without success, but then the
solution arises as a sudden insight at a moment of rest, such as just before falling
asleep. These researchers speculate that “these moments of insight would therefore
occur when arousal and noradrenergic activation are known to be at their nadir.”
Indeed, postural effects—lying down rather than standing—themselves affect the
activity of the locus coeruleus-noradrenergic system, with decreased arousal levels
when lying down (Cole, 1989; Svensson, 1987). In line with the findings from studies
using pharmacological interventions described earlier, in an experimental explora-
tion, Lipnicki and Byrne (2005) found that healthy young adult participants solved
anagrams significantly more rapidly when they were supine than when they were
standing; in contrast, mental arithmetic solution rates were unaffected by posture.
The broad role of the noradrenergic system in enabling flexible adaptation to novel
circumstances will be further considered in the penultimate section of this chapter.
Intuitive Processing: Partially Informed

Guessing, Prediction, and Gist
Intuition and insight are similar in many ways. For example, both intuition and insight
appear to involve less than fully deliberate, nondirected, and often not fully verbalized
or verbalizable forms of cognitive processing, and so they might be grouped together
in contrast with more linear, explicit, or directed modes of problem solving and think-
ing. Despite conceptual differences regarding how to define intuition, Sinclair and
Ashkanasy (2005) argued that, across researchers, there are three commonalities, in
that it is generally held that (1) intuitive events originate beyond consciousness,
(2) information is processed holistically, and (3) intuitive perceptions are often accom-
panied by emotion. They, therefore, defined intuition (p. 357) as “a non-sequential
information processing mode, which comprises both cognitive and affective elements
and results in direct knowing without any use of conscious reasoning”—for instance,
intuitive processes may rely on images and metaphors. Similarly, a number of investi-
gators have taken as a starting point a definition of intuition offered by K. S. Bowers
et al. (1990, p. 74), according to which intuition is the “preliminary perception of
coherence (pattern, meaning, structure) that is at first not consciously represented”
but involves a hunch or initial guess that then biases (or guides) further inquiry and
thinking (see also the discussion of intuition in Chapter 1, in the section on “Levels of
Control and Representational Processes”).
Volz and von Cramon (2006) attempted to differentiate intuition from both implicit
learning and insight. With regard to implicit learning, they noted,
All in all, intuitive processes are assumed to capitalize on implicitly acquired

knowledge but are not identical with implicit learning processes. Rather,
stored mental representations provide the basis [that] intuition capitalizes
on. These representations are conceived of as nonverbal, concrete (e.g.,
images, feelings, physical sensations, metaphors), and its associations are
suggested to tend to be context specific, although they are capable of gener-
alization . . . (Volz & vonCramon, 2006, p. 2077)
In trying to differentiate more explicitly between intuition and insight, these

authors focused on the differences in the content of what reaches awareness or
consciousness, the relative timing of these processes (arguing that intuition precedes
insight), the definiteness of the content in consciousness (insight consists of a solu-
tion), and the generalizability of the process. More specifically, they suggested that:
As soon as the tacit or implicit perception of coherence becomes a plausible

representation of coherence, which the subject can describe in explicit form,
this transition in awareness is often experienced as a sudden and clear per-
ception or insight. Yet, in our opinion, there is no implication that the
implicit perception of coherence involves a fully formed but unconscious ver-
sion of coherence which would regularly be represented consciously. Rather,
we propose intuitive processes and insight processes to differ with regard to
at least four aspects: (1) insight processes build on intuitive processes, and
thus, follow the latter; (2) appear into consciousness; (3) consist in a solu-
tion; and (4) are bound to the problem-solving domain. (Volz and von
Cramon, 2006, p. 2078)
Dane and Pratt (2007; also see Hodgkinson, Langan-Fox, & Sadler-Smith, 2008)
also argue for a distinction between insight and intuition, pointing to the further
difference that, in insight, one often becomes aware of the logical connections sup-
porting a particular solution or answer, whereas in intuition “one is unable to con-
sciously account for the rationale underlying the judgment that has arisen” (p. 40).
In seeking to delineate the possible brain correlates of intuitive processing, a
number of investigators have focused on the medial orbital frontal cortex as a possible
candidate. The medial orbital frontal cortex is crucial in enabling everyday decision
making and in guiding sound life judgments (e.g., Eslinger & Damasio, 1985) and has
also been found to be activated during hypothesis testing and guessing (Elliott, Dolan,
& Frith, 2000; Petrides et al., 2002). It is also a brain region that receives inputs from
all sensory modalities.
Bar et al. (2006) reported activity in medial orbital frontal cortex when partici-
pants initially guessed whether degraded visual stimuli (masked, or spatially filtered
grayscale photographs) that they were shown were common everyday objects or
abstract sculptures. Using the high temporal resolution provided through magnetoen-
cephalography (MEG), it was found that, in a comparison of successfully identified
(recognized) masked or filtered objects versus nonidentified objects, activity in orbital

frontal cortex preceded that found in visual object processing areas, particularly
fusiform (occipitotemporal) cortex, by as much as 50 ms. Stated differently, activity in
orbital frontal cortex differentially predicted successful recognition before the activity
in the visual processing areas did so (the orbital frontal cortical activity was predictive
from about 130 ms after stimulus onset and remained predictive for approximately
40 ms). In addition, in a further experiment, contrasting activity in this region in
response to intact images versus images that had predominantly only high spatial
frequency or predominantly low spatial frequency information, it was found that
orbital frontal cortex was especially responsive to low-frequency spatial information
in the image. Trial-by-trial covariance analyses showed that the orbital frontal cortical
region and the visual processing region in fusiform gyrus showed more synchronized
activity for the low-spatial frequency images and for the intact images (which also had
low-spatial frequency information) than for the high-spatial frequency images.
However, consistent with the proposal that the orbital frontal region used low-
frequency information before recognition occurred, the time course of synchrony
was such that there was synchronized activity between early visual cortex and the
frontal region before synchrony emerged between orbital frontal cortex and the
fusiform gyrus.
The researchers interpreted these findings as reflecting top-down facilitation of
object processing. Specifically, Bar and colleagues (2006) proposed that a partially
analyzed, “blurred” version of the input image, involving primarily low spatial fre-
quency information, was projected very rapidly from early visual processing areas
directly to the prefrontal cortex (perhaps via the dorsal magnocellular visual pathway)
and that this coarse information was used to help activate predictions of the most likely
possible objects. In combination with additional incoming bottom-up information,
under conditions involving high visual difficulty or time stress, these predictions or
guesses could act to substantially reduce the number of potential objects that needed
to be considered.
These observations also were interpreted as consistent with the findings obtained
by Volz and von Cramon (2006), showing that orbitofrontal cortex was activated when
participants correctly guessed that a fragmented line image comprised a coherent
(vs. incoherent) object. Volz and von Cramon (2006, p. 2083) argued that, under
conditions of time pressure or insufficient information, intuitive processes operate
such that “specific situational cues of a fuzzy input-representation activate a mne-
monic network signaling the most likely interpretation of the input, which is then
used by downstream areas.” These investigators further suggest that medial orbital
frontal cortex serves “as a detector of potential content” that is “derived from the
critical aspects of the input” and that “the resulting preliminary perception of coher-
ence, supposed to be embodied in a ‘gut feeling’ or an initial guess, is then assumed to
bias our thought and inquiry accordingly.” Such biasing may be particularly important
under conditions that make exclusive reliance on the available perceptual input
difficult (e.g., Rahman & Sommer, 2008), and under conditions when using predictive
information regarding a particular class of objects (e.g., faces) might facilitate the
process of perceptual inference (Summerfield et al., 2006; see Kersten et al., 2004, for
review).
Brain Correlates of Insight Problem Solving

Bowden and Jung-Beeman (2007) argue that although insight may occur in a variety
of different content domains—ranging from perceptual identification of degraded or
ambiguous visual stimuli, to various types of word puzzles, jokes, and riddles, and up
to complex reasoning—and therefore likely involves important “domain-specific”
cognitive and neural processing components, there nonetheless are processing
elements that are common across insight situations. One such process involves a form
of reinterpretation, in which the solver reinterprets the problem according to rela-
tively distant or unusual relations.
Findings from a task in which very brief priming presentations of the solutions
to insight problems were presented preferentially to the right versus left cerebral
hemispheres suggest that such reinterpretative processes may particularly rely on the
right hemisphere (Bowden & Beeman, 1998). The stimuli used in this and several
further studies were triads of words from the remote associates task (described earlier
in this chapter), such as age/mile/sand or pine/crab/sauce, in which each of the words
within the triad can be associated with a further shared or common word (e.g., stone
for the first triad, or apple for the second triad). Given that there are three different
elements to the problems, and the comparatively distant associations between each of
the elements, solving problems of this sort relies on remote and divergent associa-
tions. Importantly, these problems can be solved in one of two ways: either through an
insight-like process, in which it seems as though the answer just “pops into one’s head”
and one just knows the answer but does not know how one knows, or through
a process involving systematic search and deliberate attempts at combining words, in
which one is more aware of one’s strategies and one’s attempted approaches to the
problem.
Bowden and Beeman (1998) used a divided visual field paradigm to visually project
words directly to the left versus right cerebral hemisphere (by projecting to the right
vs. left visual hemifield, respectively). They found that if participants had not correctly
solved a remote associate problem (after trying for 15 seconds), participants were sig-
nificantly faster to recognize the correct solution when it was briefly presented to the
right than to the left hemisphere. In contrast, there were no laterality differences for
the solved problems. The right hemisphere advantage found for unsolved problems
was apparent for both hits (i.e., correct responses when the problem solution word
was presented) and correct rejections (i.e., correctly not accepting an unrelated word).
This outcome is clearly counter to the typical and more generally observed strong left
hemisphere advantage for responding to words.
In a further series of experiments, Beeman and Bowden (2000) found that the
right hemisphere also appeared to show more prolonged solution-related activation
for still-unsolved problems. In these experiments, they manipulated the amount of
time that participants first spent in trying to solve the problems: giving them only
1 second, 2 seconds, or 7 seconds to try to find the solution. Whereas there was no
laterality difference in solution priming after only 1 second of problem-solving effort,
there was again a clear right hemisphere advantage by 7 seconds. Figure 9.5 summa-
rizes these findings.
Solution priming by time point and

hemifield/hemisphere
60
Solution priming (msec)
50
40
30
20
10 lvf-RH
rvf-LH
0
1 2 7 15
Solving time
Figure 9.5. Priming Insight. Solution-related priming (response facilitation,

in milliseconds) for target words presented to the left visual field/right cerebral
hemisphere (solid line) versus to the right visual field/left cerebral hemisphere (broken
line), as a function of the amount of time (number of seconds) spent attempting to
solve the problem. Data for the first three time points are from Beeman and Bowden
(2000); data for the final (15 second) data point are from the initial Beeman and
Bowden (1998) study. Reprinted from Beeman, M. J., & Bowden, E. M. (2000, p. 1238),
The right hemisphere maintains solution-related activation for yet-to-be-solved
problems, Memory & Cognition, 28, 1231–1241, with permission from Springer
Science + Business Media. Copyright 2000, Springer Science + Business Media.
Together, these outcomes suggest that the right hemisphere advantage in solution-
related activation emerges over time, during a sustained effort to solve the problem.
These findings are in line with broader evidence that there are hemispheric differences
in the degree of focus or specificity of semantic activation. In particular, based on a
range of evidence involving hemispheric differences in language processing, research-
ers (e.g., Beeman, 1998; Beeman et al., 1994; Stringaris et al., 2006; see also Ben-Artzi,
Faust, & Moeller, 2009; Coulson & Wu, 2005) have proposed that the right hemi-
sphere engages in coarse semantic coding, such that it weakly and diffusely activates
large semantic fields representing various alternative meanings and more remote or
distant associations. In contrast, the left hemisphere is thought to engage in relatively
fine semantic coding, strongly focusing activation on small semantic fields represent-
ing either a single interpretation or on a few close and contextually appropriate
associations.
Although in many circumstances, the ability of the left hemisphere to quickly
narrow the focus of activation is advantageous—honing in on the correct interpreta-
tion and decreasing the accessibility of incorrect alternatives—there are times when
this narrowing may be disadvantageous, as when the solution that is focused on is
misleading, an unusual meaning is intended, or the intended meaning is less direct, as
in metaphors, or jokes, or inferences. In these circumstances, the diffuse activation
maintained in the right hemisphere could enable access to alternative interpretations
and thereby also facilitate reinterpretation of the linguistic discourse. The larger
semantic fields of the right hemisphere might increase sensitivity to the overlap of
peripheral semantic features activated by various words in the language (or problem)
context, thereby helping to integrate and connect elements of the discourse (or
problem situation), and potentially helping with structure building, maintaining
coherence, and deriving the main themes or gist of the situation.
An important situation where the coarse coding of the right hemisphere might
prove helpful is in generating inferences. To take an example from Beeman et al.
(1994): If you hear that John walked near glass, you may recognize that glass can cut.
According to coarse semantic coding theory, this sort of information is more likely to
be activated, although only weakly, in the right than in the left hemisphere. If, later,
you also hear that John called out to the lifeguard for help then you might also
activate the information that one can call out for help for many different reasons, one
of which may be that one has injured oneself—including by being cut. This informa-
tion is, again, more likely to be activated in the right than in the left hemisphere. The
combined activation of foot, glass, and cry may summate to produce “cut.” Figure 9.6
schematically summarizes the proposed differences in the processing of the right
versus left hemispheres with regard to this example.
Extended to problem solving and insight problem solving in particular, the right
hemisphere coarse semantic coding theory:
predicts that, because insight problems misdirect solvers, the left hemi-
sphere will focus on interpretations that do not lead to solution, whereas the
right hemisphere maintains solution-related (as well as misdirected) activa-
tion. Coarse semantic coding also predicts that, because right hemisphere
solution activation is diffuse, it may be overshadowed by stronger more
focused activation in the left hemisphere, or may be too weak to be gener-
ated as a solution. However, when solution candidates are presented to prob-
lem solvers the right hemisphere activation can help in judging whether
those candidates are indeed solutions. […] That is, at the very least, right
hemisphere activation can be used to help recognize the solution if or when
it is encountered. It is also possible that, at some point, problem solvers
could use this activation to help generate solutions. (Beeman & Bowden,
2000, pp. 1238–1239)
In contrast to the increasingly focused activation of the left hemisphere, activation in

the right hemisphere may remain more diffuse, and it perhaps provides evidence for
continued unconscious processing of unsolved problems. From the perspective of the
coarse semantic coding account, solution-related activation in the right hemisphere “may
easily remain sub-threshold, because large, diffusely activated semantic fields poorly sup-
port selection into awareness” (Bowden & Jung-Beeman, 2003, p. 735). In contrast,
activity in the left hemisphere may be more likely to exceed threshold and reach aware-
ness, perhaps aided by attention, because of the strong and more fine-grained (focused)
activation fields of the left hemisphere. Thus, ongoing interpretation and reinterpreta-
tion may be influenced by partially independent activation from each hemisphere.
One brain region that has been proposed as especially likely to be involved in the
processing that contributes to insight is the anterior superior temporal gyrus of the
12 inches 12 inches
foot pay foot pay
heel
toes sock heel
toes sock
foot foot
cry glass glass

cry
CUT CUT
Figure 9.6. Coarse Versus Focal Semantic Coding. Illustration of coarse
versus focal semantic coding (upper row) and the effects of such coding on the
activation of distantly related words (lower row). According to coarse semantic coding
theory, encountering a word such as “foot” leads to differing patterns of activation in
the left versus the right cerebral hemispheres. The left hemisphere strongly activates a
smaller focal semantic field (upper row, on the left), whereas the right hemisphere
weakly activates a larger more extended semantic field (upper row, on the right). Thus,
in the situational inference context described in the text, whereas encountering the
word “foot” might not lead to the activation of the secondary meaning “12 inches” in
the left hemisphere, this secondary meaning might be activated in the right
hemisphere (upper row). In addition, the more focal semantic fields in the left
hemisphere do not overlap with the concept “cut,” whereas the larger semantic fields in
the right hemisphere do (lower row). If the weak but overlapping activations from
multiple sources summate, then an inferred concept that connects distantly related
words will be activated in the right hemisphere. Reprinted from Beeman, M. J.,
Friedman, R. B., Grafman, J., Perez, E., Diamond, S., & Lindsay, M. B. (1994, p. 29),
Summation priming and coarse semantic coding in the right hemisphere, Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience, 6, 26–45, with permission from Copyright 1994, MIT.
right hemisphere. This region is recruited during language tasks that require the use
of distant semantic relations between words (Chiarello et al., 1990; Jung-Beeman,
2005), and both right and left anterior superior temporal gyri are involved in
language tasks such as understanding figurative language (e.g., Mashal et al., 2007),
extracting themes (St George et al., 1999), and generating the most appropriate
endings to sentences (Kircher et al., 2001). Using fMRI, Jung-Beeman, Bowden, and
colleagues (2004) found that this region was more active during insight than for non-
insight solutions. In a converging study, using electrophysiological (EEG) recordings,
these investigators also found increased high-frequency (gamma-band) neural activity
in this same region directly before participants consciously realized the solutions to
compound remote associates problems—but only for those problems that were
self-reported as having been solved via insight, and not for problems reported to have
been solved via noninsight means.
These results suggest that the representation of the correct solution may be
activated at a subconscious level in the right hemisphere before insight actually occurs,
and, as suggested by Kounios and colleagues, raise the possibility that “analytic and
insight processing can occur in parallel” (Kounios et al., 2008; p. 282; also see Kounios,
1993). A more recent investigation of insight processing, using a series of different
riddles as the stimuli, also reported systematic insight-related changes in EEG activity
well before the moment of self-reported insight (Sheth, Sandkühler, & Bhattacharya,
2009). These researchers observed high-frequency (gamma) band activity for correct
responses (hits) compared to false-positive responses in right frontocentral brain
regions from between 8 and 1 seconds prior to participants’ reports of insight.
Additional findings suggest that our brain state immediately before we encounter
a particular problem may influence whether we are likely to solve the—not yet speci-
fied—upcoming problem using insight or by noninsight methods (compare with our
earlier discussion, in Chapter 8, in the section on “Task Switching,” of spontaneous
fluctuations in neural processing that were systematically related to subsequent mea-
sures of cognitive flexibility). Kounios and colleagues (2006) presented participants
the compound remote-associate problems during fMRI scanning under conditions
where there was a variable and unpredictable rest period prior to the presentation of
the problems (either 2, 4, 6, or 8 seconds). When they examined brain activity during
this preparatory interval (at which point the problem had not yet been presented),
they found that although many brain areas showed declining activity across the inter-
val (consistent with a return to baseline levels of activity), some regions consistently
showed increases in activity. Furthermore, this activity systematically varied accord-
ing to whether the upcoming problem was one that the participants self-reported as
having been solved by insight, or by noninsight methods.
One of the clearest increases of this form was shown in the anterior cingulate
cortex. Increased activity in the anterior cingulate during the preparatory interval was
associated with a significant increase in the likelihood that the following problem
would be solved by insight. The anterior cingulate cortex has repeatedly been associ-
ated with conflict monitoring, and it perhaps provides a signal regarding the need to
exert greater top-down cognitive control such as maintaining or switching one’s atten-
tion, or selecting a response from competing responses (e.g., Botvinick, Cohen, &
Carter, 2004; E. K. Miller & Cohen, 2001). But this poses a puzzle inasmuch as the
increased activity occurred when there was not yet a stimulus to which to respond or
indeed any apparent competing alternatives to adjudicate between.
Attempting to grapple with this puzzling pattern, Kounios et al. (2006) speculate
that the increased activity may have reflected the attempt to suppress irrelevant
thoughts (such as daydreaming or continued processing of the previous target) thereby
enabling the participant to approach the to-be-presented problem with a “clean slate.”
On this account, it might be proposed that insight problem solving, compared with
noninsight problem solving, is particularly vulnerable to interference from internally
generated, not immediately relevant thoughts. However, other accounts of the
increased brain activity in anterior cingulate are also possible. For example, as we saw
earlier in Chapter 8, in the section on “Task Switching,” Leber, Turk-Browne, and Chun
(2008) also found that the activity in anterior cingulate during a preparatory interval
was predictive of performance on the upcoming trial—but in this case the increased
activity was associated with increased flexibility in a task-switching paradigm, reflect-
ing improved task set reconfiguration on switch trials. These researchers further sug-
gested that such flexibility likely does not arise in response to the individual’s
evaluations of the recent task demands, and it may be something that individuals
cannot directly control, given that participants “largely are unable to adjust their
flexibility willfully, despite detailed feedback and motivational payoff schemes” (Leber,
Turk-Browne, & Chun, 2008, p. 13595).
A further possibility is suggested by a more recent fMRI study. Subramaniam,
Kounios, and colleagues (2009) found evidence that increased preparatory activity in
a more posterior and dorsal region of the anterior cingulate cortex prior to insight
solutions was reliably associated with increases in positive mood. These investigators
concluded that “positive mood is one factor that enhances activity” in this region and
that “this mediates the shift toward insight solutions” (Subramaniam et al., 2009,
p. 427). They further proposed that “positive mood enhances insight, at least in part,
by modulating attention and cognitive control mechanisms via the [anterior cingulate
cortex], perhaps enhancing sensitivity to detect non-prepotent solution candidates”
(Subramaniam et al., 2009, p. 415). Thus, the precise role of anterior cingulate activity
before trials that are associated with successful task reconfiguration and before
problems that are associated with successful insight-based problem solving remains
unclear. We return to this question in the subsequent section.
Additionally, it is important to keep in mind the particular types of problems that
were used in the study by Kounios and colleagues (2006), namely problems with which
the participants had no prior familiarity, with each remote associate problem being
discrete and unrelated to the others, and no clear way in which one could prepare
beforehand for the upcoming problem perhaps beyond being as “open” and attentively
focused as possible. The patterns of brain activity observed before successful “insight”
under these conditions might be quite different from those found for other sorts of
insight problems, particularly more complex and extended problems, to which an
individual might devote numerous hours of consciously directed, and also less deliber-
ate but still “goal-guided” thinking. For the latter sorts of problems, “preparatory
activity” in the form of attempted mastery and integration of related and background
material is essential; additionally, for these sorts of problems, at least sometimes, “not
immediately relevant” internally generated thoughts might instead comprise still-to-
be-articulated associative connections that would lead to solving the problem.
Nonetheless, recent findings examining electrophysiological measures recorded
during a different sort of more complex and sustained creative task have further
pointed to the importance of “screening out” irrelevant information during successful
divergent thinking. Grabner and colleagues (2007) examined event-related EEG
synchronization and desynchronization during a novel task in which participants

were presented with brief abstract sketches of a particular situation (e.g., “a light in
the darkness”) and were asked to generate as many creative explanations for that
situation as possible. These researchers found that there was significantly greater
event-related synchrony in the lower alpha frequency band (8–10 Hz) in the right
hemisphere, and especially at right frontal electrodes, for ideas that participants
themselves later rated as more original (e.g., “jellyfish in the deep sea”) than as less
original (e.g., “candle”).5 There was no difference in this frequency band as a function
of idea originality in the left hemisphere.
The lower alpha frequency band findings are consistent with the reports of Jung-
Beeman et al. (2004) regarding increased alpha power in the right hemisphere during
insight problem solving tasks (see also Fink et al., 2009, Expt. 1, for similar lateraliza-
tion findings associated with higher originality of responding during the generation of
nonstandard uses of objects on the Alternative Uses Task). Furthermore, although the
finding of greater event-related synchrony in the lower alpha band has traditionally
been associated with relatively unspecific attention and task demands, such as overall
alertness, arousal, or vigilance, subsequent investigations (e.g., N. R. Cooper et al.,
2003; Knyazev, 2007; Sauseng et al., 2005) have provided considerable evidence
against this account. Instead, the evidence is more consistent with increased alpha
band synchrony as indicating a generalized inhibition of processing in non-task-
related areas, with greater synchrony emerging under conditions involving increased
task demands, and increased local inhibition of cortical networks. Increased alpha
desynchronization is then associated with a release of this inhibition. Thus, as
suggested by Sauseng and colleagues (2005, p. 154), prefrontal alpha synchronization
may reflect “selective top-down inhibition in the sense that frontal areas must not
become involved in (distracting) new activities as long as an ongoing [. . .] task is
carried out.” During such ongoing tasks (e.g., working memory in the case of the
Sauseng et al. study), “prefrontal areas operate (top-down) to control other areas, but
at the same time remain inactive for other processes and in this sense, [alpha]
synchronization facilitates or enables top-down processes.” This also is in line with
other results, reported by Nunez, Wingeier, and Silberstein (2001), that dynamic
global binding of local cortical networks occurs within the alpha frequency band.
Thus far, in this section, we have considered primarily what could be classed as
“state related” (moment by moment) variations in a given individual’s neural context
on the likelihood that insight will emerge or be adopted in approaching a particular
problem. Yet what about more “trait related” (longer term) differences, relating to
between person rather than within person differences in typical modes of cognitive-
affective-perceptual processing? In Chapter 6, we considered differences between
individuals who are highly creative versus those who are less creative with regard to
their degree of attentional focus. Highly creative individuals have been found to show
more diffuse attention and to show less “gating” of environmental stimuli (e.g.,
reduced latent inhibition, perhaps reflecting less automatic screening out from aware-
ness of apparently irrelevant stimuli), whereas less creative individuals tend to focus
their attention more narrowly (e.g., Carson et al., 2003; Folley & Park, 2005; Friedman
& Förster, 2005; Rowe et al., 2007). For example, in early work, Mendelsohn and
Griswold (1964, 1966) showed that individuals who were adept at solving anagrams
were more likely to use incidentally presented peripheral cues to help them solve the
problems than were persons who were less proficient at this task. They attributed
these differences to “greater responsiveness to priming,” “a wider deployment of
attention” (Mendelsohn & Griswold, 1966, p. 430), and “less screening out of
‘irrelevant’ past experiences” (Mendelsohn & Griswold, 1964, p. 431) by individuals
who are highly creative during problem solving. Do such between person differences
in levels of creativity and the typical breadth of deployment of attention lead
to characteristic differences in brain activity, even during “unstructured” situations
in which there is no particular task to be undertaken? More specifically, does the
“neural context” of someone nominally at rest, or at least with no particular (exter-
nally determined) task at hand, systematically correlate with subsequent (not yet
encountered) problem solving approaches in ways that differ for, on the one hand,
someone who is prone to adopt an insightful, intuitive strategy towards problems
versus, on the other hand, someone who is inclined to take a systematic, analytically
based approach?
To examine whether brain activity during a resting phase might differentiate
between individuals who would tend to solve problems via insight versus more sys-
tematic search, Kounios et al. (2008) used high-density EEGs to record participants’
resting brain states. They recorded EEGs under two resting conditions (first with eyes
closed and then with eyes open) and then gave participants a series of anagrams to
solve. Crucially, participants were not aware at the time of the resting state measure-
ment that they later would be asked to solve problems. Additionally, and using a pro-
cedure also successfully adopted in previous work, during the subsequent
anagram-solving phase, participants were asked to indicate, for each anagram, how
they had solved each problem. They indicated whether they had solved each of the
anagrams through insight, involving an abrupt emergence of the solution into con-
sciousness, or through systematic search, involving a “methodical, conscious, search
of problem-state transformations” (Kounios et al., 2008, p. 281).
Overall about 70% of the anagrams were solved within the allotted time period (16
seconds), and slightly more than one-half (56%) of the problems were reported as
having been solved through insight. The ratio of problems that participants reported
as having solved by insight versus through systematic search was used to define two
groups (via a median-split procedure) with one group composed of participants who
predominantly solved the problems using insight (high insight group; insight to non-
insight ratio = 3.5) and the other composed of participants who used insight less fre-
quently (low insight group; ratio = 0.8). Importantly, the two groups did not differ in
their overall rate of anagram solutions, or their overall response times. However, con-
sistent with participants’ self-reported strategies, an analysis of the anagram error
rates revealed that there was a significant correlation between the tendency to solve
problems systematically and errors of commission, or the forwarding of proposed
solutions to the anagrams that were incorrect—perhaps reflecting guessing based on
partial information just before the allotted time per problem ran out. In contrast, the
tendency to report solving by insight was correlated with timeouts or errors of omis-
sion—perhaps reflecting a reluctance or inability to guess, even when time was run-
ning out, because partial information was not available or was not available to
conscious awareness (R. W. Smith & Kounios, 1996).
Considering the patterns of neural activity in posterior cortex, it was predicted

that the high-insight group would show less activity in the high-alpha frequency band
in occipital regions, indicating less attentional gating in the visual system, and also
less beta-1 activity, suggesting less focal attention than shown by the low-insight
group. Analyses of the EEG power values were consistent with both hypotheses.
The high-insight group had less high-alpha activity in visual cortex relative to the
low-insight group (collapsed across eyes open vs. eyes closed conditions, which did not
interact with insight condition). This difference was especially apparent in left occipi-
tal cortex. Analyses at the beta-1 frequency showed that whereas the low-insight
group showed greater neural activity at left inferior-frontal and anterior temporal
electrodes, the high-insight group showed greater neural activity at right dorsal-
frontal electrodes.
In addition, there was evidence that the participants in the high-insight group
showed greater right-hemisphere activity than shown by participants in the low-
insight group. This laterality difference is generally consistent with other studies,
reviewed earlier, pointing to the important contribution of the right hemisphere to
insight-based problem solving (e.g., Bowden & Jung-Beeman, 2003; Jung-Beeman
et al., 2004) and, more generally, with studies showing that forms of cognition associ-
ated with creativity tend to especially recruit right-hemisphere association areas that
are involved in semantic processing (e.g., Folley & Park, 2005; Stringaris et al., 2006).
During the resting state, high-insight individuals showed greater activity at electrodes
located at right dorsal-frontal (low-alpha band), right inferior-frontal (beta and
gamma bands), and right parietal (gamma band) locations. In contrast, low insight
participants showed greater resting-state activity than did high-insight participants
at left inferior frontal and left anterior-temporal electrodes. It is unknown to what
extent these latter findings—observed during the resting state—would continue to
characterize individuals across other contexts or measurement times. Nonetheless,
other researchers have reported that resting-state networks observed via fMRI
have shown stability across testing occasions separated by between 5 and 14 days
(Damoiseaux et al., 2006) and as long as more than 5 months (Shehzad et al., 2009).
We turn to a broader consideration of the important contributions of brain processes
that occur during so-called resting states, or more precisely, in the phases and moments
between “active tasks,” in the following section.
Between Tasks: Thinking about the Past, Imagining

the Future, and Our Ever-Active, Salience-Detecting
and Network-Changing Minds
The past decade has witnessed a burgeoning series of cognitive neuroscience studies
characterizing what have come to be termed “default networks” (Raichle, 2010; Raichle
et al., 2001; Raichle & Snyder, 2007; see also Golland et al., 2007)—brain systems that
tend to be most active when individuals are not explicitly and directly involved in a
specified task, or are in an “undirected” task state (see Buckner, Andrews-Hanna, &
Schacter, 2008; Buckner & Vincent, 2007, for review). Although precisely what occurs
in such undirected states will vary from moment to moment, and from individual to
individual, it has been broadly characterized as involving several forms of “spontane-
ous cognition,” including recollections of past events and anticipations and planning
for future events (e.g., Andreasen et al., 1995; Binder et al., 1999). Thoughts that are
about something other than the current task and the current environmental stimuli
(e.g., Singer & Antrobus, 1963; Singer & Schonbar, 1961), variously termed “stimulus
independent thoughts,” “task-unrelated thoughts,” “task-unrelated imagery and
thought” (e.g., Antrobus, 1968; Antrobus et al., 1966; Giambra, 1995), or “mind wan-
dering” (e.g., Smallwood & Schooler, 2006; Smallwood et al., 2009), tend to occur
during periods of low task demands, such as when performing a task that is highly
familiar and well practiced, or simple sensory tasks in which little attention is needed
for adequate performance (e.g., Greicius & Menon, 2004; McKiernan et al., 2003). Less
frequently, task-unrelated thoughts also emerge in high-demand contexts, such as
during a novel complex task requiring careful attention to the sequencing of steps (e.g.,
M. F. Mason et al., 2007; see also Antrobus, 1968; Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010).
The default network that tends to be active during these undirected task states has
been characterized as “a brain system much like the motor system or the visual system”
that encompasses “a set of interacting brain areas that are tightly functionally
connected and distinct from other systems within the brain” (Buckner et al., 2008,
pp. 4–5). Very similar regions have been observed as showing greater activity in the
periods in between directed tasks in neuroimaging paradigms that involve compara-
tively longer phases of undirected activity on the order of minutes (“block” design
studies) and when the between-task phases are considerably briefer, on the order of
seconds and typically as little as 2–10 seconds (“event-related” studies). Across differ-
ent methodologies—including both block- and event-related task designs, as well as
functional connectivity analysis—a distributed set of regions has been found to be
more active in the between-task condition (e.g., Buckner et al., 2008; Greicius et al.,
2003. See also K. J. Miller, Weaver, & Ojemann, 2009 for recent support using direct
electrophysiological measurements and Greicius et al., 2009 for evidence from diffu-
sion tensor analyses.) These regions are in association cortex (not sensory or motor
cortex) and very consistently include medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate
cortex/retrosplenial cortex, and the inferior parietal lobule. Additionally, each of the
methods has revealed activity in the hippocampal formation, and in lateral temporal
cortex, extending into the temporal pole, though these hippocampal and lateral
temporal cortical activations are comparatively more strongly apparent in the func-
tional connectivity analysis approach. Anatomical evidence suggests that these regions
comprise a series of subsystems, interconnected via both direct and indirect anatomic
projections, that converge on key “hubs” particularly in posterior cingulate cortex,
and that are connected with the medial temporal lobe memory system.
Several studies have shown that there are systematic relations between the control
of attention and activity in the default network. For instance, Weissman et al. (2006)
observed that on trials in which participants responded comparatively more slowly
during a demanding global/local selective-attention task—suggesting a lapse of atten-
tion to the task—activity in brain regions involved in regulating attention decreased
(e.g., in dorsal anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex), but activity in regions of the
default network (e.g., posterior cingulate) increased.6 Another study (C. S. Li et al.,
2007) that required speeded responding together with the inhibition of a strong
prepotent tendency to respond (on trials with a “stop signal” during a go/no-go task)
yielded a similar outcome. Trials on which participants failed to inhibit responding
(that is, stop errors) were preceded by increased default network activity (e.g., in bilat-
eral posterior cingulate). Stated differently, greater activity in these regions predicted
that a “stop error” would occur on the immediately upcoming trial.
In other work, increased activity in posterior cingulate cortex during an incidental
encoding task was found to predict that stimuli that were presented at that point
would subsequently prove to have been forgotten (Otten & Rugg, 2001). That is, in
contrast to increased brain activity in other regions such as left prefrontal and tempo-
ral cortices that have been shown to predict that particular stimuli would subsequently
be remembered (e.g., A. D. Wagner et al., 1998; see Paller & Wagner, 2002; A. D. Wagner,
Koutstaal, & Schacter, 1999, for review), greater activity in the default network was
predictive of which items would be forgotten (see Uncapher & Wagner, 2009, for review
and discussion). Using a different approach, Christoff and colleagues (2009) sporadi-
cally presented probes that asked participants to report, directly, if their mind had
“wandered” from the performance of a difficult but tedious sustained attention task.
Both participants’ reports of mind wandering and performance errors on the atten-
tion-demanding task were preceded (in the 10 seconds prior to the probe) by greater
activation in the default network, for example, in medial frontal and posterior cingu-
late cortex.
What functional roles does the default network play in human cognition? Several
differing accounts have been suggested. One account proposes that the default net-
work, or portions thereof such as posterior cingulate cortex (e.g., Gusnard & Raichle,
2001), is associated with an “exploratory state” (Shulman et al, 1997, p. 661), or of
“watchfulness” regarding the external environment (Gilbert, Simons et al., 2006,
p. 56; Gilbert et al., 2007). When in this externally watchful state, the individual is
thought to broadly, globally, and spontaneously scan the environment, such as in task
situations that do not require extensive processing of presented stimuli, or where
it is unclear where targets or relevant information may appear (e.g., Hahn et al., 2007).
A related account, forwarded particularly with regard to the role of medial rostral pre-
frontal cortex in this network, is the “gateway hypothesis” (e.g., Burgess, Dumontheil,
& Gilbert, 2007). According to the gateway hypothesis, activity in medial rostral pre-
frontal cortex is associated with situations that require the deliberate tuning of the
individual’s attentional bias: either toward current sensory input or toward internally
generated thought. It has been suggested that a process of deliberate biasing toward
external information would be especially beneficial for tasks associated with a high
level of automaticity, or very monotonous tasks that tend to be associated with
substantial numbers of stimulus-independent or task-unrelated thoughts yet also
require ongoing monitoring of the current environment. Support for the inter-
pretation that activity in medial prefrontal cortex might reflect such biased or prefer-
ential orienting toward the external environment has been provided by analyses of
participants’ response times. Greater activity in this region, on a trial-by-trial basis,
was associated with faster response times—not slower responses, as might be antici-
pated if participants were engaging in task-unrelated thoughts (e.g., Gilbert, Simons,
et al., 2006).
Another account focuses on the role of the default network in particularly self-
relevant cognition. This hypothesis has been concisely summarized by Buckner and
colleagues, who propose that “the fundamental function of the default network is to
facilitate flexible self-relevant mental explorations—simulations—that provide a
means to anticipate and evaluate upcoming events before they happen” (Buckner
et al., 2008, p. 2; Buckner & Carroll, 2007). Multiple sources of evidence, showing that
several apparently different sorts of activities often elicit activity in the default
network, have led to this account. Meta-analyses of the brain regions activated during
autobiographical memory retrieval have shown a marked correspondence between
those regions that are recruited during the recollection of self-related memories from
one’s past, and the regions that comprise the default network (e.g., Maguire, 2001;
Svoboda, McKinnon, & Levine, 2006). In addition, engaging in other complex tasks,
such as imagining events that may occur in the future (Addis & Schacter, 2008; Addis,
Wong, & Schacter, 2007; Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997, 2007), thinking about the
thoughts of others (Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003; Saxe & Powell, 2006), and reaching
decisions about how one should act in complex moral situations or dilemmas (e.g.,
J. D. Greene et al., 2001; B. J. Harrison et al., 2008) all also have been associated with
activity in this interconnected network. The largely common recruitment of the
default network across these surprisingly diverse tasks prompted the suggestion that
the default network is specifically involved in the simulation of perspectives that are
different from the present (e.g., Buckner & Carroll, 2007).
A recent quantitative meta-analysis, using activation likelihood estimation (ALE)
analyses to determine statistically significant concordance of activated voxels across
more than 75 studies, has similarly provided support for the proposal that there is a
common neural basis for a number of different processes, including autobiographical
memory, navigation, theory of mind (e.g., understanding the thoughts of other
people), and the “default mode” (Spreng, Mar, & Kim, 2009). These four domains
showed closely overlapping recruitment of medial parietal regions (posterior cingu-
late, precuneus, and retrosplenial cortex), medial prefrontal cortex/anterior cingulate
(including BA 10 and BA 32), left parahippocampus/hippocampus, as well as in left
lateral prefrontal cortex (inferior frontal gyrus, BA 47), and in the temporo-parietal
junction, extending posteriorly into a region in left occipital cortex.
Subdivisions of the default network, and predominant functions associated with
those subdivisions, have also been suggested. One subdivision may particularly draw
on contents from episodic memory. Based on a marked convergence of regions involved
in the default network and those recruited during successful episodic memory retrieval,
it has been proposed that a subsystem, involving the hippocampal formation, and also
the posterior cingulate cortex, inferior parietal lobe, and portions of the medial pre-
frontal cortex, may be especially involved in providing associations and relational
information from memory, and may perhaps be modulated in accordance with the
extent to which past episodic memory is relevant or useful to the task at hand.
For example, this subsystem may particularly contribute to the processes of “scene
construction.” As described by Maguire and colleagues, in scene construction, we
mentally generate and maintain complex and coherent scenes or events by retrieving
and integrating relevant information from modality-specific regions into a spatial
context that can then be manipulated and visualized (Hassabis, Kumaran, & Maguire,
2007; Hassabis & Maguire, 2007). These investigators found that a core network of
regions was activated across several sorts of memory and imagination tasks. A similar
core network of regions was activated when individuals constructed new fictitious
scenes for the first time in the scanner (e.g., “lying on a sandy beach in a tropical bay”),
when they remembered recently imagined experiences from a prescan interview, and
when they remembered their own (“real”) personal experiences that had also recently
been recalled during a prescan interview. An extended network of brain regions,
involving left and right hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, retrosplenial cortex,
posterior parietal cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex showed increased activ-
ity across these different sorts of tasks compared to control tasks involving similar
operations but with respect to isolated, acontextual objects (e.g., recalling an object
that was visually presented during the prescan interview).
A second subsystem involving particularly dorsal ventromedial prefrontal cortex
may be involved in self-relevant mental simulations or, more generally, in forms of
thinking that require one to conceive of others or other things or beings “as being
social, interactive, and emotive like oneself” (Buckner et al., 2008, p. 24; see also
Legrand & Ruby, 2009). To take one example, greater activity in dorsal ventromedial
prefrontal cortex was observed when participants were asked to make judgments
about fictitious people who were characterized as being similar to themselves than
when the people they were asked to imagine were painted as quite different from
themselves (J. P. Mitchell, Macrae, & Banaji, 2006). Increased activity was also
observed when participants made judgments regarding whether presented words
could describe the psychological state (e.g., curious, frightened) of a target entity
(either a person or a dog) than when they decided if the words could describe a physi-
cal part (e.g., artery, liver) of the target (J. P. Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005; see J. P.
Mitchell, 2009, for review).
Considering findings from neuropsychology, Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues (2009)
have presented evidence suggesting that lesions to ventromedial prefrontal cortex
(BA 11 and BA 10) impair “cognitive empathy,” involving the tendency to spontane-
ously adopt the psychological point of view of others, and to imaginatively transpose
oneself into fictional situations. In contrast, lesions to the inferior frontal gyrus (BA
44) tended to impair “emotional empathy,” involving the individual’s feelings of
warmth, compassion, and concern for others, and a tendency to experience self-ori-
ented feelings of anxiety and discomfort in tense interpersonal situations. The latter
observations are perhaps consistent with the role of this or of nearby dorsal premotor
regions (see Cattaneo & Rizzolatti, 2009; Molenberghs, Cunnington, & Mattingley,
2009) in imitation, emotion recognition, and the early emotional matching/mirroring
of what has been termed the mirror neuron system (e.g., Rizzolatti, Fogassi, & Gallese,
2001; Zaki, Weber, Bolger, & Ochsner, 2009; however, see also Hickok, 2008, and
Mahon & Caramazza, 2005 for critical evaluation).
More generally, evidence from several apparently disparate forms of psychopathol-
ogy and mental disorders, including autism, schizophrenia, and also depression,
obsessional disorders, and other conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, has provided
further support for the notion that the default network is crucial to our ability to
engage in cognitive-perceptual-emotional simulations. These studies also underscore
the central functional importance of the interrelations between activity in the default
network/subnetworks and that found in “task-positive” networks. (See, for example,

Broyd et al., 2009; Buckner, Snyder et al., 2005; Buckner et al., 2008; Fornito &
Bullmore, 2010, T. B. Jones et al., 2010, for reviews and discussion.)
Outcomes reported by Sheline, Barch et al. (2009) provide a clear example, in this
case regarding changes in default network activity in clinical depression. Using the
data from an independent study to define the default network, these investigators
found that, compared with control participants, clinically depressed individuals
showed significantly reduced attenuation in multiple areas of the default network
during the performance of a passive looking task (viewing negative and neutral pic-
tures). This reduced attenuation of default network activity in individuals who were
depressed compared with control participants also was observed during a task in
which the participants were asked to deliberately try to regulate their emotional
response to the pictures, attempting to make their emotional responses either more
positive or more negative. These findings are consistent with other evidence, some of
which was reviewed in Chapters 2 and 3, that clinical depression is associated with an
impaired ability to appropriately down-regulate self-referential and internally gener-
ated ruminative activity or—stated more positively—with a reduced capacity to “lose
oneself” in one’s work (Sheline et al., 2009, p. 1942).
Thus far, we have predominantly considered how spontaneous task-unrelated
thought is reflected in changing activation levels of the default network or subnet-
works. Yet this leaves unexamined how such spontaneous thoughts might influence
activity in the task-positive “executive” network. Many of the brain imaging explora-
tions of the default network contrast brain activity during differing task conditions
such as “rest” versus during the performance of tasks that are novel and cognitively
demanding. These changes in the task demands across conditions (that is, no or mini-
mal task and response demands vs. clear task and response requirements) might make
it difficult to detect whether spontaneous thought or “mind wandering” also is associ-
ated with changes in activity in brain regions associated with the deliberate control
and intentional regulation of responding.
To examine this important but overlooked question, Christoff and colleagues
(2009) held the task constant—always requiring participants to perform a difficult
sustained attention monitoring task—but then used participants’ self-reports of
mind wandering or being “off-task” to compare brain activity during mind wandering
versus task focus. These researchers found that mind wandering also significantly
recruited two key regions of the executive network, including the dorsolateral pre-
frontal cortex and dorsal region of the anterior cingulate. Additionally, the magnitude
of this executive network recruitment, and also of the default network recruitment,
was greatest when participants self-reported that they were not aware that their mind
had wandered.
Seeking to interpret these findings, Christoff and colleagues (2009) noted that,
although most often, the executive and default networks are thought to “act in oppo-
sition to each other”—such that when the executive network becomes activated, the
default network becomes deactivated or actively suppressed—these findings, instead,
appeared to demonstrate “a parallel recruitment” of the executive and default net-
works. They also note that the presence of greater activity in regions such as the ante-
rior prefrontal cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex when participants were
not aware (rather than aware) that their thoughts had strayed from the task at hand
suggests that the executive involvement might be in the service of the thoughts to
which they had wandered (e.g., current personal concerns and unresolved matters).
Although this activation pattern differs from the pattern of results observed
during many tasks and baseline conditions […], it is reminiscent of the
neural recruitment observed during creative thinking […], where executive
regions such as the dorsal [anterior cingulate cortex] and default network
regions such as the [posterior cingulate cortex] are activated before solving
problems with insight. Also, a similar parallel recruitment of executive
and default regions has also been observed during naturalistic film viewing
[…], which is related to immersive mental experience. […] Thus, mind
wandering may be part of a larger class of mental phenomena that
enable executive processes to occur without diminishing the potential
contribution of the default network for creative thought […] and mental
simulation […]. Although it may undermine our immediate goals, mind
wandering may enable the parallel operation of diverse brain areas in the
service of distal goals that extend beyond the current task. (Christoff et al.,
2009, p. 8723)
These results suggest that a simple dichotomy between activation of the default
network versus the executive control network will not adequately account for some of
the more intermediate and transitional modes involving both aspects of control (e.g.,
a focus on particular goals or problems) and aspects of noncontrol (e.g., spontaneous
thinking). Additionally, these findings raise the fundamental question of what brain
regions or network(s) of brain regions might assume a role in switching between the
central executive versus default networks.
Important recent work by Sridharan, Levitin, and Menon (2008) has begun to
address this question. Using several chronometric analyses techniques and causal con-
nectivity analyses to directly assess the temporal dynamics and causal interactions of
specific nodes within the central executive and default networks, these researchers
pointed to right frontoinsular cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex as assuming
a key role in such switching. Although these two regions are often activated during
tasks that draw on central executive control, such as attention, working memory, and
response selection tasks, they also activate under a large number of other conditions,
such as in response to pain and uncertainty, and have been repeatedly implicated in
successful self-regulation in tasks involving meditation (see Tang et al., 2009, for
review and discussion).
Right frontoinsular and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex also appear to show
divergent patterns of intrinsic connectivity during resting states. Connectivity analy-
ses performed by Seeley and colleagues (2007) found different patterns of intrinsic
connectivity between these regions and other regions that are prominently activated
in central executive control tasks, such as bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and
lateral parietal cortices. In particular, right frontoinsular and dorsal anterior cingulate
cortex showed prominent intrinsic connectivity with other paralimbic regions, with
the limbic system, and with subcortical and brainstem structures, including regions
involved in reward processing, as well as with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, supple-

mentary motor area, and other frontal, temporal, and parietal regions.
Seeley et al. (2007) additionally found that the two subnetworks showed quite
different correlations with behavior. Individuals’ prescan ratings of anxiety correlated
with intrinsic functional connectivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate/frontoinsular
network but not with the executive control network. In contrast, executive task
performance—as measured by the difference in response times to a simpler visuomo-
tor sequencing task (Trails A) versus a more complex sequencing task (Trails B) which
also requires inhibition and task switching—correlated with lateral parietal nodes of
the executive control network, but not with any of the dorsal anterior cingulate/fron-
toinsular network. This led to the proposal that, although part of a “task activation
ensemble,” the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and orbital frontoinsula are not
responding in a task-specific manner, but rather to what might be seen as the current
level of “personal salience” of information. These regions were proposed to be part of
a “salience network” that “unites conflict monitoring, interoceptive-autonomic, and
reward-processing centers” (Seeley et al., 2007, p. 2352).
To examine the temporal and potentially causal interrelations of brain activity in
the default-mode network, in the central executive network, and in the salience
network, Sridharan and colleagues (2008) conducted a series of three experiments,
involving differing tasks and transitions between and within tasks. For example, one
experiment involved listening to classical music, and analyses examined brain activity
at the salient “boundaries” between movements in the symphony (i.e., transitions
between the movements in the music). The other two experiments involved visual
attention (a visual oddball task) and a task-free resting state, in which there was no
overt task, and no behavioral responses were required. Two different analyses
approaches showed that activity in the right insular/frontal operculum preceded
changes in activity linked to the auditory transitions in both the dorsolateral prefron-
tal regions (increases) and in the default network (decreased activity). In addition,
network analysis of the causal flow network (an analysis of directed information flow,
generated through a technique known as Granger causal analysis) showed that the
right frontal insular cortex had a significantly higher net causal “outflow” than did the
central executive or default mode networks not only in the auditory event segmenta-
tion task but also in the visual oddball attention task, and task-free resting state. The
onset latency of activity in right insular/frontal operculum did not differ significantly
from that in the anterior cingulate cortex, but right insular/frontal operculum showed
a higher net causal outflow than the anterior cingulate in all three datasets.
These findings suggest that, even under conditions in which the anterior cingulate
plays an important role, the right insular/frontal operculum “may generate the signals
to trigger hierarchical control” (Sridharan et al., 2008, p. 12573). More recently,
Eckert, Menon, and colleagues (2009; cf. also L. F. Barrett & Bar, 2009; Dosenbach
et al., 2007) have provided further evidence that the right frontoinsular cortex
“engages cognitive control systems by communicating the salience of a stimulus” and
that this region may be “particularly critical for modulating cognitive control systems
in challenging task conditions, in which cognitive control is necessary for optimal per-
formance and for altering behavioral strategies in the face of declining performance”
(Eckert et al., 2009, p. 2538).
Why might the anterior insular/frontal operculum/anterior cingulate cortex play

an important causal role in a “network switching process” between the default and
executive control processing modes? The insular cortex in the primate (old world
monkey) is reciprocally connected to many widely distributed sensory, motor, limbic,
and association areas in the brain (Mesulam & Mufson, 1982; Mufson & Mesulam,
1982), and the frontal insular cortex and anterior cingulate cortex themselves are
reciprocally interconnected so as to “form an anatomically tightly coupled network
ideally placed to integrate information from several brain regions” (Sridharan et al.,
2008, p. 12572). The frontal insular-anterior cingulate complex has been shown to
moderate arousal during cognitively complex tasks, and the right fronto-insular
cortex, in particular, “plays a critical role in interoceptive awareness of both stimulus-
induced and stimulus-independent changes in homeostatic states” (Sridharan et al.,
2008, p. 12572; see Craig, 2002, 2003 for review).
Equally important, however, the frontal insular-anterior cingulate complex has a
unique and specialized form of neurons that are exclusively or perhaps very nearly
exclusively (see Fajardo et al., 2008) found in this complex and that may allow
exceptionally rapid relaying of information to other parts of the brain (K. K. Watson,
Jones, & Allman, 2006). The so-called von Economo neurons or VENs (named after
the neuroanatomist who provided a classical description of these cells) are “an extra-
ordinary morphological characteristic” of the anterior insular cortex and the
anterior cingulate cortex. They are large spindle-shaped neurons among the pyramidal
neurons in layer 5 and, for several reasons, including their large cell bodies, have been
proposed to bear large, rapidly conducting axons (K. K. Watson et al., 2006) that com-
prise “the substrate for fast interconnections between the physically separated
advanced limbic sensory [anterior insular] and motor [anterior cingulate] cortices
(Craig, 2009a, p. 63):
Analogous to the tight interconnections between the contiguous somatosen-

sory and motor cortices (so-called U-fibres) needed for manual dexterity
(for example, for playing a musical instrument), the VENs might enable fast,
highly integrated representations of emotional moments and behaviours.
(Craig, 2009a, p. 63)
Additionally, VENs develop late both in ontogeny—in humans, they first appear in
very small numbers in the 35th week of gestation, and the newborn has only about
15% of the number of VENs found in the 4-year-old (Allman et al., 2005)—and also in
phylogeny, having been found only in humans, great apes, cetaceans, such as the
bottlenose dolphin and the beluga whale (Butti et al., 2009), and elephants (Hakeem
et al., 2009).
Intriguingly, the insula’s extremely diverse and virtually omnipresent role in a very
wide range of conditions involving awareness, has recently led to the proposal that
this region, based on the combination and integration of multiple forms of “saliency”
maps, is involved in the representation of the “now” that crucially contributes to a
sentient self. The insula is active not only in tasks requiring attention, cognitive
choices, and intentions but also in tasks involving “music, time perception and, unmis-
takably, awareness of sensations and movements, of visual and auditory percepts, of
the visual image of the self, of the reliability of sensory images and subjective expecta-
tions, and of the trustworthiness of other individuals” (Craig, 2009a, p. 65). Given
this ubiquitous involvement, Craig (2009a, p. 67) has proposed that representations
in the insula provide “a substrate for the sequential integration of homeostatic condi-
tions with the sensory environment and with motivational, hedonic and social condi-
tions represented in other parts of the brain,” and that “this substrate is constructed
on the foundation provided by the feelings from the body.”
In line with the general posterior-to-anterior processing gradient for increasing
abstraction in the frontal cortex (e.g., Amodio & Frith, 2006; Christoff, Keramatian
et al., 2009; see also Chapter 8), there is a posterior-to-anterior progression of repre-
sentations of saliency from the posterior to the anterior portions of insular cortex
(see the schematic diagram in Fig. 9.7). Whereas posterior insula represents more pri-
mary interoceptive states, intermediate (and incrementally more anterior) represen-
tations integrate successively “homeostatic, environmental, hedonic, motivational,
social and cognitive activity to produce a ‘global emotional moment’” that “represents
the sentient self at one moment of time.”
… the integration of salience across all of these factors culminates in a

unified final meta-representation of the “global emotional moment” near the
junction of the anterior insula and the frontal operculum. This processing
stage is key, because it generates an image of “the material me” (or the
sentient self) at one moment in time—“now.” (Craig, 2009a, p. 67)
More speculatively, this framework can also be extended to account for the sense of
our selves in time (see Fig. 9.7, lower panel). As characterized by Craig (2009a, p. 67;
see also Craig, 2009b), anatomically “repeating” the fundamental unit of the represen-
tation of “the material me”—that is, the self at one moment in time—and somehow
indexing this to an endogenous time-base, could allow the generation of “a set of
repeated meta-representations of global emotional moments that extends across a
finite period of time.” Additionally, this “anatomical structure (a ‘meta-memory’)”
could provide “the basis for the continuity of subjective emotional awareness in a finite
present”—with additional storage buffers or “workspace” (e.g., Kranczioch et al., 2005)
for the individual global emotional moments allowing the process of comparing past,
present, and future feelings, and enabling the instantiation of a “reflexive observer.”
Other investigators, for example, Allman and colleagues (2005) have suggested
that “VENs may relay a fast intuitive assessment of complex social situations to allow
the rapid adjustment of behavior in quickly changing social situations” (Watson et al.,
2006, p. 1112. See also W. J. Kuo et al., 2009, for evidence of selective recruitment of
the insula and anterior cingulate cortex in a co-ordination game eliciting rapid intui-
tive assessments of what is likely to be salient to another person.) Similarly, it has
been suggested that “the VENs and related insular circuitry may be involved in moni-
toring changes in the physiological network of the individual’s own body and that
individual’s social network” and may assume an important role in “initiating homeo-
static corrections to changes in network states” (Hakeem et al., 2009, p. 247). These
approaches7 thus share a common emphasis on how ongoing representations of our
current internal and external state in the frontal insular cortex and anterior cingulate
(a) Posterior insula Anterior insula
Primary Homeostatic Environmental Hedonic conditions Motivational, social,

interoceptive motor function conditions (nucleus accumbens and cognitive
representation (hypothalamus (entorhinal and and orbitofrontal conditions (ACC,
and amygdala) temporal poles) cortex) VMPPC, and DLPPC)
(b) Normal time passage Future
Present
Past
Subjective time passage
When salient moments occur rapidly, the

number of global emotional moments
increases during that time and, as a consequence,
subjective time dilates
Figure 9.7. A Proposed Model of Awareness in One Moment in Time

(a) and Across Time (b). Panel (a) illustrates the postulated representational
integration of salient activity from multiple internal and external sources, beginning
with primary interoceptive information in posterior insula (left) and successively
extending to more encompassing information about one’s motivational, social, and
cognitive conditions in the anterior insula (right). As characterized by Craig (2009a,
p. 67): “The primary interoceptive representations of feelings from the body provide a
somatotopic foundation that is anchored by the associated homeostatic effects on
cardio-respiratory function, as indicated by the focus of the [colors] in the chest. The
integration successively includes homeostatic, environmental, hedonic, motivational,
social and cognitive activity to produce a ‘global emotional moment,’ which represents
438
cortex may “lead” us (our mind-brain) to predominantly adopt a goal-guided, top-

down central executive processing approach or to adopt the less controlled and highly
varied (and still often goal-related if not directly goal-guided) processing character-
istic of the “default mode.” A more detailed understanding of how the insula and ante-
rior cingulate contribute to alternations between network states thus promises to
provide important advances in our knowledge of the neural determinants of “oscilla-
tory range” in cognitive control.
Bouncing Back: Brain Bases of Resilience

The possible etiological role of highly stressful life events in the onset of depression
and other mental disorders has long been recognized (e.g., Munroe & Simons, 1991;
Russo et al., 1995). Yet there are notably large individual differences in how people
respond to stress: Not all highly adverse events lead to psychopathological symptoms,
and sometimes individuals show remarkable resilience to exceedingly negative and
threatening events. The behavioral, neurochemical, and neuroanatomical pathways
that enable such “resilience”—or “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity,
trauma, threats of harm, or even significant sources of stress” (Yehuda et al., 2006,
p. 380)—are the subject of intensive ongoing research. We here focus on a few of the
important proposed neurobiological mechanisms of resilience; earlier, we also consid-
ered the key role of positive emotions (Chapter 6), and the relations between person-
ality, overcontrol, and undercontrol (Chapter 5), in fostering resilient responding.
Resilience has been hypothesized to result from cortical, top-down control from
the prefrontal cortex over subcortical brain regions (e.g., the amygdala and the dorsal
raphe nucleus) that are involved in aversive conditioning. In agreement with these
notions, results from neuroimaging suggest that the prefrontal cortex modulates
activity in the amygdala when individuals are presented with negatively valenced
stimuli, such as photographs, and they attempt to deliberately regulate their emo-
tional responses to those stimuli (Ochsner et al., 2002; Phelps & LeDoux, 2005). For
example, Urry and colleagues (2006) presented participants emotionally negative
images and instructed them to try to either increase or to decrease the emotional
impact of the negative images. Those individuals who were successful at reducing the
emotional impact showed both reduced activity in the amygdala and increased ventral
medial prefrontal cortical activity; that is, amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal
the sentient self at one moment of time.” The upper portion of (b) illustrates how “a
series of global emotional moments can produce a cinemascopic ‘image’ of the sentient
self across time,” whereas the bottom portion illustrates how “the proposed model can
produce a subjective dilation of time during a period of high emotional salience, when
global emotional moments are rapidly ‘filled up’”. ACC, anterior cingulate cortex;
DLPFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; VMPFC, ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
Reprinted from Craig, A. D. (2009a, p. 67), How do you feel—now? The anterior insula
and human awareness, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 59–70, with permission from
Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Copyright 2009, Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
cortex activity were inversely coupled during the successful intentional regulation of
negative affect in response to the stimuli.
Investigations with depressed individuals also have shown that depressed persons
demonstrate greater sensitivity to misleading negative feedback than do controls. It
has been proposed that disrupted top-down control by the prefrontal cortex of the
amygdala may underlie this hypersensitivity to negative feedback (Tavares et al.,
2008). Recent work has also shown that individuals who were formerly depressed, but
who are fully recovered, demonstrate greater activation in the amygdala and less acti-
vation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and in the anterior cingulate cortex than
do controls when they are presented with critical comments from a family member.
These observations suggest that “vulnerability to depression may be characterized by
abnormalities in nodes along cortico-limbic pathways that can be revealed by certain
types of affective challenges” (Hooley et al., 2009, p. 117; also cf. Way et al., 2010).
There is considerable and growing evidence that the neurotransmitter serotonin
may be involved in enabling resilience to aversive events, and also in the failure of
resilience that can lead to clinically severe states of depression in the face of adverse
life events (Deakin, 1991; see also the discussion of the possible contribution of sero-
tonergic dysfunction to the lack of cognitive flexibility observed in conditions such as
depression in the section on “Set Shifting and Reversal Learning” of the previous
chapter). Individuals who are depressed show reduced circulating plasma tryptophan,
an essential amino acid that is a precursor of serotonin. Depressed individuals who are
taking medications that are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and who are then
challenged with dietary tryptophan depletion have been found to show a depressive
relapse that then again resolves after replenishment of tryptophan levels through a
return to regular food intake (e.g., P. L. Delgado, 2006; P. L. Delgado et al., 1990). It has
been proposed that the serotonergic system that originates in the median raphe
nucleus in the brain stem and projects to the hippocampus and associated areas of the
cortex, functions as an adaptive system during times of chronic stress (Deakin, 1991;
Deakin & Graeff, 1991; Graeff et al., 1996). When this system breaks down, tolerance
to chronic stress is impaired and leads to depression in humans and symptoms of
learned helplessness in animal models.
Most studies using the technique of dietary tryptophan depletion have not found
that healthy controls respond to the depletion with depressive mood changes. However,
such changes have been reported in individuals who are vulnerable to depression,
including those with a family history of depression and those with genetic markers of
vulnerability (Neumeister et al., 2002). Based on theoretical notions of the role of
“learned helplessness” (e.g., Seligman, 1972) and of uncontrollable adverse events in
contributing to the onset of depression, Richell et al. (2005) combined dietary trypto-
phan depletion with manipulations of uncontrollable noise stress (possibly inducing a
situational sort of learned helplessness) or controllable noise stress (not likely to lead
to learned helplessness). Normal individuals who were jointly challenged with trypto-
phan depletion and uncontrollable noise showed a significant increase in negative
mood compared with when they were exposed to controllable noise stress. These
researchers found significant or near-significant interactions of type of stress (control-
lable vs. uncontrollable) on mood analog scales tapping depression-dejection and help-
lessness; the depletion manipulation combined with uncontrollable noise also led to a
significant and selective increase in reported sadness. Together, these results are con-
sistent with an important role of the serotonergic system in mediating resilient
responses to stress but also highlight the importance of the nature of the stressors
(controllable vs. uncontrollable).
Two important contributors to resilience may be positive affectivity (the “trait of
being joyful, interested, and contented in life,” Yehuda et al., 2006, p. 384) and opti-
mism (which also contributes to positive affect). For example, as we saw earlier in
Chapter 7, optimism is positively related to successful adaptive coping (Linley &
Joseph, 2004) and to psychological adjustment during life transitions and medical
challenges such as coronary artery bypass surgery (Brissette, Scheier, & Carver, 2002;
Scheier et al., 1999). People in general tend to show a modestly overpositive or slightly
“too optimistic” view of their likely experiences, overestimating the likelihood or
nature of positive future events in regard to themselves, and underestimating nega-
tive characteristics or events (e.g., Lench & Ditto, 2008; S. E. Taylor & Brown, 1988;
Weinstein, 1980).
In a double-blind placebo-controlled study comparing the effects of acute trypto-
phan depletion and acute stress exposure on individuals with, versus without, a family
history of depression, Firk and Markus (2008) found that stress led to less positive
affective bias. These effects tended to be stronger in those with a family history of
depression. Cools and colleagues (2008) suggested that the typical observation that
healthy individuals show greater accuracy in predicting rewards than in predicting pun-
ishments or aversive events may reflect resilience to aversive signals: “Resilience pro-
tects subjects from the detrimental consequences of exposure to adversity and enables
them to quickly recover from negative experiences” (Cools et al., 2008, p. 2297).
Using a rat model to investigate the effects of a controllable stressor versus an
uncontrollable stressor on behavior and neurochemical function, Amat and colleagues
(2005) presented evidence to suggest that medial prefrontal cortex may be particu-
larly important in learning the contingencies that are operative in a given situation—that
is, precisely what the animal can do to control the stressor or to avoid it. Aversive and
stressful events elicit quite different behavioral, emotional-motivational, and other
consequences depending on whether the source of the stress is under behavioral con-
trol, such that the animal or person has the ability to alter the onset, offset, duration,
or intensity of the adverse conditions through behavioral actions. Uncontrollable
stressors lead to changes in behavior that resemble depression and anxiety and acti-
vate serotonergic neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus much more strongly than do
controllable stressors, leading to sensitization of these neurons.
Amat et al. (2005) examined learning and behavior in rats that could terminate
painful shocks (through wheel-turning) or could not do so (uncontrollable condition).
In the uncontrollable condition, the duration of the shocks was determined by a
“yoked” animal in the controllable condition, thereby equating the duration and
timing of the shocks the two groups received. (Yoking is a procedure whereby the
reinforcement events, such as shocks or food pellets, administered to one animal in an
experimental condition are also given, in the same frequency and order, to an animal
in the “yoked” control condition. However, whereas the reinforcement events in the
experimental condition are consequences of the animal’s own behavior, for the yoked
control they are given entirely independently of the animal’s behavior.) In addition,
for each group of animals, the researchers either injected an inert vehicle into the
medial prefrontal cortex or injected the drug muscimol that would interfere with
medial prefrontal function. They found that inactivation of ventral medial prefrontal
cortex eliminated the stressor resistance that is usually observed when animals have
behavioral control, such that the controllable stressor now elicited outcomes as though
it was uncontrollable (e.g., exaggerated fear, failure to learn, and activation of the
serotonergic dorsal raphe nucleus).
These results suggest that, if a stressor is controllable, then the ventral medial
prefrontal cortex inhibits the stress-induced activation of the dorsal raphe nucleus, so
that the behavioral consequences of uncontrollable stress are not observed. Stated
differently, these findings suggest that “the presence of control inhibits stress-induced
neural activity in brainstem nuclei, in contrast to the prevalent view that such activity
is induced by a lack of control” (Amat et al., 2005, p. 365). More broadly, these out-
comes imply that:
Highly aversive events are likely to drive limbic and brainstem structures that
induce negative affective and motivational experiences; control, perceived con-
trol, or more generally, the ability to cope may activate [ventral medial prefron-
tal] inhibition of these limbic and brainstem processes. From an evolutionary
perspective, it may be sensible that activation of “lower” centers by strongly
aversive events came first, and that as species developed the ability to cope
with such events by behavioral means, inhibition from “higher” centers under
conditions of behavioral coping then developed. (Amat et al., 2005, p. 369)
Particularly persuasive additional evidence in support of this view was provided by

a recent study from this same research group that employed the opposite strategy;
rather than inactivating ventral medial prefrontal cortex during a controllable stres-
sor, they used a microinjection of another substance (picrotoxin) to activate medial
prefrontal cortex during the stressor (Amat et al., 2008). The activation of ventral
medial prefrontal cortex at the time of an uncontrollable stressor led to behavioral
and neurochemical outcomes that mirrored those found for a controllable stressor. For
example, other research has shown that an earlier experience with controllable stress
may help to “immunize” an animal from the detrimental consequences of a subse-
quent exposure to uncontrollable stress (Amat et al., 2006). Animals that were exposed
to an uncontrollable stress together with activation of the ventral medial prefrontal
cortex showed such immunization. Activation of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex
during a stressor also was sufficient to produce resistance to the neurochemical and
behavioral consequences of the stressors. Under these conditions uncontrollable
stress did not lead to the freezing behavior and failures of escape learning that are
otherwise found with uncontrollable stress, and it also blocked the activation of the
dorsal raphe nucleus that would otherwise be observed.
Collectively, these studies provide very strong evidence that behavioral control
yields beneficial outcomes through activating the medial prefrontal cortex. A wider
implication of the second study is that “resistance to the behavioral and neurochemical
impact of stressors is not determined by the ability to exert behavioral control per se,
but rather by whether [ventral medial prefrontal cortical] output is increased during
the stressor” (Amat et al., 2008, p. 1184). Allowing an animal to have behavioral control
can reduce the consequences of exposure to significant stress but other factors—such
as the provision of “safety signals” indicating when the stressors will end—also can
have beneficial effects on subsequent learning and adaptive responding.
Ongoing current experiences and activities, such as regular physical exercise, may
also bolster resilience and resistance to learned helplessness (e.g., Greenwood & Fleshner,
2008; also see Chapters 10 and 11). In humans, regular physical activity, including either
aerobic exercise or resistance training, is well documented to reduce the incidence of
stress-related mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety (e.g., Stathopoulou et al.,
2006; Wipfli et al., 2008). Beneficial effects of voluntary exercise (wheel running) have
also been shown in rats. For example, four or more weeks of voluntary wheel running
reduced animal behaviors that may reflect anhedonia, or diminished experience of plea-
sure, elicited in response to chronic unpredictable stress, such as reduced preference for
sweetness (Zheng et al., 2006). Rats that were allowed to engage in voluntary wheel run-
ning for a period of 6 weeks before being exposed to a learned helplessness manipula-
tion (exposure to a series of uncontrollable tail shocks) were resistant to the behavioral
deficits that uncontrollability usually elicits, such as deficits in escape learning and exag-
gerated fear. These “protective effects” of voluntary exercise depended on the duration
of the prior regular exercise—if less than 3 weeks they were not observed, but they were
apparent after 6 weeks (Greenwood et al., 2005). Notably, these duration differences
also correspond with the timeframe in which attenuation of stress-induced activity of
dorsal raphe nucleus serotonergic neurons is observed, with such attenuation observed
after 6 weeks but not after only 3 weeks of wheel running.
Other work from this lab (Greenwood & Fleshner, 2008) demonstrates that volun-
tary exercise was especially protective against stress-induced deficits in escape learn-
ing only when the stressor and the testing environments differed from one another.
This suggests that exercise reduced the extent to which “learned helplessness” general-
ized to other contexts, but it did not disrupt context-relevant conditioned fear learning.
Indeed, in the original context, exercised rats actually showed more freezing than did
sedentary animals, but this difference disappeared if there was no reexposure to the
stressor, and the animals were allowed to continue voluntary exercise for several
weeks. In combination, these findings indicate increased flexibly adaptive responding
in the exercised rats: They demonstrated strong fear-relevant behavior when the
specific testing environment warranted such behavior, but did not excessively general-
ize that learning to other contexts, and also adaptively “unlearned” the fear-relevant
behavior in the testing environment when conditions changed.
The beneficial effects of exercise in reducing responses to uncontrollable stressors
also are likely to be mediated through the effects of exercise on the serotonergic
system and on norephinephrine. For instance, several weeks of voluntary wheel run-
ning led to decreased elevations of a serotonin metabolite in the hippocampus and
amygdala following uncontrollable foot shock (Dishman et al., 1997), pointing to
decreased serotonergic activity and reduced release of serotonin during exposure to
the stressor in the regularly exercising animals. In contrast, compared to sedentary
rats, the shortened escape latency for rats that were allowed to engage in wheel run-
ning was associated with increased concentrations of norephinephrine in the locus
coeruleus and the dorsal raphe nucleus.
Ongoing research that is seeking to determine the sites of the neuroplasticity that
leads to these beneficial exercise-induced effects on resilience to stress is focused on
three possible mechanisms: the dorsal raphe nucleus (through a gradual increase in an
inhibitory serotonin autoreceptor, 5-HTIA, over a period of 6 weeks or so), the locus
coeruleus (through constrained activation of norepinephrine neurons during uncon-
trollable stressors, reducing the drive from the locus coeruleus to the dorsal raphe
nucleus), and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (through facilitated inhibition of
serotonergic neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus). Although, to date, there is little
direct evidence for a role of exercise in facilitating medial prefrontal cortical function
specifically, several converging findings are broadly consistent with this as a possible
mechanism. For instance, as further developed in Chapters 10 and 11, there is consid-
erable empirical support for the view that, in humans, exercise improves executive
control functions involving the prefrontal cortex (e.g., Colcombe & Kramer, 2003),
and exercise has been shown to lead to increased volume in prefrontal regions
(Colcombe et al., 2006).
Evidence from animal research work also suggests that the ability of medial
prefrontal cortex to modulate responding to stressors may be substantially shaped by
early life experiences, such as maternal separation. Whereas repeatedly separating rat
pups from their mother for prolonged periods during the postnatal period increases
their vulnerability to stressors later in life, brief separations combined with human
handling appear to make the animals later more resilient to stressors than are pups
that are left undisturbed. These conditions are also associated with behavioral differ-
ences (e.g., the handled rats may show less anxiety) and neurochemical differences in
the stress responses shown by the animals. For instance, relative to early experiences
with brief handling, early maternal separation leads to enhanced hypothalamic corti-
cotropin-releasing factor expression and increased release of adrenocorticotropin and
corticosterone in response to stressors (Francis et al., 2002; Plotsky et al., 2005).
These effects may be partially compensated for (but not entirely reversed) through
enriched environmental stimulation at the time of weaning (Francis et al., 2002).
Using in vivo electrophysiology to record unit and local field potentials in bilateral
medial prefrontal cortex in response to a pharmacological stressor, Stevenson et al.
(2008) found that rats that had been exposed to maternal separation showed attenu-
ated basal unit activity in this region, particularly in the right medial prefrontal cortex.
In contrast, the pharmacological stressor selectively activated right medial prefrontal
cortex neurons in the handled animals. Early maternal separation also altered the
functional relations between left versus right medial prefrontal cortex, such that
hemispheric coupling was attenuated by early maternal separation but was increased
by early handling.
Although these results are still preliminary, and await replication and extension,
they clearly converge with other evidence, reviewed earlier, concerning the important
role of medial prefrontal cortex in resilient responding to stress. Additionally, the dif-
ferences in hemispheric lateralization and synchronization of medial prefrontal cortex
in this animal model are consistent with other evidence from both animal studies
and studies with humans suggesting that the right hemisphere plays a preferential
role in mediating adaptive coping responses to stressors (e.g., Sullivan & Gratton,
1999; Thiel & Schwarting, 2001; Tomarken, Davidson, & Henriques, 1990).
In summary, neurobiological evidence (only a small portion of which has been

considered here) consistently points to the important role of affective and motiva-
tional factors in resilience, particularly as related to emotional positivity and optimism,
with successful modulation of stress and responsiveness to stress at least partially
achieved through the top-down influence of ventral medial prefrontal cortex. Research
is increasingly articulating the neurobiological substrates by which diverse factors may
contribute to resilience, including the perception of control, optimistic or positive
biases in the interpretation of self-related events and prospects, regular voluntary
exercise and enriched environments, and early life exposure to brief time-limited stres-
sors that help to build up behavioral and neurobiological adaptability to stress.
Novelty, Reward, and Exploration: The Locus

Coeruleus–Norepinephrine System and
Adaptive Responding to Novelty
Many accounts of the role of the locus coeruleus norepinephrine system in cognition
have been offered, but we here will focus on a few recent proposals that have sought
to both simplify and integrate the many functions proposed. It has been known for
some time that locus coeruleus neurons are modulated by the state of vigilance of the
organism, demonstrating lower activity during low vigilance behavioral states such as
grooming and eating, but increased phasic responding to stimuli—in all sensory
modalities—that are novel and salient (e.g., Aston-Jones & Bloom, 1981; Foote et al.,
1980). Neurons in this system also show an acute sensitivity to the predictive value of
stimuli, whether they predict positive or negative reinforcement, habituating very
rapidly if stimuli do not signal any reinforcement, but rapidly responding again should
the reward circumstances change. Indeed, studies of the electrophysiological activity
of locus coeruleus norephinephrine neurons in cats, rats, and primates have demon-
strated that these neurons may already signal changed reward circumstances before
there is any behavioral evidence from the animal that they are aware of the changed
reinforcement landscape (e.g., Aston-Jones et al., 1997; Sara & Segal, 1991).
This “premonitory activity” has led to proposals that “released norepinephrine
somehow permits or facilitates the subsequent behavioral adaptation” (Bouret &
Sara, 2005, p. 575, e.g., Aston-Jones et al., 1997; Sara & Segal, 1991; Vankov et al.,
1995). The latter suggestion is bolstered by evidence showing that the successful adap-
tation to extradimensional shifts in reward contingencies in rats—for example,
requiring the animals to shift from navigating a maze using spatial cues to navigating
on the basis of visual cues instead—can be facilitated by pharmacologically stimulat-
ing the noradrenergic system (Devauges & Sara, 1990; see also the section on
“Set Shifting and Reversal Learning” in Chapter 8).
In an attempt to integrate these and other findings, A. Yu and Dayan (2005)
proposed that noradrenaline function plays a key role in signaling to the brain that an
organism is confronting unexpected uncertainty. These researchers proposed that
noradrenaline serves to signal “gross changes in the environment that produce sen-
sory observations strongly violating top-down expectations” (p. 681) and that it helps
to enhance the processing of “bottom-up” information at the expense of (apparently

incorrect or misleading or irrelevant) “top-down” expectations, thereby promoting
effective behavioral adjustment. More specifically, these researchers argued that the
signal provided by norepinephrine “is a key part of an approximately optimal strategy
for strategic adaptation in a non-stationary environment” (Dayan & Yu, 2006, p. 337).
More broadly, this signal may help to guide an organism’s ongoing—and highly
adaptively important—decisions as to whether to continue more deeply and inten-
sively “exploiting” their current conditions, or, instead, to turn their attention to
“exploring” other possible avenues (also cf. Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005; Usher et al.,
1999) that might yield higher rewards:
It can also be seen as a part of a broader hypothesis about the regulation

exerted by norephinephrine over exploration (versus exploitation) as a
whole. […] Drastic changes in the environment induce unexpected model
uncertainty (signaled by norepinephrine) which, in turn, encourages more
exploratory behaviors appropriate for establishing a new model of the exter-
nal environment. According to our theory, norephinephrine operates in col-
laboration with a putatively cholinergic signal which reports on expected
uncertainty, arising from known variability or noise in the current environ-
ment. (Dayan & Yu, 2006, p. 337, emphasis in original)
In their initial proposal, these investigators focused on “medium-term” effects of

norephinephrine activation—that is, effects occurring on the order of minutes—in
helping to signal unexpected uncertainty generated by unpredicted changes in the
nature of a task or behavioral context. More recently, based on evidence that norepi-
nephrine may also be important in facilitating responding to rare events on a much
shorter time scale (e.g., within less than 200 ms after the presentation of a rare visual
target that was associated with reward in the monkey), these investigators have also
considered forms of uncertainty that might arise on a faster time scale. Specifically,
they have proposed that phasic changes in norepinephrine also may signal unexpected
events or state changes within a task and further act to interrupt the ongoing cogni-
tive processing associated with that cognitive task orientation.
Similarly, based on a survey of a large array of data, from both monkeys and rats,
on the sorts of cognitive contexts that elicit activity of locus coeruleus neurons, Bouret
and Sara (2005) have also argued that these neurons are “activated within behavioral
contexts that require a cognitive shift—that is, interruption of on-going behavior and
adaptation” (p. 580). These neurons respond both to novel, unexpected events and to
various within-task changes that require rapid behavioral adjustment by the organ-
ism, such as the presentation of a preparatory signal, the occurrence of a conditioned
stimulus, or changes in the stimulus-reinforcement contingencies.
One source of evidence is provided by extracellular electrophysiological recordings
from noradrenergic neurons in the locus coeruleus during a behavioral task with mon-
keys. The animals were required to visually discriminate between infrequent target
stimuli (CS+) and frequent nontarget cues (CS–). The results showed selective locus
coeruleus responding on trials on which a cue indicating the possibility of reward
(CS+) was presented. In addition, if the meaning of the cues was reversed (CS+ became
CS– and vice versa), then these cells rapidly altered their responding to reflect the new
contingencies, thus tracking their activity with the current target “meaning” rather
than the target’s stimulus properties (Aston-Jones et al., 1994; see also the section on
“Reversal Learning” in Chapter 8).
A further source of evidence for the important role of locus coeruleus neurons in
within-task changes that require rapid behavioral adjustment by the organism is
provided by the results of a rather different experimental paradigm that involved
odor discrimination in rats. In the experiment, the presentation of a stimulus (a light)
signaled the beginning of an experimental odor discrimination trial and thereby also
signaled an opportunity to gain reward. If the signal occurred at a point in time when
the animals were disengaged from the experimental paradigm, the signal elicited rapid
and consistent responding of locus coeruleus neurons (shown in 46 out of 49 record-
ings, with an average latency of 155 ms, and SD of 1.8 ms), concurrent with the
animals’ reengagement on the task as shown by the animals orienting to the light, and
then moving to and actively sniffing the odor port at which the discrimination trials
were presented (Bouret & Sara, 2004). If there was no longer any reward for the
task (extinction trials) then the animals no longer oriented to the light, and the locus
coeruleus neuron activity also was not observed; however, such activity again reemerged
if the contingencies changed and trials were again reinforced. Activity of single units in
the locus coeruleus also rapidly changes as a function of the novelty of a stimulus in
freely moving rats as they explore an environment (Vankov et al., 1995).
Taking into consideration the anatomical distribution of noradrenergic terminals,
and these diverse forms of rapidly adaptive responding by locus coeruleus neurons,
Bouret and Sara (2005) proposed that the noradrenaline signal has a general “reset
function” and can facilitate changes in widespread networks in the forebrain that are
involved in specific cognitive functions:
Release of noradrenaline in response to a particular sensory event will

provoke or facilitate dynamic reorganization of neural networks, creating a
completely new functional network. This functional reconfiguration will
govern the adaptive behavioral output. (Bouret & Sara, 2005, p. 580)
A schematic depiction of the way in which functional brain networks might be rap-
idly modulated by locus coeruleus activation and noradrenaline release, thereby facili-
tating cognitive and behavioral flexibility, suggested by these authors is presented in
Figure 9.8. An initial behavioral state might be represented in a particular pattern of
neurons such as that shown in Phase 1 of the figure, with some neurons active (shown
in black) and part of the current network, and others not active (shown in gray) and
not part of the network. It is proposed that when a stimulus is presented that induces
a cognitive shift, then activation of the locus coeruleus occurs directly before the
behavioral shift; the widespread activation of the locus coeruleus allows it to simulta-
neously influence multiple target structures, and so promote widespread modification
of the networks and their interactions. As shown in Figure 9.8, these modifications in
the networks may include both the new engagement of some cells (symbolized by
arrows) and new disengagement (symbolized by crosses or x’s) of other cells. Expanding
on some of these notions, Doya (2008) observed that “The optimal setting of the
LC activation
Noradrenaline
release
Shifting
stimulus
Phase 1 Shift Phase 2
Figure 9.8. Characterization of How Activation of the Locus Coeruleus

(LC) and Noradrenaline Release Could Enable Rapid Cognitive and
Behavioral Flexibility. In Phase 1, a given initial behavioral state is characterized
by activity in a specific spatiotemporal pattern of neuronal activity, here represented by
a pattern of activated neurons (black circles); the gray circles represent neurons that
are not currently participating in the network. When a “shifting stimulus,” such as
changed reinforcement contingencies, induces a cognitive shift, then activation of the
locus coeruleus appears immediately before the behaviorally evident shift in behavior
(Phase 2) and, through the simultaneous action on multiple target structures,
promotes the underlying modification of network interactions. These modifications
include locus coeruleus–mediated engagement of new neurons (shown with filled short
arrows following noradrenaline release) and disengagement of several cells (shown
with Xs). Reprinted from Bouret, S., & Sara, S. J. (2005, p. 580), Network reset: A
simplified overarching theory of locus coeruleus noradrenaline function, Trends in
Neuroscience, 28, 574–582, with permission from Elsevier. Copyright 2005, Elsevier.
learning rate depends on how quickly the world is changing. [. . .] After an abrupt
change of the environment, it is more appropriate to totally reset what has been
learned (or switch to another learning module) and start over. Norephinephrine is
implicated in such ‘resets’ of ongoing activities” (Doya, 2008, p. 414).
In their early demonstration of locus coeruleus responses during a continuous
vigilance task in the monkey, Aston-Jones et al. (1994, p. 4477) suggested that the
timing of the impulses recorded in the locus coeruleus (about 200 ms) was such that
the impulses evoked by target cues “would be expected to reach the cerebral cortex at
about the time that certain cortical slow-wave activity is generated, in particular, P3
(similar to P300) waves.” This suggestion presages several more recent studies explor-
ing the relation between this electrophysiological component and various forms of
novelty detection versus responsiveness to task-related rule changes in humans.
One such study contrasted the effects on the P3a component elicited by feedback
during a modified version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, and that elicited
by truly novel events in an “oddball” task (the P3a is an anteriorly oriented P3
component). Barceló et al. (2002) found that feedback signaling that the current
sorting rule for the card sorting task had changed, and that thus directed the partici-
pant’s mental set to new task rules, elicited P3a responses that were similar to those
elicited by nontarget novel events in an oddball task in their amplitude, latency, and
scalp topography. Even though the feedback used to signal that a new sorting rule was
now in effect (a tone) was not itself novel, and even though participants had both
learned that the tone denoted a rule shift, and had been exposed to the tone on a
number of earlier rule shift occasions, nonetheless it elicited a P3a response. Given
that “the ‘shift’ tone prompted the subject to think differently, and to flexibly adopt a
new solution (i.e., a new task set) for the same card sorting problem” these outcomes
argue that “a common brain response system may be responsible for processing
both stimulus and task novelty” (Barceló et al., 2002, p. 1890).
In subsequent work, Barceló et al. (2006) reported a similar outcome. In this study,
it was additionally found that the amplitude of novelty P3 activity that was elicited
varied with the amount of informational uncertainty arising with the switch signal.
There was a larger P3 response when the task required switching from one rule to one
of two other rules (three-task condition) than when the task required switching
from one rule to another rule (two-task condition). Thus, these investigators argued
that the P3a response should be “understood more broadly as signaling the call of an
executive control system to ‘think differently’ (i.e., to shift mental set)” (Chong et al.,
2008, p. 121).
Electrophysiological findings on the effects of frontal lobe lesions on responses to
novelty are likewise in line with this account. Comparing patients with frontal lobe
lesions to controls who were matched on age, education, estimated intelligence quo-
tient, and mood, Daffner and colleagues (2000) found that the individuals with fron-
tal lobe damage showed a markedly reduced amplitude in the P3 response to novel
stimuli, and also showed reduced duration of viewing novel stimuli. In contrast, there
was little difference in P3 amplitude between the frontal lesion and control group for
target stimuli. Furthermore, the magnitude of the P3 amplitude attenuation effect to
the novel stimuli in the individuals with frontal lesions was correlated with measures
of apathy and with viewing duration in response to the novel stimuli but not to target
stimuli. These authors argued that these results suggest that:
… frontal lobe damage leads to diminished visual attention to novel events

through its disruption of neural processes underlying the novelty P3
response. These processes appear to regulate the allocation of attentional
resources and early exploratory behaviours, and are not limited to immediate
orienting responses. Damage to the frontal lobes may prevent the generation
of a signal which indicates that a novel event in the environment requires
additional attention due to its potential behavioural significance. The disrup-
tion of these processes is likely to contribute to the apathy observed in
patients after injury to the frontal lobes. (Daffner et al., 2000, p. 927)
Finally, there is recent evidence suggesting that the P3/P3a response may be
modulated by contextual factors that shape how individuals will interpret novel or
potentially deviant or unusual stimuli. Based on the results of what, as we will see, was
itself a novel approach to the study of novelty, Chong and colleagues were led to
conclude that the P3a may “index decisions about the extent to which potentially
significant or deviant events merit the allocation of additional processing resources”
(Chong et al., 2008, p. 121).
Although under many conditions, the processing of novelty can be detrimental—if
it distracts from ongoing task performance—under other circumstances, positive
engagement with novelty may be beneficial, stimulating cognitive-emotional process-
ing and interest and (as will be clearly developed in the next two chapters) helping to
sustain and extend one’s cognitive capabilities and mental agility. Yet much of the
evidence relating to the role of the P3 in the processing of novelty has been obtained
under conditions in which individuals had little control over the presentation of the stim-
uli, and where the interpretation of novel (“oddball”) events was that of distracters
from the experimentally designated “target task.”
To examine the effects of how participants were likely to interpret novel stimuli—
as unwelcome potential distracters versus inviting inducements to exploration—on
the physiological correlates of novelty responding, Chong et al. (2008) manipulated
the task instructions that they gave to participants during a picture-viewing task.
Whereas participants in the target-focused condition were informed that the purpose
of the experiment was to see how well people respond to targets when they are exposed
to a variety of distracter images, those in the curiosity-focused condition were told that
the purpose of the experiment was to learn how curious people are about things in
their environment. Participants were also told that they could view each picture for as
long as they liked, advancing to the next stimulus by pressing a key. The stimuli shown
to participants were of three types: a repetitive standard stimulus (a right-side-up
triangle, shown on 70% of the trials), a target stimulus (an upside-down triangle,
shown on 15% of the trials, to which participants were asked to make a foot-press
response), and unusual and unfamiliar line drawings, such as impossible or frag-
mented objects (shown on 15% of the trials).
The viewing time data showed that the two groups did not differ in how long they
spent viewing the repetitive standard stimulus, with both groups looking at it only
briefly (approximately 1 second). In contrast, the two groups markedly diverged in
how long they looked at the novel stimuli. On average, the curiosity-focused group
looked at the novel stimuli for over 10 seconds, whereas the target-focused group
accorded them only about 1 second.
Surprisingly, in the target-focused condition, there also was no difference in the
magnitude of the P3 response to novel stimuli versus to the standards (or in viewing
duration or a later positive slow wave component)—apparently contrary to well-
established novelty “oddball” paradigm results, which regularly demonstrate a greater
P3 response to novel trials. Critically, such paradigms typically provide participants
with little direct control of the onset of the trials. In the current “subject-controlled”
paradigm, participants were able to determine the onset of trials. As suggested by
Chong et al. (2008), this increase in control may have facilitated greater top-down
modulation of the responses to novel stimuli, enabling individuals to allocate their
attention more closely in correspondence with the experimental context and enabling
stronger modulation of how novelty is processed. “Although novelty detection was
automatic under both conditions, additional processing was strongly modulated by
the experimental context established by the task instructions” (p. 131). Participants
in the target-oriented condition, in which novel events served as distracters, limited
the degree of processing allocated to those events, but participants in the curiosity-
focused condition extended the time and resources allocated to those events. (Note
that these outcomes pertain particularly to the P3 component; in contrast, in both the
study of Chong et al., 2008, and in more recent work by Tarbi et al., 2011, using a
modified version of the ignore vs. explore paradigm, an earlier and more perceptually-
based component, the anterior N2, that appears to be largely automatic, was not influ-
enced by task relevance, and still signaled perceptual novelty regardless of whether
novelty was to be attended or to be ignored; see Tarbi et al., 2011, for discussion.)
These results, based on adopting a methodology that places more of the situational
task context within the control of the participant, demonstrate the close intersections
of individually initiated goal-related deliberate processing and more automatic stimu-
lus-driven processes. The more abstract global orientation that participants adopted
regarding novel stimuli either substantially extended—or truncated—the amount of
processing allocated to novel events, and also altered whether those events were very
rapidly classified as “odd” enough to elicit the P3 electrophysiological signature of an
“attention-evoking” event. “Novelty,” then, is not a dimension that can be defined
entirely without reference to the mental set that an individual has adopted toward
events that are new, and whether situational constraints are such as to encourage,
versus to discourage, our self-initiated deeper exploration of what is new.
Approach versus Avoidance: Control, Controlling

Control, and the Dynamic Interplay of
Cognition and Emotion
Earlier, in Chapter 6, we saw that whether we are primarily oriented to approach a
situation, eagerly pursuing incentives and possible rewards, or seeking to avoid a
situation, aiming to avoid negative outcomes or events, exerts marked effects on
cognition. Derryberry and Tucker (1994) proposed that motivational states modulate
not only the breadth or scope of perceptual attention, particularly the extent to which
attention is focused on central compared with peripheral perceptual cues, but also
the scope of “conceptual attention”—or the breadth versus narrowness of focus on
internal cognitive representations. A narrow scope of conceptual attention “entails
restriction of the activation of mental representations to those with the highest a
priori accessibility in the context at hand (e.g., dominant semantic associates to a
lexical prime), whereas a broader scope of conceptual attention entails expansion of
the range of activation to additionally target representations with lower a priori
accessibility (e.g., subordinate semantic associates to a lexical prime)” (Friedman &
Förster, 2005, pp. 263–264).
Whereas motivational states that are oriented toward the avoidance of harmful or
undesired states tend to narrow or constrict the focus of attention, approach-related
states that are oriented toward potential positive incentives are associated with a
broadening of attention, “augmenting responsiveness to peripheral cues on the
perceptual level and increasing activation of relatively inaccessible mental represen-

tations on the conceptual level” (Friedman & Förster, 2005, p. 264). Positive affect
(often associated with approach-related states) also may be linked with broader
categorizations (Chapter 6). Other findings have pointed to narrowing of categoriza-
tion, particularly ratings of the appropriateness of exemplars to a category, with both
more transient increases in anxiety (state anxiety) and more enduring tendencies
toward anxious responding (trait anxiety; Derryberry & Tucker, 1994; Mikulincer,
Kedem, & Paz, 1990; Mikulincer, Paz, & Kedem, 1990).
One major neurobiological conceptualization of such individual differences in
motivation and personality contrasts a “Behavioral Inhibition System” (BIS) that pri-
marily functions to halt ongoing behavior while processing possible threat cues versus
a “Behavioral Activation System” (BAS, also sometimes called a Behavioral Facilitation
or Behavioral Approach system, e.g., R. A. Depue & Iacono, 1989) that functions to
promote engagement in action. This view of two main systems8 originally derived
from behavioral neuroscience research with nonhuman animals (e.g., J. A. Gray, 1990)
but has been extended to attempting to understand the mechanisms for behavioral
regulation in the context of personality, psychopathology, and individual differences.
Such efforts were facilitated by the development of a frequently used self-report
questionnaire of BIS and BAS sensitivity (Carver & White, 1994).
The BIS is “conceptualized as an attentional system that is sensitive to cues of
punishment, nonreward, and novelty and that functions to interrupt ongoing behav-
ior in order to facilitate the processing of those cues in preparation for a response,”
where the inhibitory aspect relates not to the deliberative (controlled, intentional)
process of inhibitory control but to “the abrogation of behavior in reaction to an
expected or unexpected stimulus” (Amodio et al., 2008, p. 11). In a large community
survey of 2,725 adults including the BIS/BAS scales of Carver and White and a short
version of Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire (S. B. G. Eysenck et al., 1985), as well
as a short form of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Kercher, 1992), the BIS
scale was found to relate most strongly to the personality characteristics of Neuroticism
and Negative Affect, and also to anxiety and depressive symptoms (Jorm et al., 1999).
Higher levels of activation of the BIS are associated with enhanced attention, arousal,
anxiety, and vigilance. On the one hand, excessively high levels in this system have
been linked with anxiety-related disorders; on the other hand, excessively low levels
are associated with particularly primary psychopathy characterized by, for example,
comparative fearlessness, and weak electrodermal responsiveness when anticipating
punishment (e.g., Newman et al., 2005).
In contrast, the BAS is a motivational system that is “sensitive to signals of reward,
nonpunishment, and escape from punishment.” This system is important in promot-
ing the engagement in behaviors (rather than the abrogation of behavior) oriented
toward a reward and away from threat. In the large-scale community survey of Jorm
et al. (1999), described earlier, the BAS was most strongly related to the personality
characteristic of Extraversion and to Positive Affect. Excessively high levels of activa-
tion in this system have been associated with anxious impulsivity (Wallace, Newman,
& Bachorowski, 1991), manic-depressive bipolar disorder (R. A. Depue & Iacono,
1989), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in adults (J. T. Mitchell & Nelson-
Gray, 2006). Unlike the more reflexive responding of the BIS, the BAS is thought to be
more strongly associated with goal-driven activation of behavior, particularly

reward-related processing.
A number of researchers have generally aligned the BAS system with approach
and the BIS system not only with behavioral inhibition but also with behavioral
avoidance (e.g., Elliot & Thrash, 2002; Gable, Reis, & Elliot, 2000). However, Amodio
and colleagues (2008) have argued that, although, in practice, there may often be an
association between increased BIS activity and behavioral avoidance, the connection
is not a necessary one inasmuch as cues that lead to an abrogation of behavior may—
with further information, and depending on the circumstances—either lead to
avoidance behavior or approach behavior. They proposed that rather than being linked
to avoidance, per se, the BIS is particularly associated with conflict monitoring, that
is, that it is a system for evaluating response conflict or threat rather than a predispo-
sition for avoidance.
To test this account, Amodio et al. (2008) examined the relation between BIS/BAS
scores and three well-established neurophysiological patterns, one measured during
rest trials, and the other two measured as the participants (undergraduates) per-
formed a speeded go/no-go task (80% go trials, and 20% no-go trials). In many
studies, asymmetric activity in left versus right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during
rest has been associated with differences in motivational/emotional orientation.
Greater left-sided frontal asymmetry is associated with positive emotion, particularly
with approach-related motivation (e.g., Harmon-Jones, 2003; Harmon-Jones & Allen,
1998; Harmon-Jones et al., 2002; Sutton & Davidson, 1997), and with a promotion
focus emphasizing hopes and aspirations rather than preventive aims related to
“ought” or “should” goals, such as duties and responsibilities (Amodio, Shah et al.,
2004). In contrast, the opposite pattern of greater right-sided frontal asymmetry has
been linked, although less clearly, with avoidance motivation (J. A. Coan & Allen,
2003; Sutton & Davidson, 1997). The origin of these asymmetric patterns is thought
to derive from the lateralization of cerebral dopaminergic systems within both cortical
and subcortical structures; for example, there is evidence from research with rodents
that dopamine efferents to the right hemisphere are preferentially sensitive to coping
behaviors, such as chewing (Berridge, Espana, & Stalnaker, 2003).
The other two signature ERP patterns that Amodio et al. (2008) focused on were
the “No-Go N2 component”—a negative voltage shift observed in central frontal cor-
tical regions during successful inhibition of responding on “no-go” trials particularly
when there are relatively few no-go trials—and the error-related negativity (ERN).
The latter component is often observed when participants make an error, or under
conditions where there is a high level of response interference that could lead to errors,
and has been associated with conflict monitoring (e.g., Botvinick, Cohen, & Carter,
2004). Both the No-Go N2 component and the ERN are thought to have a neural
generator in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (e.g., Carter & Van Veen, 2007).
The results showed that, as predicted, there was a significant correlation between
frontal asymmetry and scores on the BAS such that greater left-sided asymmetry was
associated with higher BAS scores. In contrast, and also as expected, frontal asymme-
try did not reliably correlate with BIS scores. In addition, the two ERP components
thought to reflect conflict monitoring were significantly associated with each other,
and with BIS scores, and not with BAS scores. Separate hierarchical regression
analyses demonstrated that whereas neither the BAS nor frontal asymmetry
predicted BIS, BIS scores were significantly predicted by the magnitude of the No-Go
N2 effect and by ERN amplitude; in addition, BAS scores were predicted only by fron-
tal asymmetry. Thus, whereas higher BIS was uniquely associated with larger No-Go
N2 and ERN amplitudes that are linked with conflict-related processing in the anterior
cingulate cortex, higher BAS was uniquely associated with greater left-sided frontal
cortical asymmetry, consistently associated with approach orientation (e.g., Pizzagalli
et al., 2005).
Interpreting the association of higher BIS scores with the two ERP components,
Amodio and colleagues (2008) note that the “inhibition” indexed by these components
is likely a form of “bottom-up” inhibition. They propose that the N2 and ERN compo-
nents likely reflect “an initial bottom-up alerting to a response-relevant cue that is
associated with a slowing or stopping of ongoing action” (p. 17) that may, however, be
followed by an intentional, and top-down controlled withholding of a response, per-
haps relying on the BAS. These results thus converge with the concepts of undercon-
trol versus overcontrol, discussed in Chapter 5, particularly the question of whether
and when individuals might be, or seem to be, “too controlled”—showing what J. H.
Block and Block (1980, p. 43) characterized as an excessive “containment of impulses,
delay of gratification, inhibition of action and affect, and insulation from environmen-
tal distractors” that might then impede spontaneous adaptability. Carver (2005) sug-
gested that excessive BIS activity might itself comprise an automatic reactive form of
inhibition, rather than deliberate and top-down regulation of behavior:
Discussions of impulsive action typically focus on the grabbing of incentives,

as though impulsiveness were relevant only to approach. This may not be true,
however. People probably vary, as well, in how impulsively versus delibera-
tively they act to avoid or withdraw from threats. […] It seems likely that when
there is no reward salient, a person with a very sensitive subcortical (reactive-
control) BIS would be more impulsive in withdrawing from a threat than would
a person with less subcortical BIS sensitivity. (Carver, 2005, p. 326)
The precise conditions under which avoidance or withdrawal may be impulsive

versus controlled still remain to be determined, but a number of theorists have con-
verged on a view that “involuntary restraint involves reflexive avoidance of harm,”
whereas “effortful restraint reflects attempts to optimize outcomes by selecting the
best choice of available actions” (Carver & Miller, 2006, p. 3; also see, for example,
Nigg, 2000; Rothbart & Ahadi, 1994; Valiente et al., 2003). Figure 9.9 depicts these
possible interrelations between subcortical aspects of reactive undercontrol (A) and
reactive overcontrol (B) with cortical, effortful control (C). The gray arrow indicates
the possibility that avoidance impulses might also emerge directly from the subcorti-
cal system, with these impulses then either restrained, or not restrained, by the effort-
ful control system. As characterized by Carver (2005):
Impulses arise from reactive (subcortical) systems [shown in A] that respond

to incentive cues. […] These impulses may be inhibited and restrained by
reactive (subcortical) systems that respond to threat cues [shown in B …].
C. Effortful control
[cortical, executive]
(inhibits an emerging impulse, and/or
fosters a nonemergent action)
A. Reactive undercontrol B. Reactive overcontrol

[subcortical aspects of [subcortical aspects of
BAS, or Extraversion] BIS, or Neuroticism]
(responds to cues of (responds to cues
incentive with an of threat with inhibition
approach impulse) or an avoidance impulse)
Figure 9.9. Schematic Depiction of the Relations Between Two

Subcortical Systems Responsible for Reactive Undercontrol ( A), and
Reactive Overcontrol ( B) Respectively and the Cortical System
Responsible for Effortful Control (C). The gray arrow indicates the possibility
that avoidance impulses might also emerge directly from the subcortical system, with
these impulses then either restrained, or not restrained, by the effortful control
system. Reprinted from Carver, C. S. (2005, p. 320), Impulse and constraint:
Perspectives from personality psychology, convergence with theory in other areas, and
potential for integration, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 312–333, with
permission from Sage Publications. Copyright 2005, Sage Publications.
Even if that does not happen, the emergent impulses may (or may not) be
restrained by an effortful (cortical) system that deliberates and chooses
among actions [shown in C]. The effortful system can also foster the emer-
gence of an action that is not strongly motivated at the reactive, impulse level.
The gray arrow indicates the possibility […] that avoidance impulses can also
emerge directly from the threat-sensitive subcortical system, which may (or
may not) be restrained by the effortful system. (Carver, 2005, p. 320)
Other research has attempted to relate either an individual’s BIS/BAS scores, or the
degree of electrophysiological frontal asymmetry that they demonstrate, to differences
in their responsiveness to particular sorts of rewards (Locke & Braver, 2008; Pizzagalli
et al., 2005). For example, testing healthy adults, Pizzagalli and colleagues (2005) found
that higher left-frontal baseline activity recorded in one experimental session was asso-
ciated with greater responsiveness to a reward condition in a later experimental ses-
sion. In the second session, participants were given different payoffs for accurately
performing a verbal recognition task. In some blocks of trials the contingencies were
neutral (feedback was provided, but correct and incorrect responses had no monetary
consequences), in others they were rewarding ($0.10 awarded for each correctly identi-
fied target), and in still others they were punishing ($0.10 lost, from an initial credit of
$2.50, for each missed target). Using a distributed source-localization technique to
examine the electrophysiological data, these researchers were able to demonstrate that
higher left-lateralized baseline activity, associated with a stronger reward bias, was
associated with distinct regions in the dorsolateral and in ventromedial prefrontal
cortex. In addition, this baseline asymmetry was reliably predictive of the extent to
which participants were differentially responsive to the reward contingencies (com-
pared to the neutral contingencies), and it remained uniquely predictive of reward
responsiveness even after controlling for momentary (state) and longer term (trait)
differences in positive affect. These findings suggest that individual differences in pre-
frontal cortical resting asymmetry are associated “with a propensity to show approach-
related behavioral tendencies in response to specific cues” (Pizzagalli et al., 2005,
p. 811), perhaps also reflecting “stronger reinforcement representations” (p. 812).
Similar reward responsiveness and a positive correlation with higher BAS scores have
been found in a task involving a direct measure of cognitive control. Locke and Braver
(2008) found that, compared with a baseline condition, reward incentive (25 cents for
each trial faster than the participant’s median RT for responding during the baseline
blocks) led to reliably faster responses during a demanding cognitive control task: the
AX continuous performance task. In this task, participants are instructed to respond to
some trials (AX trials, in which the letter “A” is shown as a context cue at the beginning
of the delay period, and the letter “X” is shown later in the same trial, comprising
approximately 70% of all trials) but not to other trials (AY, BX, or BY trials, each occur-
ring on about 10% of the trials). The speed-up in response time in the reward blocks
(participants responded about 25% faster than they did without the reward incentive)
was not accompanied by a greater number of errors—except for to the AY trials.
The selective increase in error rates to the latter type of trials likely reflects
an increased use of a “proactive control strategy” in which participants proactively
maintained the context cue in mind to help them choose the right response when the
probe was presented. Given the probabilities of trials, such proactive control typically
leads to high levels of accuracy on the BX trials (the cue letter, B, predicts the correct
response of “nontarget” 100% of the time), and also on the AX trials (the cue letter, A,
predicts the correct response of “target” 87.5% of the time). However, proactively
maintaining the context cue leads to an increased likelihood of errors on the AY trials
because these are comparatively infrequent trials, and the context cue for these trials
is misleading (most often “A” is followed by X, requiring a “target” response, but in this
case it is followed by Y, and so requires a nontarget response).
Notably, when Locke and Braver (2008) examined regions that were positively
correlated with the rate of rewards that participants were able to earn during the
reward block, they found that reward rate significantly correlated with sustained
activity in frontopolar cortex. In addition, scores on the Behavioral Activating System
subscale from the BIS/BAS (Carver & White, 1994), designed to evaluate an individu-
al’s reactivity to cues related to reward, correlated with activity in right frontopolar
cortex (as well as with other reward-related processing regions, such as the orbital
frontal cortex, and the caudate nucleus). The posited bases of this positive correlation
between frontopolar cortical activity and increased motivation-induced performance
enhancement are somewhat speculative. However, one possibility is that the correla-
tion derives from individual differences in goal-related processing, perhaps reflecting
the comparatively more successful participants’ increased attention to relevant sub-
goals within the task or to the overall (relatively abstract) goal of maximizing the
amount of rewards earned.
These findings thus return us, conceptually, to the critical role of prefrontal cortical
regions in representing goals—where we began at the outset of Chapter 8—but
further provide the promise of jointly taking into account diverse contributions to
behavioral control, including also motivational and emotional contributors. Indeed,
although cognitive control and emotional/motivational states most often have been
considered separately, there is growing evidence that, at least under some conditions,
cognitive control and emotional/motivational states (such as approach/avoidance)
may form an “integrated” cognitive-emotional system. For instance, working memory
may be especially central for maintaining active goals, but emotion/motivation may
help to modulate those goals depending on changing circumstances, giving priority to
either approach or avoidance goals in a context-appropriate manner. According to
this account, formulated by J. R. Gray, Braver, and Raichle (2002), approach- versus
withdrawal-related motivational states are associated with different modes of infor-
mation processing, which then can alter the efficiency of specific cognitive functions:
Emotional states are postulated to transiently enhance or impair some func-

tions but not others, doing so relatively rapidly, flexibly, and reversibly.
In this way, they could adaptively bias the overall control of thought and
behavior to meet situational demands more effectively. […] For example, the
active maintenance of withdrawal-related goals should be prioritized during
threat-related or withdrawal-motivated states but deemphasized during
reward-expectant or approach-related states, yet just the opposite should be
true for approach-related goals. […] A functional integration of emotion and
cognition would allow the goal-directed control of behavior to depend on the
emotional context. (J. R. Gray et al., 2002, p. 4115)
Gray, Braver, and Raichle (2002) argued that a formal test for the integration of
emotion and cognition (or of any two psychological processes) requires “evidence that
neural activity in a single brain region is influenced by two processes (e.g., by emotion
and by cognitive control) but the influence of one process is ambiguous unless the other
is taken into account” (J. R. Gray, 2004, p. 46). Elaborating on this idea, Gray notes:
Psychologically, integration is concerned with the intimacy of interactions

among mental subprocesses. If the subprocesses of emotion (different emo-
tional states) and of cognitive control (different control functions) can influ-
ence each other selectively, rather than only in a diffuse, global, or nonspecific
manner, emotion and cognitive control are integrated. That is, the existence
of selective interactions implies something interesting about the underlying
mental architecture: Although the two systems may be largely separable or
distinct, they are also inseparable, in a strong sense. They intertwine so
closely that at times it is impossible to discern which is doing what, and yet
both are clearly contributing to the overall function. Understanding the team
requires understanding not only each player in isolation, but also each player
in the context of the others. (J. R. Gray, 2004, p. 46)
Initial behavioral evidence for such integration was provided by three experiments
(J. R. Gray, 2001) in which individuals were encouraged to be either in an approach-
related state (amusement) via watching comedy videos (e.g., excerpts from Candid
Camera) or a withdrawal-related state (anxiety) through watching horror videos
(e.g., excerpt from the film Scream). After this emotion induction, participants were
asked to perform a working-memory task (a two-back task) involving either verbal
stimuli (requiring them to remember individual letters shown in a box on the screen)
or spatial stimuli (requiring that they remember the location of the boxes on the
screen). The rationale for considering working-memory for these two types of content
derived from known lateralization differences, with left frontal cortex particularly
involved in the active maintenance of verbal information but right frontal regions
especially important in the maintenance of spatial information (e.g., D’Esposito et al.,
1998; E. E. Smith & Jonides, 1999). If emotion influences cognitive control, then the
induction of an approach-related state, associated with left-lateralized frontal activity,
would be expected to facilitate performance on the left-lateralized verbal working
memory task, whereas induction of an avoidance-related state might adversely affect
this same task. In contrast, induction of a withdrawal-related state, associated with
relatively greater right-lateralized activity, might facilitate spatial working memory
performance but not verbal working memory performance.
Precisely this general pattern was found, particularly for participants who made
more errors than average across conditions: Whereas the approach-related state
enhanced verbal working memory, it impaired spatial working memory and whereas
the avoidance-related state enhanced spatial working memory performance, it inter-
fered with verbal working memory. In addition, this interaction was further associated
with individual’s self-reported approach versus withdrawal dispositions, as assessed by
the BIS/BAS questionnaire. Individuals who scored high on BIS (and low on BAS)
showed the interaction most strongly when exposed to the withdrawal/horror movie
manipulation, but those who scored high on BAS (and low on BIS) showed the interac-
tion most strongly when exposed to the approach/comedy show manipulation.
These initial behavioral findings guided the development of an fMRI study to exam-
ine whether, as predicted, both lateralized effects of emotion and cognition separately,
and also emotion-cognition integration, would be found within lateral prefrontal cortex.
Rather than a two-back working memory task, the researchers used a more demand-
ing three-back task, and rather than contrasting performance for letter versus spatial
content, they contrasted working memory performance for words (nouns) versus
faces (unfamiliar people). In addition, they included a neutral emotion condition
(watching a documentary) as well as the approach-related (comedy) and avoidance-
related (horror film) inductions.
The results showed that, as hypothesized, there was a bilateral region in lateral
prefrontal cortex (BA 9) that showed a crossover pattern of activation depending on
both the content of the working memory task and the emotion induction condition.
Although the direction of the modulation was such that there was less activity for
words in left lateral prefrontal cortex in the pleasant induction, and more for faces
(and the reverse for right lateral prefrontal cortex), a systematic crossover indicated
integrated processing, with the “match” between emotional state and task (e.g.,
approach-related induction + verbal content for the left; avoidance-related induction
+ visual content for the right) perhaps leading to a lower “load” and thus reduced
activity compared with the “mismatching” emotional state and task conditions.
A more extensive investigation, combining measures of personality, fluid intelligence,
and brain activation patterns during a working memory task (J. R. Gray, Burgess,
et al., 2005) provided further evidence for the conjoint influences of motivational and
cognitive contributors to working memory performance.
One final example—chosen as providing strong evidence that the influence of
personality-motivational factors on cognitive responding may further be modulated
by the degree of attentional specificity with which individuals can approach a task
(Most et al., 2006). In this fMRI study, participants were asked to examine a rapidly
presented series of pictures, in order to identify a target. The target was either
described in specific terms (e.g., look for a building rotated 90 degrees to the right or
left) or in nonspecific terms (e.g., look for a building or a landscape that is rotated 90
degrees). Participants sometimes searched for a specific target, and at other times for
a nonspecific target, and the series of pictures included both neutral distractor images
and emotionally negative distractors (e.g., a man about to stab a woman). Participants
also completed a personality subscale that evaluated their harm avoidance tendencies.
Individuals who score low on this subscale tend to demonstrate relatively confident
temperaments; they also tend to engage in risk-taking behavior and to quickly recover
from stress. In contrast, high scorers on the measure tend to have anxious and tense
temperaments, to show risk avoidance, and to show slower recovery from stress.
Several brain regions were more active when participants maintained a specific
rather than a nonspecific attentional set, including bilateral middle frontal gyri, left
inferior frontal gyrus, and the left inferior parietal lobule. More important, the extent
of activation observed in the amygdala in response to the emotion-related stimuli
depended on the combination of the attentional set instructions and the participant’s
harm avoidance score. Whereas under the nonspecific attentional set, individuals with
high harm avoidance scores showed greater amygdala activity than did those with low
harm avoidance scores, when participants had a more specific target to look for, then
there was no significant difference in amygdala activity in relation to harm avoidance.
Stated differently, both high- and low-harm avoidant individuals were able to effec-
tively ignore emotional distractors when they could adopt a specific instructional set,
but high harm-avoidant individuals were unable to “screen out” the distractors when
they had only the nonspecific attentional guidance.
Furthermore, the increased “screening out” by the high harm-avoidant individuals
was correlated with increased activity in the anterior portion of anterior cingulate
cortex—such that participants who were high in harm avoidance showed increased
activity in this region to emotion-related stimuli only under the specific instructions.
Thus, the more focused instructions appeared to particularly bolster the cognitive- or
affective- monitoring capability of the harm-avoidant participants, and this was
shown both by less “automatic” responsiveness to the negative emotional stimuli,
manifested in reduced amygdala activity under the specific attentional set, and by
increased “controlled” responsiveness during the presentation of those otherwise
attention-grabbing emotional stimuli, as shown by increased anterior cingulate
cortical activity under the specific attentional set.
This study, then, like the investigations by J. R. Gray (2001) and J. R. Gray, Burgess,
and colleagues (2005), clearly demonstrates the “intimate interaction” that may
emerge between cognitive control and emotion. It thus provides further support for
the characterization of the domains of emotion and cognition (as well as motivation/
action and perception) as somewhat discrete, but also to some extent overlapping,
with boundaries that, under particular task and other situational contexts, are perme-
able to one another. The schematic characterization of the iCASA framework, pre-
sented in Figure 1.2 in Chapter 1, reflects these and other findings (see also Barrett,
2009; Pessoa & Adolphs, 2010).
Looking Back
We have now concluded our “paired chapter” overview of some of the key findings—
from cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology—relating to how “mental agility,”
in its many diverse forms, may be realized in the brain. We have considered the
possible brain bases of forms of reactive flexibility, such as set shifting and reversal
learning, and of spontaneous flexibility, essential to promoting effective and creative
responding in many fluency and divergent thinking tasks. We have also considered
neural contributors to several tasks that require adaptive movements between levels
of representational specificity and levels of control, ranging from visuospatial and
verbal analogies, to gist-based intuitive processing, to how we may access remote
associates to enable appropriate inferences and “insightful” restructuring of problem
contexts. The often critical role of emotion, and of motivation and goals, has been
underscored, as well as sometimes surprising intersections between these. To take
one example, we considered evidence that one’s orientation to stimuli, emphasizing
exploratory curiosity toward novel pictures or treating them as potential distractors
from the “main task” at hand, may either lead to the elicitation of the P3—one of the
electrophysiological “signatures” of novelty—or essentially eradicate that signature;
in contrast, such changes in task set left untouched an earlier and more perceptually-
based and bottom-up automatic signature of novelty, the N2.
Findings relating to cognitive flexibility not only from investigations at the brain
systems level but also at the level of single neurons and the neurochemical level have
received some attention, together with several findings from neuropsychology.
Prominent here is the pivotal evidence provided by the temporal variant of frontotem-
poral dementia (semantic dementia) in helping to establish “where” concepts are rep-
resented in the brain, and of the frontal variant of this same progressive disorder in
pointing to the central role of prefrontal cortex in evaluating and integrating multiple
relations in analogical and other forms of complex reasoning.
We have seen that even a comparatively simple task, such as remembering the first
of three presented stimuli for a short time, involves the dynamic coordination of
widely distributed brain regions in frontal, parietal, medial-temporal, and occipital
lobes. Representation of a stimulus across a brief temporal period and intervening
stimuli is reliant on both active neuronal firing in regions such as prefrontal cortex
and memory supported by short-term synaptic changes. Additionally, we have seen
that, although many investigative efforts have examined the brain systems and neural
connectivity that enables appropriate and flexible responding to experimentally and
externally determined stimuli and task contexts, a full understanding of how we
adeptly (or not so adeptly) respond to such tasks must take into account the activity
and connectivity of the mind/brain when there are few external demands—and our
thoughts are guided by internally generated goals and preoccupations, spontaneous
memories, and imaginative and deliberatively planful forays into the future. The grow-
ing evidence for the diverse contributions of the “default mode” network to multiple
forms of cognition may provide a healthy corrective to an overly narrow concentration
on experimentally and externally determined task conditions, encouraging investiga-
tive efforts to more fully recognize the cognitive, behavioral, and neural significance of
more spontaneous and internally generated activity, both during task performance
itself (for instance, in mind wandering, or other forms of concurrent task unrelated
thinking), and as a potentially potent sculptor of the “representational and processing
landscape” into which as yet not presented tasks and stimuli will need to make their
way. From the perspective of the iCASA framework, this bodes well for arriving at an
increasingly deep and connected understanding of both varying levels of representa-
tional specificity and varying levels of representational control—including not only
extremely controlled and highly automatic modes of processing but also more sponta-
neous and impromptu and intermixed modes.
10
Making Brain Paths to Agile
Thinking, Part 1
Correlational and Longitudinal Evidence
Although the idea that frequent intellectual activity might

help one’s mental faculties in old age predates the Roman
Empire, it has only recently become the subject of rigorous
scientific investigation.
—R. S. Wilson & D. A. Bennett (2003, pp. 87–88)
… I work very hard to be acted on by as many things as I can.

That’s what I call being awake.
—Robert Rauschenberg (2006, p. 134)
Our day-to-day environment is a crucial but not always sufficiently recognized

sculptor of our brains and of our ability for agile thinking. The things we see, hear,
imagine, and plan each day, the activities we perform, and the “contents” of our leisure
and work pursuits simultaneously and reciprocally shape our thinking and our brains.
Research findings from a wide range of methodologies and disciplines converge in
demonstrating a simple fact: Agile thinking thrives in stimulating environments.
This chapter considers indirect—correlational and longitudinal—evidence that is
broadly consistent with this claim; the next chapter focuses on direct experimental
investigations that provide more probative support. We begin our consideration of
indirect forms of evidence by focusing on clear cases of brain plasticity associated
with prolonged behavioral alterations in one’s experiences, such as the acquisition of
complex skills (e.g., learning to play a musical instrument) or adaptations to the loss
of a particular sense modality. Then we turn to a consideration of the many longitudi-
nal and epidemiologic studies that have sought to identify longer term contributions
of our day-to-day cognitive, intellectual, and social-emotional environments to the
preservation and optimization of cognitive function, and also to the likelihood and
timing of the onset of degenerative brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Setting the stage for that consideration is a section on three key concepts relating
to the ways in which our life experiences may alter our responses to the cognitive
effects of aging and to dementia—including the notions of “brain reserve,” “cognitive
462
Making Br ain Paths to Agil e T h in k in g , Part 1 463
reserve,” and “compensation.” Then longitudinal and epidemiologic studies are

considered with respect to six interrelated domains of function: education, social
interactions, occupational factors, leisure activities, second- or multiple- language
use, and physical exercise/cardiovascular fitness. Two final sections provide a bridge
to the next chapter. The penultimate section focuses not on older individuals,
but younger children and youth, particularly evidence relating to the cumulative
detrimental effects that may arise as a result of poverty and socioeconomic depriva-
tion, leading to both marked reductions in opportunities for cognitive and socio-
emotional stimulation and increased exposure to myriad forms of physical and
socio-emotional stress. A final section considers the outcomes of longitudinal field
experiments that aim to determine the effects of a cognitively and socially engaged
lifestyle on cognitive vitality. Although any one of the studies that have been taken to
support the “use it or lose it” hypothesis of cognitive function (e.g., Swaab, 1991) may
be vulnerable to viable alternative interpretations, the strength of the evidence for the
hypothesis derives from the convergence of multiple studies, and the combined
findings from both direct and indirect approaches.
Plasticity in Human Brains—and Agile Thought

Plasticity refers to “the manner in which the nervous system can modify its organiza-
tion and ultimately its function throughout an individual’s lifetime” (Kolb, Gibb, &
Robinson, 2003, p. 1). The past several decades have yielded remarkable demonstra-
tions of cortical or brain plasticity in adult humans in response to changes in sensory
or motor experience, and other forms of complex behavior. Changes in the brain in
response to experience have been demonstrated at multiple levels of the central ner-
vous system, ranging from the molecular and synaptic levels to much larger scale
changes in neural networks and cortical maps (Bavelier & Neville, 2002; Buonomano
& Merzenich, 1998).
Significant alterations in where and how information is processed in the brain have
been shown to result from variations in the sensory or motor “input” that individuals
regularly experience, or that they may, unfortunately, be foreclosed from experiencing
because of injury or illness (e.g., due to becoming blind, or to the loss of limb move-
ment following a stroke). Other important demonstrations of cortical plasticity
involve long-term, and also newly acquired, cognitive and motor skills.1
P L A S T I C I T Y O F C O R T I C A L M A P S I N R E S P O N S E TO
A LT E R AT I O N S I N S E N S O R Y - M OTO R I N P U T: B R A I N
C H A N G E S L I N K E D TO F U N C T I O N A L B E H AV I O R A L C H A N G E S
Changes in human brain activity arising as a consequence of changes in sensory-motor
input have been demonstrated using multiple methods. Clear alterations in the
cortical maps, relating to the cortical regions that “code for” or represent sensory
and motor information of an arm or hand, have been observed in persons who have
experienced restricted sensory-motor input to a limb following amputation of the
limb (e.g., Flor et al., 1995; Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1998). In normal individuals,
the representation of the hand in the sensory cortical map of the body (sometimes
referred to as the Penfield map or sensory homunculus) is flanked on one side by the
sensory cortical representation of the face and on the other side by the upper arm,
chest, and shoulders. Using the functional brain imaging technique of magnetoen-
cephalography (MEG), Flor and colleagues (1995) showed that amputation of an upper
limb was associated with significant alterations in the somatosensory maps of the
persons affected. Specifically, sensory input from the face and from the upper arm had
“invaded” the somatosensory cortical region that previously—before the amputa-
tion—had represented the hand.
This suggests that nearby representations had “claimed” the region that otherwise
(before amputation) would have coded for sensory inputs from the hand
(Ramachandran, Stewart, & Rogers-Ramachandran, 1992a, 1992b). As Ramachandran
and Hirstein (1998, p. 1609) note, these early findings demonstrated that “the famous
Penfield map in [primary sensory cortex] that every medical student and psychology
undergraduate learns about, can be reorganized over a distance of at least 2 or 3 cm
even in the adult brain.”
Other researchers studying human sensory-motor representations, using brain-
imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have dem-
onstrated that there is increased cortical representation associated with the acquisition
of special motor skills. For instance, blind individuals who read Braille show an
increased cortical representation of the reading finger (Sterr et al., 1998). These indi-
viduals also may show recruitment of formerly “visual” areas of the occipital cortex
(V1 and V2) for tactile information processing (R. H. Hamilton & Pascual-Leone,
1998; see Driver & Noesselt, 2008, for broader discussion of causal interplay between
different senses). Similarly, in musicians who are string players compared to nonmusi-
cian controls, neuroimaging has shown an enlargement of the cortical somatosensory
representation of the digits of the left hand, used for the dexterity-demanding finger-
ing of the strings (Elbert, Pantev, Wienbruch, Rockstroh, & Taub, 1995).
Nonetheless, fascinating though they seem, such changes in the brain and neural
representations do not, on their own, tell us about the functional or cognitive-behavioral
significance (if any) of the changes. We might well ask, “What does a larger cortical
somatosensory representation of the digits on one’s hand really mean, functionally?”
In isolation from attempts to systematically relate apparent plasticity of neural
representations and of neural systems to relevant changes in actual behaviors and/or
sensory-cognitive function, these various forms of evidence are suggestive only.
However, a number of studies also have started to provide a more detailed picture of
the functional importance of such changes.
These studies suggest that there may be rapid, task-specific dynamic changes in the
cortical organization of several prestabilized maps that depend on experience in a
given domain. For example, Braun, Schweizer, et al. (2000) trained participants, over
a 4-week period, in 1-hour sessions each day, in a simultaneous sensory stimulation
task involving the thumb and little finger of one hand They also recorded high-resolu-
tion electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in participants at pretraining, during the
initial week of training, and post training. After training, there was greater segrega-
tion of the primary somatosensory cortical representation of these two digits than
before training—but this separation was apparent only when stimulus discrimination
was required, and not during passive stimulus perception for which stimulus discrim-
ination was not required. These results suggest that “different task-specific maps
evolve during the training period, which may then be activated selectively and dynam-
ically on demand” (Braun et al., 2001, p. 2260).
Braun and colleagues (2001) also have shown that the cortical representations of
the thumb and little finger show changes during a highly learned habitual movement—
that of handwriting. The cortical representations of these two digits were more distant
from one another during writing (with either hand) than during rest. Given these find-
ings with a well-learned task, the authors propose that “somatosensory cortex switches
between different, concurrently pre-existing maps depending on actual requirements”
and that such task-dependent activation of preexisting maps “might be a powerful
mechanism to optimize stimulus processing” (Braun et al., 2001, p. 2259).
Using fMRI in conjunction with psychophysical testing, Pleger and colleagues (2003)
demonstrated that tactile coactivation of adjacent receptive fields of the right index
finger led to increased spatial discrimination in the coactivated region. Stimulation was
applied to the finger using a small (8 mm) electromechanical device, called a solenoid,
for a period of 3 hours. This coactivation of the receptive fields representing the skin
portion underneath the solenoid led to an enhanced ability of participants to differenti-
ate between pairs of tactile stimuli that were applied to nearby locations on the finger.
These researchers further showed that enlargement of cortical territory in primary
somatosensory cortex (S1), assessed by fMRI, was linearly correlated with a lowering of
spatial two-point discrimination thresholds of the participants in the coactivated
region, such that participants were better able to differentiate between two nearby
points of stimulation following the period of tactile coactivation. Discrimination sensi-
tivity was not increased in a control condition involving much more focal stimulation
(single-site stimulation of only 0.5 mm on the left index finger) that did not lead to
coactivation of adjacent receptive fields. In addition, the increased two-point discrimi-
nation sensitivity in the coactivated region (mean = 1.28 mm, SD = 0.25 mm) resulting
from this brief intervention was temporary: After 24 hours, discrimination between
two points in the previously coactivated region (mean = 1.55 mm, SD = 0.26 mm) was
equivalent to that prior to the intervention (mean = 1.58, SD = 0.20).
Figure 10.1 shows, for an individual participant, the change in the cortical repre-
sentation of the right index finger that was observed, and also the corresponding psy-
chophysical changes in the same participant’s ability to differentiate between any two
points applied to the finger. Comparison of the pre- versus poststimulation brain
images shows an increased extent of activation in the somatosensory cortex; the pre-
versus poststimulation psychophysical curves show a shift of 0.14 mm in the separa-
tion distance needed for the participant to detect separate points of stimulation.
There is also increasing evidence that the recruitment of formerly “visual” areas of
cortex during tactile (Braille) reading in persons who are blind plays an important
functional role in Braille reading. These sources of evidence include (a) findings show-
ing that temporarily disrupting cortical function in occipital cortex—through the use
of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)—disrupts Braille reading in early blind
subjects (L. G. Cohen et al., 1997, 1999); (b) neuropsychological evidence, involving
an early blind individual who experienced a bilateral occipital ischemic stroke, after
which she was no longer able to read Braille, yet other forms of tactile processing were
A B 120
Two tips perceived [%]

100 Pre
80
60
Pre 40
20
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
T-score Tip separation [mm]
10 120

100 Post
8
80
Post 6 60
40
4
20
2 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
0
Tip separation [mm]
120

100 After 24h
80
After 24 h 60
40
20
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Tip separation [mm]
Figure 10.1. Single subject Illustration of Changes in Functional Brain Activity and Psychophysical Sensitivity Arising
from the Coactivation of Adjacent Receptive Fields of the Right Index Finger. Panel (A) shows functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) BOLD signal detected in primary (S1) and secondary (S2) somatosensory cortex during the preexperimental phase, immediately
after the coactivation experimental phase, and 24 hours later, with activations projected on an axial (left), sagital (middle), and coronal (right)
T1-weighted, normalized MRI slice. Compared with the preexperimental assessment, following the stimulation phase, there was increased
contralateral activation in both primary and secondary somatosensory cortex; this increase in activation was no longer apparent 24 hours later. This
participant, and several others, also demonstrated slight increases in the ipsilateral secondary somatosensory cortex, but these ipsilateral
activations did not reach significance in the group-level analysis. Panel (B) shows the two-point discrimination threshold for the same subject
shown in (A), for the corresponding phases (preexperimental, immediately after the coactivation phase, and 24 hours later). Correct responses in
percent (red squares) are plotted as a function of the separation distance between the two stimulating tip points, together with the results of a
logistic regression line (blue with blue diamonds); the horizontal line indicates the 50% level of correct responses. After coactivation the
psychometric function showed a shift (by 0.14 mm) toward lower separation distances (compare the downward arrows for the upper and middle
graphs); this change in discrimination threshold also was no longer observed 24 hours later (compare the downward arrows across the three
graphs). Reprinted from Pleger, B., Foerster, A. F., Ragert, P., Dinse, H. R., Schwenkreis, P., Malin, J. P., Nicolas, V., & Tegenthoff, M. (2003, p. 647),
Functional imaging of perceptual learning in human primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, Neuron, 40, 643–653, with permission from
Elsevier. Copyright 2003, Elsevier. Note: See the insert for a full-color version of this image.
unchanged (R. Hamilton et al., 2000); and (c) neuroimaging findings indicating
that neural activity in visual cortex (pericalcarine cortex) during Braille reading shows
laterality effects, differing for left- versus right-hand Braille readers, implying “specific
early processing of tactile information from the reading hand” (H. Burton et al., 2002,
p. 600). Other findings showing that, within individual Braille readers, the patterns of
activation in visual cortex are highly localized, also are congruent with a functionally
significant role. As argued by Burton and colleagues:
In studies of visual cortex in sighted individuals, such patterns of localized

activity are taken as evidence for a distributed network of functional areas
[…] Accordingly, the finding of focal activations in blind individuals coun-
ters the notion that responses in these regions are nonspecific or a patho-
logical consequence of visual deprivation […]. To the extent that these
regions selectively respond to visual features, it is parsimonious to speculate
that comparable specificity exists for processing tactile features needed to
translate Braille into a neural code used by the language areas of the brain.
(H. Burton et al., 2002, p. 599)
Although many aspects of the mapping between changes in neural representation

and behavioral function remain unexplored, these and similar results substantially
bolster the case for the supposition that observed changes in the sensory-motor rep-
resentations that develop with prolonged practice or experiential exposure in a given
domain are not mere epiphenomena but are of functional importance in supporting
the corresponding sensory, cognitive, and motor behaviors. By extension, this then
provides at least prima facie evidence to suppose that changes in the brain associated
with other more complex forms of experiential input may likewise have functional
importance. It is to such more complex behavioral tasks that we next turn.
B R A I N C H A N G E S W I T H OT H E R F O R M S O F
LONG-TERM COMPLEX EXPERIENTIAL INPUT
Other brain imaging findings have pointed to additional plastic changes in the brain
in relation to experience. For example, it is known from research on food-storing bird
species that the size of the brain structures needed for spatial memory and navigation
(especially the hippocampus) can be influenced by behavioral demands. Food-storing
bird species, such as the black-capped chickadee, create food caches in diverse places
in the environment and then rely on an accurate and detailed spatial memory in order
to later recover their caches. In the black-capped chickadee, variations in the intensity
of food-storing activity are correlated with the size of the hippocampus (e.g., Smulders,
Sasson, & DeVoogd, 1995). Might a similar modification in the demands placed on
human brains for navigation lead to structural changes in the hippocampus—likewise
known to be critical for spatial memory and spatial navigation?
To address this question, researchers turned to a group of professionals who
regularly demonstrate high levels of complex spatial navigation: London taxi drivers
(Maguire et al., 2000). Taxi drivers in London must undertake extensive training,
typically lasting 2 years, to learn how to navigate between thousands of places in the
city, including the layout of 25,000 streets; they also must pass stringent examina-
tions by the Public Carriage Office before they can be licensed to operate (Woollett,
Spiers, & Maguire, 2009). Maguire and colleagues recruited 16 licensed London taxi
drivers, all of who had been taxi drivers for more than 1.5 years (mean time as taxi
driver = 14.3 years, range = 1.5 to 42 years). The drivers ranged in age between 32 and
62 years (mean = 44 years), and all took part in MRI scanning that allowed detailed
imaging of the structure of their brain.
Analyses of the brain images were then performed using the technique of voxel-
based morphometry. This is a method for comprehensively examining the whole brain
for changes in anatomical structure across groups of participants (e.g., Ashburner &
Friston, 2000). The technique was used to identify regions of brain gray matter con-
centration that differed significantly between the taxi drivers and a group of 50 healthy
males of approximately the same ages who did not drive taxis.
The analyses showed that, compared to the control participants, the taxi drivers
had significantly increased gray matter volume in the posterior hippocampus, on both
the right and the left. By contrast, the control participants showed greater volume in
the anterior hippocampus. In addition, the amount of time that the drivers had spent
driving taxis—both during training and after becoming qualified—was significantly
correlated with the volume of the right posterior hippocampus; right posterior gray
matter volume increased and anterior volume decreased with more navigation experi-
ence (Maguire et al., 2006). Greater volume in the midposterior hippocampus of taxi
drivers was also observed when taxi drivers were compared to a control group of
London bus drivers. The latter group likewise regularly navigated the city, but along a
constrained and much more limited set of routes. The finding that bus drivers did not
show similar changes in midposterior hippocampal volume helps to rule out several
other possible factors that might be postulated as contributing to the observed
plasticity, such as high levels of self-motion or increased stress, which may have char-
acterized both the bus drivers and the taxi drivers (Maguire et al., 2006).
Maguire and colleagues concluded from these findings that “the professional depen-
dence on navigational skills in licensed London taxi drivers is associated with a relative
redistribution of gray matter in the hippocampus” (Maguire et al., 2000, p. 4402). They
further argued that the significant positive correlation between right posterior
hippocampal volume and years of taxi-driving experience strongly suggests that the
differences were acquired through the greater demands on, and use of, navigational
knowledge, rather than preceding that experience. These results thus pointed to the pos-
sibility that there is “local plasticity in the structure of the healthy adult human brain as
a function of increasing exposure to an environmental stimulus” (Maguire et al., 2000,
p. 4402; see also Maguire, Spiers, Good, Hartley, Frackowiak, & Burgess, 2003).
The exact nature of the changes induced through such extensive development and
use of navigational knowledge, at a microscopic rather than macroscopic level, remains
unknown. Although the differential changes in the posterior versus anterior
hippocampus may reflect different mechanisms, it is possible that the changes are
interconnected, perhaps reflecting an “overall internal reorganization of hippocampal
circuitry” (Maguire et al., 2000, p. 4402). Research with aging rats has demonstrated
morphological alterations in the hippocampus that were correlated with the magni-
tude of spatial impairment shown by individual animals. Age-related decreases in the
total volume of one region were accompanied by corresponding increases in volume in

another region, pointing to a connectional reorganization of the hippocampus that
was associated with degree of navigational skill (Rapp, Strack, & Gallagher, 1999).2
Several relative and systematic differences in gray matter volume also have been
demonstrated in professional musicians compared with amateur musicians, and in
amateur musicians compared with nonmusicians (Gaser & Schlaug, 2003). Positive
correlations, demonstrating the highest gray matter volume in professional musi-
cians, intermediate levels in amateur musicians, and the lowest levels in nonmusi-
cians, were shown in several functionally related brain regions. The brain regions
included motor and somatosensory areas (regions important to the planning, prepa-
ration, execution, and control of sequential finger movements), bilateral inferior
temporal gyrus (important in visually guided learning, such as sight reading), left
cerebellum (important in cognitive skill learning and music processing), and superior
parietal cortex (a region specifically involved in integrating information across audi-
tory, visual, and somatosensory modalities, and also important for guiding motor
movements). These findings demonstrate that changes in brain structure with exten-
sive experience, particularly when training begins early in development, are them-
selves remarkably extensive and may involve other mechanisms, such as changes in
the density of synapses and in the density of glial cells, that have been demonstrated
in experimental animal studies involving environmental enrichment (to be discussed
in the following chapter).
A quite different form of cognitive-perceptual expertise that most of us are very
fortunate to have acquired—that of learning to read and write—likewise has been
found to substantially alter the way in which the brain subsequently responds to hear-
ing and attempting to repeat language-like stimuli. Clearly, comparisons of individu-
als who are literate with those who are not need to be undertaken with caution.
Considerable care is necessary to ensure that the apparent comparison of the effects
of learning the complex skills of reading and writing is not confounded with many
other factors that may covary with literacy, such as sociocultural background, or age,
or gender, or with factors that might themselves interfere with the acquisition of
those skills, such as learning disabilities or cognitive dysfunction. Nonetheless, stud-
ies that have taken steps to address these concerns have pointed to selective behav-
ioral effects associated with these complex forms of learning, and to changes in both
brain activity and brain connectivity in and across cortical and subcortical regions
known to be involved in representing written language (see Castro-Caldas, Petersson,
Reis, Stone-Elander, & Ingvar, 1998; Petersson et al., 2000, 2001; Reis et al., 2001;
Reis, Faisca, Ingvar, & Petersson, 2006).3 Notably, language learning beyond a first
language also may have substantial and sometimes surprising effects on cognitive
performance. As developed in a later section of this chapter, some studies have
suggested that the continued daily use of two languages, and the consequent need for
inhibiting one language when using the other, may benefit an individual’s perfor-
mance on tasks that require inhibitory control, and more recent evidence links a life-
time of being bilingual or multilingual to the maintenance of cognitive function and
even a temporal delay in the onset of clinically apparent symptoms of dementia.
Yet before considering these studies and additional research on the beneficial
effects of education and stimulating leisure and work environments, we must take a
conceptual pause to delineate three key concepts that have emerged from research on
the effects of cognitive, social, and physical lifestyles on cognitive and brain function.
The three interrelated concepts are the notions of brain or cerebral reserve (sometimes
referred to as “passive” reserve), cognitive reserve (also sometimes referred to as
“active” reserve), and compensation.
BRAIN RESERVE, COGNITIVE RESERVE,

A N D “ C O M P E N S AT I O N ”
Two individuals who sustain apparently similar levels of brain damage or who show
similar levels of brain pathology do not necessarily demonstrate equivalent levels of
functional or cognitive-behavioral impairments. Rather, what seem to be equivalent
brain lesions may be markedly disruptive to the adaptive adjustment of one person
but not that of the other. The occasional disjunction between the amount of brain
damage and the severity of consequences for adaptive function has been often noted
(e.g., Katzman, Terry, et al., 1988; Meguro et al., 2001; Roth, Tomlinson, & Blessed,
1967; Satz, 1993; cf. also Christensen et al. 1999), and it was the need for an explana-
tory mechanism for that disconnection that led to the proposals of some sort of
“reserve capacity” that could enable continued adaptive functioning despite the pres-
ence of substantial brain pathology. Thus, in their classic early paper on the relation-
ship between quantitative measures of dementia and degenerative changes in the
cerebral gray matter in older adults, Roth, Tomlinson, and Blessed (1967, p. 258)
stated that, at least for some individuals, “it appears that a certain amount of the
damage estimated by plaque counts may be accommodated within the reserve capac-
ity of the cerebrum without causing manifest intellectual damage.” Consistent with
this suggestion, in a postmortem examination of 137 older former residents of a nurs-
ing home, Katzman, Terry et al. (1988) found that the brains of 10 of the subjects
showed definite histological changes of the Alzheimer type (e.g., plaque counts that
were 80% as high as those found in persons with clear dementia) yet these individuals
had shown preserved mental status. These individuals had, indeed, achieved func-
tional and cognitive performance scores that were in the upper fifth of the nursing
home residents, performing as well or better than the control participants who had no
Alzheimer’s pathology.
The notions of “brain reserve capacity” and the closely related concept of a “thresh-
old” or “discontinuity” in adaptive function have been forwarded in different contexts
since the early 1980s (Gurland, 1981; Mortimer, 1988; Roth, 1986). However, Paul
Satz (1993) provided the first systematic articulation of the relations between these
notions. Satz broadly defined the concept of “brain reserve capacity” as a hypothetical
construct related to adaptive behavior that might be assessed by relatively direct mea-
sures of cerebral reserve, such as “overall brain size, regional brain size, ‘proper mass,’
and dendritic branching” and also less directly, “in terms of neuronal efficiency, redun-
dancy, and adaptability as well as [through the psychosocial factors of] intelligence
and education” (Satz, 1993, p. 290). While clearly recognizing that none of these
indices provided a definitive measure of brain capacity, Satz forwarded them as plau-
sible heuristic measures and outlined two key postulates with regard to the proposed
construct: First, that greater brain reserve capacity acts as a protective factor against
the initial emergence of functional impairment, and, second, that less brain reserve
capacity acts as a vulnerability factor, such that a person with less brain reserve
capacity is at greater risk for functional impairment should a brain lesion occur.4
More recently, Y. Stern (2002) differentiated between passive models of reserve,
involving brain or neuronal reserve, versus active models involving, instead, cognitive
reserve capacity. In passive models, reserve is defined in terms of “the amount of
damage that can be sustained before reaching a threshold for clinical expression,”
whereas in active models, the focus is on “differences in how the task is processed.”
Although the distinction between passive and active models is not a strict dichotomy,
and the models are not mutually exclusive, passive models can be distinguished in
that they assume that there is some fixed cutoff or threshold (e.g., for Alzheimer’s
disease, something akin to the number of synapses available), after which functional
impairments will emerge for everyone. In addition passive models are essentially
quantitative models:
They assume that a specific type of brain damage will have the same effect in
each person, and that repeated instances of brain damage sum together.
Individuals differ only in their overall brain capacity, and brain damage is
either sufficient or insufficient to deplete [brain reserve capacity] to some
critical level. The model does not account for individual differences in how
the brain processes cognitive or functional tasks in the face of the disruption
caused by brain damage. It also does not address potential qualitative differ-
ences between different types of brain damage. (Y. Stern, 2002, p. 450)
There is considerable evidence to support the threshold model, yet, taken on its
own, it is not sufficient to account for all of the findings that have been reported (e.g.,
Staff et al., 2004). Most notably, qualitative differences in cognitive or active reserve,
involving an “ability to optimize or maximize performance through differential recruit-
ment of brain networks” (Y. Stern, 2002, p. 451) and perhaps reflecting the use of alter-
nate cognitive strategies may also be important. Thus, on the cognitive reserve account,
whereas one individual with Alzheimer’s disease may begin to express clinical features
of the disease after (for example) the loss of a given number of synapses, another
person who has greater cognitive reserve may still be able to function effectively with
the same number of synapses. This account argues that at least some of the effects of
education and occupational attainment do not necessarily reflect changes in gross brain
neuroanatomy linked to such attainments but may arise because individuals have
learned to process information in a more efficient manner. In the apt contrast proposed
by Stern (2002, p. 451), “The threshold approach supposes that the person with more
[brain reserve capacity] has more to lose before they reach some clinical cut-point. The
cognitive reserve hypothesis focuses less on what is lost and more on what is left.”
From this conceptualization, an important implication of the cognitive reserve
concept is that it should also apply to healthy individuals:
Since the changes in brain recruitment associated with reserve are a normal
response to increased task demands, this definition suggests that cognitive
reserve is present in both healthy individuals and those with brain damage,
and is reflected in the modulation of the same brain networks. In essence, an
individual who uses a brain network more efficiently, or is more capable of

calling up alternate brain networks or cognitive strategies in response to
increased demand may have more cognitive reserve. (Y. Stern, 2002, p. 451)
Some initial support for this proposal was provided by Stern, Hilton, and colleagues
(2003) and also by Stern, Zarahn, et al. (2008), using fMRI with healthy individuals to
examine correlations between measures of cognitive reserve (e.g., Vocabulary) and
patterns of brain activity during different tasks that varied both in content and level
of difficulty. For example, Stern, Zarahn, et al. (2008) using a technique known as
canonical variates analysis, found that in younger but not older participants there was
a spatial pattern or brain network that modulated activity as a function of task load.
As task load increased—during both a verbal and an object working memory task—
this network became increasingly correlated with measures of cognitive reserve
(assessed both by Vocabulary and an estimate of intelligence based on the National
Adult Reading Test, or NART). The researchers speculated that “this spatial pattern
could represent a general neural instantiation of [cognitive reserve] that is affected by
the aging process” (Y. Stern, Zarahn, et al., 2008, p. 959).
Although emphasizing that functional interpretation of the brain areas of the gen-
eral network must be made cautiously—because the relation of cognitive reserve per-
tains to the entire spatial pattern—these researchers nonetheless remarked that many
of the regions that emerged have previously been observed in studies of controlled
processing, such as task switching and working memory (e.g., Braver et al., 2003;
Wager et al., 2004), and also that similar regions emerged in their earlier (Y. Stern
et al., 2003) study. Thus, “these consistent findings across studies and tasks provide a
preliminary suggestion that control processes may be an important component of
some aspects of [cognitive reserve]” (Y. Stern, Zarahn, et al., 2008, p. 966). Additional
support for these postulates could be provided by examining yet a still larger set of
tasks to determine whether a similar pattern emerges across additional task and stim-
ulus variations or, more ambitiously, by prospective studies. In the latter case, expres-
sion of the network would be first assessed in younger participants who then would be
followed across time, with the prediction that “higher expression will predict slower
progression of age-related cognitive changes” (Y. Stern, Zarahn, et al., 2008, p. 966).
On the one hand, given that all cognitive functions must also be realized by physi-
cal brain processes, the distinction between cognitive and brain reserve is not entirely
precise, and, if taken too literally, might be misleading. On the other hand, the con-
cepts of cognitive versus brain reserve nonetheless appear to depend on different
levels of analyses. Whereas brain reserve involves, as noted, particularly differences in
the quantity of the available neural substrate (e.g., brain size; number of synapses),
cognitive reserve especially involves between-individual and between-group differ-
ences in the organization and relative use of particular brain regions, such as sug-
gested by increased or decreased connectivity in brain networks, or the availability of
alternative networks to accomplish a given task. Another, more descriptively helpful,
term is that of “neurocomputational flexibility”:
This idea suggests that individuals who have developed a range of cognitive
strategies for solving complex problems, such as navigating around the neigh-
bourhood or performing well on neuropsychological tests, are more likely to
remain within normal limits for longer despite the parallel progression of
underlying disease. Alternatively, high brain reserve individuals may not only
have a wider repertoire of conscious and preconscious cognitive strategies at
their disposal, but also a greater number of potential neural pathways for
execution of these same cognitive processes, thus allowing maintenance of
function despite neurological insult. (Valenzuela, 2008, p. 297)
As a concrete example, Scarmeas and Stern (2003) suggest that whereas a trained
mathematician or someone with lifelong engagement in mathematical training might
be able to solve a mathematics problem many different ways and so have more flexibil-
ity in solving the problem if any one strategy was precluded, someone with less train-
ing might have less “built in redundancy” and thus might demonstrate less resilience
in the face of brain damage. From this perspective, one might more accurately speak
of “brain reserves” or “cognitive reserves”—acknowledging that there are multiple
interacting mechanisms, operating at different spatial and temporal scales, and requir-
ing the assessment of both earlier and ongoing levels of complex mental stimulation.
This perspective is graphically summarized by the diagram in Figure 10.2, reprinted
from Valenzuela’s (2008) paper.
The latter ideas are closely linked conceptually to the further concept of compensa-
tion. The notion of compensation came to the fore after several early functional
neuroimaging studies found that there were clear differences in the patterns of neural
activation shown by healthy younger versus older adults performing the same cogni-
tive tasks. Often the difference could be characterized as involving more focal or local-
ized activations in the younger group, in contrast with more widespread and less focal
activations in the older group (e.g., Cabeza, 2002; Gutchess et al., 2005; J. M. Logan
Complex mental
activities
Brain
reserves
Neural and
Neurocomputational synaptic numbers
flexibility
Figure 10.2. Schematic Rendering of the Notion of “Brain Reserves”

Emphasizing the Interactions Between Behavioral Activities, Neural
and Synaptic Effects, and “Neurocomputational Flexibility.” Reprinted
from Valenzuela, M. J. (2008, p. 298), Brain reserve and the prevention of dementia,
Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 21, 296–302, with permission from Wolters Kluwer/
Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. Copyright 2008, Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott, Williams
& Wilkins.
et al., 2002; D. C. Park et al., 2003), with the results sometimes including both increases
in activation in the older relative to the younger group in some regions but also
decreases in other regions.
One pattern that has been frequently reported involves an increase in bilateral
brain activity in older persons compared with more unilateral activity in younger
adults during the performance of particular tasks. In healthy young adults, many
cognitive tasks, due to stimulus differences (e.g., words vs. pictures) or other cognitive
processing demands (e.g., involving the initial encoding vs. the retrieval of informa-
tion from memory), tend to predominantly recruit regions in either the left or right
cerebral hemisphere. For example, initially encoding to-be-remembered information
often elicits left-lateralized frontal activity, whereas right-lateralized activity may be
more often observed during retrieval, a pattern summarized by the Hemispherical
Encoding Retrieval Asymmetry (HERA) theory forwarded by Tulving and colleagues
(1994). Several studies have reported that such asymmetric activity is attenuated
in older adults, especially in prefrontal cortex. Older adults frequently show more
bilateral or “even-handed” involvement of both cerebral hemispheres in such tasks
(e.g., Rosen et al., 2002; also see Springer et al., 2005).
Cabeza (2002; see Dennis & Cabeza, 2008, for review) summarized this age-related
difference with the phrase “Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in OLDer adults,”
abbreviated as “HAROLD.” To illustrate, Cabeza, Grady and colleagues (1997) found
that whereas younger adults showed right lateralized prefrontal cortical activity
during the recall of word associate pairs, older adults showed bilateral prefrontal activ-
ity during recall. Other investigators have reported similar outcomes, using recogni-
tion tests rather than recall (e.g., Madden et al., 1999) and pictures rather than words
(e.g., Grady, Bernstein, Beig, & Siegenthaler, 2002). Age-related changes in the degree
of asymmetry also have been reported in more posterior brain regions, with both left
and right temporoparietal and frontal regions showing positive correlations with
accurate recognition of faces in older adults, whereas these effects were more lateral-
ized to the left hemisphere in younger adults (Grady et al., 2002). More purely percep-
tual decisions, such as required during a face-matching task, also have been found to
lead to greater bilateral prefrontal cortical activity in older than in younger adults
(e.g., Grady, McIntosh, et al., 2000).
One account of these patterns focuses on the notion of “dedifferentiation”—a
reduction in cerebral specialization accompanying the aging process, involving reduced
efficiency of specialized regional brain functioning, and perhaps arising from impair-
ments in inhibitory mechanisms across the corpus callosum,5 or for other reasons. The
dedifferentiation hypothesis is partially supported by neuropsychological data that
show that the correlations across different cognitive tasks tend to increase with aging,
suggesting decreasing specialization of function. For example, in a large-scale study,
Baltes and Lindenberger (1997) found that whereas in younger adults the median cor-
relation between five different composite ability measures tapping perceptual speed,
reasoning, memory, knowledge, and fluency was .38, the corresponding value for older
adults was markedly higher at .71, with corresponding differences in the amount of
explained variation of only 14% versus 50%.
The dedifferentiation hypothesis is also supported at quite a different level of
analysis: by neuroimaging findings showing that, compared with younger adults, older
adults show reduced neural specialization in the ventral visual cortex (D. C. Park et al.,
2004). Although, like their younger counterparts, older adults showed some brain
regions that were particularly responsive to faces, and others that were particularly
responsive to other categories of stimuli, such as places, chairs, and pseudo-words,
across several different measures older adults had more shared voxels across catego-
ries than did young adults. This finding is important in that visual cortex is relatively
less affected by age than is frontal cortex, and it suggests that dedifferentiation may
be a pervasive aspect of aging (but see also Voss et al., 2008, for evidence that reduced
neural specialization may be particularly prominent for face and place stimuli, in con-
trast to color or word stimuli). More recently, J. Park and colleagues (2010) demon-
strated that such dedifferentiation at the level of neural representations was predictive
of flexibility in cognitive-behavioral performance. These researchers used a measure of
“neural specificity,” derived using the technique of multivariate pattern analysis of
fMRI activations. The measure of neural specificity significantly predicted the perfor-
mance of older adults on a number of different behavioral tasks requiring fluid, on-
the-spot processing, such as a task switching sequencing task and a verbal fluency
measure. Furthermore, whereas the neural specificity measure did not correlate with
a measure of longer term “crystallized” knowledge (vocabulary), it accounted for 30%
of the variance in a composite measure of fluid processing ability. These authors con-
cluded that “neural specificity may be a fundamental neural measure associated with
performance on complex cognitive tasks” (J. Park et al., 2010, p. 9258) and that
declines in neural specificity may be one of the neural factors that contribute to
age-related deficits in behavioral performance.
An alternative, but not necessarily entirely mutually exclusive, account to the
proposal that more diffuse or distributed activity arises from dedifferentiation posits
that the activity is in some way compensatory. According to a compensatory account,
the more diffuse or distributed brain activity in older individuals offsets age-related
deficits through a strategic recruitment of alternative regions, or involves changes in
the supporting cognitive processes. This model is also motivated by a broad range of
evidence from studies showing that recovery of language and motor functions after
unilateral brain damage often involves the recruitment of the unaffected cerebral
hemisphere such that, following recovery, the functions become comparatively more
bilateral (for review, see Cabeza et al. 2002; T. A. Jones, Hawrylak, Klintsova, &
Greenough, 1998).
In an attempt to directly contrast the dedifferentiation and compensatory accounts,
Cabeza et al. (2002) compared the brain activity shown by two groups of older adults
to that of younger adults. One group of adults (“old-high”) was selected to take part
because, during a preexperimental screening session, they performed at a level similar
to that of younger adults on a battery of four memory tests, known to distinguish
older adults with low versus high memory functioning. In contrast, the second older
adult group (“old-low”) was selected because they performed at a level below that
shown by younger adults on the screening battery. Importantly, however, these two
older groups did not differ from one another on measures of executive function
and general intellectual function, including the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, letter
fluency (FAS), mental arithmetic, and mental control. Both older groups and a group
of younger adults then took part in a positron emission tomography (PET) scanning
session involving two memory tasks—a relatively less demanding paired-associate

recall task and a more demanding source judgment task (e.g., M. K. Johnson,
Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; K. J. Mitchell & Johnson, 2009) in which participants
had to decide whether individual words had been presented in visual or in auditory
format at study.
As expected based on the screening session, the old-high group showed better
memory in the scanning session than did the old-low group; in addition, performance
on the recall task was higher than on the source memory task. The key findings con-
cerned the patterns of brain activity shown by the old-high versus old-low groups
relative to the younger group. Whereas the old-high group showed bilateral frontal
activations during the source memory judgment task, the old-low group showed
unilateral frontal activations. These outcomes suggest that in the first group the bilat-
eral activity was compensatory, enabling these older persons to maintain performance
at a level comparable to the younger adults, but via recruitment of additional brain
regions. Stated differently, the results suggest that “low-performing older adults
recruited a similar network as young adults but used it inefficiently, whereas high-
performing older adults counteracted age-related neural decline through a plastic
reorganization of neurocognitive networks” (Cabeza et al., 2002, p. 1394).
These outcomes also appear to provide evidence against at least a highly general form
of the dedifferentiation hypothesis. “If reduced lateralization is just another example of
the deleterious effects of aging on the brain (e.g., atrophy), then it should have occurred
in the group of elderly adults displaying more pronounced age-related cognitive deficits”
(Cabeza et al., 2002, p. 1399), that is, in the old-low participants. However, this was not
what was found. Instead, it was the group showing comparatively preserved cognitive
function (on both the pretest screening battery and also in the scanned task) that
showed reduced lateralization (that is, more bilateral activation).
Other evidence in favor of a compensatory and “behaviorally relevant” construal of
the age-related changes in recruitment of brain regions derives from an examination of
the relation between brain activity and cognitive-behavioral performance. If the addi-
tional (more bilateral) activations observed in the older individuals are functionally
relevant (rather than a consequence of pathological dedifferentiation), then it might be
expected that increased bilateral activity would be associated with improved accuracy
or speed of responding on the task that is being performed. Consistent with this expec-
tation, in a verbal working memory task, Reuter-Lorenz and colleagues (2000) found
that older adults who showed bilateral prefrontal activity were faster in the working
memory task than were older adults who did not show such bilateral recruitment.
Further support for the notion that the bilateral activation is functionally signifi-
cant was provided by Morcom and colleagues (2003); region of interest analyses con-
ducted by these researchers demonstrated that whereas unilateral (left) activity in
lateral prefrontal cortex during the incidental encoding of words (during which
participants made animate/inanimate judgments) was predictive of later successful
remembering in younger adults, bilateral activity was predictive of such successful
remembering in older adults. Notably, these effects were obtained under conditions of
matched performance between the older and younger groups (through testing at dif-
ferent delays) and also were found in analyses using a rescaling procedure that removed
age-related between-group global differences in the magnitude of brain activity.
Compensatory mechanisms also have been forwarded as important in cognitive

domains other than memory. Wingfield and Grossman (2006) propose that results
from language comprehension tasks argue in favor of compensatory mechanisms that
involve multiple aspects, including up-regulation of working memory resources and
more sustained activation to support task performance. Older adults who demon-
strated good comprehension even for syntactically quite complex sentences, attaining
comprehension scores that were close to those obtained by the younger adults, showed
“up-regulation” of activity in two brain regions—a part of left inferior frontal cortex
and a right temporal-parietal region—that was not observed in the younger adults
(but that have been found to be involved in younger adults under even more challeng-
ing conditions). In contrast, such up-regulation was not observed in older adults who
showed comparatively less good comprehension, who performed less well than did the
younger adults on the complex but not simpler sentences, although these participants
also showed up-regulation in a dorsolateral prefrontal cortical region often found to
be activated during more general problem-solving activities.
Other research findings from these investigators further showed age-related differ-
ences in the temporal course of activation. Whereas younger adults showed recruit-
ment of the ventral portion of left inferior frontal cortex in a late time window only for
highly demanding grammatical judgments, older adults showed recruitment in this
time window also for simpler grammatical judgments, and, for complex judgments,
showed additional recruitment of a corresponding region in the right hemisphere that
was not called upon by the younger adults. Thus, “sufficiently flexible neural and cogni-
tive resources can conspire to circumvent much age-related change to maintain access
to the goal of communicative efficacy” (Wingfield & Grossman, 2006, p. 2837).
Perhaps one of the more convincing sources of evidence that the greater bilateral
brain activity observed during task performance in older individuals is (at least some-
times) behaviorally compensatory is provided by studies that have used transcranial
magnetic stimulation (TMS) to either temporarily disrupt the functioning of a cortical
region or to temporarily heighten activity in a region. Rossi et al. (2004) showed that,
for both younger and older adults, repetitive TMS (rTMS) to left dorsolateral prefron-
tal cortex at encoding was more disruptive to successful yes/no recognition of complex
visual scenes than was right lateralized stimulation. However, at retrieval, whereas dis-
ruptive effects in younger adults were mostly observed on the right (as expected based
on the HERA model), in older adults rTMS to either right or left dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex interfered with successful retrieval (as expected based on the HAROLD model).
Indeed, for the older group, the application of left-lateralized rTMS at retrieval was
more disruptive to effective retrieval than was right-lateralized stimulation.
In another study, high-frequency rTMS applied to left prefrontal regions was used
to temporarily heighten rather than to disrupt brain activity in older individuals who
showed modest deficits in memory (Solé-Padulles et al., 2006). Functional MRI scans
performed before versus after the rTMS showed increased poststimulation activity in
right prefrontal (BA 45, 47, and 46) and bilateral posterior cortical regions (BA 39/19).
Compared with a control condition that was given only sham or “simulated”
rather than actual rTMS, active rTMS also led to performance improvements on an
associative face-name learning task. Although the effects of rTMS may be too nonspe-
cific to restore lost or damaged specific synaptic connections, Ridding and Rothwell
(2007, p. 566) suggest that it may be possible for rTMS to “interact with the normal
processes of brain plasticity that accompany damage or chronic disease” so as to
increase “the ability of the brain to undergo compensatory changes” that improve
behavioral function.
In addition to suggesting a pattern of hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older
adults, many neuroimaging studies point to a second consistent pattern that involves
a posterior-to-anterior shift in aging, recently termed “PASA” (S. W. Davis, Dennis,
Daselaar, Fleck, & Cabeza, 2008). Reduced brain activity in posterior cortical regions
together with increased activity in frontal regions in older compared with younger
adults was initially reported by Grady and colleagues (1994). In two PET studies these
investigators found that, in comparison with a younger group, older adults showed
reduced occipital activity but increased prefrontal and also relatively more anterior
activity (including in occipitotemporal and parietal regions) during a perceptual
face-matching task and also during a location-matching task. In their report, Grady
et al. (1994) suggested a compensatory account of these findings:
The regions of cortex more activated in young subjects were early in the
visual pathway (prestriate), possibly before the ventral-dorsal dissociation,
and those more activated in the old subjects were in occipitotemporal, pre-
frontal, and parietal cortex. These results suggest that the neurobiological
changes that underlie the performance decrements of old subjects on these
visual tasks are a reduction in the processing efficiency of prestriate occipital
cortex, increased utilization of one or more cortical networks to compensate
for this inefficiency, and a concomitant slowing of reaction time, reflecting
the increased time for information processing by these recruited areas.
(Grady et al., 1994, p. 1461)
Although not invariably observed, subsequent studies, using tasks involving atten-
tion, perception, and episodic and working memory, have likewise reported a relative
shift from posterior toward comparatively more anterior activations in older adults
(e.g., Daselaar et al., 2003; Levine et al., 2000; see Dennis & Cabeza, 2008; D. C. Park
& Reuter-Lorenz, 2009, for review). However, interpretation of many studies may be
complicated by the potential contributions of age-related differences in task difficulty.
If a given task is more difficult for older persons, or is perceived to be more difficult,
this might well lead to increased anterior and especially prefrontal cortical involve-
ments, similar to those found with increasing task difficulty in younger adults
(e.g., Konishi et al., 1998). Additionally, strong claims about the functional relevance of
the age-related posterior to anterior shift require a conjunction of observations
regarding the relationship between prefrontal versus occipitotemporal activations,
such that age-related increases in prefrontal activation are shown to correlate posi-
tively with performance, and also that the prefrontal and occipitotemporal activations
are themselves negatively correlated with one another—as would be expected if
decreases in the latter are being compensated for by increases in the former.
In a recent fMRI study that included both an episodic recognition task and
a visual perception task, S. W. Davis et al. (2008) attempted to stringently evaluate the
posterior-to-anterior shift in aging hypothesis. These researchers further sought to
examine the feasibility of applying the hypothesis to the patterns of age-related brain
deactivation (rather than activation) that were observed during task performance
(see the discussion of the “default mode” network in the “Between Tasks” section of
Chapter 9). To address the task difficulty issue, these researchers used a combination
of several steps. The steps included repeated encoding presentations compared with a
single presentation of the to-be-remembered words for the older versus the younger
group and a pair-wise accuracy matching procedure, such that even though both
groups showed a range of performance accuracies, pairs of older and younger adults
were selected who were matched very closely on their accuracy level.6 In addition, par-
ticipants were asked to give confidence ratings, both for the recognition memory task
(old/new judgments) and the visual perception task (judgments concerning which of
two colors extended over a larger area), thereby enabling examination of outcomes for
both low- and high-confidence responses.
Consistent with the posterior-to-anterior shift account, combining across the two
tasks, younger adults showed significantly greater activation in midline occipital
cortex (BA 17/18) than did older adults, whereas older adults showed greater activa-
tion in more anterior regions, including left middle frontal gyrus (BA 45) and also a
parietal region (supramarginal gyrus, BA 39). This pattern was observed both for
responses made with low confidence and responses made with high confidence, and
for both the memory task and the perception task. In addition, in older adults, there
was a negative correlation between the level of activation in occipital cortex and the
middle frontal activation. That is, older adults with lower levels of activity in the pos-
terior visual processing region showed greater frontal activation; furthermore, in
older adults, the frontal activity significantly correlated with task performance. In
contrast, neither of these correlations was significant in the younger group. Notably,
the age-related patterns of task-related deactivation—at least partially reflecting, as
we saw in Chapter 9, activity levels in the default mode network—followed a broadly
similar pattern. Specifically, deactivation in the older compared with younger partici-
pants was less pronounced in a more posterior region (precuneus) of the default mode
network, but older participants showed comparably greater deactivation in a more
anterior region (medial prefrontal cortex) of this network.
The evidence reviewed thus far clearly suggests that at least some (even if not all)
instances of reduced lateralization and/or the posterior-to-anterior shift in older com-
pared with younger adults reflect a process of compensation. Nonetheless, these find-
ings still leave unanswered an important question regarding the functional-behavioral
origins of that compensatory activity, and the extent to which such changes are inten-
tionally versus more automatically or unintentionally elicited. Does the additional
recruitment of brain areas arise because of deliberate or conscious efforts by individuals
to engage in different task strategies to boost their performance? Or does the additional
recruitment occur without any conscious awareness of the changes and without higher
order intentions? Stated differently (and not in an entirely parallel manner), is compen-
sation best construed as a psychological or as a brain-based phenomenon? Cabeza
(2002) dubbed these two possibilities as the “psychogenic” view, according to which
age-related changes in brain activity arise from age-related changes in cognitive struc-
tures or processes (such as semantic memory networks, or semantic elaboration during
encoding respectively) versus the “neurogenic” view, according to which age-related
brain activity changes reflect a change in neural architecture, including changes in the
functions of different brain regions, their connections, or both.
Definitively deciding between the psychogenic versus neurogenic accounts
“in general” is not possible, in part because it would require a highly detailed, veridical
mapping of the exact cognitive operations and processes that are used to complete a
given task by different groups—and then showing whether those operations are, or
are not, equivalent across the groups. It is also very likely that the particular contribu-
tors, at both the brain systems and cognitive-behavioral levels, to the several different
patterns of compensation that have been observed differ somewhat from task to task
and depending on context and other factors. Nonetheless, some broad forms of evi-
dence may weigh on one side or the other. To the extent that the task being examined
is very simple—allowing comparatively little leeway for between-person or between-
group strategy differences—finding age-related differences even on such tasks would
argue against the psychogenic and perhaps for the neurogenic perspective. Likewise,
to the extent that brain activity differences are observed regardless of overt or
instructed cognitive strategy manipulations, this also would support the neurogenic
perspective.
Relevant observations with respect to the latter possibility are provided by J. M.
Logan and colleagues (2002), who examined recognition memory in older versus
younger adults under different encoding conditions. These researchers found that pro-
viding older adults with additional encoding support—through encouraging deep
semantic elaboration of words by requiring participants to provide abstract/concrete
judgments—improved older adults’ recognition memory performance and also mark-
edly decreased the extent to which older adults showed less frontal activity than did
younger adults in left BA 6/44. Nonetheless, the more distributed bilateral activations
that they observed in older compared with younger adults remained, with older adults
in this condition still showing greater activation in right BA 6/44. This result thus
appears at least partially consistent with a neurogenic story.
A further finding that might weigh on the side of the neurogenic account comes
from a comparison of older and younger adults on a probabilistic category-learning
paradigm (the so-called weather prediction task), known to elicit activity in a neural
network involving the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, caudate nucleus, and posterior
parietal cortex (e.g., Poldrack et al., 2001). On this task, older adults showed longer
response times overall, but measures of accuracy and of strategy use, based on block-
by-block analyses of participants’ response patterns, did not differ between the older
and younger groups (Fera et al., 2005). Yet whereas younger adults showed greater
prefrontal and caudate activation, older adults showed significantly greater parietal
activity than shown by younger adults, and, furthermore, this activity was positively
correlated with their performance. Age-equivalent performance on the task thus
appeared to be mediated by differential recruitment of regions within the same neural
circuitry without observable changes in accuracy or strategy application.
The latter findings suggest that the bases of at least some age-related differences in
activation patterns do not derive from relatively coarse-grained or obvious differences
in cognitive-perceptual processing. Nonetheless, it remains possible that more subtle
differences might be present and might be detected with measures with greater sensi-
tivity to detect strategy differences or other factors relating to the precise timing,
weighting, or coordination of strategies. Evidence consistent with this possibility is

provided by electrophysiological findings reported by Czernochowski and colleagues
(2008). These investigators used event-related potentials and measures of both epi-
sodic recognition and a more difficult source discrimination task (e.g., M. K. Johnson,
Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; K. J. Mitchell & Johnson, 2009) that required the par-
ticipant to determine which of two items had been presented more recently. Whereas
each of three groups—younger adults, older adults with relatively low socioeconomic
status, and older adults with relatively high socioeconomic status (SES)—showed
equivalent performance on the recognition trials, the groups diverged on the more
difficult source (recency) discrimination trials. On the recency discrimination trials,
the accuracy of the lower SES older adults did not exceed chance levels, whereas that
of the higher SES older adults was similar to that of younger adults. These behavioral
differences were accompanied by a corresponding difference in a frontal component of
the event-related potentials (ERPs), such that only the higher SES older adults showed
a significantly greater long-duration frontal negativity on the recency than the recog-
nition trials, and this negative slow-wave activity correlated with recency performance
but not with recognition performance. The authors propose that whereas the higher
SES older adults were able to use strategies to compensate for the adverse effects of
aging on the complex recency discrimination task, these strategies were not used by
the lower SES older adults, and this was shown by both their chance-level behavioral
performance and differing ERP profiles on the difficult trials.
In other work, using an episodic memory task, Velanova, Lustig, Jacoby, and
Buckner (2007) found that the retrieval-related patterns for older and younger adults
were similar in many respects, and both age groups showed similarly timed effects in
parietal cortex relating to retrieval success. However, older adults showed divergent
patterns in frontal regions, particularly for more difficult recognition trials for which
there had been only one encoding presentation rather than multiple presentations.
For these difficult trials, older adults showed greater frontal activation than did
younger adults. Furthermore, analyses of the time course of activity within the trials
indicated that, compared to younger adults, this activation tended to occur relatively
late within the trial. This might suggest a “reactive” control response to perceived
difficulty, in which older individuals exerted comparatively more effort in attempting
to “edit” representations that had been retrieved, rather than a more proactive gating
of representations.
The hypothesis for such a shift of processing load toward later portions of the
trial, reflecting a predominantly reactive rather than proactive mode of control, is
diagrammed in Figure 10.3. As characterized by Velanova and colleagues, according to
this model:
Memory retrieval is heuristically conceived as a set of processes automatically

elicited by a cue that can be constrained by early-selection processes and
edited by late-selection processes. Resources, represented by polygons
[in Fig. 10.3], can be expended at early- and late-selection stages to aid effec-
tive memory retrieval. […] Young adults are hypothesized to rely on a combi-
nation of early- and late-selection processes with considerable resources
expended to constrain processing through top-down mechanisms at early-
selection stages [see Fig. 10.3A]. Due to compromise in frontal-striatal
EXPENDED RESOURCES
A
YOUNG CONSTRAINED
ADULT CUE REPRESENTATION
EARLY LATE
B
OLDER ADULT UNCONSTRAINED
VIA EXECUTIVE CUE REPRESENTATION
COMPROMISE
EARLY LATE
EMERGENT
LOAD-SHIFT EDITED
CUE REPRESENTATION
COMPENSATORY
STRATEGY
EARLY LATE
Figure 10.3. The Hypothesized “Load Shift” Model of Executive Function

in Aging Illustrating a Possible Form of Within-Trial Age-Related
Compensatory Change. Younger adults (A) may rely on both early top-down
processes and late selection, yielding a constrained representation that is close to the
task requirements. In contrast, older adults with compromised executive function
(B) may less strongly constrain information during early stages; consequently, in order
to compensate for unconstrained representations, older adults may need to expend
greater resources to edit retrieved information at late-selection stages. This emergent
“load-shift” compensatory strategy (C), that is, a shift from expending front-end
resources in the service of early-selection processes to applying resources at the
back-end to implement late-selection processes, would then result in an edited
representation rather than a constrained representation (as in the case of young
adults). Reprinted from Velanova, K., Lustig, C., Jacoby, L. L., & Buckner, R. L. (2007,
p. 1043), Evidence for frontally mediated controlled processing differences in older
adults, Cerebral Cortex, 17, 1033–1046, with permission from Oxford University Press.
Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.
systems involved in executive function, older adults fail to constrain process-

ing at the early-selection stage. As a result, poorly constrained representa-
tions are accessed [Fig. 10.3B]. To compensate, older adults expend greater
resources to edit the retrieval event at late-selection stages [Fig. 10.3C]. The
shift from expending front-end resources to mediate early-selection pro-
cesses to those applied at the back-end to implement compensatory late-
selection processes is the load shift. (Velanova et al., 2007, p. 1043).
More recent findings have bolstered this possibility, in which, essentially,

“‘compensation’ may occur even within a single trial for older adults” (Paxton et al.,
2008, p. 1024)—with age-related deficits early in the trial potentially offset by
increased recruitment later in the trial.
One further important observation concerning the mechanisms involved in espe-
cially the age-related shift from more posterior cortical brain activity to greater reli-
ance on anterior cortical regions concerns the connections between this shift in
processing emphasis and both “thinking with our senses” and the relative degree of
dependence on top-down controlled processing. In their recent extended review of
brain imaging studies and healthy cognitive aging, Dennis and Cabeza (2008) hypoth-
esized that, from a compensatory viewpoint, given that perception reflects the
interaction of bottom-up sensory processing and top-down cognitive processing,
deficits in bottom-up sensory processing might be compensated for by greater reli-
ance on top-down cognitive operations, such as those partly mediated by the prefron-
tal cortex. This is clearly consistent with the extensively reported age-related increases
in prefrontal cortical activation. More cogent support for this hypothesis is provided
by the significant negative correlation between age-related increases in prefrontal
activity and age-related decreases in occipital activity that S. W. Davis and colleagues
(2008) observed for both the memory and the perception tasks, discussed earlier.
These findings indicate that those individuals who showed the weakest occipital
activation tended to also show the strongest prefrontal activations. This “decline and
compensation” view of the relation between perceptual and cognitive decline is
depicted in the rightmost panel of Figure 10.4, and again underscores the importance
of “thinking with our senses” in enabling adaptively flexible cognitive processing.
Sensory Cognitive Sensory Cognitive Sensory Cognitive

processing processing processing processing processing processing
Sensory Sensory Association

Brain cortex
organs cortex
(e.g., PFC)
Under- Over-
recruitment recruitment
(decline) (compensation)
Aging Aging Aging
(A) Cascade view (B) Common-cause view (C) Decline–compensation view
Figure 10.4. Three Views of the Interrelations Between Perceptual and

Cognitive Decline in Aging, Including (A) The Cascade View, (B) The
Common-Cause View, and (C) The Decline-Compensation View. Reprinted
from Dennis, N. A., & Cabeza, R. (2008, p. 28), Neuroimaging of healthy cognitive
aging, in F. I. M. Craik & T. A. Salthouse (Eds.), Handbook of aging and cognition: Third
edition (pp. 1–54), New York: Psychology Press, with permission from Taylor & Francis.
Copyright 2008, Taylor & Francis.
The figure also depicts two alternative accounts of the relations between age-related
declines in perception and cognition, including the “cascade” and the “common-cause”
views, that attribute age-related declines to decreased sensory processing versus
common brain-related changes, respectively.
In summary, although substantial initial steps have been taken, the exact origins
and timing of compensatory brain activity remain incompletely understood. An impor-
tant means to illuminating these issues may involve interventions aimed at stimulating
and training the use of broader networks. As observed by Reuter-Lorenz and Cappell
(2008, p. 181), “The brain is exceedingly clever, not only in the social, affective, and
cognitive states it supports, but in the neural strategies it invokes to develop and main-
tain these states effectively over the lifespan.” A key question thus becomes whether
and how we can “foster cognitive success and resilience in later life by discovering ways
to forestall or reverse declines, and otherwise optimize the brain’s response to its own
aging.” The next several sections evaluate what we know about some possible routes to
that goal. In addition, a broader conceptual overview of both the multiple sources of
functional and neural challenges during aging, and the multiple potential routes for
adapting to those challenges, is provided in Figure 10.5, which presents the “scaffolding
theory of aging and cognition” proposed by D. C. Park and Reuter-Lorenz (2009).
Crucially, as depicted in this model, the forms of compensatory scaffolding that we
have been considering in this section, including greater frontal cortical recruitment,
more distributed processing, and enhanced bilateral brain activity, are not the only
ways to combat the functional deterioration and neural challenges that aging so often
• Shrinkage
• Frontal recruitment
• White matter • Neurogenesis
changes • Distributed processing
• Cortical thinning Neural • Bilaterality
challenges
• Dopamine
depletion
Compensatory
scaffolding
Aging Level of
cognitive
function
Scaffolding
enhancement
• Dedifferentiation of
ventral visual area Functional
deterioration • New learning
• Decreased medial
temporal recruitment • Engagement
• Exercise
• Increased default
activity • Cognitive training
Figure 10.5. Conceptual Model of the Scaffolding Theory of Aging and

Cognition. Reprinted from Park, D. C., & Reuter-Lorenz, P. (2009, p. 184), The
adaptive brain: Aging and neurocognitive scaffolding, Annual Review of Psychology, 60,
173–196, with permission from Annual Reviews. Copyright 2009, Annual Reviews.
brings in its wake. Within the reach of many older persons are several additional forms
of scaffolding enhancement that can help to bolster the level of cognitive function
that is attained. Prominent in that set of options are new learning, cognitive training,
exercise, and engagement. The following sections consider indirect longitudinal and
epidemiologic research that has examined the potential ability of these options to
counteract aging-related cognitive decline and to sustain mental agility despite
advancing years. Direct experimental interventions exploring the question of how to
behaviorally bolster mental agility—at all ages—are also rapidly growing in number,
and these will be taken up in Chapter 11.
Longitudinal and Epidemiologic Research

on the Benefits of Environmental Stimulation
An early important source of evidence for beneficial effects of environmental stimula-
tion or an “enriched environment” on agile thinking was provided by longitudinal
studies of aging, in which the performance of an individual is examined across time.
These studies led to the proposal that an older individual’s performance on complex
cognitive tasks is moderated by a broad array of factors relating to an individual’s
exposure to various environmental circumstances.
On the basis of a series of investigations in what has been termed the Seattle
Longitudinal Study, Schaie (1994; see also Schaie, 2005) outlined a number of factors
that appear to be “protective” against the losses associated with cognitive aging.7
These are “favorable life experiences or conditions [that] may forestall or attenuate the
declines typically seen in a variety of cognitive processes in later adulthood” (Hultsch,
Hertzog, Small, & Dixon, 1999, p. 245). Several of these factors specifically relate to a
more cognitively stimulating environment. Among these are the following: “histories
of occupational pursuits that involve high complexity and low routine,” “above-
average education,” “substantial involvement in activities [such as] extensive reading
habits, travel, attendance at cultural events, pursuit of continuing education opportu-
nities, and participation in clubs and professional associations” (Schaie, 1994, p. 310).
According to these researchers, a flexible style of personality in middle age, living with
a marriage partner with high mental ability, and a self-rating of high satisfaction with
life at middle or early old age also were “protective.”
Although readily stated separately, precisely determining the relative contribu-
tions of these several factors (e.g., education, occupational attainment, leisure activi-
ties) to continued adaptive cognitive functioning and also to the possible onset of
disease is complicated (e.g., Gilleard, 1997; Gurland, 1981; Hertzog, Kramer, Wilson,
& Lindenberger, 2008; Koepsell et al., 2008; McDowell et al., 2007). In part this is
because the factors themselves are not independent of one another (e.g., education
and occupational attainment are positively correlated, and occupations themselves
vary in the amount of social or interpersonal competence they require). Additionally,
however, each of these factors may themselves correlate with a host of other variables
that in turn may influence not only cognitive-neural functioning and health (e.g., diet,
stress, environmental toxins) but also may influence assessment, detection, and
classification of impairments (e.g., “detection bias,” Qiu et al., 2001). For example,
educationally related differences in “test-taking mastery” might affect how individuals

score on the neuropsychological tests that are used to evaluate cognitive function.
Education (and cognitive function) may also influence the development and long-term
maintenance of health-related dietary and exercise habits (e.g., W. Johnson, Dreary,
McGue, & Christensen, 2009). Additionally, it is often virtually impossible to deter-
mine whether baseline levels of ability or performance were equivalent across groups,8
and it is difficult to analytically separate out the contributions of social, physical, and
cognitive factors or “whether any of these three environmental activities is a promoter
of intact cognition or simply a self-selected marker of same” (Cracchiolo et al., 2007,
p. 278).
Nonetheless, while recognizing that the contributions are, in actuality, closely
interconnected, and underscoring such interconnections at several points, we will
here attempt to separately consider six factors: education, social interactions, occupa-
tion, leisure activities, second- and multiple-language use, and physical and cardiovas-
cular exercise.
E D U C AT I O N
Precise evaluation of the potential effects of education on the maintenance of cogni-
tive functioning across age, and on the risks for dementia, has proven particularly
elusive. Despite early influential studies that provided a strong impetus for the notion
of education as a source of reserve (e.g., Albert et al., 1995; S. M. Butler, Ashford, &
Snowdon, 1996; Farmer, Kittner, Rae, Bartko, & Regier, 1995; Shimamura et al.,
1995), and an early and important proposal by Katzman (1993) that education
increases synaptic density in neocortical association cortex, thereby increasing brain
reserve, subsequent evidence has proven to be more mixed. As noted by J. W. King and
Suzman (2008, p. ii), “remarkably, the dose-response curve for education predicting
most outcomes is very poorly known, and just what the active ingredient is remains
unclear.” For example, in a meta-analysis of over 15 population-based studies,
Valenzuela and Sachdev (2006a, 2006b) found—consistent with the notion of educa-
tion providing a protective effect—that the overall odds ratio for developing dementia
related to higher education alone was 0.53 (95% confidence interval: 0.45–0.62).
However, of the 15 studies, whereas 10 studies showed a significant protective effect,
5 did not, and there was significant heterogeneity in the effects. Similarly, McDowell
and colleagues (2007, p. 127) remark on the “widespread, although interestingly not
universal” evidence that points to a link between level of education and the incidence
of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease. These authors list outcomes from stud-
ies in seven different countries that have supported the link, but that are countered by
four studies from several different populations that did not support the link. Likewise,
Van Dijk and colleagues (2008) note that although “the most frequently mentioned
and well-established proxy measure of reserve capacity in the aging brain is educa-
tional attainment [. . .] it is noteworthy that recent articles based on longitudinal data
report conflicting results with respect to the relationship between educational level
and normal age-associated cognitive decline” (p. 119).
As noted, a wide array of correlated and potentially contributory factors make a
definitive determination of the magnitude and ultimate source of these across-study
differences very difficult to assess. Although many factors may be important, one par-
ticularly important consideration with respect to evaluations of dementia is whether
diagnoses are determined based on psychometric test performance or on clinical
grounds: A relationship between education and psychometric test performance may
be observed that is not observed when the diagnosis is made on clinical grounds
(Gilleard, 1997). For instance, in a review of 34 studies, Anstey and Christensen (2000)
found that all seven studies that used mental status measures reported a protective
effect of education—an outcome that is important in that “mental status measures
are notoriously poor at reflecting change at the upper end of the score distribution”
(p. 167). In contrast, although protective effects of education were also found on mea-
sures of memory and on crystallized measures of intelligence, the effects were more
mixed (5/7 and 3/4 studies reported protective effects, respectively), and for the two
studies that measured fluid intelligence no beneficial effects were found. Thus, the
presence of protective effects of education may, in part, depend on the nature of the
outcome measure.
Another important consideration is the number of measurements used. Although
numerous studies examine only two test occasions, as noted by Van Dijk et al. (2008,
p. 120), “the use of three or more assessments of longitudinal cognitive aging reduces
measurement error and is the method of choice, especially when nonlinear effects are
expected.” Also important are health, stress-related, and lifestyle factors, and how and
if these are taken into account in analyses. Lower education or lower socioeconomic
status may be associated with higher levels of stress, in some cases for prolonged
periods of time (e.g., Seeman & Crimmins, 2001; see also the later section in this
chapter on “Socioeconomic Status, Stress, and Brain Paths to Agile Thinking”). These
increased levels of stress may be associated with increased glucocorticoids that—in
turn—may be linked to memory impairments and reductions in hippocampal volume
(e.g., Lupien et al., 2005). Proneness to psychological stress has also more specifically
been linked with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (R. S. Wilson et al., 2003).
It is further worth noting that educational levels may themselves be determined by
varying individual, familial, and environmental factors; that education is many decades
removed from the time of cognitive or clinical evaluation; and that there is sometimes
ambiguity as to what comprises “lower” versus “higher” levels of education. Education
is most often based on self-report and dichotomized into levels involving less versus
more education. For example, the studies reviewed by Valenzuela and Sachdev (2006a,
2006b) most often separated groups into those with more, versus less, than 7 or 8
years of formal education. However, in a two-phase community study of nearly 500
older adults with middle- to high-socioeconomic status conducted in Ravenna, Italy,
DeRonchi et al. (1998) found that whereas the prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer’s
disease was higher among those with no formal education, there was no significant
difference in the prevalence of dementia for those who had at least 3 years, versus
more than 3 years, of formal schooling. In contrast, other studies have focused on
comparisons of the cognitive test performance of groups with much more extensive
formal education—contrasting groups with as many as 21 or 22 years of education
with those with 14 or 16 years (e.g., Shimamura et al., 1995) or less than versus more
than 16 years (e.g., Mortimer et al., 2003). Others have argued that, rather than years
of education, where the quality of educational experience might still vary considerably
even if correctly quantified, tests of literacy or reading level might constitute a better
predictor of cognitive decline than does education (Katzman, 1993; Manly et al.,
2005).
Nonetheless, recent outcomes also suggest that there is a real (albeit complex and
multifactor) association between education and dementia. McDowell et al. (2007)
using data from the Canadian Study of Health and Aging, with an initial sample of
6,646 persons, systematically evaluated possible artefactual contributors to the asso-
ciation between education and dementia. Participants living in the community were
screened at three time-points with 5-year intervals for mental status using the
Modified Mini-Mental State test (Teng & Chui, 1987), which has greater accuracy
(both sensitivity and specificity) than does the Mini-Mental State Examination
(MMSE; McDowell, Kristijansson, Hill, & Hébert, 1997). Individuals who scored
less than 78 on the screening test were given detailed clinical and neuropsychological
evaluations, with diagnoses based on a consensus between physicians and neuropsy-
chologists; in addition, clinical assessments of random samples of 983 persons who
screened negative were given.
The results, summarized in Figure 10.6, showed that there was a strong association
of education with the risk of dementia. For Alzheimer’s dementia, part of the asso-
ciation reflected other factors related to occupation, lifestyle behaviors, and socio-
economic status in general, but these factors alone did not entirely account for the
association. In addition, although the random sample of negative cases did show a
clear tendency to underidentify individuals with more education (of 16 cases of false
Incidence of demenita (per 1,000 person-years)
60
50
40
All dementias,
survivors + decedents
30
All dementias,
20 survivors only
10 AD, survivors only
VaD, survivors only

0
<6 6–8 9–12 13 +
Education (yrs)
Figure 10.6. Incidence of Dementia and Education Level. Data from the
Canadian Study of Health and Aging showing age- and sex-standardized 10-year
cumulative incidence of dementia per 1,000 persons as a function of educational level.
Cumulative incidence is shown separately for all types of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease
(AD), and vascular dementia (VaD). Reprinted from McDowell, I., Xi, G., Lindsay, J., &
Tierney, M. (2007, p. 132), Mapping the connections between education and dementia,
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 29, 127–141, with permission
negatives, 7 at the first assessment and 9 at the second assessment, only 1 had less
than 8 years of education, whereas 15 had more than 8 years of education), the number
of missed cases was too small to offset the overall educational association. Based on
their systematic consideration of alternative accounts, the authors concluded that their
analyses “support the notion that educational attainment does influence risk of demen-
tia, both directly and through a number of intermediate pathways”—yet “more detailed
questions remain to be addressed.” For example, does education lower the likelihood of
cognitive decline or reduce the seriousness of the decline—or delay its onset? Also, “if
the effect lies chiefly for those with very little formal education, what accounts for this
non-linearity in the educational effect?” (McDowell et al., 2007, p. 139)
An association between education and dementia risk was also found in a recent
follow-up of 1,449 individuals between the ages of 65 and 79 years from four separate
independent population-based randomly selected samples in the Finnish Cardio-
vascular Risk Factors, Aging and Dementia (CAIDE) study. Ngandu et al. (2007) used
a three-step protocol, in which persons who scored 24 or less on the MMSE were then
clinically evaluated for dementia (according to the DSM-IV criteria) and then probable
and possible AD. Compared to persons with 5 years of formal education or less, those
with 6 to 8 years of education had a 40% lower risk of developing dementia; for per-
sons with 9 years of education or more the risk was 80% lower. These associations
remained unchanged after adjustment for several demographic, socioeconomic, vas-
cular, and lifestyle characteristics, such as smoking, physical activity, and occupational
characteristics; furthermore, a similar pattern (though slightly attenuated) was found
when analyses considered the entire sample (rather than only those available to the
follow-up), suggesting that although differential loss to follow-up might reduce the
magnitude of the association, it nonetheless remains significant.
Other forms of evidence such as twin studies, also point to the protective role of
education.9 Analyses of the association between education and risk of dementia in the
HARMONY study of the Swedish Twin Registry (Gatz et al., 2007) found that lower
education was associated with an increased risk of dementia in both a co-twin control
analysis and a case control analysis. In the co-twin analysis involving 33 monozygotic
pairs, the nondemented twin had, on average, 0.85 more years of education than his
or her demented twin partner, and the odds ratio was 3.17 (95% confidence interval
1.26 to 7.93); for the case control analysis the odds ratio was 1.77 (95% confidence
interval 1.38 to 2.28). Although, as shown in Figure 10.7, there was a marked overall
pattern for the average number of years of education to increase across birth years,
nonetheless in all birth years spanning from before 1909 to past 1929 the nonde-
mented members of the study population had more years of formal education than
did the demented members. Analyses using genotype data for the apolipoprotein
E genotype showed that the relation between education and dementia was not medi-
ated by genetics, but by shared environmental influences that were related to both
dementia and to education, potentially involving, for example, childhood factors, such
as nutrition or intellectual pursuits, or midlife factors, such as occupation.
It is possible that, at least in some cases, higher education (and other protective
factors, such as challenging occupations) may act to postpone the time at which
clinical symptoms of dementia become apparent. Stated differently, for a comparable
initial clinical symptom picture the degree of underlying brain pathology may be
10
Average years of education

9
6
19 09
19 10
19 12
19 14
19 16
19 18
19 20
19 –22
19 24
19 26
+
–2
29
9
–
<1
09
11
13
15
17
19
21
23
25
27
19
Birth year
Not demented Demented
Figure 10.7. Twin Study of Education Level and Dementia. Average years of
education for dementia cases, and nondemented members, by birth year, in the
HARMONY study of the Swedish Twin Registry. Reprinted from Gatz, M., Mortimer, J.
A., Fratiglioni, L., Johansson, B., Berg, S., Andel, R., Crowe, M., Fiske, A., Reynolds, C.
A., & Pedersen, N. L. (2007, p. 234), Accounting for the relationship between low
education and dementia: A twin study, Physiology and Behavior, 92, 232–237, with
permission from Elsevier. Copyright 2007, Elsevier.
greater in those with “protective” factors (Y. Stern, 2006). To the extent that this is
true, and there is more underlying brain pathology present, it might be expected that
once symptoms do appear such individuals would show more rapid progression of the
disease—leading to more rapid decline in cognitive function and earlier death than
seen in those without the “protective” factors.
Stern et al. (1999; see also Scarmeas et al., 2003; Seeman et al., 2005) presented
cognitive evidence supportive of this view, with greater (more rapid) yearly declines in
memory performance on a memory task (the Selective Reminding Test) observed for
those with more years of education (greater than 8 years vs. less than 8 years). Similar
results have been found for those with higher versus lower occupational attainment, and
higher versus lower levels of earlier leisure activity, though the time scale here was only
an average of 4 years before diagnosis (Helzner et al., 2007). Teri et al. (1995) also found
that for Alzheimer’s dementia patients, higher education was associated with more rapid
declines on the Mini-Mental State Examination and other dementia rating scales.
In an extensive study designed to examine the relations between education, the
neuropathology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and cognitive performance, Koepsell
et al. (2008) studied 2,051 participants, aged 65 years and older, from 27 different
Alzheimer’s Disease Centers who died and underwent autopsy, and all of whom had
taken the MMSE within 2 years of death. The severity of neuropathology was quanti-
fied with several measures, including the extent and distribution of neurofibrillary
tangles (Braak and Braak stage), neuritic plaque density, and the Consortium to
Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease and National Institute on Aging/Reagan
diagnostic classifications. Consistent with the notion of a protective effect, higher
education (beyond high school compared with less than high school education) was
associated with higher final MMSE scores—but only when AD neuropathology was
absent or mild. For more advanced levels of AD neuropathology, there was little differ-
ence in the MMSE scores as a function of educational group, suggesting that the
advantages from higher education may not withstand the onslaught of more severe
neuropathology:
[A]mong persons with little or no AD neuropathology, we found higher

MMSE scores among more highly educated persons, compatible with better
testmanship. With mild AD neuropathology, a larger proportion of persons
with more education maintained normal MMSE performance, compatible
with a delay in clinical expression of AD as posited by the cognitive reserve
hypothesis. However, we found that any early advantage in cognitive test
performance associated with more education appeared to be overwhelmed
when AD neuropathology was advanced. (Koepsell et al., 2008, p. 1738)
Considering four different potential mechanisms that might underpin the modu-
lating role of education on the association between Alzheimer’s disease and neuropa-
thology, Koepsell et al. (2008) concluded that the observed pattern might most likely
arise from both the effects of enhanced test-taking abilities in persons with more
education (“testmanship”) and greater cognitive reserve. As schematized in
Figure 10.8, Koepsell et al. (2008) suggest that, if the effects of differences in educa-
tion on test scores were entirely a result of education being confounded with some
other factor (or set of factors) that was, in fact, the “real” explanatory mechanism,
then, after identifying and controlling for that factor, there should be no relation
between education, severity of pathology, and test scores (Fig. 10.8A). If, instead, the
effects reflect factors related to test-taking ability, such as better test-taking skills,
more extensive knowledge, or greater abilities for abstraction, then the pattern to be
expected would involve an “across-the-board” advantage for the higher educated group,
regardless of level of pathology (Fig. 10.8B). The pattern that would reflect greater
cognitive reserve might look quite similar to that of better testmanship (Fig. 10.8C).
Greater neuroplasticity, if it takes the form that “attenuates the rate of decline in
cognitive performance over time, not just the timing of the first deficits,” (p. 1738)
might be expected to show the pattern depicted in the fourth case (Fig. 10.8D).
However, the actual results appear to reflect a composite outcome (Fig. 10.8E), sug-
gesting contributions from both enhanced test-taking abilities and from cognitive reserve.
Finally, and from a different perspective, we might also point to findings from
research that has sought to more directly examine the relationship between neuronal
structure and education, including ongoing involvement in learning opportunities. In
important early work, Scheibel and colleagues (Jacobs & Scheibel, 1993; Jacobs,
Scholl, & Scheibel, 1993) found a positive relation between dendrite size and educa-
tion in a cortical language area (Wernicke’s area). Postmortem analyses further showed
that deceased persons with a college education had more dendritic branches than did
those with only a high school education. However, as noted by Satz (1993, p. 282),
A Confounding (after adjustment) B Testmanship
Cognitive performance
More educated More educated
Less educated Less educated
Minimal Advanced Minimal Advanced

Severity of AD neuropathology Severity of AD neuropathology
C Cognitive reserve D Neuroplasticity

More educated More educated
Less educated Less educated
Minimal Advanced Minimal Advanced

Severity of AD neuropathology Severity of AD neuropathology
E Composite pattern suggested by present study

More educated
Less educated
Minimal Advanced
Severity of AD neuropathology
Figure 10.8. Education, Cognitive Performance, and Severity of

Alzheimer’s Disease Neuropathology. Schematic characterization of the
differing patterns of association between cognitive performance and severity of
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) neuropathology, as modified by education, under four
accounts (A–D) and the composite pattern (E) suggested by the outcomes of the study
by Koepsell and colleagues (2008). See text for additional explanation. Reprinted from
Koepsell, T. D., Kurland, B. F., Harel, O., Johnson, E. A., Zhou, X.-H., & Kukull, W. A.
(2008, p. 1737), Education, cognitive function, and severity of neuropathology in
Alzheimer disease, Neurology, 70, 1732–1739, with permission from Wolters Kluwer
Health. Copyright 2008, Wolters Kluwer Health.
despite the “importance of these findings and the fact that they represent the
first evidence in humans linking concepts of educational experience and cognitive
reserve with dendritic regional arborization,” caution is clearly necessary in inter-
preting these outcomes given the relatively small sample size (20 neurologically
normal right-handers, 10 male and 10 female), marked intersubject variability, and
the number of variables that were examined. Equally important, intriguing and
suggestive as these findings are, they are susceptible to differing causal interpreta-
tions10—Were individuals who had more dendritic branching more likely to complete
further years of formal education, or did more years of education lead to greater
dendritic branching?
SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
Beneficial effects on cognitive function also have been reported to be linked with
continued engagement in social activities, such as social interaction of various
sorts—with a spouse, contacts with relatives or friends (visiting, telephone, writing,
e-mail), and activity in social groups. In an early large-scale longitudinal study (Bassuk,
Glass, & Berkman, 1999), pronounced withdrawal or disengagement from social
activities was associated with increased risk of cognitive decline in a group of 2,812
community-dwelling older individuals (65 years of age or older) who were followed
over a period of 12 years. After statistically controlling for age and for initial levels of
cognitive function, initial levels of social disengagement were significantly associated
with the probability of cognitive decline (measured using the 10-item Short Portable
Mental Status Questionnaire) at follow-ups of 3, 6, and 12 years. In any given interval
tested, older individuals who reported fewer types of social contacts were more likely
to show cognitive decline, and were at increased risk of death, than were persons with
more social ties.
This association remained significant even after controlling for other sociodemo-
graphic and health characteristics, such as education, income, housing type, physical
disability, sensory impairment, and level of physical activity. Furthermore, social
disengagement still predicted cognitive decline even when the analyses were restricted
to those individuals who had shown a 6-year history of consistently high levels of
cognitive performance before the interval over which cognitive change was evaluated,
so as to minimize the effects of undetected or early dementia on the outcomes. The
odds of experiencing cognitive decline were nearly twice as great in the least socially
engaged individuals (those reporting no social ties) compared with those who were
the most socially engaged (those who reported five or more ties).
Similar outcomes were reported by Fratiglioni et al. (2000), based on a 3-year
follow-up of 1,203 individuals, living in the community, and using information regard-
ing social networks obtained by trained nurses at the outset of the study (at which
time all participants were dementia free). Clinical evaluations established 176
incident dementia cases (126 Alzheimer’s disease and 32 vascular dementia). Analyses
showed that there was a significant and systematically increasing risk of dementia as
the individual’s social network quality decreased, as assessed by a composite measure
of living arrangements and the frequency and judged quality of contacts (satisfying or
unsatisfying) with family and friends. After adjusting for age, sex, education, baseline
cognition, and depression, the relative risk associated with a poor or limited social
network compared with an extensive or moderate social network was 1.6 (95% confi-
dence interval 1.2–2.1): that is, a poor or limited social network increased the risk of
dementia by 60%. Similar findings were apparent for individual measures of social
connectedness. For example, individuals living alone, and those without any close
social ties, both had an adjusted related risk for developing dementia of 1.5 (95%
confidence interval of 1.0–2.1 and 1.0–2.4, respectively).
Using a case-control method in Japan, with 60 individuals with Alzheimer’s
dementia each matched on a pair-wise basis to two controls, Kondo et al. (1994) found
broadly similar outcomes, with a significantly greater odds ratio associated with
surrogate-reported low frequencies of psychosocial behaviors such as letter-writing or
telephoning and visiting friends or relatives. Analyses of several other community-
based prospective studies have also consistently pointed to the protective effects of
social integration on longevity and cognitive function (Seeman & Crimmins, 2001;
also see Fratiglioni et al., 2004; House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988; Lövdén, Ghisletta,
& Lindenberger, 2005; Menec, 2003). In a further study, Seeman et al. (2001) found
that, in an older adult sample that was initially selected for relatively high levels of
physical and cognitive function at baseline (the MacArthur cohort on successful aging)
a measure of the frequency of all social contacts did not predict performance on a
more detailed cognitive assessment battery. However, the frequency of specifically
emotionally supportive interactions with spouse, children, and close friends and
relatives was predictive (Seeman et al., 2001).
Other research, involving up to four annual assessments of some 800 individuals
in senior citizen facilities in and around Chicago, Illinois, revealed that the experience
of feeling lonely was related to clearly increased incidence of dementia, even after
statistically taking into account such factors as the frequency of social, cognitive, and
physical activity (R. S. Wilson, Krueger, et al., 2007). Loneliness, as assessed by five
5-point Likert-scale items, such as “I miss having people around,” and “I feel like
I don’t have enough friends,” also was associated with lower levels of cognitive func-
tion at initial assessment and with more rapid cognitive decline during follow-up.
One possible interpretation of these findings is that “loneliness is a consequence
of dementia, perhaps as a behavioral reaction to diminished cognition or as
a direct result of the pathology contributing to dementia” (R. S. Wilson, Krueger et al.,
2007, p. 238). However, various considerations argue against this interpretation;
for example, loneliness was unrelated to several indices of neural pathology, including
beta-amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, or cerebral infarctions. An alternative
explanation focuses on the possibility that loneliness might somehow compromise
the neural systems that subserve cognition and memory, “thereby making lonely
individuals more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of age-related neuropathology”—
that is, decreasing neural reserve (R. S. Wilson, Krueger, et al., 2007, p. 239).
Social interactions have the potential to yield both many emotional and many cogni-
tive benefits that may amplify and augment one another. Social activities offer indi-
viduals opportunities for a healthy commitment to broader aims and concerns, with
avenues for the expression of their own views and contributions. Participation in social
activities also may provide emotional support and resources for decision making and
problem solving. Finally, taking part in social interactions is itself frequently a challeng-
ing and dynamic cognitive activity that may draw on several cognitive and emotional
processes, such as attentional and inhibitory control, memory updating and monitor-
ing, and understanding of others’ perspectives and feelings (e.g., Adolphs, 2001).
From a biological perspective, several of the brain regions in the extensive system
of limbic and associational cortical and subcortical networks that are important to
social cognition also support episodic and semantic memory, as well as other cognitive
functions. Thus, “it is possible that aspects of cognitive processing that allow people to
develop and maintain large social networks might also provide a reserve against the
development of cognitive impairment despite the accumulation of Alzheimer’s pathol-
ogy, or otherwise compensate for the effects of degeneration of non-social cognitive
systems” (D. A. Bennett et al., 2006, p. 411; also see Bickart et al., 2011; Kanai & Rees,
2011). Animal research has uncovered several detrimental effects of social isolation
on the brain, including decreased density of dendritic spines (dendrite branching) in
the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex (Silva-Gómez et al., 2003) and down-
regulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor—essential to synaptic plasticity—in
the dentate gyrus and CA3 regions of the hippocampus (Barrientos et al., 2003; see
especially the first section of Chapter 11); accompanying impairments in reversal
learning (Schrijver et al., 2004) have also been documented.
Recent analyses by Ybarra and colleagues (2008) of data from the Survey of
Americans’ Changing Lives (House, 1986, cited in Ybarra et al., 2008) demonstrated
that social interaction was a significant predictor of a measure of cognitive perfor-
mance, as measured by the MMSE, not only in older adults (aged 65–96 years) but also
in younger adults (aged 24–41 and 42–64 years). Notably, using an experimental
manipulation, these researchers also demonstrated that even a brief (10-minute)
experimental assignment to either a social interaction condition, involving discussion
of a social issue, or to a cognitively stimulating condition, involving a reading compre-
hension task, a crossword puzzle, and a mental rotation task, could boost cognitive
performance in healthy young adults (Ybarra et al., 2008, Study 2). Compared with
control participants who were assigned to watch 10 minutes of a situation comedy,
participants in both the social interaction and cognitive stimulation conditions
showed significantly higher speed of processing on a visual same/different judgment
task and achieved higher reading span scores on a working memory task. In the next
chapter we will consider several further cognitive experimental interventions that
may similarly enhance the cognitive performance of healthy young adults.
O C C U PAT I O N A L F A C TO R S
Other research points to the significant beneficial effects of engaging in forms of paid
employment that place high demands upon on-the-spot thinking and problem solv-
ing. An influential early series of studies (Kohn & Schooler, 1978) examined the effects
of complex work on cognition, using a combined set of measures that were designed
to tap—though clearly only partially and not entirely objectively—“flexible think-
ing.”11 Based on statistical analyses, using structural equation modeling, of longitudi-
nal data collected from a representative sample of American men across a decade
(1964 and 1974), Kohn and Schooler (1978) concluded that “job conditions offering a
challenge and the opportunity to do self-directed, substantively complex work increase
intellectual flexibility.” On the other hand, “work conditions that limit intellectual
challenge and self-direction on the job decrease intellectual flexibility” (Schooler et al.,
1999, p. 483). Findings based on a third testing of the original sample, collected in
1994 to 1995, pointed to a similar conclusion, even after the original sample had aged
a further 20 years.
More recent results from the Maastricht longitudinal study on aging, conducted in
the Netherlands and using independently assessed mental work demands for different
job categories (Bosma et al., 2003), provide stronger support for the possible protec-
tive effects of complex work on cognitive performance (see also Forstmeier & Maercker,
2008). Information on the mental work demands of various occupations was obtained
from an independent survey, in which 44,486 employees answered four questions on
the nature of their work. The questions were as follows: (1) Is your work mentally
demanding? (2) Do you have to concentrate strongly during work? (3) Does your work
require great precision? (4) Do you regularly work under time pressure? The average
percentage of “yes” responses to these questions was computed and then matched to
the job titles of 708 participants who had been professionally active outside of the
home and had a job title code (women who worked at home were excluded).
As expected, mental work demands and educational level were significantly posi-
tively correlated (r = .60). Comparisons of the cognitive performance for participants
with the greatest versus fewest mental demands at work (highest third vs. lowest
third) showed that, over the 3-year follow-up, those with the fewest mental demands
at work showed significantly greater declines in information processing speed,
memory, and general cognitive status as assessed by the MMSE. Although lower
educational levels also were associated with relatively greater declines in cognitive
functioning, these effects were markedly attenuated and, indeed, no longer signifi-
cant, after controlling for the effects of mental workload and, importantly, greater
mental workload had similar effects in the lower versus higher educated participants.
Three years after baseline, at which time none of the participants (aged 50–80) had
shown cognitive impairment, 4% of those with comparatively less cognitively demand-
ing employment developed some cognitive impairment compared with 1.5% of those
with mentally demanding jobs.
The outcomes of a study by Staff and colleagues (2004) that attempted to evaluate
both passive versus active reserve components as contributors to cognitive function
in older adulthood via brain imaging similarly underscore the importance of occupa-
tional attainment and challenges. (The distinction between passive and active reserve
was discussed earlier in this chapter in the section on “Brain Reserve, Cognitive
Reserve, and ‘Compensation.’”) The participants were 92 older volunteers, aged
79 years at the time of testing. They were a subsample of a 1932 Scottish Mental
Survey study (the 1921 Aberdeen birth cohort study) and included all those from the
cohort study who could be successfully imaged using MRI by Staff and colleagues. This
study contrasted the contributions of total intracranial volume, as a measure of
passive reserve, and education and occupational attainment, as measures of active
reserve, to memory performance (assessed using the auditory verbal learning test),
and nonverbal fluid reasoning (assessed by Raven’s Progressive Matrices). The analy-
ses also included measures of childhood intelligence (assessed at age 11) and age-
related pathology as measured by MRI. Total intracranial volume was not predictive of
either memory or fluid reasoning performance, but education was significantly predic-
tive of older adults’ memory performance, accounting for between 5% and 6% of the
variance. Occupational attainment was also predictive of memory performance,
explaining about 5% of the variance. In contrast to education, which did not predict
older adults’ reasoning abilities, occupational attainment also predicted nonverbal
reasoning ability (between 5% and 8% of the variance). This study thus points to the
important potential reserve effects of both education and occupational attainment,
such that “more education and a more cognitively complex occupation predict higher
cognitive ability in old age than would be expected for a person’s childhood ability and
accumulated brain burden” (Staff et al., 2004, pp. 1196–1197).
Outcomes from another longitudinal study, the Canadian Study of Health
and Aging, generally concur with the earlier findings but also point to the potential
importance of the duration of complex work and the possibility that complexity of
work with people and things may differ from complexity of work predominantly
involving data (E. Kröger et al., 2008). After adjusting for work-related physical
activity and education, it was found that high complexity of work with people or things
was associated with a reduced risk of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, but only for
individuals who held their principal occupation for more than 23 years (reductions of
64% and 55% for dementia, and 69% and 52% for Alzheimer’s disease for high
complexity work with people and things, respectively). In contrast, and surprisingly,
prolonged high complexity of work with data was associated with an increased risk of
dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, possibly reflecting elevated stress in these cases or
the absence of beneficial effects arising from social interactions.
Other researchers have suggested that the interpersonal aspects involved in higher
level occupations may play a particularly important role in the maintenance or buildup
of protective effects from sustained intellectually and interpersonally demanding
employment. In particular, Y. Stern et al. (1995) found that, among Alzheimer’s
disease patients who were matched on the severity of clinical expression of the
disease, those who had had occupations that involved more substantive complexity
and more interpersonal skills or had high physical demands (e.g., jobs requiring
eye-hand-foot coordination, climbing, balancing) showed greater deficits of parietal
blood flow—suggesting that the underlying disease process was more advanced
in these individuals before a comparative level of clinical deficits was apparent.
In addition, even after controlling for age, level of education, and disease severity,
both the interpersonal demands and physical demands of the previous occupation12
still accounted for unique variance in the measure of parietal function.
Protective effects against dementia of occupations involving higher complexity,
particularly occupations requiring the supervision of subordinates in the workplace,
were also found in a longitudinal study of the elderly conducted in Amsterdam
(Schmand et al., 1997)13. Similarly, benefits of intellectually demanding work and
higher levels of work-related human interaction and communication were shown in a
National Academy of Sciences study of World War II veterans (Potter et al., 2008).
This study involved a sample of 1,036 individuals who, in early adulthood, had been
given an assessment of intelligence through the Armed Services. These individuals
were then also tested, in late adulthood, via telephone as part of an epidemiologic
study of aging and dementia, during which they provided their occupational history
and completed the modified Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (similar to the
MMSE, but including additional content, such as immediate and delayed recall of a
10-item word list). Multivariate regression models revealed that both intellectually
demanding work and higher levels of human interaction and communication at
work were each significantly associated with higher scores on the cognitive status test.
This study also reported an interaction between the general intellectual demands of
the participant’s work and intelligence, such that persons who had obtained relatively
lower intelligence scores in the early adulthood assessment achieved greater cognitive
benefits from an intellectually demanding occupation. The authors concluded that
these findings “support the notion that intellectually demanding work is more than a
proxy for education or intellect, and that it produces an independent association with
cognitive performance in later life” (Potter et al., 2008, p. 1806; see also Rohwedder &
Willis, 2010).
Taken together, these findings are consistent with an “environmental complexity”
hypothesis that was first forwarded by C. Schooler in the early 1980s (Schooler, 1984,
1998; Schooler & Mulatu, 2001; Schooler, Mulatu, & Oates, 1999). According to this
hypothesis, complex environments are those that:
(a) Involve exposure to diverse forms of stimuli

(b) Demand the individual to make many and often complex decisions
(c) Involve contingencies or relations between events and choices that may be ill
defined or apparently contradictory
Such environments will both invite and require high levels of cognitive effort,
integrative thinking, and planning and coordination. They also are likely to motivate
individuals to develop their intellectual capacity and skills in ways that could be
generalized to other situations. They are, then, environments that will ask for, and
continuously encourage, agile thinking.
L E I S U R E A C T I V I T I E S A N D A G E - R E L AT E D C O G N I T I V E D E C L I N E
In an extensive review of cohort studies that examined the effects of education,
occupation, premorbid intelligence, and mental activities on the risk of dementia,
Valenzuela and Sachdev concluded that, of all these indices, the forms of leisure
activities individuals engaged upon most consistently emerged as highly important.
“It is evident that mentally stimulating leisure activity is the most robust brain-reserve
measure, since all these studies showed a significant protective effect even after
controlling for age, education, occupation and other confounds” (Valenzuela &
Sachdev, 2006a, p. 447). Several of the studies included in their review will be consid-
ered here. Nonetheless, there are also both less strongly supportive findings and a few
instances of negative findings with regard to the benefits of leisure activities particu-
larly with respect to reducing age-related cognitive decline—rather than dementia
risk, for which the evidence is much stronger. Negative and comparatively less strongly
supportive findings with regard to age-related cognitive decline will be considered
first, followed by more positive findings, and thereafter by a separate consideration of
the effects of cognitively stimulating leisure-time activities on dementia risk.
Negative and Less Strongly Supportive Findings

In a cross-sectional study of a sample of 204 generally healthy and well-educated older
and younger adults between 20 and 91 years of age, Salthouse, Berish, and Miles
(2002) observed no relation between self-reported engagement in various leisure
activities assumed to involve a range of cognitive demands and enhanced cognitive

function. The activities considered included hobbies, puzzles, reading newspapers and
magazines, gardening, and watching television. A cognitive stimulation index was
computed in which the level of cognitive demand of each activity was multiplied by
the number of hours per week that the activity was engaged upon, and then these
quantities were summed across all activities. However, there was some suggestive
evidence that a measure of “Need for Cognition” was positively correlated to three
composite measures of fluid intelligence and episodic memory for persons who scored
below the median for the sample (but still quite well relative to overall norms) on
measures of Block Design and Vocabulary. Based on these findings and consideration
of the methodological and conceptual challenges in studies attempting to assess the
impact of cognitive stimulation on cognitive functioning, these researchers cautiously
concluded that “it may be premature to reach a definitive conclusion about the validity
of the use it or lose it perspective” (Salthouse et al., 2002, p. 556; for additional review,
see also Salthouse, 2006).
There are also some findings that more specifically raise questions concerning the
degree to which particular types of activities, such as solving crossword puzzles, may or
may not carry benefits for cognitive function. Based on a series of four studies, each
with nearly 200 participants spanning the ages 18 to 80, Hambrick, Salthouse and
Meinz (1999) concluded that their results provided “no evidence to suggest that
amount of crossword puzzle experience reduces age-related decreases in fluid cogni-
tion or enhances age-related increases in crystallized cognition” (p. 131). However, this
series of studies also found another reason to impugn “crosswords” as a prototypical
example of cognitively stimulating activities. They found that, as expected, general
knowledge (and efficiency of word retrieval) was a very strong predictor of crossword
puzzle proficiency. In contrast, there was no direct relation between crossword puzzle
proficiency and any of several measures of abstract and fluid (on-the-spot) reasoning
ability, including a series completion test involving numbers, letters, and words, a
modified form of Cattell’s Matrices, verbal analogies, or an analytical reasoning task
that was specifically chosen because it required the simultaneous consideration of mul-
tiple constraints (as seems to be especially true of crossword puzzle solving).
Furthermore, this was true regardless of the level of difficulty of the items within the
puzzles, and also held across a wide range of puzzle difficulty and expertise.
Speculatively, these counterintuitive findings suggest that regular engagement in
crossword puzzles may lead to the development of forms of proceduralized knowledge
access, perhaps largely based on automatic processes, such as semantic priming, or
associatively cued semantic memory retrieval, that facilitate domain-specific or near-
transfer performance, but not performance on tasks that are less closely related.14 For
instance, in a study of expertise in the word game of Scrabble, in which tournament-
rated Scrabble players (elite and average) were compared with unrated novice players,
Tuffiash et al. (2007) found that elite-rated versus average-rated tournament players
differed from one another only on tasks highly representative of Scrabble performance
(e.g., generating words beginning with the prefix “un” and an anagram task) and not
on measures of digit-symbol coding, or more basic verbal indices such as vocabulary,
simple letter fluency, or four-letter noun fluency. In contrast, both the elite-rated and
average-rated tournament players showed verbal skills that exceeded those of the
novice undergraduate students (e.g., significantly higher vocabulary, and letter

fluency) but did not differ on digit-symbol coding.
In addition, two longitudinal studies have provided no or only moderate support
for a link between activity levels and level of cognitive functions. Aartsen et al. (2002)
found that self-reported involvement in various everyday activities (e.g., visiting
cultural institutions or cafes/restaurants) was not related to any of several dependent
measures that they examined, including immediate memory, fluid intelligence, and
scores on the MMSE. One relation for which they did find positive support was in the
other causal direction such that information processing speed (assessed by a coding
task) was related to attending educational courses. Based on the outcomes of various
cross-lagged regression models to evaluate the effects of everyday activities on cogni-
tive performance in older adults, these authors speculate that one of the reasons they
failed to observe beneficial effects is that, in addition to controlling for age, gender,
level of education, and health, they also included controls for confounding variables
and a measurement model to account for errors of measurement.
Positive and Mixed Findings

More mixed, partially or modestly supportive findings regarding the potential
benefits of leisure activities for counteracting age-related cognitive decline have
been reported in longitudinal or combined longitudinal and cross-sectional studies
conducted in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Mackinnon et al. (2003) examined cognitive change across three time points in
relation to common physical, recreational, and intellectual activities in an Australian
probability sample of persons aged 70 years and older (N = 887 for single time point
analyses, N = 294 for analyses across all three time points of 1991, 1994, and 1998).
Significant correlations were observed between the level of activity and measures of
memory (including word recognition, word recall, and free recall of a 5-item postal
address) and of crystallized intelligence (assessed by three items of vocabulary, three
similarities items, and the National Adult Reading Test). However, the rate of cogni-
tive change was no greater in a small subsample of participants (N = 27) who showed
comparatively low but consistent levels of activity across time than in the participants
who became less active across time, although there was a trend (p = .06) for the group
who maintained their activity levels to also show comparatively maintained levels of
crystallized intelligence.
Based on their longitudinal analyses of a sample of 250 middle-aged and older
adults from the Canadian Victoria Longitudinal Study, Hultsch, Hertzog, Small, and
Dixon (1999) found evidence to support both the proposal that more cognitively able
individuals tend to seek out stimulating environments, and that such environments
act to sustain or promote cognitive ability. Relatively less involvement in novel infor-
mation processing activities in particular was associated with a measure of memory
decline across 6 years, but a similar relation was not found for social or physical activ-
ity. However, there also were strong concurrent changes in cognition and activity levels,
suggesting that it may also be the case that changes in cognition lead to changes in
activity, rather than necessarily the reverse. These researchers (Hertzog, Hultsch, &
Dixon, 1999) also found support for such reciprocal causal effects in the longitudinal
data reported by Pushkar Gold et al. (1995, 1998).
Newson and Kemps (2005) used a composite measure of current activities, includ-
ing items related to household maintenance, domestic chores, social activities, and
service to others in both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of a subset of data
(N = 755) from a population-based study of older adults in Australia. The cross-
sectional analyses showed that, after controlling for the effects of sensory functioning
(visual and auditory acuity), a generally active lifestyle was associated with higher
levels of current cognitive function, though the effects were not large (increases of
between 3% and 5% in total variance explained on measures of speed of processing,
picture naming, incidental recall, and verbal fluency). A commonality analysis,
performed to partition the variance into unique and shared proportions, including
age, sensory function, and activity, showed that the total variance accounted for by
activity ranged from 5% to 14%. Similar modest beneficial effects of engagement were
observed in the longitudinal analyses from data collected across a 6-year interval.
After controlling for effects of sensory functioning, general lifestyle activity level pre-
dicted change scores on measures of processing speed (1%), picture naming (3%), and
incidental recall (3%).
In the United Kingdom, Gilhooly and colleagues (2007) conducted an examination
of the relations between mental activities and fluid reasoning in a sample of 145 older
participants, aged 70 to 91 years. These researchers reported a significant positive cor-
relation (r = .26, p < .01) between a composite score of mental activities and a fluid
intelligence factor score derived from several cognitive tests. In addition, simultaneous
multiple regression showed that mental activity levels made a separate contribution to
predicting current fluid functioning, in addition to contributions from other factors
(age, National Adult Reading Test score, and a measure related to socioeconomic status).
Notably, during an interview with the participants, the researchers also asked most of
the participants the question “Is there anything you deliberately do to maintain your
mental functioning?” There was evidence that individuals who reported that they delib-
erately engaged in mental activities showed a reduced negative effect of age on both
abstract fluid reasoning tasks and a measure of real-world problem solving—even
though this group did not differ from nondeliberate engagers in the sheer volume of
mental activities reported. The researchers speculate that perhaps “deliberate engagers
undertook more meta-cognitive processing and monitored and reflected more on their
own performance in order to identify useful strategies for solving problems, making
decisions and storing and retrieving information” (Gilhooly et al., 2007, p. 276).
Other studies suggest that it may be that some subgroups of older adults especially
benefit from increased cognitively stimulating leisure activities. For example,
Christensen et al. (1996) found greater activity-related benefits for participants with
low educational attainments. Similarly, Gilhooly et al. (2007) found that the beneficial
effects of leisure-time involvement were stronger for those participants who were
from the relatively most economically deprived areas (based on their postal codes)
compared to those from relatively affluent areas. Leisure activity was significantly
positively related to fluid intelligence measures for both groups, but to real-world
problem solving only for the less advantaged group.
Other efforts have focused on obtaining more precisely scaled measures of cogni-
tive activity and also on trying to include lifetime, rather than only cross-sectional,
measures of cognitive and other activities. R. S. Wilson et al. (2003) developed
a lifetime measure of cognitive activities in which participants were asked how

frequently they engaged in a number of common activities (e.g., reading a book,
reading a newspaper, playing games) at each of five lifetime periods (ages 6, 12, 18, 40,
and their current age). This questionnaire was then administered to a sample of 141
older persons (screened not to have dementia). Linear regression models that included
education as a predictor showed that lifetime cognitive activity was significantly
predictive of measures of semantic memory, perceptual speed, and visuospatial ability
but not episodic memory and working memory.
Similarly, Valenzuela and Sachdev (2007) developed the Lifetime of Experiences
Questionnaire (LEQ) to assess complex mental activity across the lifespan. This mea-
sure included questions relating to educational, occupational, and leisure pursuits in
each of three life stages (young adulthood: 13–30 years; mid-life: 30–65 years; and late
life: from 65 years or retirement onward). In a sample of 79 healthy older adults,
individuals with higher scores on the LEQ showed significantly less cognitive decline
over 18 months than did those with lower scores, as shown by a composite measure
of scores on a wide range of neuropsychological tests (r = .37, controlling for age,
baseline cognition, and hypertension). Examination of more specific cognitive subdo-
mains indicated that the LEQ significantly correlated with changes in performance in
attention, with trends also found for changes in central executive and working memory
domains.
Taken together, then, there is modestly strong albeit somewhat mixed evidence,
from longitudinal and cross-sectional studies, that engaging in more stimulating cog-
nitive and leisure activities is beneficial for maintaining aspects of cognitive function
(as opposed to more specifically reducing dementia risk, the evidence for which is both
stronger and more consistently positive, considered next). Future work using longitu-
dinal, prospective, or epidemiologic approaches might, as suggested by Hertzog et al.
(1999), aim to develop designs that are organized around life events that are impor-
tant to the engagement hypothesis. For instance, future research might focus on levels
and forms of engagement before and after retirement transitions and career changes.
Efforts to obtain more precisely scaled measures of cognitive activity that more closely
reflect likely benefits and actual engagement in the activity, and simultaneous data
collection ascertaining the perceived reasons for changes in activities provided by
participants would also be especially informative. Yet even the authors of one of the
studies that yielded the least strong positive support for the “use it or lose it” account
with respect to age-related cognitive decline did not conclude that activity made no
difference. Rather, Salthouse et al. (2002) concluded that:
Nevertheless, we would still recommend that people act as though there is a

positive relationship between cognitive stimulation and cognitive function-
ing because engaging in cognitively stimulating activities appears to do no
harm, it is often enjoyable for its own sake, and future research may eventu-
ally establish that it does have a beneficial effect in preventing or remediat-
ing age-related cognitive decline. (Salthouse, Berish, & Miles, 2002, p. 556)
In this same spirit, it is essential to keep in mind that there are multiple metrics on
which the value of an activity may be assessed. Additionally, for reasons that remain
to be fully elucidated, some metrics, such as age-related cognitive decline, may prove
less uniformly sensitive to the differential effects of cognitively stimulating leisure
activities than are other metrics, such as dementia risk. It is to this latter outcome
measure that we next turn and where we find more robust support for the benefits of
ongoing involvement in a diversity of cognitively and socioemotionally challenging
pursuits.
Engagement in Cognitively Stimulating

Leisure Activities and Dementia Risk
Support for the view that continued engagement in cognitively stimulating activities
may help to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s dementia has been provided by several
prospective longitudinal studies, and also using case control methodology. Friedland
and colleagues (2001) used a case-control methodology to compare the reported levels
of involvement in a broad range of nonoccupational activities by participants between
the ages of 20 to 60. The patients were individuals who developed probable or possible
Alzheimer’s disease and who reported to clinic settings in Cleveland. The patients’
lifetime involvement in activities was based on the reports of surrogates who had
known them very well for at least 10 years, whereas the controls were friends or
neighbors of the patients.
Individuals who later developed probable or possible Alzheimer’s disease had
lower levels of intellectual, passive, and physical activities during midlife than did the
control group. This pattern was observed after controlling for age, gender, adequacy of
household income level, and education. The odds-ratio of dementia for persons who
were reported to have engaged in less than the average level of activities was 3.85
(95% confidence interval 2.65–5.58). In addition, an increase in the level of engage-
ment in intellectual activities from the period of early adulthood to that of middle
adulthood also was related to a significantly decreased likelihood of Alzheimer’s
disease. Given the use of surrogate reporting, caution in interpreting these findings is
necessary. However, analyses of a surrogate substudy, in which controls were asked to
complete the surveys and also to have a surrogate complete the survey on their behalf,
showed that the means reported by individuals themselves versus their surrogates did
not differ significantly—suggesting that the surrogates may not have systematically
over- or underreported activities.
In an important prospective study, R. S. Wilson et al. (2002) examined rates of
clinically diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease (incident AD) and decline in cognitive func-
tion in a longitudinal cohort study of 801 Catholic nuns, priests, and brothers,
recruited from 40 groups across the United States. They assessed participants at
baseline, at which time they were 65 years or older, and on an average of more than
five subsequent occasions. Activity level was assessed using a composite measure for
seven common activities that involve information processing (e.g., reading books,
going to museums), with each activity rated on a 5-point scale of frequency (possible
range = 1–5, actual range = 1.57–4.71). A proportional hazards analysis showed that,
after adjusting for the effects of age, sex, and education, the relative risk of Alzheimer’s
dementia decreased by 33% for each 1-point increase in the composite cognitive
activity measure. For example, for a person reporting a high level of cognitive activity
at baseline (scoring at the 90th percentile for cognitive activity) the relative risk of
developing Alzheimer’s was 47% less than for a person who reported infrequent
cognitive activity at baseline (scoring at the 10th percentile). Similar outcomes
were obtained when excluding participants with especially low levels of episodic
memory at baseline (a possible very early sign of disease), and when including a
variable coding for the possession of one or more genetic risk factors potentially
related to Alzheimer’s disease, as well as when adding additional terms for depression
and other illnesses.
Higher cognitive activity levels also were associated with significantly attenuated
declines in cognitive function. For example, whereas, on average, the global cognitive
function score decreased by 0.043 units per year, the decrement was about 0.046 units
per year for someone in the 10th percentile of cognitive activity but only 0.026 for
someone in the 90th percentile of cognitive activity. More frequent cognitive activity
was associated with higher baseline function for each of several cognitive domains
examined, and it was associated with lower rates of decline for working memory,
perceptual speed, and (less strongly) episodic memory, but not for semantic memory
or visual-spatial ability. Although there are multiple possible interpretations, Wilson
et al. (2002) suggest that one possible interpretation of the latter findings is
that strengthening working memory and/or perceptual speed may help to offset or
compensate for age-related decline in other functions.
In their meta-analysis of some 22 studies, involving combined results for more
than 29,000 persons, Valenzuela and Sachdev (2006a) found that high levels of mental
activity, as determined by educational level, occupational complexity, or cognitive
lifestyle activities, resulted in an overall relative risk reduction of incident dementia of
46%. The odds ratios for these three different indices were quite similar to one another
(0.53 for years of education, 0.56 for occupational complexity, and 0.50 for cognitive
lifestyle). Very similar patterns were found when, rather than dementia incidence, the
outcome variable was cognitive decline. More recent studies reviewed by Valenzuela
et al. (2007) have concurred in the estimates of a protective effect for incident demen-
tia associated with cognitive activity especially later in life. Protective effects of
between 40% and 50% were observed after simultaneously controlling for other risk
factors, such as age, and earlier life experiences (e.g., level of education). Across six
studies with individual sample sizes between 469 and 2,040, and a combined N of
7,061, increased cognitive activity in later life was associated with an adjusted risk of
dementia between 0.41 and 0.67.
Further bolstering the inference that it was mentally stimulating activities, in par-
ticular, that were beneficial, in several of these studies (Fratiglioni et al., 2000;
Fabrigoule et al., 1995; Karp et al., 2006; Verghese et al., 2003) cognitive lifestyle
activities were related to incident dementia in a dose-dependent manner, such that
the higher the level of stimulating activities (e.g., the cognitively challenging leisure
pursuits were undertaken frequently rather than rarely), the greater the reduction in
risk. In their 21-year prospective study as part of the Bronx Aging Study, Verghese
et al. (2003) found, for example, that a one-point increase in the cognitive-activity
score—an increase that corresponded to participation in an activity for one day a

week—was associated with a 7% reduction in the risk of dementia. In addition, the
relation to incident dementia remained after adjustments for baseline scores that
could presage dementia and after the exclusion of participants who were diagnosed
with dementia during the first 7 years after enrollment in the study.
Similarly, in their prospective longitudinal study in France (the Paquid study),
Fabrigoule et al. (1995) found that whereas there was no protective effect against
dementia for engaging in one activity, participating in two activities reduced the risk of
dementia by 2.4 and three activities reduced the risk by 5. Although several specific
activities no longer showed a protective effect after adjusting for cognitive performance
collected at the same time (MMSE, visuospatial attention and visual memory, and
verbal fluency), other activities, particularly traveling, odd jobs or knitting, and garden-
ing continued to be predictive even after cognitive performance adjustment. Notably,
these authors suggest that the activities that remained predictive likely involve greater
attention control processes, “particularly innovation and initiative capacity and ability
to plan different activities in order to reach a goal” (p. 489) than do activities, such as
reading and watching television, that may rely more on automatic processes.
At a broad conceptual level, the latter outcomes are consistent with the iCASA
framework’s emphasis on the beneficial effects of maintaining a range of levels of cogni-
tive control for mental agility—especially given evidence that older adults may, by pre-
dominant preference, tend to rely more strongly on automatic processes. Thus, activities
that strongly call upon deliberate mental control may counteract a too narrow reliance
on habitual or automatic responding. (See, for example, Jacoby et al., 2005, and the
work of Jennings et al., 2005, discussed in Chapter 11, in the section on “Training in
Recollection: An Intervention with Transfer Benefits to Thinking”). For a similar reason,
engaging in leisure and learning activities that are novel, or that frequently require
adopting new approaches or viewpoints, may prove especially beneficial. (See, for
example, the beginning section of Chapter 11, on “Establishing Causal Connections:
Enriched Environments, Brains, and Flexibility in Nonhuman Animals”). Fabrigoule
and colleagues further suggest that rather than viewing the differing possible inter-
pretations of these patterns as mutually exclusive, it is quite possible that several
explanations are concurrently valid.
It is actually quite reasonable to think that (1) the activities correlated

with a lower risk of dementia imply cognitive processes such as initiative
capacity and ability to plan; (2) participation in activities contributes to
the maintenance of the attention and control processes that are crucial
for subjects’ environmental control; and (3) no longer doing these activities
may indicate a decline in the involved control processes, which may be one
of the early signs of development of dementia. (Fabrigoule et al., 1995,
p. 489)
Later, in Chapter 11, we will explore the beneficial effects of several direct, experi-
mental interventions that aim to increase attention and control processes on cogni-
tive and self-regulatory performance—including not only in older adults but also in
preschool children and in healthy young adults.
Second- or Multiple-Language Use (Bilingualism

and Multilingualism)
Does the frequent use of a second or multiple languages influence our cognitive
function as we age, and, if so, how? A key finding from psycholinguistic studies
that provides a first step toward understanding the possible effects of bilingualism
on cognitive processing across the life span is the observation that when adult
individuals who are bilingual are using one language, the other language nonetheless
remains active, at least up to the stage of activating words in the lexicon. For example,
when bilingual participants are asked to make lexical (word/nonword) decisions in
one language, words from the other language may nonetheless slow responding if, for
example, a word has lots of orthographically quite similar “neighbor” words in the
irrelevant language (for review, see Brysbaert, 1998; also see the section in Chapter 4
on “Coactivation of Meanings Consistent with Physical Form: The Consorting of
Meaning and Form”). This then, naturally raises the question of how the language that
is not currently directly in use is “kept out of the way” so that it does not excessively
interfere with ongoing processing. How can the languages be kept separate, so that
fluent processing proceeds?
In a model proposed by D. W. Green (1998), the appropriate selective use of one
language in bilingual speakers depends on inhibitory control, whereby the currently
nonrelevant language is suppressed. Crucially, according to the model, this cross-
language suppression is undertaken by the same executive functions that are used
more broadly to control attention and to allow inhibition in other sorts of tasks and
contexts. Consistent with this account, research by Bialystok (1988, 1993; Bialystok &
Viswanathan, 2009; Bialystok et al., 2009; see also S. M. Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008)
has provided evidence that bilingual children developed several control processes
more readily than did monolingual children—including selective attention to relevant
aspects of a problem, inhibition of attention to misleading information, and switching
between competing alternatives.
Considering the possible implications of D. W. Green’s (1998) model, and of such a
constant need for inhibitory control, Bialystok et al. (2004) observe:
If this model is correct, then bilinguals have had massive practice in exercis-
ing inhibitory control, an experience that may then generalize across cogni-
tive domains. If the boost given by childhood bilingualism is sufficiently
strong, bilingualism may continue to influence certain control processes
throughout the life span. (p. 291)
Does the “massive practice” related to inhibitory processes in bilingualism

affect the relative effectiveness of executive control processes during middle or late
adulthood? Particularly given evidence that older adults frequently show a decline in
just these particular types of processes, Bialystok et al. (2004) undertook to test this
possibility and to compare the effects of bilingualism as a function of age.
The task they chose to evaluate control processes is known as the “Simon
task” (Lu & Proctor, 1995). This is a surprisingly simple paradigm that taps into
stimulus-response compatibility effects. The particular rendition of the Simon task

adopted involved colored stimuli that were displayed on either the right or left side of
a computer screen. Each of the two colors was associated with a response key that, like
the visual stimuli, was on either the left or the right side of keyboard, aligned with the
visual stimuli. On the stimulus-response congruent trials the stimulus and the required
response were both on the same side; on the stimulus-response incongruent trials, the
required response was on the opposite side of the stimulus. Additional conditions
(Study 2) included a control condition, in which the stimuli were presented in the
middle of the screen, and more difficult four-color trials (including both congruent,
incongruent, and control conditions).
The participants were 64 younger adults (30 to 58 years of age) and 30 older adults
(60–80 years of age), from Canada, India, and Hong Kong, who were either monolin-
gual (speakers of English) or bilingual (speakers of English and Tamil, or English and
Cantonese, or English and French). All bilinguals were educated in both languages
from the age of 6 years and had continued to use both of their languages on a daily
basis (proportion of English use 55%, 48%, and 52%, respectively). The bilingual and
monolingual groups did not differ on several background measures, including the
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, the Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test, a measure
of verbal working memory, and a sequencing span task involving working memory for
digits. Additionally, all participants were approximately matched on education (all had
bachelor’s degrees).
Entirely in line with the prediction of a protective effect arising from the continued
daily use of two languages, the magnitude of the response time difference between
congruent and incongruent trials (the Simon effect) was significantly smaller for the
bilingual than for the monolingual groups. In addition, for the more difficult condition
involving four colors, there was a significant language use by age group interaction,
such that age was associated with a larger increase in response time for the incongru-
ent compared with the congruent trials in the monolingual than in the bilingual par-
ticipants. Furthermore, comparisons of the effects of the level of working memory
demands of the tasks, contrasting performance in the two-color versus four-color con-
ditions, revealed that although, overall, there was a significantly larger working
memory cost for older than for younger adults, this effect also was moderated by lan-
guage use. Specifically, the age-related increase in working memory costs was much
smaller for bilingual than for monolingual participants.
These effects are shown in Figure 10.9 but further differentiated by participant age
group (30–39, 40–49, 50–59, 60–69, 70–79 years). The first panel of Figure 10.9
demonstrates that the bilingual and monolingual participants performed virtually
identically to one another on the control trials, in which the stimuli were presented in
the center of the screen. However, as shown in the second panel of Figure 10.9, the
bilingual participants showed less of a working-memory cost from the requirement to
consider four possible colors and responses compared with only two colors and
responses (attenuated working memory cost, second panel). Bilingual participants
also showed less of a processing cost associated with the incongruent versus the con-
gruent stimulus-response mappings (attenuated Simon effect, third panel).
Additionally, these language-group differences in working memory cost (second panel)
(a) 1500 (b) 1500

1350 Monolingual 1350 Monolingual
1200 Bilingual 1200 Bilingual
Mean RT (ms)
WM cost (ms)
1050 1050
900 900
750 750
600 600
450 450
300 300
150 150
0 0
30–39 40–49 50–59 60–69 70–79 30–39 40–49 50–59 60–69 70–79
Age Age
(c) 1500
Simon effect (Inhibition)
1350 Monolingual
1200 Bilingual
1050
900
750
600
450
300
150
0
30–39 40–49 50–59 60–69 70–79
Age
Figure 10.9. Bilingualism, Aging, and Cognitive Control. Mean reaction

time (RT) for monolingual and bilingual participants as a function of age (by decade).
Panel (a) shows the mean RT for the control condition; the middle and lower panels
show, respectively, the mean RT cost for working memory (b), and the mean RT cost for
inhibition or the “Simon effect” (c). See text for additional explanation. Reprinted from
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Klein, R., & Viswanathan, M. (2004, p. 298), Bilingualism,
aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon task, Psychology and Aging, 19,
290–303, with permission from the American Psychological Association. Copyright
2004, American Psychological Association.
and the Simon effect (third panel) were more pronounced for persons in the older age
brackets (60–69 and 70–79 years).
Two other studies reported by Bialystok et al. (2004) replicated the central finding
of an increased resistance to interference (a smaller Simon effect) in bilingual com-
pared with monolingual participants even though, as in the study just reviewed, the
two groups were otherwise comparable on background measures and experience.
These outcomes—together with the unexpected observation that bilingual language
use also was beneficial more generally for the four-color condition that placed especial
demands on working memory—suggest that the executive processes that are called
upon to successfully and fluently manage two languages are also called upon in the
Simon task. The researchers speculate that:
These executive processes may not be neatly partitioned into parts that
deal with inhibitory control and others that are concerned with working
memory—it may be a more generalized set of control processes that manages
these complex procedures. In that case, the simple experience of bilingual-

ism that relies on some aspect of these processes to control the production
of the relevant language appears to yield widespread benefits across a range
of complex cognitive tasks. (Bialystok et al., 2004, p. 302)
Additional strongly suggestive findings regarding the lifelong effects of bilingual-

ism on cognitive function—but now exploring the possible effects of language use on
the time of onset of dementia—were provided by a further study by Bialystok, Craik,
and Freeman (2007). These researchers examined the records of all patients referred
to a memory clinic in Toronto over a 3-year period who had received a diagnosis that
included dementia. Eleven judges experienced in behavioral research with bilinguals
determined language use based on the patients’ case record information regarding
language history. Patients were classified as bilingual only if they had spent the major-
ity of their lives, at least from early adulthood, regularly using at least two languages;
cases where the judges could not reach consensus (21 patients) were excluded from
the analyses. This yielded a sample of 184 patients who could be classified as bilingual
or monolingual. Of these, 91 were monolingual and 93 were bilingual. Additionally,
each group had 66 patients diagnosed with probable Alzheimer’s dementia (some-
times with other conditions, such as depression) versus other dementias. The inter-
viewing neurologist determined age of onset by asking patients and their families
when symptoms were first noticed.
In line with the predicted beneficial effects of continuing to use two languages, the
results showed that the age of onset of symptoms of dementia was, on average,
4.1 years later in bilinguals (mean age 75.5 years, SD 8.5) than in monolinguals (mean
age 71.4 years, SD 9.6)—a significant difference. A significant difference also was
found for the measure of age at time of initial clinic appointment. Bilinguals, on aver-
age, were 3.2 years older than were monolinguals at the time of their first clinic
appointment. Importantly, the two groups showed essentially equivalent degrees of
impairment at the first appointment (average MMSE scores for the monolingual group
of 21.3 vs. 20.1 for the bilingual group). Additional analyses showed that the pattern
of delayed disease onset in the bilingual group was very similar for men and for women,
and also for both patients with probable Alzheimer’s disease (average onset delay of
4.3 years) and for patients with other dementias (average onset delay of 3.5 years).
Furthermore, these findings were obtained even though the bilingual group, on aver-
age, had significantly fewer years of formal education than did the monolingual group;
adjusting for this effect did not change the pattern of earlier dementia onset in the
monolingual versus bilingual group. Occupational status also did not account for the
effect: The monolingual and bilingual groups did not differ in mean rankings of
occupational status and bilinguals still showed a significantly later onset than did
monolinguals after including occupational status as a covariate.
There also was no evidence that the results arose from a greater reluctance of the
bilingual group to seek medical attention: Indeed, the time between onset of
symptoms and the first clinic visit was somewhat shorter (mean of 3.0 years) for the
bilinguals than for the monolinguals (mean of 3.8 years). Although in contrast to
the monolinguals, most of the bilinguals were immigrants whereas the majority of
the monolinguals were not, the difference in age of onset was still observed, and
significant, when confining the analyses to only those participants who had immi-
grated (average onset of 63.8 years for monolinguals vs. average onset of 75.3 years
for bilinguals). Finally, unlike the findings suggesting a faster rate of cognitive decline
(especially in executive speed and memory) in those with more versus fewer years of
formal education that were reported by Scarmeas and colleagues (2006), follow-up
analyses of the patients’ MMSE scores across the 5 years following the diagnosis
provided no evidence that there was a faster rate of cognitive decline in the bilingual
than in the monolingual group.
There are several reasons to be cautious in interpreting these outcomes—especially
given that, like many of the studies considered in the current chapter focusing on
indirect evidence, the study is correlational rather than experimental. Nonetheless,
Bialystok et al. (2007) rightly note that the factors that led participants to be bilingual
rather than monolingual predominantly occurred quite early in life, and this differs
from other factors, such as reduced midlife activity, that might more directly influence
subsequent cognitive function or potentially contribute to dementia (as in the research
reported by Friedland et al., 2001). Broadly in line with the views taken by many of the
researchers reviewed throughout this chapter, Bialystok et al. (2007, p. 463) reach
the speculative conclusion that “bilingualism does not affect the accumulation of
pathological factors associated with dementia, but rather enables the brain to better
tolerate the accumulated pathologies.”
Further support for the potentially beneficial effects of lifelong use of more than
one language is provided by a large-scale epidemiological study of older adults in Israel
that used representative sampling procedures and cognitive-screening measures
across three testing occasions over a period of 12 years (Kavé et al., 2008). These
researchers found that, on each of the three testing occasions, the number of lan-
guages that were spoken significantly contributed to measures of cognitive status,
above and beyond what could be predicted on the basis of other demographic factors
such as age, education, or age at immigration. Speaking multiple languages was also a
predictor of cognitive status in persons who had had no formal education.
The mechanisms that contribute to such protective effects remain to be fully deter-
mined, and only some of several possibilities have been considered here (e.g., func-
tional reorganization of brain networks; see Valenzuela & Sachdev, 2006a, and
Mercado, 2008 for a review of additional possibilities). Nonetheless, there is growing
evidence that the use of more than one language may require individuals to continu-
ously practice using inhibitory and other control processes that, in turn, may help
counteract the deleterious effects of cognitive aging. (See Kroll et al., 2008 for recent
review of neuroimaging and neurophysiological evidence relating to language selec-
tion; also see Emmorey, Luk, Pyers, & Bialystok, 2008, for evidence that, unlike two
languages within a single modality, two languages in different modalities, with one of
the languages involving spoken language but the other the motor-system signs of
American Sign Language that do not compete for “articulation” in the same manner,
is not associated with a corresponding enhancement of executive control function.)
More generally, Bialystok et al. (2007, p. 463) conclude that “it is increasingly clear
that biological factors interact with environmental experiences to determine cogni-
tive outcomes; the present findings suggest that bilingualism is one experiential factor
that can provide a positive benefit in this respect.”
Physical Exercise, Cardiovascular Fitness,

and Cognitive Agility
Although the potential beneficial physical effects associated with regular physical exer-
cise have long been known, several sources of indirect evidence (longitudinal, correla-
tional, and epidemiological) also strongly link physical activity with the maintenance
of cognitive abilities. For example, in a longitudinal examination of a large community-
based sample (the MacArthur studies of successful aging) Albert et al. (1995) found
that current strenuous physical activity (current energy spent in daily activities around
the house, such as yard work, cleaning, etc.) and a measure of cardiorespiratory fitness
(peak pulmonary expiratory flow rate) were direct predictors of cognitive change.
Higher levels of activity were associated with smaller declines in cognitive perfor-
mance as assessed by a battery of neuropsychological tests measuring language, non-
verbal and verbal memory, conceptualization (assessed by performance on the
Similarities subtest from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale-Revised), and visual-spatial
ability (copying a complex figure).
Similarly, in a 12-year longitudinal study of older individuals, aged 70–75 years,
Pignatti, Rozzini, and Trabucchi (2002) found that persons who walked at least 2 km
a day at baseline assessment showed significantly less cognitive decline on a Mental
Status Questionnaire (MSQ) at 12-year follow-up than did persons who did not regu-
larly engage in such activity. Furthermore, after controlling for baseline scores on the
MSQ, low levels of physical activity was associated with a 3.7-fold relative risk of cog-
nitive decline.
Results from a large representative sample included in the Swedish National study
on Aging and Care similarly pointed to the benefits of physical activity (Lindwall et al.,
2008). Individuals who engaged in light exercise (e.g., walking, playing golf) several
times a week achieved the highest MMSE scores and scores on a cognitive battery test-
ing working memory, episodic and semantic memory, attention, perceptual speed,
visuospatial ability, and aspects of executive function. In contrast, those who were the
least physically active showed the lowest scores on these measures. Other research
demonstrated that individuals who showed higher objectively evaluated levels of car-
diorespiratory fitness (e.g., peak oxygen consumption) at a first assessment showed a
significant advantage on tests of cognitive function administered 6 years later, includ-
ing measures of attention/executive function, verbal memory, and verbal fluency, as
well as a modified version of the MMSE (Barnes et al., 2003).
More generally, in a large meta-analysis of 134 studies that examined the effects of
physical exercise on cognitive function, Etnier et al. (1997) found an overall effect size
of 0.25, indicating that—overall—exercise had a modest positive impact on cognition.
Other recent reviews (e.g., Hillman, Erickson, & Kramer, 2008) have similarly high-
lighted the beneficial effects of physical exercise on groups such as school-age children.
The following chapter considers evidence from randomized controlled intervention
studies, including a meta-analysis of studies with older adults, conducted by Colcombe
and Kramer (2003), showing that aerobic fitness training significantly improved older
adults’ performance on several types of cognitive tasks, including speeded tasks, spatial
tasks, tasks requiring controlled processing, and—particularly—those placing clear
demands on executive functions (cf. C. D. Hall, Smith, & Keele, 2001).
Protective effects from physical activity for the risk of dementia also have been
shown. Data from a randomly selected community sample of men and women aged
65 years or older, collected as part of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging,
a prospective study on dementia, showed that, compared with no exercise, physical
activity was associated with lower risks of cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease,
and dementia of any type; after adjusting for age, sex, and education the odds ratios
were 0.58, 0.50, and 0.63, respectively (Laurin et al., 2001). Likewise, in a randomly
selected subsample of a larger population-based cohort in Finland (the CAIDE or
Cardiovascular risk factors, Aging, and Incidence of Dementia study), Rovio et al.
(2005) found that participating in strenuous leisure-time physical activity at least twice
a week in midlife was associated with significantly reduced risk of both dementia and
Alzheimer’s dementia at follow-up—even after adjustments were made for age, sex,
and education, and a number of health and lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol drinking)
and also for APOE genotype (odds ratio for dementia of 0.48, 95% confidence interval
of 0.25–0.91; odds ratio for Alzheimer’s dementia of 0.38, 95% confidence interval of
0.17–0.85). Reduced risk for incident dementia in those who self-reported exercising
three or more times a week compared to fewer than three times a week also was found
in a large 6-year prospective cohort study by Larson and colleagues (2006).
Nonetheless, as for each of the other potentially protective factors that we have
considered in this chapter, there are also some negative findings. For example, in their
prospective study of Catholic clergy that demonstrated clear protective effects of
greater cognitive activity on dementia risk, R. S. Wilson et al. (2002) found no
evidence for protective effects of physical activity for either incidence of Alzheimer’s
disease or for cognitive decline. Similarly, although, in a Japanese study, Yoshitake
and colleagues (1995) found that physical activity was related to somewhat decreased
risk of Alzheimer’s disease, they did not find a reduction of risk for vascular dementia.
Relatively small sample sizes, and consequently comparatively low incidence rates of
dementia, may contribute to some reported negative findings. However, as also for
the other factors that we have considered, experimental interventions—to be taken
up in our next chapter—will substantially strengthen the evidence base supporting
the roles of physical exercise and cardiovascular fitness in sustaining and promoting
mental agility in persons of all ages.
Socioeconomic Status, Stress, and Brain

Paths to Agile Thinking
Children of lower socioeconomic status tend, on average, to score below the levels
achieved by their middle class peers on tests of intelligence and school achievement
(Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; G. J. Duncan, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov, 1994; D. A.
Hackman & Farah, 2009). Such differences can be observed as early as preschool and
continue into grade school and into adolescence and beyond. Data from the Infant
Health and Development Program, an eight-site randomized clinical trial of early
interventions for low birth-weight infants, showed that even after adjustment for sev-
eral other family-level measures, 5-year-old children in persistently poor families
scored approximately three-fifths of a standard deviation below that of never-poor
children on a preschool and primary measure of intelligence (G. J. Duncan et al., 1994).
Similar findings emerge with respect to school achievement. Analyses combining data
across several large-scale nationally representative cross-sectional surveys showed
that, compared to nonpoor children, poor children between the ages of 5 and 17 years
were twice as likely to repeat a grade, and twice as likely to be expelled or suspended
from school; they were also 2.2 times as likely to not finish high school (Brooks-Gunn
& Duncan, 1997).
Multiple interrelated factors are associated with differences in socioeconomic
status and income (cf. McEwen & Gianaros, 2010). Clearly, poverty may lead to funda-
mental physical deprivation if families possess insufficient resources to meet their
basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. Poverty also leads to increased exposure to
stress, and decreased access to diverse forms of cognitive stimulation. The confluence
of multiple adverse conditions—physical, socioemotional, and cognitive—may be “a
key, unique feature of childhood poverty” (G. W. Evans, 2004, p. 86; G. W. Evans &
English, 2002). Low-income compared with middle-income children are exposed to
greater levels of violence, and of family disruption, and they experience more numer-
ous and higher levels of many forms of adverse physical conditions in their homes and
neighborhoods (Aneshensel & Sucoff, 1996). Such adverse conditions range from
increased exposure to air, water, and noise pollution, to inadequate heating in the
winter, to more frequent safety hazards within and outside the home, such as greater
traffic volume, more crime, and less playground safety, with fewer elements of nature
(G. W. Evans, 2004; Strife & Downey, 2009). Notably, as we will see in Chapter 11, in
the section on “Attention Restoration Theory and Experiences of the Natural
Environment,” even relatively brief exposure to natural elements, such as trees or
parks, may help to buffer individuals against the detrimental physiological and cogni-
tive effects of stress; the experience of natural elements may also specifically help to
restore capacity for directed attention, which might have additional carryover effects
on further activities, such as classroom learning and engagement.
The amount and forms of the cognitive stimulation that children receive, both
through speech and interactions with their parents and through the availability and
diversity of books, toys, activities, and experiences such as travel and cultural events,
differ considerably with socioeconomic level (Bradley et al., 2001). Children from poor
families have been found to have less access to a wide range of different recreational
and learning materials, beginning in infancy and continuing through adolescence. At
all ages (infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence) children from
poor families are far less likely to have three or more children’s books (Bradley et al.,
2001); they are less likely to go on trips or to visit a library or museum, and they are
less likely to be given lessons to enhance their skills in domains such as music or
sports.
Thus, poverty limits children’s access to developmental stimulation and heightens
their exposure to stress—both physically and psychosocially (Dearing, 2008). As fur-
ther developed later in this section, such stress is shown biologically: Children from
lower socioeconomic (SES) levels tend to show higher levels of the steroid hormone
cortisol, which in humans is associated with the action of the hypothalamic-pituitary-
adrenal axis stress response system (G. W. Evans & English, 2002; Lupien et al., 2001).
Poverty also leads to heightened parental stress, associated with parental factors such
as depressive symptoms that, in turn, lead to changes in parenting behaviors that may
detrimentally influence children’s socioemotional function (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan,

1997; Dearing, 2008). Additionally, there is evidence that access to stimulating mate-
rials and experiences may mediate the relation between SES and not only cognitive
functioning (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997), including language ability (Farah et al.,
2008), but also children’s behavior problems (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002), with the
absence of appropriate stimulation associated with a lack of engagement and boredom
and frustration.
At the cognitive-developmental level, differences with respect to especially spoken
language skills may be prominent. Children from families at a higher SES show a larger
productive vocabulary than do children from middle or lower SES levels (Hoff, 2003;
M. L. Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009; cf. Kohen et al., 2002), and children from impov-
erished backgrounds show deficits in their spoken language capabilities relative to
their general cognitive abilities. Mothers with higher education tend to talk and read
with and to their children more, and to use a richer vocabulary (Bradley et al., 2001).
In a study of kindergarten children, Noble et al. (2005) found that several aspects of
language ability, including vocabulary, syntactic ability, and phonological awareness,
were associated with SES. These researchers (Noble et al., 2007) also found that lan-
guage ability, particularly semantic abilities, may mediate the association between
SES and executive function and cognitive control, and it may partially mediate the
association between SES and assessments of memory, working memory, and visu-
ospatial skills.
More recently, M. L. Rowe and Goldin-Meadow (2009) demonstrated that SES-
related differences in children’s vocabulary emerge as early as 14 months of age, with
children from higher SES families using gesture to communicate a broader range of
meanings than children from lower SES families. This relation was mediated by more
diverse and extensive use of gesture by higher SES parents, suggesting that both dif-
ferences in parent speech and in parent-child gesture may contribute to later vocabu-
lary skill (see also the discussion of the role of gesture as a concrete, physically
grounded means of extending and bootstrapping thinking in the section, “Not an
Epiphenomenon: Gestures as Representational Actors within—and Sometimes
Prescient Precursors to—Thinking,” in Chapter 4).
Focusing specifically on assessments of executive functioning and fluid thinking
and reasoning, Ardila and colleagues (2005) found significant positive correlations
between parents’ years of education and the scores of both younger children (aged 5–6
years) and older children (aged 13–14 years) on several measures of fluency. Significant
positive correlations were observed for semantic verbal or category fluency (animal
names), phonemic fluency (words beginning with the letter M), semantic graphic
fluency (drawing pictures of meaningful objects), and figural fluency (drawing
geometric designs). A similar pattern, across age groups, was observed for a test of
similarities, requiring the child to find commonalities between pairs of words such as
“dog and cat” or “liberty and justice.” In contrast, parental educational level was not
associated with nonverbal tasks of progressive matrices and card sorting, suggesting
that the effect of parental educational differences on children’s performance is greater
for verbal than for nonverbal tests.
A comprehensive and analytical attempt to differentiate between the effects of SES
on different prefrontal/executive functions was undertaken by Farah and colleagues
(2006). These researchers developed separate assessments of three prefrontal/

executive brain systems and associated functional abilities: lateral prefrontal cortex/
working memory, anterior cingulate/cognitive control, and ventromedial prefrontal/
reward processing systems, as well as of four other functional systems, including
occipitotemporal/pattern vision, parietal/spatial cognition, left perisylvian/language,
and medial temporal/memory systems. This study also included rigorous controls for
infancy and childhood health factors that might compromise neurocognitive function
in the lower SES children. The children were part of a cohort of children followed since
birth as control participants in a longitudinal study on the effects of prenatal cocaine
exposure and had received annual or semiannual pediatric screenings as part of that
study. A total of 60 children, including 30 low SES African American children from the
control cohort and 30 middle SES African American children, were tested.
Each functional system was assessed using two different tasks for which there
exists functional brain localizing evidence in children and/or adolescents as well as in
adults. To take two examples, the tasks for the lateral prefrontal cortex/working
memory system were a spatial working memory task and a “two-back” (n-back) task
using letters, whereas the tasks intended to assess the anterior cingulate cortex/cog-
nitive control system included a go-no go task (in which children were to respond as
quickly as possible to any presented digits, except 4) and a number Stroop task (in
which children sorted cards either on the basis of the value of the digits shown, or the
number of digits shown, with the digits and the number of digits that were presented
either congruent or incongruent with one another).
Results showed that there was a significant overall advantage across the test bat-
tery for children of middle SES compared with low SES; this effect did not interact
with either age or gender. Comparisons across the tasks that were supported by differ-
ent brain systems, however, also demonstrated that the SES effect was not uniform;
some functional/neurocognitive systems were differentially adversely affected.
Consistent with other findings, the differences were most strongly pronounced for
the subtests focusing on language and memory. There was also a significant difference
in the lateral prefrontal/working memory composite score and a strong trend toward
a difference in the anterior cingulate/cognitive control composite. No effect was
observed on the ventromedial prefrontal/reward-processing composite measure, and
weak but not significant trends were found for the parietal/spatial cognition
and occipitotemporal/visual cognition measures. These findings are summarized in
Figure 10.10, which presents the effect sizes, measured in standard deviations of
separation between the low and middle SES group performance, separately for the
seven different functional/neurocognitive systems.
The absence of a significant effect of SES on ventromedial prefrontal reward
processing—here involving a measure of “reversal learning”—is noteworthy. In these
tasks children had to “unlearn” an earlier association between a given stimulus and
reward (see the section on “Set Shifting and Reversal Learning” in Chapter 8), and also
were asked to delay an action in order to maximize reward. Although this outcome is
contrary to some assumptions and also to early suggestive findings (e.g., G. W. Evans
& English, 2002) that increasing SES is associated with an increased ability to resist
impulse and delay gratification for the sake of larger future rewards, other investiga-
tions by this group (e.g., Noble et al., 2007) also found no association between SES and
1.0
0.8
Effect size
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
e ory ol g ory n n
gu
ag
em ntr sin
em ogn
itio itio
n m e co oces M o gn
La ng itiv rd pr al
c lc
rki gn ati ua
Wo Co ewa Sp Vis
R
Figure 10.10. The Influence of Socioeconomic Status on Cognition.

Effect sizes, measured in standard deviations of separation between the performance
of the low socioeconomic status (SES) and middle SES groups, on the composite
measures of seven different functional/neurocognitive systems including (from left to
right): language, working memory, cognitive control, reward processing, memory,
spatial cognition, and visual cognition. Black bars represent effect sizes for statistically
significant effects; gray bars represent effect sizes for nonsignificant effects. See text
for additional explanation. Reprinted from Farah, M. J., Shera, D. M., Savage, J. H.,
Betancourt, L., Giannetta, J. M., Brodsky, N. L., Malmud, E. K., & Hurt, H. (2006, p.
168), Childhood poverty: Specific associations with neurocognitive development, Brain
Research, 110, 166–174, with permission from Elsevier. Copyright 2006, Elsevier.
tests of executive-reward processing and delay of gratification. As Farah and colleagues

(2006) observe, these results are consistent with evidence that the ventromedial areas
of the prefrontal cortex may develop relatively earlier than other regions (Fuster,
2002) and may therefore be less susceptible to detrimental effects of childhood
poverty; in contrast, the prolonged maturational periods for the language and execu-
tive function systems might lead these systems to also carry increased susceptibility
to environmental effects.
The substantial effect of SES on the medial temporal/memory system—here
assessed by incidental word-picture and face learning tasks—also is especially note-
worthy. In additional work, Farah et al. (2008) found that performance on this memory
composite was related to a composite measure of parental nurturance, including the
warmth and availability of parental care: Regression analyses indicated that each stan-
dard deviation of difference in parental nurturance was associated with about one-
third of a standard deviation of difference in memory ability.
These findings are consistent with the possibility that impairments in medial
temporal function in children with lower SES may be related to the multiple forms
and sources of increased levels of socioemotional stress in low SES families (Evans
& English, 2002; L. Li et al., 2007; Lupien et al., 2001; Lupien et al., 2005. Also see
the discussion later in this section of findings from G. W. Evans & Schamberg, 2009,
relating childhood poverty to chronic physiological stress and reduced working

memory.) The hippocampus is not only crucially involved in particularly declarative
and relational or contextual forms of memory, but it is also a target of stress
hormones. It has a very high concentration of receptors for corticosteroids, and it
participates in terminating the stress response through gluco-corticoid-mediated
negative feedback that inhibits the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis
(Kim & Diamond, 2002). The adverse effects of stress, arising from particularly
prolonged or intense stress, are largely mediated by the glucocorticoid receptors
(Sapolsky et al., 2000). Adverse effects may involve both transient and permanent
changes that can influence learning and memory, including alterations of synaptic
plasticity, morphological changes (e.g., in hippocampal dendrites), and even cell death
(necrosis), as well as suppression of adult neurogenesis (Kim & Diamond, 2002;
McEwen, 2001, 2008). For example, posttraumatic stress disorder has been associated
with atrophy of the hippocampus in adults that further correlates with deficits in
declarative memory (Bremner, 2007; Kitayama et al., 2005).
Using the brain imaging technique of voxel-based morphometry (also adopted in
the studies of London taxi drivers, described earlier in this chapter), Gianaros and
colleagues (2007) found that in healthy older women, prospective reports of perceived
stress, evaluated every 1–3 years over a 20-year period, were correlated with reduc-
tions in gray matter density in the right hippocampus (and orbitofrontal cortex).
Based on animal models of chronic stress, the mechanisms underlying such reduc-
tions in hippocampal volume may include a decrease in the generation of new neurons
(neurogenesis) in the dentate gyrus, a retraction and debranching of apical dendrites
of pyramidal neurons in the CA3 region of the hippocampus, as well as decreases in
hippocampal cell body size and decreased expression of dendrite spines (Fuchs &
Flügge, 1998; McEwen, 2001; Sapolsky, 2000).15 The important role of environmental
enrichment and also physical activity in sustaining neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus
is discussed in Chapter 11.
Using an electrophysiological approach, Kishiyama and colleagues (2009) showed
that prefrontal-dependent ERP measures of attention were reduced in children from
low SES backgrounds compared with children from higher SES backgrounds. The task
was a simple target detection task, in which frequent standard stimuli (upright black
triangles, comprising 75% of the trials) and infrequent (15%) novel stimuli (pleasant
and moderately arousing colored pictures from the International Affective Picture
System) were presented. The children were instructed to ignore both the standard
stimuli and the novel pictures and to press a button only to target stimuli that con-
sisted of tilted rather than upright triangles; these target stimuli were presented
unpredictably on 10% of the trials.
Electrophysiological analyses showed that, for the frequent standard stimuli, two
early ERP components (the extrastriate PI and N1 components) that are modulated by
the degree of voluntary attention through top-down control by the lateral prefrontal
cortex were attenuated in the low SES group. The low SES group also showed a signifi-
cantly attenuated novelty N2 response to the infrequent novel stimuli—reflecting a
reduced automatic response to novelty. The N2 component is dependent on a distrib-
uted novelty-processing network that also crucially involves the prefrontal cortex
(e.g., Knight & Scabini, 1998; see also the section on “Novelty, Reward, and Exploration”
in Chapter 9). In contrast, the two groups did not differ in responses to targets (P3b).
These outcomes are consistent with the possibility that the environmental
deprivation and stress associated with the life experiences of low SES children may
particularly adversely affect prefrontal cortex development. Both the attenuated early
attention-sensitive components and the reduced ERP novelty response parallel those
found in patients with lateral prefrontal lesions (Barceló et al., 2000; Yago et al., 2004).
On neuropsychological testing, children from lower SES also showed reduced working
memory span as assessed by digit span (with the scaled performance of the higher
SES children exceeding norms by more than one standard deviation, but that of lower
SES children near the mean) and reduced flexibility on the alternating portion of the
Trail Making test. The latter task, in which the test-taker must alternate between
marking sequentially increasing numbers versus letters, requires both set shifting and
inhibition. In contrast, no impairments in the performance of the lower SES children
were observed on the simpler noninhibitory portion of the Trail Making test that
required attention to numbers only, rather than intermixed numbers and letters.
The relation between childhood poverty, chronic stress, and cognitive function,
specifically working memory, in young adults has also more explicitly been demon-
strated in a recent investigation that used a biological measure of chronic physiologi-
cal stress. Drawing on results from a longitudinal study on rural poverty, G. W. Evans
and Schamberg (2009) were able to obtain data for 195 young Caucasian adults on the
duration of childhood poverty exposure, their working memory, and a measure of
“allostatic load”—“an index of cumulative wear and tear on the body caused by
repeated mobilizations of multiple physiological systems over time in response to
environmental demands” (p. 6545). As noted by McEwen (2008, p. 175), the term
“allostatis” refers to the “active process by which the body responds to daily events
and maintains homeostasis” or is able to achieve “stability through change.” Adaptive
responses to sudden unexpected or stressful events, such as increased catecholamines
(e.g., norephinephrine) that increase heart rate and blood pressure, if chronically
increased or dysregulated, may lead to disease. The notion of “allostatic load,” or “over-
load,” was introduced by McEwen and colleagues to refer to “the wear and tear that
results from either too much stress or from inefficient management of allostatis,” such
as not turning off the response when it is no longer needed or not habituating
to a recurrent stressor and so not attenuating the allostatic response (McEwen, 2008,
p. 175; see also Ganzel, Morris, & Wethington, 2010).
Allostatic load thus reflects an organism’s attempt to maintain bodily equilibrium
in multiple response systems (e.g., cardiovascular, endocrine, neuronal), and it was
assessed by G. W. Evans and Schamberg (2009) as the sum of six risk factors on which
the participant scored above the median, including resting diastolic and systolic blood
pressure, overnight cortisol, overnight epinephrine and norepinephrine, and body
mass index. Each of these physiological measures, and the summary measure of allo-
static load, were assessed at age 9 years, and again at age 13 years, with chronic allo-
static load computed as the average across the two assessments. Working memory was
assessed at age 17 years, and it was computed as the maximum number of visually
spatially presented stimuli that the participants could recall in correct sequential
order, averaged across two assessments (separated by 1 hour).
Results showed that, the greater the proportion of a child’s life growing up in
poverty (measured at birth, 9, 13, and 17 years), the higher the degree of cumulative
wear and tear on his or her body. In addition, there was a significant negative relation
between the proportion of life in childhood poverty and working memory scores in
young adulthood. This relation between poverty and working memory was signifi-
cantly attenuated when childhood allostatic load was added to the regression equa-
tion. Furthermore, allostatic load during childhood significantly predicted working
memory in young adulthood.
Although these studies all provide evidence that is correlational, and so interpreta-
tive caution is clearly necessary, findings from other sources and using other techniques
broadly support proposals that “family income per se influences family investments in
children, family stress processes, and, in turn, children’s psychological development”
(Dearing, 2008, p. 328). For example, in a number of U.S. states in the late 1960s to
early 1970s, randomly selected families who fell below prespecified income levels were
“negatively taxed”—that is, given an income allowance. In addition to more direct
health benefits (e.g., improved nutritional adequacy in rural sites in Iowa and North
Carolina, and fewer children with low birth weight in the Gary, Indiana site), compared
with children in control group families, children in the experimental group showed
improved school attendance (rural and Seattle/Denver sites), improved academic grades
(Gary site, grades 7 to 10), and higher achievement test scores (rural and Gary sites);
they also completed more years of schooling (New Jersey site) (Salkind & Haskins,
1982). Other research that has followed children through “naturally occurring” changes
in family resources also has demonstrated within-child associations between family
income and behavioral problems. Children showed fewer externalizing problems such
as physical or verbal aggression during times when their families’ income was relatively
high compared to when it was relatively low, and this effect was particularly pronounced
for chronically poor families (Dearing, McCartney, & Taylor, 2006).
From another perspective, it might be noted that one recurrent and pervasive
socioemotional aspect of poverty—involving relatively lower “power,” in the broad
senses of “empowerment,” across a range of socioeconomic and other circumstances—
may itself detrimentally impact executive function. Such impairments associated with
lower social/interactional power have been found even when induced via relatively
transient and modest experimental manipulations in university students (Guinote,
2007; P. K. Smith et al., 2008). In university students (who otherwise might be gener-
ally characterized as a relatively “advantaged” group), across three different manipula-
tions of power, P. K. Smith and colleagues (2008) found impairments of executive
functioning in those with lower power, including impairments in processes of inhibit-
ing and updating, as well as planning. Performance deficits associated with lower
power emerged under quite different experimental manipulations, including semantic
priming of concepts of relative dominance versus subordination, assignment to an
evaluator versus evaluated role, and autobiographical recollection of situations involv-
ing power versus powerlessness. Furthermore, the impairments did not appear to
reflect differences in motivation. The groups reported putting similar amounts of
effort into the tasks and, more persuasively, performed similarly on a task that largely
continuously, rather than only intermittently, demanded inhibiting prepotent
responses, suggesting an increased likelihood of disruption of more difficult goal
maintenance under conditions of low power.
These findings also prompt the question of how much of the SES differences that
are observed relate to long-term versus immediately proximate effects in the testing
situations. Here we might recall the work of G. L. Cohen and colleagues (2006,
2009) on self-affirmation interventions to counteract the detrimental effects of
stereotype threat that demonstrated clear beneficial effects on the academic perfor-
mance of African American school children. (See the section on “Self-Affirmation and
Flexible Thinking” in Chapter 6; also compare with evidence reported by Sherman
et al., 2009, that self-affirmation reduced stress-related increases in epinephrine in
college students taking an important examination, with this effect most pronounced
in students who were most concerned about negative college evaluation; compare,
too, with the recent “social belongingness” intervention adopted by Walton & Cohen,
2011). Similarly, objective and immediately proximate effects of a given environment on
test performance might encompass aspects of natural versus urban environments.
Both actual walks and viewing pictures of natural scenes were found to improve
measures of working memory and attention compared to walking in, or viewing
pictures of, typical urban contexts (Berman et al., 2009; see the section on “Attention
Restoration Theory and Experiences of the Natural Environment” in the following
chapter).
Thus, although no one investigation or methodological approach can support
specific causal claims of a relation between the adverse physical and socioemotional
environmental conditions that characterize the lives of children, youth, and adults of
lower SES, and their tendency to obtain lower scores on assessments of executive,
memory, and attention function, the evidence to date clearly indicates that there are
multiple contributors. Furthermore, those contributors encompass factors beyond
SES disparities in any one domain such as health or nutrition alone (e.g., Farah et al.,
2008). Both the absence of multiple forms of positive environmental stimulation, and
the unfortunate and far too-frequent presence of stressful and harmful stimuli, add to
the burden and to the substantial human costs of poverty, and they contribute to
income and SES-related discrepancies in neurocognitive function and achievement.
Deep economic disparities may progressively undermine the capacity for creatively,
adaptively, and resiliently overcoming adversity, diminishing the mental agility of
those who, sadly, may need it most given the many sources of stress that poverty brings
in its wake.
Multidimensional Interventions in
the Community: Promising Beginnings
In this, the final section of this chapter, we will return to the other end of the develop-
mental spectrum and briefly consider innovative broadly based or “multimodal” inter-
ventions that have been undertaken to promote more extensive and more diverse
cognitive, social, and physical engagement in particularly older adults, and that have
evaluated how these interventions affect measures of health and cognitive function.
Two prominent examples of such interventions are the Experience Corps program and
the Senior Odyssey program, developed as a parallel to the “Odyssey of the Mind” pro-
gram aimed at younger age groups. (A third and highly innovative intervention, in
which older adults in a retirement home engaged in extensive theatrical training,
requiring a complex integration of multimodal, social, and emotional information, as
well as a wide range of novel mental and physical activities, is reported by Noice &
Noice, 2009).
The first of these interventions, the Experience Corps program, is a volunteer
service in which older adults learn to help young elementary school children in school
settings to improve the child’s educational, social, and other capacities (Fried et al.,
2004; Glass et al., 2004). The program was established with four interlinked goals,
intended to increase the ongoing motivational, cognitive, physical, and social engage-
ment of older adults (see also E. C. Schneider et al., 2007). Specifically, the program
aimed to create a context in which older adults could become:
(a) motivated to be engaged through the opportunity to “give back” and

make a difference in the success of the next generation; (b) cognitively active
through reading with children and library service; (c) physically active
through daily transit to and service in schools; and (d) introduced into new
social networks, which include other team members, children, teachers, and
staff in the school community. (M. C. Carlson et al., 2008, p. 794)
The initial trial of the Baltimore program involved 149 older adults, including many
individuals who were in a sociodemographically high-risk sample for cognitive decline
(for example, the mean age of the participants was nearly 70, and participants had an
average of more than two health conditions diagnosed by a physician, with about 70%
diagnosed with high blood pressure and some 25% with diabetes). A total of 21 per-
sons withdrew following the randomization, leaving 70 in the intervention group and
58 in the wait-list control group. Individuals in the intervention condition first
received training to enable them to engage in roles such as helping to build literacy
skills; they also took part in teams that met regularly for engaging in problem solving
and planning, and socializing. They then, over the course of many months, for an aver-
age of about 15 hours a week, helped children in the grades kindergarten to third
grade with their reading, and with their play and cooperative social interaction skills.
For the older adults, participation in the program, as assessed at 4- to 8-month
follow-up (Fried et al., 2004), was associated with increases in physical activity and
physical strength and decreases in the time spent watching television. Additionally,
consistent with other research showing that volunteering is associated with greater
social integration and increased social connections (e.g., A. H. S. Harris & Thoresen,
2005), the program led to improvements on measures of perceived social support.
Those in the intervention condition also showed improvements on two more formal
assessments of cognitive function (M. C. Carlson et al., 2008), including the inhibitory
control portion of the Trail Making Test (Part B, that requires alternation between
numbers vs. letters) and delayed memory recall of a complex abstract line drawing
that they had earlier copied (the Rey-Osterreith Complex Figure Test; Lezak, 1995).
These improvements were especially marked in the participants who were in the
lowest third of the distribution on the Trail Making Test at the outset of the study,
with baseline performance that was suggestive of cognitive impairment.
These promising findings suggest that multicomponential and “real-life” interven-
tions may be successful by “integrating the individual effects of increased cognitive,
social, and physical activity into daily life, thus allowing for large daily doses of
stimulating activity” (M. C. Carlson et al., 2008, p. 799; cf. Kramer et al., 2004).
A key aspect of the Experience Corps program entails potential conjoint effects on
motivation. Carlson and colleagues note:
A major translational challenge is “incentivizing” sedentary individuals to

adopt and maintain new behaviors. A “hook” or enticement is required that
extends beyond the typical appeals to personal health promotion.
Interventions that offer “real-life” meaning, and environments and tasks
that can be applied in varied settings, may promote better adoption, inter-
est, and adherence. (M. C. Carlson et al., 2008, p. 794)
As schematically shown in Figure 10.11, such multipronged interventions—aimed

to increase neural plasticity—might be postulated to lead not only to beneficial
intermediate outcomes, such as improvements in executive function and memory, but
could then also beneficially influence more distal everyday living skills, such as
improved medication and health routines, thereby further fostering flexibly adaptive
function.
The second multimodal intervention program that we will consider here, called the
Senior Odyssey program, has broadly similar aims to the Experience Corps program
for increasing the active and meaningful engagement of older adults, but it adopts a
rather different approach. This program (Stine-Morrow et al., 2007; Stine-Morrow,
2007) was largely modelled on the Odyssey of the Mind program, developed as an
enrichment activity for a wide range of children through young adults. In the Odyssey
of the Mind program, teams of individuals work together over several months to cre-
atively generate solutions to long-term problems related to science and technology,
literature, civil engineering, or history, and then present their solutions in the context
of a public tournament. Key aspects of the broadly parallel Senior Odyssey program
include exposure to ill-defined problems (cf., Schooler & Mulatu, 2001), collaborative
and also competitive involvements, and an emphasis on creative responding and par-
ticipation. In the program, older adult participants were assigned (mostly although
not entirely randomly) to the experimental group versus a control group that was
tested pre- and post-intervention only. Experimental participants selected a long-
term problem to work on and took part in team and other group meetings across
several months. Participants in the experimental group received coaching in different
broad strategies and took part in games to encourage flexible thinking and problem
solving, but they were not given any specific training on the cognitive measures used
to assess the effects of the program.
On a measure of change from pretest to posttest (Time 2 Score minus Time 1 Score,
divided by the standard deviation at Time 1), and using directional (one-tailed) statis-
tical tests, there were significant positive benefits of the Senior Odyssey program on
measures of speed, inductive reasoning, and divergent thinking, but not on working
memory or visual-spatial processing (Stine-Morrow et al., 2008). Notably, a composite
of all of these variables, perhaps providing a global measure of fluid ability, showed a
reliable improvement, and this improvement was greater for individuals who partici-
pated in more versus fewer of the interim group and team sessions (Stine-Morrow
et al., 2008).
Intervention Primary Mechanisms Intermediate Distal
Pathways Outcomes Outcomes
Physical
Activity
Neural plasticity Cognition Complex IADL

Experience • Cortical activity • Executive function • Medication taking
Corps Cognitive
• Structure size • Memory • Making change
Participation: Activity
• White matter • Speed of processing • Speed of processing
Generative • Networks
Roles
Social
Activity
Figure 10.11. Hypothesized Causal Pathways of the Multimodality Experience Corps Program: Effects on Cognitive Health
and Functioning in Older Adults. Hypothesized causal pathways of the multimodality Experience Corps: Baltimore program effects on
cognitive health and functioning in older adults. IADL, instrumental activity of daily living. Reprinted from Carlson, M. C., Saczynski, J. S., Rebok,
G. W., Seeman, T., Glass, T. A., McGill, S., Tielsch, J., Frick, K. D., Hill, J., & Fried, L. P. (2008, p. 795), Exploring the effects of an “everyday” activity
program on executive function and memory in older adults: Experience Corps, The Gerontologist, 48, 793–801, with permission from Oxford
University Press. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.
Although the design and execution of this naturalistic experiment were not entirely
“tidy” (e.g., assignment was not completely random in that individuals in a retirement
community and couples were assigned to the same condition, and there was attrition
of nearly 25% from the experimental group), nonetheless, it is an important initial
step toward increasingly analytical assessment of the effects of multimodality and
non-laboratory-based interventions on cognition. As noted by one investigator:
Ultimately, the validation of putative protective factors will require prospec-

tive experimental investigations, that is, longitudinal studies in which a suit-
ably selected sample of older volunteers, who are taught and encouraged to
participate in the identified activity, is compared with a placebo group.
(Katzman, 1995, p. 584)
Further important steps toward the aim of evaluating interventions designed to

“make brain paths” to agile minds—but in the more rigorously controlled context of
the experimental laboratory, and involving both different age groups and also
animals—will be considered in the next chapter.
11
Making Brain Paths to Agile
Thinking, Part 2
Direct Experimental Evidence
We should not therefore conceive of the brain as a stationary

object capable of activating a cascade of changes that we call
plasticity, nor as an orderly stream of events driven by
plasticity. Instead we should think of the nervous system as a
continuously changing structure of which plasticity is an integral
property and the obligatory consequence of each sensory input,
motor act, association, reward signal, action plan, or awareness.
[…] Behavior will lead to changes in brain circuitry, just as
changes in brain circuitry will lead to behavioral modifications.
—A. Pascual-Leone et al. (2005, p. 379)
The finding that neural stem cells […] persist in the adult brain
and give rise to new neurons throughout life has […] added a
completely new level of complexity to adult brain function.
—S. Jessberger & F. H. Gage (2008, p. 684)
The previous chapter has marshaled several sources of evidence that, taken together,
make a strong case for the key formative role of diverse types of cognitive, sensory-
motor, and social-cultural stimulation in preserving and enhancing mental flexibility.
Yet important limitations to the conclusions that can be drawn from such indirect
correlational and longitudinal studies also were noted. For instance, did individuals
who became taxi drivers in the London taxi driver study (Maguire et al., 2000)
preselect themselves—on the basis of their aptitude for navigation and ready acquisi-
tion of spatial maps—into this highly demanding spatial-navigational world? If so,
what factors, including the relative size or distribution of brain regions involved in
spatial navigation and memory, also correlated with such preselection? Although
additional observations, such as the correlation between the number of years of
taxi-driving experience and volume in the right posterior hippocampus, suggested
that it was the additional driving experience itself that led to a relative redistribution
of hippocampal gray matter in these individuals, an inferentially stronger foundation
for this causal conclusion would be obtained if the same or similar results were
526
obtained using a direct experimental manipulation, involving random assignment

to an “enriched” experimental group versus a “nonenriched” or standard control
group. This chapter focuses on such direct experimental investigations of the role of
“environmental enrichment” (broadly construed) in enabling flexible thinking and
behavior, and evidence for correlated changes in the brain.
Studies with animals (most often laboratory rats, but also other animals, such as
mice, squirrels, cats, and gerbils)1 have been especially powerful in establishing a
causal connection between levels of stimulation in an organism’s environment and agile
thinking. Equally important, such studies have been crucial in helping to delineate
some of the changes in the brain that support more flexible and adaptive behavior.
The seminal studies charting the behavioral and brain effects of environmental
enrichment in nonhuman animals are thus our starting point, and they comprise the
first main section of this chapter. From there, in the second main section, we move to
a consideration of several experimental demonstrations of plasticity in human brains
and the many ways we may foster and maintain agile thinking through what we do each
day, be it for work, for play, or for that happiest of melded intermingling of the two.
Establishing Causal Connections: Enriched

Environments, Brains, and Flexibility
in Nonhuman Animals
An animal study of the effects of environmental enrichment on brain and behavior
(e.g., Renner & Rosenzweig, 1987) typically would involve two contrasting environ-
ments. One group of animals is randomly assigned to an “enriched” environment and
another group assigned to an “impoverished” environment. In the enriched environ-
ment for laboratory rats, for example, a group of 10 to 12 animals are placed in
a relatively large cage with numerous objects, such as metal and cardboard tubes,
wooden blocks, metal ladders and chains, tunnels, and balls. The objects allow many
forms of exploration and interaction (e.g., climbing, jumping, running, rolling, chew-
ing). Equally important, the objects are changed frequently, with some objects removed
and replaced with new ones not previously or recently experienced by the animals. The
enriched animals are thus continuously provided new opportunities for learning, and
also for “learning to vary” (see the earlier section, in Chapter 5, “Learning to Vary
versus Learning to Repeat,” emphasizing the importance of behavioral variation in
fostering creatively adaptive behavior). By contrast, in the impoverished environ-
ment, the animals are housed under standard laboratory conditions, with one animal
(or a few animals) per cage. In nearly all cases, both groups of animals have ready
access to ample food and water, and are housed at normal temperatures with normal
day-night cycles.
Animals exposed to enriched as compared to impoverished environments show an
advantage in many forms of behavior and learning that might be seen as forms of
“agile thought.” For example, laboratory rats that were allowed to explore environ-
ments that contained stimulating objects such as toys and ropes later were found
to have superior problem-solving skills in complex tasks, such as solving mazes
(e.g., Joseph & Gallagher, 1980; Kempermann, Kuhn, & Gage, 1997; Kobayashi,
Ohashi, & Ando, 2002). Animals exposed to enriched compared to impoverished
environments also are quicker to learn tasks that require a reversal of a response that
was learned previously in a visual discrimination task (e.g., Doty, 1972; Krech et al.,
1962; compare with the earlier discussion of “Set Shifting and Reversal Learning” in
Chapter 8). For example, Milgram et al. (2005) found that aged beagle dogs given
behavioral enrichment demonstrated both improved discrimination learning and
reversal learning compared to controls that were not given enrichment (e.g., a novel
set of toys each week). Similarly, animals from enriched environments show an
advantage in other forms of response flexibility, such as that required for alternation
learning (Nyman, 1967).
Animals from enriched environments also demonstrate greater ability to transfer
their learning to new situations—likewise an important aspect of agile thinking.
One study (Morgan, 1973) found that although rats from enriched and impoverished
conditions did not differ in the rate at which they first learned to remove an obstacle
so as to be able to enter a food compartment, the enriched rats were more adept at
learning how to remove the obstacle in a different way from that learned initially. The
impoverished animals showed marked slowness in abandoning a strategy that was at
first successful (pulling a ball in a narrow alleyway toward the start box, so as to clear
a path to the goal box and to reward), but that was subsequently rendered no longer
effective by a change in the experimental apparatus (when, instead, the obstructing
ball could be removed only by pushing it toward the goal box).
Another study (Luchins & Forgus, 1955) found that animals from enriched environ-
ments were quicker than those from impoverished environments to abandon a longer
indirect path through a maze (and to food rewards) that, though previously forced, was
no longer necessary because the conditions necessitating the indirect path were
removed. Indeed, a number of animals from the impoverished environments contin-
ued to use the indirect route, which was nearly twice the distance as the direct route,
even after being forcibly shown that the direct path was now possible. These outcomes
again demonstrate an enhanced ability to adaptively alter behavior and previously
learned habits in animals from enriched compared with impoverished environments.2
These and other changes in adept problem-solving ability are paralleled by, and may
themselves partially reflect, many changes in brain function (e.g., M. C. Diamond,
Lindner, & Raymond, 1967). Sirevaag and Greenough (1987; 1991; A. M. Turner &
Greenough, 1985) conducted a comprehensive series of studies to analyze a wide
range of possible cortical synaptic, cellular, and vascular changes in rats raised in
enriched compared with control environments. Using light- and electron-microscope
techniques, these researchers demonstrated that enrichment experiences were associ-
ated with several significant and interrelated brain changes. Animals from enriched
environments showed a greater number of synapses per neuron (more than 20%
increase), enhanced dendrite length (approximately 10% increase), and greater vascu-
lar volume (approximately 50% increase) than did control animals. They also had
enhanced neuronal support and greater metabolic activity as indicated by higher
mitrochondrial volume, and by more astrocyte processes, especially after about
30 days of enrichment, with more prolonged enrichment perhaps also leading to an
increased number of astrocytes (Sirevaag & Greenough, 1991).
In addition to these effects on the cortex, enriched environmental conditions have

been shown to lead to changes in limbic and other structures. The hippocampus of
enriched rats differs from that of impoverished rats on a wide array of biological
variables, such as increased levels of nerve growth factor and increased neurogenesis
in the dentate gyrus (discussed further later). Environmentally induced changes also
can be seen in the cerebellum and the amygdala (see Mohammed et al., 2002, for
extensive review). Notably, the cerebellum is an important contributor to both motor
and mental dexterity, and it facilitates automatic learning of motor, mental, and
sensory skills. Monkeys reared in a stimulating environment showed more extensive
spiny branchlets of Purkinje cells in the cerebellum than did control animals.
The conclusion that the brain changes are linked to increased stimulation is further
supported by studies that have examined the reversibility of the brain changes. In one
study, E. L. Bennett and colleagues (1974) examined the effects of switching environ-
mentally enriched rats from the enriched to the impoverished environment. At 21
days following the switch, the animals that were moved to the impoverished environ-
ment still showed significantly enhanced brain weight. The preserved changes were
particularly evident in the occipital cortex. Occipital cortex shows the most pro-
nounced changes with environmental enrichment in rats, and other evidence suggests
that these changes are linked not to visual stimulation per se but rather to the process-
ing of multimodal or cross-modal information. However, by 32 days post switch the
difference between the previously enriched animals and those never exposed to the
enriched environment was no longer significant. E. L. Bennett and colleagues (1974)
also showed that the durability of the brain changes is associated with the duration of
the environmental stimulation. Rats given 80 days of enriched stimulation showed
more persistent brain differences (e.g., in brain weight, and acetylcholinesterase and
cholinesterase activity) than did rats given only 30 days of enriched activity.
Nonetheless, even brief periods of increased stimulation can have beneficial brain
effects (Ferchmin et al., 1970; Jessberger & Gage, cited in Jessberger & Gage, 2008).
Ferchmin and Eterovic (1986) found that four daily 10-minute sessions in an enriched
environment was sufficient to produce brain changes in periadolescent rats (30 to 40
days old). These animals—given only a total of 40 minutes to explore a novel environ-
ment in the company of a group of “teacher” or “guide” animals that were familiar with
the environment—showed significant increases in RNA content in the occipital cortex.
These results point to increased protein synthesis in the brains of animals that engage
in even very brief periods of novel exploration.
Notably, such beneficial effects of environmental complexity are not restricted to
animals at an early stage of life-span development but have been demonstrated in
both young and older animals (M. C. Diamond, Johnson, Protti, Ott, & Kajisa, 1985;
Kobayashi, Ohashi, & Ando, 2002). Rats not moved to a more complex environment
until 300 days of age nonetheless showed improved reversal learning following the
enrichment (Doty, 1972). Similarly, adult mice not moved to an enriched environment
until they were 600 to 750 days old demonstrated both brain weight increases and
superior incidental learning and food-seeking (Warren et al., 1982). Comparing the
dendrite topology in visual cortex of older rats that had been randomly assigned to
either standard social colony or isolation housing at the age of 14 months, Connor
et al. (1982, p. 44) concluded not only that the integrity of the dendritic tree for
supragranular neurons of the occipital cortex was better preserved in the social condi-
tion, but that “exposure to isolation expedites segment shortening, segment loss, and
shifts in the basal dendritic tree that may occur in aging animals.” Mohammed and
colleagues (2002) placed rats that were 22 months of age into an enriched versus
standard environment. Enrichment was associated with increased dendritic spine
densities in each of three areas that were examined: the visual cortex, the hippocam-
pal formation (dentate gyrus), and the entorhinal cortex.
In other work, Kempermann and colleagues (2002) showed that, compared to older
mice housed under standard conditions, older mice housed under enriched conditions
for a sustained period of time showed enhanced performance on a Morris water maze.
Although the two groups did not differ on the very first trial, animals from enriched
environments found the submerged platform more quickly than did the control
animals on each of the subsequent trials, suggesting that they were more adaptive in
their exploration of the environment. The older animals from an enriched environ-
ment also were able to remain balanced on a rotating rod for almost twice as long as
the control animals.
Investigations that have sought to chart the occurrence of the generation of new
neurons (neurogenesis), particularly in the hippocampal dentate gyrus, as a result of
environmental enrichment have shown that, in older age, the baseline rate of adult
hippocampal neurogenesis is very low. However, changes in environmental stimula-
tion may—in relative terms—lead to a much more marked up-regulation of neurogen-
esis (Kempermann, Kuhn, & Gage, 1998; Segovia et al., 2006; see Fig. 11.1 for a
A B
Young adult Aged Experience-enriched aged
Figure 11.1. Effects of Age and Environmental Enrichment on

Neurogenesis. Young adult mice show a relatively large number of neural stem cells
(black circles in A) that, in turn, produce large numbers of newborn granule cells (white
circles in A). Although neurogenesis decreases in aged animals, the effects of aging on
neurogenesis can be partially counteracted by environmental enrichment and physical
activity. In contrast, morphological analyses of 4-week-old granule cells in young mice
(B, left panel) versus aged mice (B, right panel), using retroviral labeling techniques,
show that the number and shape of dendritic spines on recently generated granule
cells do not differ, suggesting that neurons mature at a similar rate in young and
aged animals. Reprinted from Jessberger, S., & Gage, F. H. (2008, p. 688), Stem-cell-
associated structural and functional plasticity in the aging hippocampus, Psychology
and Aging, 23, 684–691, with permission from the American Psychological Association.
Copyright 2008, American Psychological Association.
schematic depiction of the number of newborn granule cells in the young adult versus
aged adults, and experience-enriched aged adults). Kempermann, Gast, and Gage
(2002; see also Kempermann et al., 2004) found that mice exposed to environmen-
tally enriched living conditions beginning at “midlife” (between 10 months and 20
months of age) showed hippocampal neurogenesis that was nearly five times greater
than that shown by controls. Additional analyses suggested that this neurogenesis
reflected a shift in the distribution of newly formed cells, such that the number of
newly generated glial cells was reduced in the enriched animals. There was also some
evidence that enrichment decreased nonspecific age-dependent degeneration in the
dentate gyrus in that enriched animals showed reduced lipofuscin deposits, which are
a prominent sign of aging in the brain.
The precise function of the new (adult-generated) neurons is a topic of ongoing
debate (e.g., Lledo & Saghatelyan, 2005) though there are several features of the
neurogenesis that must be explained by any account. Prominent among these is the
observation that hippocampal neurogenesis appears to be found only in a quite specific
region—in the granule cell layer of the dentate gyrus, the quite narrow input struc-
ture to the hippocampus—where it is also known that representations and activity
patterns are extremely sparse. Therefore, as Kempermann observes, “adding new
neurons to this reduced network with its sparsely firing neurons might be a way to
economically optimize the projection into the hippocampus proper.” In addition
“adding neurons here might be a way to solve the so-called stability-plasticity dilemma,
which is particularly pressing at a network position where constantly new information
is flooding in and endangers the proper consolidation of the previously learned
contents” (Kempermann, 2008, p. 164).
The latter possibility also was considered by Bischofberger (2007), particularly in
relation to important evidence that the young granule cells show a temporally
restricted period of enhanced excitability compared to old granule cells. Using immu-
nohistochemical methods to visualize the recruitment of new neurons into the neural
circuits that support water maze learning in mice, Kee et al. (2007) found that as the
adult-generated cells became mature, it became increasingly likely that they would be
incorporated into circuits supporting spatial memory for the task. New neurons were
recruited into spatial memory networks by about 4 weeks, and by about 6–8 weeks
they were as much as twice as likely as were mature neurons to be recruited. This pref-
erential recruitment was most pronounced in the innermost portion of the dentate
gyrus. Figure 11.2 summarizes the time course of development of newly generated
granule cells in the adult hippocampus, from the initial stem cell, through neural
progenitors, to newly generated immature and finally mature neurons (see Kee et al.,
2007 and Bischofberger, 2007 for additional details).
Although there also is evidence that the new neurons are not essential to the
learning of all hippocampus-dependent tasks, including the water maze (e.g., Meshi
et al., 2006; Wojtowicz et al., 2008), reduced neurogenesis may be highly detrimental
to other tasks (e.g., contextual fear conditioning; Wojtowicz et al., 2008). Additionally,
Kee and colleagues suggest that already-existing granule cells might be sufficient to
support learning, though these memories might be less temporally specific (Aimone,
Wiles, & Gage, 2006) or more prone to interference (e.g., Becker, 2005; Wiskott,
Rasch, & Kempermann, 2006). As proposed by one researcher:
Stem Neural Newborn

cell progenitors young neurons
Glutamate
Glutamate Glutamate
GABA GABA
GABA
1–3 days ~2 weeks ~6 weeks
GFAP
Nestin DCX, PSA-NCAM NeuN
Figure 11.2. The Time Course of Development of Newly Generated

Granule Cells in the Adult Hippocampus, From the Initial Stem Cell,
Through Neural Progenitors, to Newly Generated Immature and
Finally Mature Neurons. As summarized by Bischofberger (2007, p. 274):
“Neural progenitors are generated from neural stem cells, which are characterized by
the expression of the intermediate filament proteins glial fibrillary acidic protein
(GFAP) and nestin. The progenitors continue to divide for a few more days and give rise
to neurons and glia. The neurotransmitter GABA seems to be excitatory in the young
neurons until the age of about two weeks after cell birth, gradually becoming inhibitory
afterward. At the same time, the young cells start to form glutamatergic excitatory
synapses, which have a maximal density at the age of six to eight weeks. The newly
generated immature and mature neurons can be distinguished on the basis of different
developmental markers such doublecortin (DCX), the polysialylated neural cell
adhesion molecule (PSA-NCAM) and neuron-specific nuclear (NeuN) protein.”
Reprinted from Bischofberger, J. (2007, p. 274), Young and excitable: New neurons in
memory networks, Nature Neuroscience, 10, 273–275, with permission from MacMillan
Publishers Ltd. Copyright 2007, MacMillan Publishers Ltd. Note: See the insert for a
The enhanced plasticity of newly generated young granule cells might facili-
tate feature learning during exploration. As old granule cells show a higher
threshold for synaptic plasticity, the connectivity might become relatively
stable later on. As a consequence, mature neurons would be most sensitive to
features they learned when they were young. Adding new neurons could help
the network to achieve both stable analysis of “old” features as well as adap-
tation to new environments, finally supporting precise and distinct repre-
sentations of new memories throughout life. (Bischofberger, 2007, p. 275)
In a speculative and integrative approach, Kempermann (Fabel & Kempermann,

2008; Kempermann, 2008) has proposed that adult neurogenesis is linked both to
learning (e.g., Shors et al., 2001) and to physical activity—and particularly locomotion
(e.g., van Praag et al., 1999). Kempermann suggests that it is not simply coincidental
that increased physical exercise (e.g., Pereira et al., 2007, reviewed later) and increased
cognitive stimulation are both related to increased adult neurogenesis. His proposal
builds on the simple notion, earlier articulated by Vaynman and Gomez-Pinilla (2006,
p. 701), that “the need to generate physical movements to gain and compete for energy
resources for survival, or what is referred to as ‘motricity,’ may have provided the
impetus for mental activity”:
Sustained cognitive challenges as well as sustained physical exercise thus

maintain the pool of new neurons that might be recruited if the need arises
in a situation of cognitive complexity. Activity thus results in a plastic adap-
tation that is an investment for the future. […] Physical activity, especially
over longer periods of time, might indicate to the brain an increased chance
of experiencing exactly those situations rich in complexity and novelty that
presumably benefit from more new neurons. We thus propose that (literally)
in the long run it is not isolated physical activity that is good for the brain,
but physical activity in the context of cognitive challenges. Feedback from
systems involved in locomotion might serve as a means of communication
between the periphery and processes involved in brain plasticity.
(Kempermann, 2008, p. 165)
According to this account, the relevant mechanisms operate on both short- and
long-term time scales such that a very nonspecific broadly activated system (related to
physical activity) “sets the stage on which the particular cognitive stimuli that recruit
individual neurons might act” (Kempermann, 2008, p. 165). Thus, activity helps to
preserve the capability for long-term levels of cell-based plasticity by maintaining
adult neurogenesis in an activated state.
Figure 11.3 graphically illustrates these proposed interactions between environ-
mental stimulation, continued neurogenesis in the hippocampus during adulthood,
and adaptive responding to novelty and challenge—or the “neurogenic reserve
hypothesis.” The uppermost panels of the figure show the contrasting effects of high
versus low levels of adult hippocampal neurogenesis on how an organism responds to
novel information. The animal with a high level of adult neurogenesis, shown in Panel
(A), can readily “adapt to the new situation and learn the distinguishing differences,
thereby expanding its cognitive map (i.e., the representation of the environment)
without catastrophic interference between novel and previously learned information.”
In contrast, the animal with low adult hippocampal neurogenesis, shown in Panel (B),
is unable to realize such “adjustment and optimization of the mossy fiber connection”
and the novel information leads to interference with previously learned information.
The middle and lowermost panels contrast the longer term effects of an organism that
has comparatively few experiences of novelty, shown in Panel (C), with an organism
that very frequently encounters novelty, shown in Panel (D). As characterized by
Kempermann:
(a) Adult neurogenesis (b) Lack of adult neurogenesis
allows adaptation to new experiences results in reduced functional plasticity
Young-adult High levels Young-adult Low levels
of adult of adult
neurogenesis neurogenesis
3 CA1 3 CA1 3 CA1 3 CA1
2 CA3 2 CA3 2 CA3 2 CA3

1 Dentate gyrus 1 Dentate gyrus 1 Dentate gyrus 1 Dentate gyrus
(c) Lack of exposure and training in younger age leads to reduced cellular
and functional plasticity with increasing age
High levels Strong Old Low levels
Young-adult of adult age-related of adult
neurogenesis decrease neurogenesis
No
reserve
3 CA1 3 CA1 3 CA1 3 CA1
2 CA3 2 CA3 2 CA3 2 CA3

(d) Exposure and training in younger age builds a neurogenic reserve for cellular
and functional plasticity in the aging hippocampus
High levels Reduced Old High levels
Young-adult of adult age-related of adult
neurogenesis decrease neurogenesis
Neuro-
genic
reserve
3 CA1 3 CA1 3 CA1 3 CA1
2 CA3 2 CA3 2 CA3 2 CA3

Figure 11.3. The Neurogenic Reserve Hypothesis, Illustrating the

Possible Interactions Between Environmental Stimulation, Continued
Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus During Adulthood, and Adaptive
Responding to Novelty and Challenge. The animal with a high level of adult
neurogenesis, shown in Panel A, can readily adapt to the new situation and both learn
and appropriately assimilate relevant distinctions into its prior knowledge of the
environment. In contrast, the animal with low levels of adult hippocampal
neurogenesis, shown in Panel B, is unable to do so and the novel information leads to
interference with previously learned information. The middle and lowermost panels
contrast the longer term effects of an organism that has comparatively few experiences
of novelty, shown in Panel C, and leading to no neurogenic reserve, with an organism
534
On longer timescales, the fact comes into play that the learning experience
itself (as well as locomotion) as the means of navigation in the physical (and
thus cognitive) space affects the regulation of adult neurogenesis. If there is a
lack of stimuli, represented by the prolonged exposure to the same environ-
ment, adult neurogenesis decreases and the potential for recruiting the nec-
essary new neurons in times of computational need is reduced. No reserve
has been built. […] By contrast, if the individual experiences a high level of
complexity and novelty (i.e. has to physically navigate in a complex and chang-
ing world), precursor cell activity remains high, a neurogenic reserve is built
and the hippocampus can still plastically adopt to very novel situations that
are experienced for the first time in older age. (Kempermann, 2008, p. 166)
Critically, from this perspective, and in terms of the iCASA framework, increasing
environmental complexity can be seen as increased understanding of and differentia-
tion between multiple different “exemplars” of a given sort of stimulus, or experience.
Exposure to many different contexts or instances—of objects, events, ideas, places,
and so on—allows both maintenance of earlier information and accommodation of
(learning of) new information. In contrast, exposure to only one or a few contexts or
instances leads to decreased adaptability, and potentially substantial interference
(failure to learn, or forgetting).
An interesting prediction that follows from this account relates to the relative ini-
tial amounts of exposure to different contexts or instances that an organism has expe-
rienced. In particular, if an animal has experienced a wide variety of different contexts
or instances across a period of time, then exposure to yet another context or instance
from the same broad class or classes might be less “novel” than it would be to a more
naïve animal—with consequent differences in the implications for neurogenesis:
If the neurogenic reserve hypothesis is true, one will, for example, also find
that in an old animal that has seen very many environments, the regulatory
effect of yet another new environment on adult neurogenesis will be lower
than in a naïve animal. The relationship between adult neurogenesis and
levels of adult neurogenesis might consequently become complicated: it is
conceivable that despite a positive correlation between adult neurogenesis
and cognitive performance on certain hippocampus-dependent functional
domains, exceptionally well adapted animals might even have less adult
neurogenesis than those for which there are still challenges. (Kempermann,
2008, p. 167)
that very frequently encounters novelty, shown in Panel D, and that consequently has
both neurogenic reserve and adaptive flexibility in accommodating further new
experiences. See text for additional details. Figure adapted from G. Kempermann
(2008, p. 166), The neurogenic reserve hypothesis: What is adult hippocampal
neurogenesis good for? Trends in Neurosciences, 31, 163–169, with permission from Elsevier.
Copyright 2008, Elsevier. Note: See the insert for a full-color version of this image.
Less speculatively, other evidence clearly suggests that there are some limitations
on plasticity in older animals. For instance, the longer term enhancement from
enrichment (increased population spiking over baseline values in hippocampal
dentate gyrus cells) was found to decay more rapidly in older rats compared to younger
animals (Sharp, Barnes, & McNaughten, 1987). Furthermore, there may be important
differences in the speed with which brain changes occur. Periadolescent rats, for exam-
ple, appear to have both particularly plastic brains, and to be especially likely to show
rapid brain changes, in part because they exhibit high levels of play and exploration
(Ferchmin & Eterovic, 1986).
The precise way that the brain changes in response to enriched experience also
depends on the age at which enrichment occurs. One study contrasted brain changes
shown in rats that were placed into enriched “condominiums” in young adulthood, as
juveniles (directly after weaning), or in old age (senescence). Both the young adult
and older animals showed brain changes similar to those that have been reported
previously, including a large increase in dendritic length and increased dendritic
spine density compared to that shown by age-matched control rats housed in regular
cages. In contrast, this was not observed in the juvenile animals. Juveniles showed
only an increase in dendritic length or branching—and a decrease (rather than
increase) in dendritic spine density (Kolb, Forgie, Gibb, Gorny, & Rowntree, 1998).3
Thus, although animals at all ages showed changes in dendritic structure as a conse-
quence of environmental enrichment, enrichment may have qualitatively (and not
only quantitatively) different effects depending on the age at which the increased
stimulation occurs.
Age differences also often alter the ways in which the animals actively explore their
environment and interact with objects. Kolb et al. (1998) report that whereas the
young and middle-aged rats in their experiments explored the entire complex of their
enriched condominiums, some of the older rats mostly confined themselves to the
ground level. These older animals essentially ignored the upper levels of the structure,
either because of reduced motoric abilities or because of reduced motivation to explore.
Interestingly, however, even within the older group of animals, animals that did more
extensively explore all levels (“climbers”) had larger brains than did the animals that
explored less extensively (“nonclimbers”).
Enriched environments also may be seen as providing opportunities for variable or
novel behavior. As we saw in Chapter 5 (throughout the section on “Learning to
Vary versus Learning to Repeat”), directly reinforcing variable behavior, rather than
habitual or repetitive actions, often enhances problem solving in new situations.
For instance, rats that were earlier directly reinforced for interacting with various new
objects in many different ways, subsequently, in a novel context involving never-
before presented objects, showed significantly greater problem-solving skills. The ani-
mals previously reinforced for varying their behavior were significantly more efficient
in retrieving hidden morsels of food in the new objects and new environment than
were control animals that were reinforced equally often, but in a manner that was
unconnected to their activity (“yoked controls,” Neuringer, 2004).4
A question that one might ask is whether physical interaction with the novel
objects and environment is critical for the beneficial effects to be observed. Is direct
experiential interaction necessary, or might it be sufficient to simply frequently

observe novel events or to watch others interacting with objects in novel ways? Other
research that contrasted the brain measures of rats placed in an enriched environment
only as “observers” showed that the observers’ brains were essentially identical to
those of impoverished rats (Ferchmin, Bennett, & Rosenzweig, 1975). The observer
rats were placed in a small mesh cage inside a larger cage that contained other animals
and miscellaneous toys. This “cage within the cage” was itself often moved about both
within the cage (suspended from the ceiling, hooked to the right or left wall, or placed
on the floor) and also between different cages, so that there were different animals
and activities to be observed. Nonetheless, despite these multiple changes in what was
“on view,” beneficial brain effects were found only if the rats could themselves directly
interact with objects. Corresponding benefits were not found in the passive observer
animals. More recent work has shown that rats given a single brief exposure to a novel
toy demonstrate a significant increase in acetylcholine levels in the hippocampus only
if the animal was permitted to actively manipulate the object. In addition, a further
presentation of the novel toy was associated with a significant decrease in the number
of errors the animals made on a different task they had just learned (a radial arm
maze)—suggesting that novelty also helped to boost consolidation of information
concerning the maze (Degroot et al., 2005).
A further question that could be asked concerns the role of differences in social
experience: Are the differences between environmentally enriched versus impover-
ished animals due to differences in learning and stimulation arising from social
factors? On the one hand, there is some evidence for beneficial effects arising from
social stimulation in animals. Such stimulation sometimes takes indirect forms, in
which animals that have gained experience with various objects “model” or “teach”
their use for other animals that are not yet experienced with the objects. On the other
hand, social stimulation is clearly not the only factor at work.
For example, in one study, rats in the impoverished environment were housed
exactly as were the animals in the enriched environment, also enjoying the company of
several other animals in their home cage. There was only one difference: only those in
the enriched environment had access to toys, those in the impoverished environment
did not. The brain characteristics of the group-housed but otherwise nonenriched
animals were intermediate between those of rats in the (more typical) impoverished
versus enriched environments (Rosenzweig, Bennett, Hebert, & Morimoto, 1978).
Holding the group size constant at 12 per cage, the magnitude of the brain effects that
were observed increased across several variants of environmental stimulation, with
more pronounced brain changes found in animals that had to navigate a new complex
maze each day, and in animals that were exposed to changing stimulus objects, than for
group-housing alone.
Further evidence for the crucial role of the rat’s interaction with a changing envi-
ronment is provided by a study in which, rather than both groups being group-housed
as in the previous study, animals in both the enriched and impoverished environ-
ments were housed singly (Bennett, Rosenzweig, Morimoto, & Hebert, 1979). The
sole experimental difference between the two groups was that rats in the enriched
condition were required to traverse a new maze daily in order to travel from their food
to their water stations. In contrast, rats in the impoverished condition merely needed
to travel across an empty box between the food and water stations. Even under these
tightly controlled conditions, beneficial brain effects similar to those found in many
other studies of environmental enrichment were observed.
Other research has examined the effects of specific forms of sensory or motor
training on the brain processes of animals. In a classic study, Chang and Greenough
(1982) restricted the visual input of rats during maze training to only one cerebral
hemisphere by using an eye patch and severing the rats’ corpus callosum so as to
largely preclude communication of visual information between the cerebral hemi-
spheres. They found that the trained cerebral hemisphere had more extensive dendrite
branching than did the nontrained hemisphere, showing that “the brain effects are
localized in a region involved in sensory aspects of the training experience” (p. 289).
In other research, it has been shown that environmental enrichment can counteract
the detrimental effects of a previous lack of visually driven activity, and enable the
development of normal visual acuity maturation in dark-reared rodents (Bartoletti
et al., 2004). Monocular deprivation in 50-day-old rats resulted in a significant
shift in the fraction of cells in the visual cortex that responded to the deprived eye for
animals that were dark-reared under standard conditions, but no such shift in the
ocular dominance distribution was found for dark-reared animals given environmen-
tal enrichment.
This finding was further supported by evidence that for the environmentally
enriched animals, but not the standard-reared animals, there was largely normal devel-
opment of visual connections and therefore also resistance to reorganization via mon-
ocular deprivation (the density of neurons in the visual cortex that were surrounded
by perineuronal nets was normal in layer 4, and nearly normal in layers 2/3 and 5/6).
In addition, electrophysiological estimates of visual acuity using visual evoked poten-
tials demonstrated impaired visual acuity in dark-reared standard-housed animals
(at postnatal day 60) but normal visual acuity in the dark-reared animals raised under
environmentally enriched conditions. Thus, environmental enrichment promoted the
development of visual connections and enabled normal neuronal development for
these dark-reared animals (see also Cancedda et al., 2004, and Sale et al., 2009).
Changes in specific behavioral patterns, such as the use of a particular forelimb for
a reaching task, also have been found to selectively alter the density of synaptic
branching in only one brain region of an individual animal. This points to quite
specific, experientially related alterations in the pattern of brain connectivity even
within a single animal (e.g., Greenough, Larson, & Withers, 1985; Kolb et al., 1998).
Together, these studies also demonstrate that it is not only extreme variations in envi-
ronmental complexity and stimulation that are important: Relatively more subtle and
narrow changes in daily learning and stimulation likewise appear to have significant
effects on both the brain and adaptive (flexible) behavior.
In summary, there is convincing evidence that enriched environments lead animals
to show more flexibly adaptive thinking and that these changes are accompanied by
diverse and pervasive brain changes. Facilitated learning and problem-solving in new
situations, enhanced learning of “reversals,” and a readier transfer of learned skills to
novel situations are among the adaptive behaviors and cognitions shown by animals
from enriched compared to impoverished environments.
Experimental Interventions and

Mental Agility in Humans
R E C E N T LY A C Q U I R E D ( “ E X P E R I M E N TA L LY A S S I G N E D ” )
EXPERTISE AND BRAIN PLASTICITY IN HUMANS
The previous chapter detailed several instances of specific forms of brain plasticity
that were linked to sustained changes in cognitive and sensory-motor behavior, such
as changes in the cortical representation of the fingers associated with the acquisition
of new sensory-motor skills in musicians or in individuals who learn to read Braille.
Yet direct experimental manipulations of recently acquired expertise, in which alloca-
tion of individuals to either an expertise or nonexpertise group is experimentally and
randomly determined, provide stronger and more cogent evidence for the functional
role of brain plasticity in expertise-related cognitive-behavioral plasticity.
A growing number of studies provide such evidence. For instance, researchers
found increased areas of activation in the primary motor cortex of individuals
following several weeks of practice engaging in particular finger sequence movements
(a four-part finger-to-thumb opposition sequence) for 10 to 20 minutes each day
(Karni et al., 1995).
Perhaps intermediate between the correlational and experimental approach—
but drawing upon the strengths of both approaches—is a recent functional neuro-
imaging study that examined the patterns of brain activity during the learning of new
key-press sequences by experienced pianists and nonpianists (Landau & D’Esposito,
2006). The sequences were either systematic or randomly ordered. More specifically,
the systematic sequences were versions of a serial reaction time task (Nissen &
Bullemer, 1987) based on what is known as a finite state grammar, involving a set of
rules for the creation of particular strings or sequences (A. S. Reber, 1967). Thus, the
sequences significantly differed from typical piano sequences (e.g., in the absence of
auditory feedback, and lack of temporal variability). However, a central characteristic
of the serial reaction time task is that it can involve manipulations of the frequency of
occurrence of particular sequences, and performance will benefit from the ability to
recognize and flexibly move between these sequences—just as “during music perfor-
mance, any given note on the piano may be followed by different combinations of
notes, and a pianist must learn to flexibly switch between these different sequential
associations” (Landau & D’Esposito, 2006, p. 247).
Therefore, it was expected that, as the pianists learned these novel key-press
sequences, they would draw upon a different functional network than would the non-
pianists. Furthermore, it was expected that both pianists and nonpianists would,
across repetitions of the sequences, learn the sequence, therefore showing faster and
more accurate responding. It was anticipated that this repetition-related learning
would be accompanied by decreases in brain activity in regions that were initially
recruited for the task. Additionally, however, it was predicted that the pianists, but
not the nonpianists, would also show increased brain activity in associative learning
regions, reflecting the integration of the novel nonmusical sequences with well-
established expert knowledge.
This was essentially the pattern of outcomes that was observed. For both groups,
brain regions that were activated during the initial learning of the task (e.g., bilateral
primary sensorimotor cortex, basal ganglia, and parietal regions) showed decreased
activity as the sequences became increasingly well learned by pianists and the non-
pianists alike. However, several brain regions showed increased activity (in both
magnitude and extent) for only the group with expertise. These latter regions were
primarily in a right-lateralized network of prefrontal, motor, and cingulate regions,
suggesting that prior motor-related training led to the involvement of a broader set of
regions for task performance.
This study does not allow a definitive determination of the mechanisms leading to
these different effects. Nonetheless, Landau and D’Esposito (2006) argue that, given
that the observed decreases in brain activation common to the two groups were shown
rapidly, within a single experimental session and within a matter of only minutes or
hours, they likely reflect either changes in synaptic efficiency, or recruitment of
existing networks. In contrast, the slow changes typical of the acquisition of longer
term expertise, most often occurring over weeks or years, might arise through synap-
togenesis—that is, modifications in axonal and dendritic structure—involving
reward-motivated learning and neurochemical interactions (e.g., release of acetyl-
choline, noradrenaline, and dopamine) between basal ganglia/midbrain regions and
somatosensory cortex. Notably, Landau and D’Esposito also explicitly point to the
relevance of these findings to interpretive issues relating to “neural efficiency,” setting
the evidence for both experience-related reductions and experience-related increases
in brain activation that were shown by the pianists against an overly simplistic view
according to which optimized neural processing is necessarily reflected in reduced
activity. Rather, they propose that “an optimized motor system is capable of greater
flexibility and adaptability, depending on the demands of the task. This may mean
reduced activity in the case of simple and repetitive motor tasks, or it may mean
recruiting an extensive network of primary and multimodal regions during perfor-
mance of complex tasks” (Landau & D’Esposito, 2006, p. 257).
These findings point to the interlinked roles of behavioral and neural plasticity in
the learning of serial reaction time sequences, acquired within a single session. What
about more complex visual-spatial-motor tasks, learned over additional sessions, or
periods of weeks or months, or tasks directly involving more cognitive or representa-
tional functions?
Learning-induced cortical plasticity, even at the structural level of the brain, was
recently demonstrated in humans by examining the effects of first acquiring and then
no longer maintaining a skill that relatively few of us likely possess: that of juggling
(Draganski, Gaser, Busch, Schuierer, Bogdahn, & May, 2004). Participants were first
given a brain scan when all of them were naïve to juggling. This brain scan focused not
on the areas of the brain that were activated by performing a task (functional MRI) but,
instead, was a very high-quality scan of the anatomical structure of the brain (MRI).
After this initial brain scan, one-half of the participants were given 3 months to
practice juggling. They were asked to practice until they became proficient at a classic
three-ball cascade juggling routine. When they had become skilled at this routine—as
evidenced by the ability to sustain juggling with three balls for at least 60 seconds—
they were given a second MRI brain scan. This scan provided a second high-quality
image of the anatomical structure of their brains that could be compared to the
first scan.
To compare the first versus second scans, and to examine the whole brain for
changes in anatomical structure in the jugglers versus nonjugglers, the researchers
used the technique of voxel-based morphometry (e.g., Ashburner & Friston, 2000).
This method, which was also used in the study of London taxi drivers, discussed in
the previous chapter, allowed the researchers to identify regions of brain gray matter
concentration that differed significantly between the newly proficient jugglers versus
the naïve juggler groups.
These analyses revealed that individuals who had newly acquired the skill of
juggling showed a significantly increased concentration of gray matter in a motion-
sensitive area of midtemporal cortex (hMT/V5) in both the right and left cerebral
hemisphere, and also an increase of gray matter concentration in the left posterior
intraparietal sulcus. The latter region is involved in visual-spatial attention and spatial
transformation. It has been associated with attentional modulation of visual search
(Donner, Kettermann, Diesch, Ostendorf, Villringer, & Brandt, 2000) and with smooth
eye movement pursuit of target objects in situations where the object can no longer be
seen (Lencer et al., 2004). There were no changes in gray matter of the nonjugglers
over the same period, demonstrating that the changes were specific to the engage-
ment in training of this complex skill.
These findings both further support, and significantly extend, the conclusions
based on the London taxi driver study. A key strength of this study is the experimental
assignment of participants to the practiced versus naïve juggling conditions.
Experimental assignment to the experimental versus control conditions substantially
undermines the feasibility of an alternative account that would attribute the findings
to a form of “self-selection” into a profession or area of expertise for which (possibly
because of the structure of one’s brain) one already has a special aptitude. The study
also demonstrates that even relatively short-term alterations in our experience—
experiential changes undertaken over the course of months—can lead not only to
alterations in the way that the brain processes information but also may change brain
structure (the distribution of gray matter concentration).
The juggling study involved a further manipulation that provides additional evi-
dential support for the ongoing causal role of experiential input in the brain changes
observed. The now proficient jugglers were asked to abstain from juggling for a further
3 months and were then given yet another detailed structural brain scan. At the time
of this third scan most of the participants in the juggling condition were no longer
proficient in the three-ball cascade routine—and the previously identified region-spe-
cific gray matter concentration changes in motion-sensitive areas of the brain were
significantly attenuated. Thus, as the participants progressively lost facility in their
new skill of juggling through lack of practice, the specific brain changes that emerged
during the learning of that skill likewise were progressively lost.
A more recent investigation using an experimental design paralleling that used in
Draganski et al. (2004) replicated and extended these findings but with juggling-naïve
healthy older adults (Boyke, Driemeyer, Gaser, Büchel, & May, 2008). Although
older adults did not reach the same level of juggling proficiency as shown by younger
adults, those older adults that were able to learn the three-ball cascade, like their
younger counterparts, demonstrated gray-matter changes in right middle temporal

visual cortex (hMT/V5). In addition, this pattern reversed when participants were
scanned after abstaining from juggling for 3 months, at which time they were no
longer juggling proficient. A similar activity-related pattern of an initial increase
(with juggling) followed by a decrease (with juggling abstention) was found in left
hippocampus and bilaterally in the nucleus accumbens, a structure known to be
involved in reward systems and that is thought to be a neural interface between the
limbic and motor systems.
The precise nature of the observed brain-structural changes, and their subsequent
reversal with lack of practice, remain to be discovered, particularly by comparison
with analyses made at the microscopic, histological level. One possibility, suggested by
Draganski et al. (2004), is that the changes reflect alterations at the level of synaptic
bulk and neuritis. Other possibilities include increased cell genesis, perhaps of
supportive glial cells or even neuronal cells (e.g., Trachtenberg et al., 2002).
Recent evidence using a broadly similar experimental design, but combining voxel-
based morphometry in combination with a technique known as diffusion tensor imag-
ing so as to measure changes in white matter (axons and axonal bundles, surrounded
by myelin, to enable more rapid conduction of nerve impulses), has also pointed to
consistent changes in white matter microstructure during the acquisition of increased
juggling expertise (Scholz et al., 2009). Pretraining to posttraining changes in white
matter microstructure (as indicated by mean fractional anisotropy) were observed in
the right posterior intraparietal sulcus. Such white matter changes might reflect activ-
ity-dependent changes in the myelination of axons (e.g., Ishibashi et al., 2006; for
review, see Taveggia et al., 2010) or related changes in axon diameter or fiber density,
potentially supporting changes in the conduction velocity and/or the synchronization
of neuronal signals.
However, Scholz and colleagues (2009) further found that, although the observed
changes in gray matter density as a function of juggling were spatially close to the
underlying changes in white matter, there was no correlation between the magnitude
of gray matter and white matter changes across subjects. The patterns of change in the
two tissue types as a consequence of juggling practice and abstention from juggling
also differed. Thus, it is possible that the complex skills cultivated in juggling are sup-
ported by “relatively independent structural changes [. . .] in these different tissue
types.” Definitive conclusions await future work, perhaps using “varying training
regimes and longer periods of observation to more fully characterize the complex
dynamics of gray-matter and white-matter change with learning” (Scholz et al., 2009,
p. 1371) as well as non-imaging-based cellular and biochemical techniques.
Both the juggling and taxi-driver studies provide clear evidence that the structure
of our brains may be altered through the acquisition of complex spatial and motor
skills. The juggling studies are particularly strong in demonstrating a causal connec-
tion between skill acquisition and brain changes. Yet all of these studies involved
spatial-motor tasks. Is there equally persuasive evidence for the learning of tasks that
are more closely allied to thinking, especially to agile thinking?
An important study by Olesen, Westerberg, and Klingberg (2004) provided initial
evidence of plasticity in both brain and behavior in a form of activity that is both more
prototypically “cognitive” and more closely associated with mental agility. The study
examined the effects of prolonged practice on tasks that require working memory—
that is, our ability to keep in mind, and consciously use and manipulate, several differ-
ent pieces of information at a time.
Working memory is an important building block that we rely on in solving
problems and engaging in creative reasoning of all forms (e.g., Carpenter, Just, &
Shell, 1990). Larger working memory capacity is important in being able to keep track
of “where we are” as we work through a problem, particularly as we iteratively gener-
ate subgoals, mentally take note of what we find as we accomplish them, and then set
new subgoals. Working memory capacity positively correlates with performance on
multistage puzzles (e.g., a complex planning task known as the Tower of Hanoi) and
on tasks such as the completion of novel visual-spatial series (e.g., progressive matri-
ces). It has been argued that positive correlations between working memory and rea-
soning derive from a similar capacity limit relating to the ability to form and preserve
bindings between elements in memory, with working memory limited to approxi-
mately three to four chunks (e.g., Olsson & Poom, 2005) and reasoning similarly lim-
ited to relations between up to four variables (Halford, Cowan, & Andrews, 2007).
Although an individual’s working memory capacity traditionally has been viewed
as constant, Olesen et al. (2004) demonstrated that individuals can, through training,
extend their working memory capacity (see also note 4). In their study, healthy adults
practiced three visual-spatial working memory tasks each day for 5 weeks. They were
presented several successive target items displayed in a particular location of a grid
(Grid, Grid rotation, and 3D Grid) and then required to recall each of the target
locations shown, in the correct sequence.
Working memory training began on the first day at a fixed level (level 2, a sequence
of two cues) for all tasks, with difficulty adjusted to performance. Then, on each
successive training day, the starting level of difficulty corresponded to the level that
had been achieved on the preceding day. To examine the effects of this extensive train-
ing on brain activity, the participants were given brain scans while performing a simi-
lar working memory task (functional MRI), and a control task, on five different
occasions: day 1, and then days 2, 4, 8, and 23 of the working memory training.
The results showed that the training sessions led to continuous improvements in
working memory on each of the three tasks. Across the five scanning days, the level of
accuracy, combining across both easier sequences with few items and more difficult
sequences with many items, significantly increased from nearly 30% to nearly 45%.
Furthermore, these increases in accuracy were accompanied by a significant decrease
in the amount of time required for responding.
Training also was associated with improvements on several neuropsychological
tests that were not directly trained. The tests included a different measure of visual-
spatial working memory (a Span board task), a measure of verbal working memory
(digit span), and a measure of response inhibition (the Stroop color-word task, mea-
suring the individual’s time to name the ink color of words that themselves designated
conflicting color names, such as the word “red” printed in green ink). However, com-
pared with the test-retest improvement shown by a control group, only the improve-
ment in the latter task reached statistical significance.
Several other studies, however, have more strongly supported the generalization of
the benefits of working memory training to at least some nontrained tasks (Buschkuehl
et al., 2008; Klingberg, Forssberg, & Westerberg, 2002; Klingberg et al., 2005; S.-C.
Li et al., 2008), particularly in young adults (Dahlin et al., 2008) including, most nota-
bly, a measure of fluid intelligence (Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, & Perrig, 2008).
In the latter study, younger adults were trained on a combined auditory and spatial
working memory task for up to 19 days, with the level of difficulty of the task
(the n-back task) successively adapted to their level of performance across the training
sessions. The trained group demonstrated an average performance increase of 0.65
standard deviations on a visual-spatial fluid reasoning task and this gain significantly
exceeded that found for a control group simply tested at the beginning and again at
the end of the experiment.5
Analyses of the brain imaging data collected by Olesen et al. (2004) showed that the
working memory training benefits that they observed were accompanied by two dis-
tinct changes in patterns of brain activity across the 5 weeks. On the one hand, one set
of brain regions showed increases in activity as a result of training. Increased brain
activity was shown in superior and inferior parietal cortex and middle frontal cortex, as
well as regions deep inside the brain in the nuclei in the basal ganglia (caudate nucleus)
and thalamus (pulvinar). On the other hand, another set of regions showed decreased
activity with training. Regions that showed training-related decreases in activity
included the anterior cingulate sulcus, postcentral gyrus, and inferior frontal sulcus.
Many studies have shown decreases in activation with repeated practice of a task or
with repeated presentations of stimuli such as words or objects (see, for example,
Grill-Spector, Henson, & Martin, 2006; Henson, 2003, for review). This suggests that
processing has somehow become more efficient with practice. However, the working
memory trials differed in an important way from many earlier studies involving
repeated presentations of stimuli.
Training or repetition in the earlier studies allowed, and probably even encouraged,
automatization of responding because the items were repeated multiple times. Indeed,
such automatization was shown in measures of stereotyped responding or stereotypy.
For example, in a “verb generation” task that required participants to provide verbs
that might go with presented nouns (e.g., dog–bark), participants repeatedly provided
the same verbs each time a given noun was presented (e.g., dog–bark) even though a
large number of alternative responses were possible (e.g., dog–walk, dog–wag,
dog–swim, dog–sleep). Across several experiments, involving both verb generation and
a similar type of word generation task, and using both visual and auditory presenta-
tion of stimuli, we found average rates of response stereotypy between 75% and 87%.
Indeed, individual participants sometimes gave stereotyped responses for more than
95% of the items (Buckner, Koutstaal, Schacter, & Rosen, 2000). By contrast, in the
working memory task used by Olesen et al. (2004), the stimuli were unique to each
trial, and the ongoing demand to keep new information “on line,” involving the active
maintenance of the current to-be-remembered set of target locations and sequence,
would act to prevent automatization.
Previous research has shown that the amplitude of the activation in a network of
regions in frontal and parietal cortex correlates with success on working memory
tasks. For example, successful recall of the to-be-remembered targets on any given
working memory trial was associated with greater activity in the frontal-parietal
cortex during the delay interval between the presentation of the to-be-remembered
sequence and the signal to recall the sequence (Pessoa, Gutierrez, Bandettini, &
Ungerleider, 2002). These findings also are consistent with research in primates, using
recording from single cells during working memory tasks, which have demonstrated
that there are neurons that show a sustained and stimulus-specific response during
the delay period, between presentation of the target and the cue to recall. As we saw in
Chapter 10, such neurons are found in prefrontal cortex but they may also, depending
on the task, be observed in inferior temporal cortex (for visual patterns or color
stimuli), the parietal cortex (for visual-spatial stimuli), and the premotor cortex
(for specific motor responses; see Pessoa et al., 2002 for review).
Nonetheless, there was also suggestive evidence, in the study by Olesen and
colleagues (2004) that, even with stimuli that were unique on each trial and that
required constant online maintenance and updating, decreases in the brain activity
involved in working memory might occur in some brain regions, particularly if the
training was extended across an even longer period of time. In the middle frontal gyrus
and superior parietal cortex the initial increases in brain activity shown in the first 4
weeks appeared likely to be followed by decreases or perhaps asymptotic levels of activ-
ity if training were continued beyond the fifth week (Olesen et al., 2004, Figure 3).
These latter findings are consistent with recent reviews arguing that there are multiple
ways in which brain activation might be affected by repeated performance of an activity
(Jonides, 2004; Kelly & Garavan, 2005; see also Dahlin et al., 2009). More specifically,
as noted earlier in connection with the findings for pianists versus nonpianists learning
serial response time sequences, it may be that comparatively fast learning, involving a
high level of repetition and automatization of performance, is associated with decreases
in activity within a given network of regions (e.g., Floyer-Lea & Matthews, 2004),
whereas slow learning, involving less repetition and the development of strategies for
task performance, is (also) associated with recruitment of additional regions as the task
is learned (e.g., Landau & D’Esposito, 2006; Olesen et al., 2004).
The key point from our current perspective, however, is that both behavioral
improvements, and systematically correlated changes in brain activity, were demon-
strated in conjunction with increased practice at a highly complex, not readily auto-
mated, working memory task. The task demanded flexible, ongoing updating and
revision of the individual’s goals and the mental representations that they were main-
taining in mind across time. The results thus provided clear initial evidence of train-
ing-induced plasticity in both brain and behavior for a complex cognitive task closely
associated with mental agility.
A more recent investigation, similarly involving multimodal working memory
training over a 5-week period in young adults, but using combined behavioral train-
ing, fMRI, and positron emission tomography, has begun to illuminate the biochemi-
cal bases of these effects (McNab et al., 2009). Using a paradigm based on the earlier
work of both Klingberg et al. (2002) and Olesen et al. (2004), McNab and colleagues
(2009) showed that training-induced improvements in working memory capacity
were significantly correlated with changes in the density of cortical dopamine (D1)
receptors. Although the relation between working memory performance and
dopamine binding potential also involved a curvilinear (inverted-U) component,
within the ranges investigated, there was a significant negative correlation between
D1 binding potential and working memory performance. Reductions in D1 binding
potential were associated with increased working memory capacity in four out
of five independently determined regions of interest: right and left posterior regions
of parietal, temporal, and occipital cortices, a right dorsolateral prefrontal region,
including the right middle frontal gyrus and right superior frontal gyrus, and a right
ventrolateral prefrontal region, including the right inferior frontal gyrus. The findings
were specific in that no corresponding changes as a function of changes in working
memory capacity were found for the D2 dopamine receptor system. Together, these
outcomes attest to the “high level of plasticity of the neuronal system defined by
cortical D1 receptors” in healthy adult volunteers and “the reciprocal interplay between
behavior and the underlying brain biochemistry” (McNab et al., 2009, p. 802).
Other recent work has further begun to illuminate the effects of training in
working memory on white matter connectivity. Conceptually mirroring the findings
that Scholz et al. (2009) obtained for the juggling training task, using the technique of
diffusion tensor imaging, Takeuchi et al. (2010), demonstrated changes in white
matter microstructure in regions near left intraparietal sulcus from pretraining to
posttraining of working memory. These white matter changes (assessed by voxel-
based analysis of fractional anisotropy) were further found to be significantly corre-
lated with the total amount of training participants completed on the three different
challenging working memory paradigms over a course of about 2 months (range of
training between about 50 and 190 total sessions, with a mean of approximately 40
sessions for each of the three types of working memory training tasks).
Collectively, these and other studies6 demonstrate a simple but remarkable fact:
Throughout our lives we are flexibly tuning and adjusting the visual, cognitive, and
motor skills that we have and the discriminations that we can make, and our remark-
ably plastic brain is likewise changing as it adjusts to enable and support those skills.
What we do and what we think about—including the extent to which our thinking
involves a healthy exercising and stretching of our capabilities—changes not only
what we know and how we can use that knowledge, but also our brain, and precisely
how it can then further work with (store, connect, and use) that knowledge. Neither
our on-line ability to hold and manipulate multiple items or relations, nor our related
capacity to flexibly solve novel problems, is necessarily fixed. These capacities are, to
an extent that is not yet fully charted, malleable and subject to significant improve-
ment through training efforts that are—from the perspective of a lifetime—really
quite brief, a matter of weeks or months rather than years.
E X E R C I S I N G O U R B O D I E S TO E N H A N C E O U R M I N D S :
E X P E R I M E N TA L E V I D E N C E L I N K I N G P H Y S I C A L A N D
C A R D I O VA S C U L A R F I T N E S S TO C O G N I T I V E P E R F O R M A N C E
In Chapter 10, we considered evidence from a number of longitudinal and epidemio-
logical studies that pointed to the beneficial effects of regular physical exercise and
maintaining cardiovascular fitness on cognitive functioning. A growing number of
experimental studies have more firmly grounded this conclusion using random assign-
ment of participants to fitness training versus control conditions. A meta-analysis of
18 longitudinal studies that used experimental designs to examine the relation
between physical activity and exercise on cognitive functioning in older adults between
55 to 80 years of age showed that across a variety of tasks, training methods,

and participant groups, fitness training increased performance by approximately
one-half of a standard deviation (Colcombe & Kramer, 2003). The beneficial effects
were most pronounced for tasks that involved executive function (defined as tasks
related to the planning, inhibition, and scheduling of mental procedures, such as the
Erickson flanker task, in which participants must respond to a centrally located
item, such as an arrow, that is closely “flanked” on either side by either congruent or
incongruent distracting stimuli). In addition, significant and consistent benefits were
observed on measures of controlled processing (tasks that required at least some
cognitive control, such as pressing a key in response to one type of target, but a differ-
ent key in response to other targets), visuospatial performance (tasks that tapped
the person’s ability to transform or remember visual and spatial information), and
processing speed (tasks that measured low-level neurological functioning, such as
reaction times). Fitness training that combined aerobic and strength training yielded
greater benefits (effect size of 0.59) than did aerobic training alone (effect size of
0.41), and maximum benefits were observed for regular exercise sessions of moderate
duration (between 31 and 45 minutes, effect size of 0.61). There was no significant
benefit for short sessions (15–30 minutes, effect size of 0.18), and longer sessions
(46–60 minutes, effect size of 0.47) were less beneficial than were moderate sessions.
Other observations have pointed to relatively similar effect-size gains for exercise
training in both normal and cognitively impaired adults, suggesting that individuals
with early dementia may also benefit from exercise training (Kramer & Erickson,
2007).
Increased cardiovascular fitness training has also been linked to accompanying
brain changes. In an important longitudinal intervention study, Colcombe and col-
leagues (2004; see also G. W. Small et al., 2006) randomly assigned older individuals to
either an aerobic cardiovascular fitness-training group or to a nonaerobic toning and
stretching group. Over a period of 6 months participants increased their total walking
time (aerobic group) or toning and stretching exercises (control group) to 40 to 45
minutes, three times a week. As expected, the aerobic group showed a significant
improvement in cardiovascular fitness as measured by peak oxygen uptake. Also as
predicted, older participants in the aerobic group additionally showed significant
behavioral benefits on a response-conflict task designed to tap controlled executive
processing and inhibition. The task was a spatial flanker task, in which participants
were asked to press a button on either the right or left side of the stimulus display as
indicated by a central directional arrow cue. The central arrow was sometimes flanked
by additional arrows that pointed in the same direction (congruent trials) and at other
times was flanked by additional arrows that pointed in the opposite direction of the
central cue (incongruent trials). Individuals in the aerobic fitness group showed
a significant reduction in response conflict for the incongruent compared to the
congruent trials (11% reduction in response conflict from Time 1 to Time 2 compared
with a 2% reduction in the control group).
Neuroimaging analyses (fMRI) showed that this behavioral effect—reflecting
increased flexibility of responding—was accompanied by corresponding changes in
brain activity in networks of attention, particularly increased activity in the middle
frontal gyrus and superior parietal cortex, together with decreases in activation in
anterior cingulate cortex, a region associated with response conflict. Very similar
neuroimaging results were obtained by these researchers in an earlier cross-sectional
investigation, comparing individuals who entered the study with comparatively high
levels of aerobic fitness with those who were relatively less aerobically fit.
In follow-up work, Colcombe et al. (2006) examined possible structural (gray or
white matter) changes in the two randomly assigned groups from the Colcombe et al.
(2004) study using the technique of voxel-based morphometry. These analyses
showed that, for older adults in the aerobic fitness group but not for those in the
nonaerobic group, there were significant increases in gray matter volume in the fron-
tal cortex (anterior cingulate cortex/supplementary motor cortex and right inferior
frontal gyrus) and in temporal cortex (left superior temporal gyrus). The aerobic
fitness group additionally showed increases in the volume of anterior white matter
between the initial (Time 1) and the final (Time 2) scans.
Also using MRI measures, Pereira et al. (2007) reported that young to middle-aged
individuals (mean age of 33 years, range from 21–45 years) who engaged in a 3-month
aerobic exercise program showed increases in cerebral blood volume in the dentate
gyrus of the hippocampus. (Modest but not statistically significant increases also were
observed in entorhinal cortex.) These increases in cerebral blood volume were corre-
lated both with a measure of cardio-respiratory fitness (peak oxygen consumption)
and with cognitive measures of verbal learning and memory (a modified version of the
Auditory Learning Test). Notably, these researchers also earlier demonstrated, in
research with mice, that exercise had a selective effect on cerebral blood volume in the
dentate gyrus (with a trend for such an effect in entorhinal cortex), and that exercise-
induced changes in cerebral blood volume in the dentate gyrus in mice correlated with
postmortem measurements of neurogenesis. Additionally, they demonstrated that if
neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus was prevented, through the use of an x-irradiation
procedure, then the exercise-induced cerebral blood volume effect was likewise
blocked. In contrast, in a control group of mice, given a “sham” procedure without the
x-irradiation and for which neurogenesis thus remained possible, the cerebral blood
volume effect was again observed.
The mechanisms underlying the changes in frontal and parietal regions reported by
Colcombe and colleagues (2004, 2006) remain to be determined. However, work from
animal models suggests several possible, not necessarily mutually exclusive, possibili-
ties. Perhaps most likely are increases in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)
and other nerve growth factors that, in rats, have been shown to lead to an increase in
the number of synapses, capillaries, and cell bodies. In particular, Vaynman and
colleagues (2004) demonstrated that, in rats, voluntary exercise increased both an
important intermediary in gene expression (mRNA) and BDNF in several regions,
including the hippocampus, cerebellum, and frontal cortex and—furthermore—that
interfering with BDNF (by blocking the binding of BDNF to its receptor) also
eliminated the behavioral benefits of exercise as shown on a water maze task.7 As
observed by Colcombe et al. (2004, p. 3320), “One possibility, then, is that increases in
cardiovascular fitness increases the number of interconnections (synapses) in frontal
and parietal gray matter, allowing for greater systematic recruitment of these areas
under higher cognitive load.” Other possibilities include increases in blood supply to
these regions or positive cholinergic effects.
PRACTICING AGILE THINKING?

A fundamental characteristic of individuals who are experts in their field seems
to be their ability to adaptively and flexibly apply their skills and knowledge to novel
situations, in new and surprising ways (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). A reasonable
question might then be: can we “deliberately practice” (e.g., Ericsson, 2000; 2008)
agile thinking itself so as to become experts in cognitive agility?
The findings using the environmental enrichment paradigm might be seen as a form
of practicing of agile thinking. In these studies, rats and other animals that were pro-
vided opportunities to explore and to engage with a wide range of stimulating objects
and activities become more adept problem-solvers, and also more adept and motivated
problem-explorers as shown, for example, in reduced fear and greater curiosity in the
face of novel circumstances. But the animals in these cases did not “deliberately” prac-
tice agile thinking in the way that musicians or artists might focus on sustaining and
systematically expanding their techniques and capability. The research examining the
effects of practicing working memory also might be seen as a form of deliberate prac-
tice. But working memory is only one specific process involved in agile thinking, and
these studies involved repeated practice on a relatively narrow type of task.
One area of research that could be seen as involving—at least partially—more
“deliberate practice” of agile thinking is investigations of the effects of specific train-
ing on tests of fluid intelligence. Tests of fluid intelligence require on-the-spot think-
ing and novel uses of new information rather than simple recall of previously learned
information, or the application of well-practiced routines or procedures. The extent to
which individuals can benefit from training in tasks that draw on fluid intelligence has
been explored in several studies, particularly in relation to older adults (e.g., Baltes,
Dittmann-Kohli, & Kliegl, 1986; Baltes, Sowarka, & Kliegl, 1989; Baltes & Willis,
1982; Willis & Nesselroade, 1990).
It is well known that older adults often show declines in a number of types of
cognitive performance, such as memory. What is perhaps somewhat less well
known (or as often emphasized) is that some forms of cognition, such as vocabulary
or other tasks that rely on well-learned information, seem to be relatively well
preserved. Healthy older adults show comparatively little performance decline in
these domains, instead showing maintained or even, in some cases, improvements in
performance (Horn & Cattell, 1967). Decreases are more pronounced in areas that
demand on-the-spot “fluid” thinking and manipulation of information. Thus, an
important research question has been whether these performance decreases in fluid
reasoning might be offset by training in tasks that require active on-line thinking and
planning.
An illustrative study is that of Baltes, Dittmann-Kohli, and Kliegl (1986). These
investigators studied a large sample of 204 healthy older adults, between 60 and 86
years of age. Participants were randomly assigned to either a training program condi-
tion or a no contact control group. The training program involved group sessions in
two different abilities: figural relations and induction. Training sessions focused on
helping the participants to identify rules and concepts and to use them in solving the
figural relations and induction problems. Tutored instruction, peer observation, feed-
back, and information on the usefulness of alternative strategies were given. Sessions
were conducted over a 10-week period, with 5 weeks for figural relations training
and 5 weeks for induction training.
To evaluate the effects of the training sessions, a large set of eight different tests
was administered to all participants at the beginning and end of the 10-week period.
These tests sampled a wide range of types of abilities, including the same fundamental
abilities that were the focus of training (figural relations and induction, measured
using standardized tests), some that were similar to those abilities, and some that
were relatively different from those abilities (measures of perceptual speed and
vocabulary). This allowed determination of the degree to which any training benefits
that were observed were highly specific, that is, shown only on tasks that required
the same or highly similar procedures as those that were part of the training sessions
(“near transfer” tests), or were more broad improvements that were quite generally
shown even on tasks that did not require procedures like those that were trained
(“far transfer” tests).
Training significantly improved older adults’ performance accuracy on tasks
requiring on-the-spot thinking that were similar to those that had been trained on
(near-transfer tests; see also McArdle & Prindle, 2008). This increase in accuracy did
not reflect changes in the number of items that were attempted: The number of items
attempted was essentially identical in the experimental and control groups for the
four near-transfer tests, indicating that the training did not simply alter readiness or
willingness to try to solve the problems. Deliberate practice also enhanced older adults’
performance on the near-transfer tasks regardless of the degree of difficulty of the
problem.
Although extremely encouraging, and an “existence proof” for the beneficial effects
of deliberately “exercising the mind” for agile thinking in types of problems similar to
those that were practiced, several cautions in interpreting these results are necessary.
First, the study only examined training effects in older adults who were comparatively
healthy and well educated. It cannot be concluded that similar training benefits neces-
sarily would be shown in less healthy individuals (for example, those in the early stages
of dementia).8 It also is not possible to draw any conclusions about the relative ability
of older, compared with younger, individuals to benefit from training on fluid intelli-
gence tests. Only older individuals were tested, so it simply is unknown to what extent
younger individuals also might show training-related improvements, or whether or
not such improvements would be of a similar magnitude to those shown in the older
population. Finally, it is important to consider the amount of training: only 5 weeks
for each task. This is much briefer, and much less intense, than the years of deliberate
practice (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996) undertaken by individuals who achieve high
levels of expertise in domains such as music or dance.
Closely related to this point is the question of the durability of the benefits
observed—do the benefits persist past the training period and, if so, for how long?
A partial answer to this question is provided by the results of three follow-up tests
that were administered 1 week, 1 month, and 6 months following the training. These
tests still showed improvement at 1 week; however, by 6 months, performance was
only very slightly and not reliably better than at pretest. Nonetheless, here, again a
comparison to research findings and detailed observations on deliberate practice are
informative: Among expert performers, deliberate practice is not simply abruptly
stopped once some level of achievement is reached, but rather is continued, at very
regular intervals, across years and years (not weeks or months).9
Additionally, other studies have provided evidence for benefits from direct training
in strategy application to specifically improve reasoning ability, such as training in
using rules to identify patterns (e.g., repeats of a pattern, or skips) in inductive reason-
ing tasks (Saczynski, Willis, & Schaie, 2002). The large-scale randomized controlled
single blind investigation known as the “ACTIVE” (“Advanced Cognitive Training for
Independent and Vital Elderly”) study found longer term maintenance of training ben-
efits on reasoning ability across periods as long as 2 years (Ball et al., 2002) and extend-
ing out to 5 years (Willis et al., 2006). Reasoning task training was further found to
enhance self-reported everyday living skills at 5-year follow-up (Willis et al., 2006).
Training in metacognitive strategies such as self-monitoring and self-testing, may
also prove beneficial, at least for participants who do not spontaneously or regularly
engage in such strategies, particularly as they can, in principle, be applied to any new
learning or performance task (Dunlosky et al., 2003; 2007). Results have further
shown that allowing participants to choose memory encoding strategies from among
a number of different but potentially effective instructed approaches may be more
beneficial for both immediate performance and transfer than requiring a specific
strategy (Lustig & Flegal, 2008). The latter researchers concluded that “manipulations
that encourage older adults to increase proactive control and deep encoding but that
allow flexibility in the method of doing so are the most likely to promote successful
training and transfer” (Lustig & Flegal, 2008, p. 763). A review of far transfer effects
in older individuals using strategy training versus extended practice approaches is
provided by Zelinski (2009). Additionally, Lustig et al. (2009) provide a detailed
consideration of the possibility of using neuroimaging data “as a guide to identify core
cognitive processes that can be trained in one task with effective transfer to other
tasks that share the same underlying processes” (Lustig et al., 2009, p. 504).
TRAINING IN RECOLLECTION: AN INTERVENTION

W I T H T R A N S F E R B E N E F I T S TO T H I N K I N G
As noted in Chapter 2, a key factor that seems to characterize the efforts to intention-
ally remember information of many (although not all) older adults is a disproportion-
ate emphasis on relatively general, “gist-like” or categorical information, at the expense
of detailed, item-specific recollection (e.g., Koutstaal, 2003; Koutstaal & Schacter,
1997a; Reder, Wible, & Martin, 1986; Tun et al., 1998). This preference for, or bias
toward, relatively general or categorical memory recall has detrimental effects on per-
formance in situations that require item-specific memory. But is this bias inevitable, or
can older individuals learn (or relearn) to more strongly rely on effortful “recollective”
processes rather than relatively automatic “familiarity-based” processes? And if older
adults can learn to rely more extensively on recollective processes, might this yield
benefits for their performance on other cognitive tasks that likewise place strong
demands on effortful, controlled, or frontally mediated/frontal-executive processing?
Unlike many studies that have aimed to alter the way in which older adults initially
encode information by encouraging and teaching them to use elaborative encoding
methods (e.g., Lustig & Flegal, 2008) or mnemonic techniques,10 the approach adopted
in two pioneering studies by Jennings and Jacoby (2003) and Jennings and colleagues
(2005) focused on helping older individuals, at the time of recalling information, to
improve their ability to recollect information. The training sessions involved a highly
challenging task that aimed to improve recollection in two ways. First, the training
sessions began at a level at which older adults could accurately perform the task, but
then the difficulty level was systematically increased, on a case-by-case basis, as the
participant mastered each level. Second, for each item that the participant answered,
he or she was provided immediate feedback as to whether the response was correct.
If the participant’s response was correct, the computer “beeped” and the message
“correct” appeared on the screen. If the participant’s response was incorrect,
no message appeared. This directly and prominently signaled to older adults when
they were correct, and when they had made errors.
For reasons that will soon become apparent, the task the older adults were asked
to perform has come to be called the “repetition-lag” paradigm. First, participants are
presented with a list of 30 words on the computer screen and are asked to read each
word aloud and remember it. Then, they are given a “yes/no” recognition test, consist-
ing of the 30 words they have just studied, plus 30 new words. However, the new
words are not just presented once. Each new word is presented twice during the recog-
nition test phase (thus the “repetition” portion of the name for this procedure). For
one-half of the repeated new words, the first and second presentation of the new word
occur quite closely to one another in time; for the remaining half, the first and second
presentation of the new word is spaced apart—with a long rather than short “lag”
between the first appearance and its second appearance (thus the “lag” portion of the
procedure’s name). Crucially, participants are instructed to say “yes” only to the words
that they have earlier read aloud, during the study phase, and to be sure to say “no” to
all of the new words, both if they are being shown the new word for the first time, and
if the new word had been shown earlier but during the recognition test, rather than
during the reading task.
Earlier research (Jennings & Jacoby, 1997) showed that, compared with younger
adults, older adults often made many errors on this task, mistakenly saying “yes” to
the new words that repeated during the test phase, particularly if there was a longer
lag between the first and second presentation of the word. Such errors would arise if
individuals made their recognition decisions only on the basis of whether the word
seemed to be familiar and did not try to determine the precise source (e.g., M. K.
Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; K. J. Mitchell & Johnson, 2009) of that famil-
iarity: that is, was the word one that they had read aloud earlier or one that had
occurred at an earlier time during the testing?
The objective of the training procedure used by Jennings and Jacoby (2003) was to
encourage older adults to pay closer attention to the evidential grounds for their
recognition decisions and to try to recollect the source of the information rather than
responding only on the basis of familiarity. To do this, these researchers gave older
adults not one, but many study-test cycles of the repetition-lag procedure, across sev-
eral days of training (four sessions a day, for a total of 7 days, with all the training days
immediately consecutive to one another except for the intervening weekend). In the
initial sessions, they used only a very short lag, with only one intervening item
between the presentation of the new item, and its re-presentation, plus one slightly
longer lag (two items), that posed a greater challenge and to which older adults often
incorrectly responded “yes.” As performance improved at a given lag (up to the accu-
racy level previously shown by young adults at that lag), the researchers increased the
lag between items, gradually incrementing the shorter and longer lag from 1 and 2; to
1 and 3; then 2 and 4; 2 and 8; 4 and 12; 4 and 16; 8 and 20; 8 and 24; 12 and 28; 12
and 32; 16 and 36; 16 and 40; 20 and 44; and finally, 20 and 48. The lags were chosen
such that individuals were always working at one lag that they had mastered and
another lag that was still challenging, and participants continued with a given interval
pair until they had achieved criterion (defined as the average accuracy level of younger
adults at the same interval).
Individuals in the training group improved markedly compared with a group that
was exposed to a similar series of study-test cycles, but without the performance-
guided systematic increments of the lag intervals (the control group received a “yoked”
set of lag intervals, but in a randomly intermixed manner). Although the controls also
noticeably improved (mean lag mastered by the end of training = 10.2 items, compared
with 1.83 at the outset), the benefit in the experimental group more than doubled that
of the control group (27.92 at the end, compared with 1.92 at the outset). These results
concur with, and extend, other test-specific training interventions with older adults,
demonstrating that “older individuals retain a reserve capacity or cognitive plasticity
that can be utilized to improve memory function” (Jennings & Jacoby, 2003, p. 436)
not only in tasks that focus on encoding but also in tasks that focus on retrieval.
Equally important, a further study, using a largely similar training procedure, dem-
onstrated that the benefits derived from “training in recollection” (and attentiveness
to the use of familiarity vs. recollection) had “carryover” benefits to other types of
tasks. Jennings et al. (2005) found that, compared with a recognition practice control
group, recollection training not only improved performance on the trained procedure
but also led to significant improvements on several other transfer tasks. Pre- to post-
training improvements were found on four other tasks: a working memory task (an
n-back task, in which participants were asked to study each letter and indicate whether
it was the same as a letter presented “n” trials earlier, e.g., 1, 2, or 3 trials before), a
task involving self-ordered pointing (in which participants were required to point once
only to each of 16 different abstract shapes presented on 16 different pages), a differ-
ent memory task requiring discrimination between words that had been presented in
auditory form versus words that the participants had themselves read, and a digit
symbol substitution task (from the WAIS-R), in which participants were asked to sub-
stitute nine different symbols corresponding to designated numbers for a list of num-
bers. Thus, the recollection training procedure produced benefits that extended
considerably beyond the particular training procedure, “encompassing working
memory with letter stimuli, output monitoring with abstract shapes, and source dis-
crimination for presentation modality [. . . showing benefits] to near transfer mea-
sures regardless of stimuli type and for both working and long-term memory demands
[. . . and] suggesting that targeting recollection for training does not improve a memory
system per se but may enhance processes that are applicable across multiple systems”
(Jennings et al., 2005, p. 295).
This observation of considerable across-task benefits of the training contrasts with
many previous training studies, in which benefits of training are observed only for
tasks and skills similar to those on which participants have trained (e.g., Kramer &
Willis, 2002). Notably successful and adept performance on the various tasks that
showed transfer gains in Jennings et al. (2005) draws on several cognitive, perceptual,
and/or attentional processes, beyond item-specific recollection, that are important to
flexible thinking, such as the updating of working memory (n-back), output monitor-
ing (self-ordered pointing), and sustained attention (symbol substitution) 11. This study
of Jennings et al. (2005) involving training in episodic recollection with older adults—
like the later study focusing on training in working memory in younger adults reported
by Jaeggi et al. (2008; discussed in the section on “Recently Acquired ‘Experimentally
Assigned’ Expertise and Brain Plasticity in Humans”) that showed benefits from work-
ing memory training on a measure of fluid on-the-spot reasoning—points to consider-
able transfer benefits from training in memory (and concurrent attention) for mental
agility. In the next section we will further consider transfer benefits from tasks that
focus on training our ability to adeptly exercise where and to what we attend.
T R A I N I N G AT T E N T I O N A L C O N T R O L : D UA L - TA S K VA R I A B L E -
PRIORITY TRAINING, AND REAL-TIME VIDEO GAMING
Beneficial effects of cognitive-behavioral training in older, and also younger, individu-
als may be increased—and also show greater generalization to other tasks—if the
training procedure that is used is deliberately made to vary, placing strong demands
on the individual’s ability for flexible and dynamically changing responding (Bherer
et al., 2005; Kramer et al., 1995. Also see Chapter 5 and R. A. Schmidt & Bjork, 1992,
regarding the benefits of “learning to vary,” and Gopher, Weil, & Siegel, 1989, for a
broad conceptual overview, based on models of skills and theories of attention, for
how “emphasis change” may foster development of beneficial strategies in highly com-
plex problem-solving domains.)
One such procedure involves what has been called “variable priority training.” Such
training requires the individual to rapidly switch priorities among two or more tasks
that are performed concurrently. Rather than being instructed to place equal empha-
sis on each of two tasks to be performed together (fixed priority training), in variable
priority training participants might be asked to allocate changing amounts of effort
and attention to one or the other task, in proportions of, for example, 20–80, 35–65,
50–50, 65–35, and 80–20. The designated proportions would require the participant
to comparatively emphasize his or her speed and accuracy of performance on one task
(say alphabet arithmetic, in which individuals must subtract or add letters, as in “K–3
=?” for which the answer is “H”) compared to another task (e.g., a continuous gauge
monitoring task). In an important early study by Kramer and colleagues (1995), across
eight experimental sessions (including an initial screening session) both younger and
older adults received training on each of the tasks separately, as well as together, with
individuals assigned to either variable priority or fixed priority training. Feedback
reflecting a combination of both speed and accuracy of performance was given both
continuously for the last five trials and for each 5-minute block of trials. Participants
were also tested on two transfer tasks (a scheduling task, and a paired-associates
running memory task) for which feedback was given only at the end of each 5-minute
block, rather than continuously.
As expected, and consistent with many previous studies, at the outset of training,
the older participants were generally both slower and less accurate than were the
younger participants, and also showed a larger performance decrement as a result of
the dual task compared to single task requirements. Both older and younger adults
were able to vary their performance as requested by the variable priority instructions.
Most relevant here were the training effects. The results showed that, for both older
and younger adults, training yielded improvements in both response times and accu-
racy for both the monitoring and alphabet-arithmetic tasks. These effects were larger
for the variable priority than for the fixed priority training—even though the test
conditions involved 50–50 emphasis for everyone, and the variable priority group had
far less training on this particular emphasis condition than did the fixed priority
group. In addition, transfer was greater for those in the variable priority than in the
fixed priority condition particularly under the dual-task requirements.
Crucially, from the perspective of the iCASA framework, it appeared that variable
priority training led to both increasing automatization of single task components of
the dual tasks and a more general increase in the ability to effectively coordinate or
manage multiple tasks. On the one hand, increasing automatization in the variable
priority condition was particularly clear on the alphabet arithmetic problems, as
shown by an overall improvement in the speed of performance and in significantly
larger decreases in the slope of the function for adding versus subtracting letters
(“addend-subtrahend slope;” cf. G. D. Logan, 1988, 2002) with increasing training.
Decreases in the addend-subtrahend slope were significantly larger for the variable-
than for the fixed-priority training condition for both older and younger adults.
On the other hand, a more general increase in the ability to coordinate or manage
multiple tasks was shown in significantly greater response time improvements on the
new transfer scheduling task, and also in significantly greater response time and accu-
racy improvements in the new transfer paired-associates task, particularly under
dual-task conditions, for the variable priority than for the fixed priority condition.
These variable-priority transfer-training benefits were found for both older and
younger adults, suggesting that the three training sessions on the original tasks
enabled both age groups to learn a dual-task processing skill that generalized to new
contexts and tasks. Paralleling many previous studies that have shown that more
difficult initial learning conditions may yield stronger longer-term learning and trans-
fer (R. A. Schmidt & Bjork, 1992), these greater transfer benefits for the variable-
compared with the fixed-priority conditions were accompanied by relatively poorer
performance in the early training sessions, particularly for older adults. This suggests
that variable-strategy training needs to persist beyond an initial phase of increased
costs or difficulty.
A further study, using broadly similar methods and feedback, but with simpler
auditory and visual discrimination tasks for the primary training component, again
showed that training enhanced performance on both the trained tasks and transfer
tasks for both older and younger adults (Bherer et al., 2005; see also Bherer et al.,
2006). The transfer benefits for older individuals were at least as large as those for
younger persons—and larger in the case of an accuracy measure. Testing of a subset of
the participants 1 month later additionally suggested that the benefits were main-
tained across this intervening delay. More recent work has also shown that both age
groups show generalized attentional-control benefits through dual-task training

under conditions where there is both strong input and strong output interference,
resulting from similar stimuli and the requirement to use similar motor responses for
the two tasks. Both older and younger adults showed dual-task training benefits,
reflecting reduced task-set costs, on three different transfer tasks, including a within-
modality task and two across-modality task combinations (Bherer et al., 2008).
Another method that similarly draws on the ability for flexible and dynamically
changing responding by the participant involves action video games. In pioneering
research with younger adults, C. S. Green and Bavelier (2003, 2006) found that train-
ing on a complex video game—particularly a game (Medal of Honor) that involved
so-called first person shooting and that demanded rapid responding to fast-paced
visual display changes—yielded transfer benefits on several perceptual and attention
tasks. Performance of the experimental group was compared with control participants
who were randomly assigned to train on a video game (Tetris) that also involves con-
siderable visuomotor coordination, but that requires focus on one object at a time and
so places fewer demands on attention switching and broad scanning. Individuals who
trained (for 1 hour per day for 10 consecutive days) on the action video game showed
benefits on each of three tasks. Action video training led to significant gains on a mea-
sure of “enumeration,” that is, the ability to rapidly and automatically assess a small
number of stimuli in a brief display, independently of the number of stimuli.
Participants who undertook the action video training also showed an enhanced “useful
field of view,” that is, an extension of the area from which useful visual information
can be extracted in a single glance, evaluated by requiring participants to localize a
quickly flashed target from the midst of a large number of distracting objects. Finally,
participants in the action video training group demonstrated faster recovery from the
so-called attentional blink (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992)—a failure to detect a
target after the presentation of an earlier target stimulus that occurs when consecu-
tive stimuli such as letters are shown in rapid brief succession.
Summarizing these outcomes, C. S. Green and Bavelier (2003, p. 536) observe that
“10 days of training on an action game is sufficient to increase the capacity of visual
attention, its spatial distribution and its temporal resolution,” noting also that,
although these benefits might derive from changes in known attentional bottlenecks,
“speeded perceptual processes and/or better management of several tasks at the cen-
tral executive level are also likely to contribute.” Real-world complex tasks such as air
force test flights also have been shown to benefit from training on another rapid com-
plex video game (a modified Space Fortress game; Gopher, Weil, & Bareket, 1994),
combined with training on more effectively prioritizing attention-allocation to
selected subcomponents of the task (Gopher et al., 1989). These training benefits were
most apparent for the more advanced flights. Nonetheless, not all studies with younger
adults have reported gains on visual and attentional skills with interventions on the
order of 20-plus hours of video game playing (e.g., Boot et al., 2008). Although the
latter authors did find expert versus nongamer differences on several measures, includ-
ing object-tracking speed, visual change detection, task switching, and mental rota-
tion, it is unclear whether these differences resulted from far more extensive practice
by the experts, or from preexisting differences in individuals who become expert
gamers relative to those who do not.
In other work, Basak and colleagues (2008) examined the effects of training in
another commercial real-time strategy video game—called Rise of Nations—on the
executive and cognitive function of older adults. The game requires participants to
build new cities, improve city infrastructure, and expand one’s national border through
a wide range of strategies, such as diplomacy, technology races, building “wonders,”
and espionage. The participant can explore broader or more detailed parts of the entire
map and must continually monitor his or her resources and situation, as well as plan
methods for protecting and expanding his or her territories.
Thus, like the Medal of Honor game used by Green and Bavelier (2003, 2006), the
strategy-based Rise of Nations game appears to place high demands on multiple
aspects of executive control, such as switching between various goals and priorities,
and maintaining multiple sources of information in working memory. However, unlike
the Medal of Honor game, the Rise of Nations is not a first-person shooter game, and
therefore it does not place the same demands as does the former on visual-spatial
attentional abilities, such as selective and focused attention. These similarities and
differences led Basak and colleagues (2008) to predict that whereas extensive playing
of the Rise of Nations game would yield broad transfer gains on measures of executive
control and memory, there would be fewer transfer gains on speeded visual-perceptual
processing tasks. Forty older adults who were naïve to video games were randomly
assigned to either 7–8 weeks of video game playing (total training time of 23.5 hours)
or to a no-contact control group. Both groups were tested on a cognitive battery pre-
and posttraining, and final data were collected from 19 participants in the training
group, and 20 participants in the control group.
Whereas the video training had no effect on one measure of working memory
(operation span), training yielded a significant reduction in switching costs associated
with a task-switching procedure and also focus or object-switching on an N-back task.
Training also improved detection in a visual short-term memory task particularly
when the number of stimuli was near the capacity limit (four items). Notably, signifi-
cant training related benefits, especially after 23.5 hours of training, additionally were
found on a measure of on-the-spot fluid reasoning (Raven’s Advanced Progressive
Matrices). Individual differences in improvements in game playing were correlated
with improvements on the N-back and task-switching measures (but not the reason-
ing or visual short-term memory measures). As predicted, measures of visual-spatial
performance (functional field of view, attentional blink, enumeration) were not
affected by the training on the Rise of Nations game.
On the one hand, inasmuch as the video game involved such tasks as “maintaining
items in short-term memory, juggling things back and forth in a short span of time,
and making decisions on various strategies and resources” (Basak et al., 2008, p. 776),
it might be suggested that the transfer effects observed, on tasks measuring visual
short-term memory, switching between objects, and reasoning abilities, comprised
“near transfer” benefits. On the other hand, the many differences between the video
game context and the standardized measures of executive function and reasoning on
which transfer benefits were demonstrated might be construed as involving a form of
distant transfer.
Although it is difficult to definitively isolate the factors responsible for the
action-video induced improvements in younger and older adults, particularly in
contrast with many of the programs that have been designed for the specific purpose
of “brain training,” such games are remarkable for their complexity, and the manner in
which they simultaneously and in parallel place demands on multiple brain systems:
In video games developed for entertainment, for instance, one may be simul-
taneously engaged in memory tasks (e.g., spatial memory for the route to the
enemy fortress, semantic memory for weapons at one’s disposal or enemies
still active), executive tasks (e.g., resource and weapon allocation, dual task-
ing), visual attention tasks (multiple object tracking, distractor rejection),
visuomotor tasks (e.g., steering, piloting), and rapid object recognition, to
cite just a few. (C. S. Green & Bavelier, 2008, p. 696)
Similarly, Basak and colleagues emphasize the variability and the dynamic changes
in flexibly adaptive responding called upon by the Rise of Nations game:
One possibility of why we see improvements in performance of the training

group in the transfer tasks could be that [Rise of Nations] keeps the player
on his or her toes; one is always changing priorities, albeit voluntarily, in
which sometimes one may focus on building wonders, generating resources,
maintaining multiple cities, attacking the enemy, or defending one’s own
territories. (Basak et al., 2008, p. 776)
Like the variable priority training work of Kramer et al. (1995), certain video games
appear to require varied, flexible, and integrative responding to dynamically changing
contexts. Notably, as also remarked by C. S. Green and Bavelier (2008), requirements
for such parallel, multiple and simultaneous, modes of processing are also characteris-
tic of some natural learning and performance activities that may also yield benefits to
cognitive flexibility, such as music and sports or athletics training. Beyond calling
upon both automatic and controlled processes, such parallel modes of processing par-
ticularly may call upon relatively higher levels of hierarchical organization and infor-
mation processing that help to promote generalization of learning to new tasks and
contexts (cf. Ahissar & Hochstein, 2004). Thus, both action video games such as Medal
of Honor and complex strategy games such as Rise of Nations, which draw on multi-
ple, simultaneous, and varied modes of processing, may help to extend an individual’s
oscillatory range in levels of control and/or levels of specificity, and they may promote
mental agility in contexts that extend beyond the game-playing scenario.12
Nonetheless, it is also important to be a “healthy skeptic” with regard to such
possibilities and to take into account the vast diversity of video games, each one of
which may call upon somewhat different skills and abilities or dynamic combinations
and recombinations of skills, and may thus have somewhat differing implications for
the nearer and farther transfer of those abilities. Additionally, it is important to rec-
ognize that the potential benefits of engagement in this activity, as for virtually all
activities do not occur in isolation from competing alternatives for behavioral engage-
ment. There are, here, as so often, trade-offs and “opportunity costs”—time spent
video-gaming is time not spent on some other potential activity that might bring
different benefits—and excessive devotion to any one activity may bring costs to
individuals of all ages, including young children, if engagement in other pursuits, such
as reading, writing, or academic preparation is forfeited (e.g., Weis & Cerankosky,
2010; see also Bailey et al., 2010).
AT T E N T I O N R E S TO R AT I O N T H E O R Y A N D E X P E R I E N C E S
O F T H E N AT U R A L E N V I R O N M E N T
The central concept in attention restoration theory is that of “directed attention” or
what was earlier, following William James (1890/1981), termed “voluntary atten-
tion.” Largely under intentional control, directed attention involves the capacity to
inhibit or block competing stimuli or distractions during purposeful activity and so
assumes a crucial role in such diverse aspects of behavior as novel problem solving,
resisting distractions, inhibiting undesired impulses and inclinations, and focusing on
weak or ambiguous stimuli. It also enables efficient and effective selectivity of
processing in both thought and perception, so that we can more readily separate the
essential and important from the inessential and less important.
As observed by S. Kaplan (1995, p. 171), voluntary directed attention is “not, in
itself, more important to problem-solving than knowledge or perception or action”
nor is it “necessarily the most important component of the system necessary to gener-
ate appropriate behavior.” However, it is fragile—and particularly is vulnerable to
fatigue—and therefore often comprises a weak link in our informational processing
nexus. Similar to self-regulatory resource depletion theory, discussed in Chapter 5
(see also S. Kaplan & Berman, 2010), attention restoration theory emphasizes the
effortful nature of focused attention and “views directed attention as a global
inhibitory mechanism such that fatigue from one task transfers to other tasks that
subsequently require directed attention” (S. Kaplan, 2001, p. 482).
Four broad suggested approaches to restoring directed attention have been out-
lined by S. Kaplan (1995, 2001). One is closely reminiscent of that suggested by
Elsbach and Hargadon (2006, alluded to in Chapter 5, and further discussed in Chapter
12) regarding the need for structuring “recharge times” in organizational workdays.
This approach is simply to avoid situations that might draw on the need for directed
attention, particularly situations where there is insufficient or inappropriate informa-
tion, where one has “inappropriate” motivation, inadequate skill, or situations that
require consideration of multiple competing mental models (S. Kaplan, 2001).
Avoiding such highly taxing situations, and instead immersing oneself in contexts
characterized by heightened compatibility with one’s own inclinations and aims, may
help to restore attention; the compatibility may be motivational and/or informational.
Other approaches involve experiencing “a sense of being away,” via settings or con-
texts that provide either physical or mental relief from daily concerns, and becoming
immersed in a coherently ordered environment of substantial scope or “extent,” again
either physically, as in encountering expansive horizons, or conceptually, as when the
presence of historical artifacts promotes a sense of connectedness to a much larger
and more extended past.
Perhaps most researched, however—and also most directly related to the iCASA
framework’s emphasis on the need for “oscillatory range” in levels of control—is the
restorative capabilities of a form of “involuntary” or spontaneous attention to
changing patterns or information that requires no deliberate effort, or what has

(perhaps less helpfully) been termed “fascination.” Such spontaneous attending or fas-
cination may relate to either an ongoing process (e.g., in storytelling or problem solv-
ing) or to content (e.g., observing animals or children). It frequently emerges in certain
settings within nature, as when we become quietly engrossed in observing clouds or
snow patterns or the motion of water, although other contexts may also elicit it.13
A number of early field-based studies provided initial credence for the notion that
exposure to nature might help to both preserve and restore voluntary attention.14
Hypothesizing that gazing out of the window at a natural scene might provide an
“easily accessible ‘micro-restorative’ activity,” Tennessen and Cimprich (1995) found
that college students with more natural (rather than built) views from their dormitory
window achieved higher scores on measures of directed attention, such as the Symbol
Digit Modalities Test, in which participants are required to translate geometric sym-
bols into digits as quickly as possible according to a provided coding scheme. Similarly,
contrasting individuals living in otherwise quite closely matched urban public housing
units in Chicago, F. E. Kuo and Sullivan (2001) found that those persons with rela-
tively greater natural scenery (trees and grass) close to their residence achieved sig-
nificantly higher scores on a backward digit span test—a task that places strong
demands on directed attention as items are moved in and out of the focus of attention
(Jonides et al., 2008)—than did those with only built scenery nearby. Individuals with
some nearby nature also reported significantly lower levels of psychological aggres-
sion and physical violence against their partner, with this effect mediated by the
directed attention effect. Beneficial effects of nearby green space on objective mea-
sures of attention and self-regulatory inhibitory capacity of 7- to 12-year old girls in
urban public housing have also been reported (A. F. Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2002).
Few studies have examined the effects of natural settings on the cognitive function
of older adults. In a notable exception, using a within-subject design, Ottosson and
Grahn (2005) contrasted performance on various cognitive measures before, versus
after, a 1-hour period of relaxation spent either outdoors in a garden, or indoors in a
favorite place, for 15 older persons (mean age of 86 years) living in a nursing home.
They observed a significant pre-to-post advantage for the outdoor setting on both
forward and backward digit span, and on a symbol digit modalities test.
Several recent studies using randomized assignment to experimental conditions
offer critical further support for the potential restorative qualities of natural scenes
and objects. In two experiments, Berto (2005; also see Hartig et al., 2003) found that
even relatively brief within-laboratory exposure to a series of natural scenes (less than
10 minutes total) following a demanding attention task yielded improvements on a
further session with the demanding attention task. The task used was the Sustained
Attention to Response Test, requiring participants to respond by rapidly pressing the
space bar to all digits that were presented, except the digit “3,” which was presented
only infrequently, and to which the participant was to make no response. A measure
of sensitivity to the distinction between the respond versus do not respond trials (d’)
was significantly improved when participants had viewed natural scenes compared to
built scenes. This enhanced sensitivity was found both when the picture-viewing time
and pacing were experimenter determined, and when picture-viewing time and pacing
were determined by the participants themselves. Under the experimenter-determined
presentation rate, response times were also significantly faster. In contrast, viewing
geometrical patterns did not lead to attention benefits.
Adopting an especially sensitive within-participant design, Berman et al. (2009)
demonstrated that compared with viewing photographs of urban cityscape scenes,
viewing photographs of natural scenery (from Nova Scotia) led to improvements on
two different measures of directed attention. University student participants were
first administered the Attention Network Task, a task designed to differentiate
between three behaviorally and neuroanatomically separable aspects of attention,
including alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Attentional alerting was
assessed by contrasting trials in which a central cue warned participants than an
upcoming trial was about to appear, versus trials in which no cue is given; typically,
participants’ performance is facilitated by the alerting cue. Attentional orienting
similarly was assessed by contrasting two types of trials but here the cue additionally
provides participants with guidance as to the location of the upcoming trial informa-
tion, with cues at either the top or bottom half of the screen contrasted with a cen-
trally displayed cue. Third, executive attention was assessed by trials in which a
centrally displayed arrow either pointed in a direction congruent with that pointed to
by four additional surrounding (flanking) arrows or pointed in an incongruent direc-
tion; these trials require the greatest amount of directed attention. After the Attention
Network Task, participants were shown either approximately 10 minutes of natural
scenery photographs (50 photographs, with approximately 7 seconds per picture) or
10 minutes of photographs of the built environment, after which they were again
given the Attention Network Task. The order of the intervening photographs was
counterbalanced across participants, with 1 week separating the two experimental
sessions (either nature, then urban views, or vice versa).
Berman and colleagues (2009) found that compared with viewing the urban
scenes, viewing the natural scenes lead to significantly enhanced performance on the
executive attention trials of the Attention Network Task. (Note that this result,
involving selective performance enhancement on the executive attention trials, thus
directly parallels that found using integrative body-mind training, reported by Tang
and colleagues, 2007, 2009, and discussed in the first section of Chapter 3.) These
benefits were not related to changes in mood, although, as expected, participants
rated the viewing of the pictures of nature as significantly more refreshing and more
enjoyable than the viewing of the urban areas, and they also liked the nature pictures
significantly more. In addition, and replicating an earlier experiment that instead
involved actually walking in an urban setting versus a natural setting (Berman et al.,
2009, Experiment 1), exposure to nature also led to significantly improved backwards
digit span.
At the most immediate level, these results, and those of the other studies reviewed
in this section, show that “simple and brief interactions with nature can produce
marked increases in cognitive control” (Berman et al., 2009, p. 1211). At a broader
level, these outcomes have implications that may reach far beyond that of the cogni-
tive scientist’s laboratory, suggesting that “to consider the availability of nature as
merely an amenity fails to recognize the vital importance of nature in effective cogni-
tive functioning.” Immersion in interactions with nature provides one important
means whereby restoration of our capacity for directed attention may emerge.
Nonetheless, it is also imperative to exercise caution, avoiding a too simplistic

and unilaterally encompassing contrast of “beneficial” natural settings versus
“detrimental” (or at least not beneficial) urban settings. As emphasized by Ulrich
(1984)—in his early investigation demonstrating the potential benefits of “views to
nature” in promoting postsurgical recovery in hospital patients—the precise charac-
ter of the control or comparison condition, and the needs of the individual, clearly also
must be taken into account. Indeed, “perhaps to a chronically understimulated patient,
a built view such as a lively city street might be more stimulating and hence more
therapeutic than many natural views” (Ulrich, 1984, p. 421).
In this same spirit, research needs to focus on evaluating promising admixtures of
natural and urban environments—that may provide ideal opportunities for both
stimulation and restoration (cf. Karmanov & Hamel, 2008). Although the simple con-
trast between “natural” versus “built” environments has been found to strongly influ-
ence human perception and categorization of scenes, the presence of trees and
vegetation in urban settings, such as commercial streets, residential areas, and park-
ing lots, may substantially increase liking for such urban areas, and it is possible to
create “pockets” of nature such as city parks. Ulrich (1993, p. 95) remarks that the
visual configurations and elements to which people respond as “natural” appear to be
quite broad for people in industrialized societies, “extending considerably beyond
wilderness to include many obviously human-made settings such as pastures, fields
planted in cereal crops, wooded parks, and even golf courses.”
In very general terms, European, North American, and Japanese adult groups
tend to respond to scenes as natural if the landscape is predominantly
vegetation, water, and mountains, if artificial features such as buildings,
automobiles, and advertising signs are absent or inconspicuous, and if the
dominant visual contours or edges are curvilinear or irregular rather than
starkly rectilinear or regular. (Ulrich, 1993, p. 95)
Research also needs to evaluate the ways in which all of the key characteristics
identified by attention restoration theory, including not only fascination but also
compatibility, a feeling of extent, and a feeling of “being away,” can be realized in the
design of our built environments and the ways in which we can draw on those charac-
teristics to creatively modify our environments, with aesthetic and natural objects of
all sorts, to best promote human flourishing.
T R A I N I N G O F AT T E N T I O N — I N Y O U N G C H I L D R E N —
ALSO IMPROVES FLEXIBLE THINKING
The effects of particular forms of environmental stimulation on flexibly adaptive
thinking also may be examined for individuals at the other end of the developmental
spectrum. A prominent and changing aspect of the young child’s cognitive capacity
involves attention. Children between the ages of 3 and 7 years typically show pro-
nounced improvements in their ability to voluntarily control attention. Although
much of this development may be related to maturational processes, researchers have
recently begun to examine whether environmental factors, particularly exposure to
activities that challenge the child’s current level of voluntary attention control, may
help to accelerate this developmental process.
Rueda, Rothbart, McCandliss, Saccomanno, and Posner (2005) devised several
procedures that young children, between the ages of 4 and 6 years, found engaging
and that systematically posed increasing challenges to the child’s executive attention
capacity. In a pretraining phase, children in the experimental groups first learned to
track a cartoon cat on a computer screen by using a joystick. They initially helped the
cat to stay on grassy (nonmuddy) areas of the screen, then helped the cat to stay dry
by tracking it with an umbrella, and then assisted it to find food in a maze. Five days
of training exercises then began, divided into 9 or 10 sessions, with each exercise
becoming more difficult as the child reached a given level of performance (e.g., correct
on three consecutive trials).
The sessions focused on three aspects of attention: anticipation (using the joystick
to anticipate where a duck would emerge from a pond, at first when it remained visible
throughout, then when it was submerged for part of its trajectory), stimulus discrimi-
nation (remembering different multiattribute cartoon characters to be selected from
an array of characters), and conflict resolution (choosing the larger of two arrays,
when the arrays themselves consisted of numbers, that either agreed or disagreed
with the size of the array). Six-year-old children also completed an inhibitory control
(go/no-go) exercise that required them to click the mouse button as quickly as possible
to sheep that appeared, but not to click in response to wolves that appeared in sheep’s
clothing. Children in the experimental attention-training condition were compared
with age-matched control groups who came to the laboratory just for pre- and post-
training assessments of attention and intelligence (Experiment 1) or also for several
intervening control laboratory sessions in which they watched popular children’s
videos (Experiments 2 and 3).
Results showed that the 4-year-olds given the attention-training sessions signifi-
cantly improved on two measures of intelligence: the abstract fluid-reasoning portion
(Matrices) of the measure of intelligence (the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test) and
also on the total score of the intelligence measure (Matrices plus Vocabulary). This
improvement was not found for their comparison group: There was a significant
group by pre/post-assessment interaction for both measures. Notably, as we have seen
(e.g., in Chapter 9) the Matrices task is a well-accepted measure of fluid on-the-spot
thinking, nonverbal reasoning, and simultaneous processing—all aspects directly
related to agile thinking.15 In contrast, in the 6-year-olds, behavioral improvements in
performance on these measures were less pronounced. However, the researchers
also obtained electrophysiological measures (EEGs) during the performance of the
attention test that was given in the pre- and postassessment sessions (the Child
Attention Network Test), and the event-related potentials (ERPs) from this task
showed different patterns for the trained versus nontrained older children.
The Child Attention Network Test measures the ability to resolve conflict in
responding to different stimuli. In this task, a central fish is presented, with four
“flanking” fish, which either point in the same direction as the central fish, corre-
sponding to the direction the child is required to indicate (congruent trials), or point
in the opposite direction (incongruent trials). A comparison of the ERPs for the con-
gruent versus incongruent trials showed that the older children—very much like
adults—showed an early negative-going amplitude on the incongruent trials at the

central location (the Cz electrode); in contrast, nontrained 6-year-olds showed a more
anterior effect (most prominent at the Fz electrode). Other findings have suggested
that processing in relatively more anterior regions (likely associated with more
anterior regions of anterior cingulate) may reflect a comparative predominance of
emotional processing, whereas the more posterior regions may reflect a predominance
of cognitive processes (see Bush, Luu, & Posner, 2000, for review and discussion).
Rueda et al. (2005) further found that the younger (4-year-old) trained group
also showed a greater negative going amplitude for the incongruent than for the
congruent trials, but this was seen at a more anterior location (most prominent
at the Fz electrode), and so was similar to that shown by the older nontrained
group. These results thus show that even brief training in attention tasks led to
increases in more general modes of cognitive flexibility in the youngest children, and
they also suggest (particularly for the older children) that such training may lead to
adaptive modifications in the brain systems supporting attention-demanding
performance.
A longer term and more comprehensive program, aimed at increasing children’s
attention and self-regulatory capacities, has also demonstrated that preschoolers can
substantially and significantly benefit from interventions aimed to advance their
capacity for self-regulatory control—enhancing performance on standardized mea-
sures of cognitive control and executive function (A. Diamond et al., 2007; also see
Blair & Diamond, 2008; Dowsett & Livesey, 2000). The “Tools of the Mind” curriculum
program is based on several basic theoretical and practical principles derived from
Luria (1965) and Vygotsky (1978), and it is specifically designed to incorporate many
techniques for supporting (“scaffolding”), training, and challenging executive func-
tions. The program jointly emphasizes, first, broad foundational skills, such as the
child’s ability to regulate his or her own social and cognitive behaviors, to attend and
to remember “on purpose,” and the use of symbolic representation,16 and second,
specific literacy prerequisites for reading and writing (e.g., oral language, phonemic
awareness, and knowledge of letters) and for mathematics (e.g., counting meaning-
fully, one-to-one correspondence, and patterns).
The activities designed to promote these skills often include specific interpersonal
interactions that help children to learn to use external aids to facilitate their attention
and memory, and that encourage the use of self-regulatory private speech. For exam-
ple, the importance of concrete, external aids is emphasized in the activity of “Buddy
Reading,” when all children receive a picture book and take turns telling a story and
listening to a story. Children who listen are given a card with a line drawing of an ear,
with the teacher explaining that “ears don’t talk, ears listen,” whereas the storyteller is
given a drawing of lips. The card acts as a concrete visual reminder to the child (e.g.,
the ear indicates that the child needs to inhibit talking at this time and listen).
Afterward, the children “trade drawings and roles, thus learning to enact the social
norms of turn-taking and waiting one’s turn” (A. Diamond et al., 2007, supplemental
online material, p. 5). Similarly, a brief “clean-up song” provides an auditory reminder
to the children of what they are to be doing during the transition between different
activities and also helps to pace them to do the tidying up of their toys and materials
quickly. In another math-related activity, the child directly engages in physical
activities with another child that help to model and support processes of self-monitor-
ing. During this activity, again done in pairs:
One child has a “hand” and counts out objects while the other child checks
whether the counting has been correct (the second child serving as a regula-
tor of the first child’s performance). The child who is the “checker” waits until
the first child finishes counting out the number of objects and then, using a
checking sheet, makes sure the answers are correct. This supports self-reflec-
tion as well as inhibition. The child who checks inhibits the desire to act until
it is his or her turn. The “counter” engages in self-reflection while watching
the checking, reflecting on his/her previous answer, thinking about whether
it’s correct or not […]. “Reliving” one’s actions by watching someone check is
practice in self-reflection on action, a metacognitive aspect of [executive
functions]. (A. Diamond et al., 2007, supplemental online material, p. 5)
Other joint activities, such as that of planning play scenarios, encourage children
to think before acting. They also draw on working memory and inhibitory capacities as
the children remember the scenario they had planned and inhibit impulsive behaviors
inconsistent with their agreed-upon roles.
A. Diamond and colleagues (2007) were given the opportunity to evaluate the
effects of the Tools of the Mind program versus another new high-quality curriculum
on standardized measures of executive function when a low-income urban school dis-
trict in the Northeast opened a new publicly funded preschool program. Importantly,
the school district agreed to randomly assign teachers and children to these two, newly
instigated, curricula. The two programs had equivalent resources such as books, toys,
and furniture, and equivalent state-set standards, such as a student-teacher ratio of
not more than or equal to 15:2. Stratified random assignment was used to allocate
teachers and assistants to the two programs. The comparison curriculum was a “bal-
anced literacy” curriculum, designed to teach children literacy skills through a bal-
anced combination of reading, writing, and listening activities, in the context of
particular themes, such as “family” or “transportation.” It was a typical and high-qual-
ity curriculum that had the same academic content as the Tools program but differed
in the broad educational focus, and there were no activities explicitly and intentionally
designed to promote executive function.
The two programs were run over a period of 2 years. In the first year teachers for
both curricula were given a 4-day training workshop; additional training days were
also given in both the first and second years. Children in the two groups were closely
matched on age (mean of about 5 years), ethnicity (approximately 90% Hispanic),
income (approximately 78% with family incomes of less than $25,000/year), and
mother’s education. Data were reported for 62 children in the comparison curriculum
and 85 children in the Tools curriculum; the parents for 91% of the Tools, and 76% of
the comparison group, gave consent for their children to be tested on the executive
function measures.
Two tasks were used to assess executive function: a “dots task” and a “flanker task.”
The dots task was a spatial compatibility or Simon effect task, in which a red heart or
flower appeared on the right or left of the computer screen, and was given in three
versions: congruent, incongruent, and mixed. In the congruent-dots condition, the

rule was “press the button on the same side as the heart.” In contrast, on the dots-
incongruent trials, the rule was “press the button on the side opposite the flower”—
requiring inhibition of a tendency to respond on the same side as a stimulus appears.
In the dots-mixed task, incongruent and congruent trials were randomly intermixed.
This task thus required not only inhibition but also the ability to flexibly move between
the rules, or a form of task switching.
The flanker task was given in two versions: standard and reversed. In the standard
version, the children were shown two shapes, one inside the other (e.g., a smaller circle
inside of a larger triangle) and asked to choose which shape was inside (with the
response options shown as a circle and a triangle). The reversed flanker task was given
after the standard version, and it required the children to, instead, indicate which
shape was on the outside, thus requiring inhibition of the previously learned stimu-
lus-response mappings and mindset.
These tasks, given at the end of the second year, were unlike any of the activities
that the children had done before. Together, the tasks provided measures of inhibitory
control (resisting habits, temptations, or distractions), of working memory, and of
cognitive flexibility. The latter was widely characterized as: “the ability to nimbly
adjust to changed demands or priorities”—building on, but also extending inhibitory
and working memory functions, and involving such aspects as “considering something
from a fresh or different perspective, switching between perspectives, adjusting to
change, and ‘thinking outside the box’” (A. Diamond et al., 2007, supplemental online
material, p. 3).
Results showed that on the congruent trials of the dots task, which had minimal
executive function demands, there were no effects of the curriculum on response
accuracy. In marked contrast, on both the dots-incongruent trials (requiring inhibi-
tory control processes) and the dots-mixed trials (requiring inhibitory control in con-
junction with increased demands on both working memory and cognitive flexibility),
the children in the Tools curriculum significantly outperformed those in the compari-
son condition. The dots-mixed trials were too difficult for most of the children in the
comparison curriculum: Only 29% of these children were able to pass the required
pretest, despite up to three chances to do so, and considerable instruction, feedback,
and practice. In contrast, 51% of the children in the Tools of the Mind condition
passed this criterion.
On the standard-flanker task (which, like the dots-incongruent trials, required
inhibitory control), the Tools program children again significantly outperformed their
peers in the comparison condition. These group differences were especially pronounced
on the more highly demanding reverse-flanker task, which also called upon all three
functions of inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility: Whereas children
in the comparison condition achieved an accuracy rate of 65% correct on this chal-
lenging task, the children in the Tools condition averaged 84% correct. These advan-
tages of the Tools program remained after controlling for effects of age and gender.
Additional results, also from a randomized control trial but including only 1 year of
the programs and 18 classrooms (W. S. Barnett et al., 2008) showed that teachers in
the Tools of the Mind classrooms reported substantially fewer behavioral problems,
including both externalizing problems (e.g., verbal or physical aggression) and
internalizing problems (e.g., depression or anxiety), than in control classrooms

(difference of about one-half a standard deviation). Objective measures of classroom
climate, literacy environment, and frequency of teacher scaffolding techniques, scored
from videotapes of the teachers during class time by raters who were blind to the
treatment or control status, also showed large and highly significant benefits, with
effect sizes of about 2.0. Modest positive effects on English language development
(receptive vocabulary, assessed by a four-alternative picture task) and receptive and
expressive language skills in the Spanish-speaking children were also found (effect
sizes of 0.22 and 0.35, respectively).
These results are promising, and it is possible that, with a larger sample and
perhaps also a more consistently implemented program (beyond the initial year,
during which teachers are still learning the program), stronger academic benefits
might also be observed. In line with this possibility, academic performance measures
from the Diamond et al. (2007) study (unfortunately collected for just the Tools
program group and not for the comparison group) were significantly correlated with
the percentage of correct responses on the demanding incongruent-dots, and particu-
larly the most difficult mixed-dots task conditions, but not for the easier congruent
condition. Specifically, several measures of academic performance, administered and
analyzed independently by the National Institute of Early Education Research, showed
strong significant correlations with performance in the most demanding mixed-dots
condition, including assessments of receptive and expressive vocabulary, and applied
verbal mathematical problem solving. Summarizing these important findings, and
their broader conceptual implications, Diamond and colleagues noted:
Although play is often thought frivolous, it may be essential. [The “Tools of

the Mind” curriculum] uses mature, dramatic play to help improve [execu-
tive functions]. If, throughout the school day, [executive functions] are
supported and progressively challenged, benefits generalize and transfer to
new activities. Daily [executive function] “exercise” appears to enhance
[executive function] development much as physical exercise builds bodies.
(A. Diamond et al., 2007, p. 1388)
In the next and final section, we consider whether a similar approach, involving the
encouragement of increased “playful practice” and the pursuit of novel and engaging
activities, might likewise yield benefits for the novel problem-solving and on-line
reasoning capabilities of older individuals.
N O V E L A C T I V I T I E S , P L AY F U L P R A C T I C E ,
AND IMPROVING AGILE THINKING
Several lines of evidence, reviewed in earlier sections of this chapter, converge in
pointing to the possibility that older adults may, under appropriate conditions, show
much more flexible and adaptive thinking than might otherwise be expected on a
“standard view” of the cognitive declines associated with normal aging. These studies
suggest that environmental conditions that invite the use of agile thinking may be
surprisingly important in maintaining cognitive performance. They further suggest
that conditions that invite involvement in intellectually challenging activities, and

particularly novel activities, may prove especially beneficial (e.g., Hultsch, Hertzog,
Small, & Dixon, 1999; C. Schooler, 1984).
However, the existing sources of evidence for this possibility are either indirect
(e.g., correlational studies showing comparatively preserved intellectual functioning
in older adults who continue to engage in cognitively complex work and leisure
activities) or involve forms of test-specific training rather than manipulations of
involvement in more diverse, and less closely test-related, everyday cognitive and
creative activities. There are no direct experimental demonstrations in healthy older
adults of improvements in agile thinking or “fluid intelligence” arising from non-test-
related increases in cognitive stimulation.
The aim of a series of studies in our lab (Tranter & Koutstaal, 2008) was to experi-
mentally test whether introducing older adults to a period of novel, mentally stimulat-
ing activities would lead to increased agile thinking in older adults—as measured by
improvements on a standardized measure of fluid intelligence. In a two-phase experi-
ment, healthy older participants were randomly assigned to either experimental or
control conditions.
Participants in the experimental group were provided numerous individual and
group opportunities to engage in a wide range of novel problem-solving and creative
activities. The activities encompassed several aspects of fluid intelligence, such as
problem solving, visual-spatial manipulation, and creativity. However, none of the
activities was similar to the actual pre- and postmeasures of fluid intelligence.
Examples of the activities included word logic puzzles, number games, unfamiliar
music critique, team construction activities (e.g., group creation of a marble run), and
creative modelling (e.g., of a vase and flowers, made entirely from “pipe cleaners”). The
experimental participants took part in these novel activities, two to three times each
week, sometimes in the laboratory and more often at home, for 10 to 12 weeks.
Participants in the control condition also came into the laboratory for cognitive tests,
and for a few subsequent social group meetings, but did not receive novel cognitively
stimulating opportunities.17
Both groups of participants were administered a measure of fluid intelligence at
the beginning and the end of the 10- to 12-week period. The measure of fluid intelli-
gence was Cattell’s Culture Fair test (Cattell & Cattell, 1960). Cattell’s Culture Fair test
is a multicomponent nonverbal test with high levels of sensitivity and was specifically
designed to minimize “the influence of verbal fluency, cultural climate and educational
level” (Cattell & Cattell, 1960, p. 5, manual) on performance. The four subtests (series,
classification, matrices, and conditions) require participants to attempt to perceive
relations between shapes and figures. For example, in the classifications subtest, par-
ticipants are shown problems of five abstract shapes and figures and are asked to select
which, out of the five, does not belong with the others. The odd one out is different in
size, shape, orientation, or content. Similarly, in the series subtest, participants are
shown incomplete progressive series of abstract shapes and they are asked to select
the alternative, out of five options, that best completes the series.
The experimental prediction was straightforward. If the opportunity to practice
(engage in) novel and playful agile thinking does indeed have beneficial effects on
tasks that are themselves not practiced, then participants in the experimental group
should show increased performance on this standardized measure of fluid intelligence

from pretest to posttest. Furthermore, the performance increase in the experimental
group should be greater than that observed in the control group.
The findings were equally straightforward. Combining across the two phases,
compared to controls, the experimental groups showed a significant increase in
performance on Cattell’s Culture Fair test of fluid intelligence. Across phases, the aver-
age effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.56 of a standard deviation. This benefit is of a similar
magnitude to that reported previously for studies of test-specific guided training
(e.g., Baltes et al., 1986). However, unlike the guided training studies where benefits
were restricted to the same or very similar tests, the benefits shown here were obtained
through engagement in novel activities that were unrelated to the measure used to
evaluate performance. A similar training-related increase (effect size d of 0.70) was
found on another measure involving flexible on-line spatial-perceptual processing and
visual-construction: the WAIS-R Blocks (Wechsler, 1981). Given that fluid intelligence
tasks, such as solving matrices, often depend heavily on visual-spatial manipulation,
the training-related increase on this measure raises the possibility that one “route” to
the improved flexible thinking that we observed was through enhanced spatial-per-
ceptual processing (or a boost in one form of “thinking with our senses”).
These findings demonstrate that increasing the opportunities of older adults for
engagement in new and challenging pursuits can lead to much more flexible and adap-
tive thinking than might be expected based on the standard view of cognitive aging.
Equally important, the observation that these gains in fluid intelligence performance
were obtained using an experimental design, with healthy adults randomly allocated
to either the experimental or control group, addresses the persistent question of the
direction of causality in this area of research.
The findings from this experimental investigation strongly suggest that it is not
only that high-ability individuals lead more intellectually active lives, which, in turn,
buffers them against cognitive decline (causal direction from preexisting higher ability
to better preserved cognitive performance). Rather, engaging in more intellectually
active pursuits may itself enhance cognitive performance. Thus, the causal direction is
also from engagement in cognitive activities to more strongly preserved cognitive per-
formance. With increased opportunities for novel and continuing exploration, and the
full (and playful) use rather than disuse of our cognitive abilities, decrements in our
capacity to creatively and flexibly grapple with the world, in ways that do not rely on
prior learning or knowledge, may not be as severe, as sharp, or as early as—without
such stretching toward mental flexibility and agility—they otherwise would be.
Looking Back
We have now completed the paired chapters on “making brain paths to agile thinking”
and, with this, also the third part of the book, broadly focused on the brain, the envi-
ronment, and their manifold interactions. In these last two chapters we have turned
to consider the numerous ways in which the environments in which we live, work, and
play continuously and dynamically shape the structure and functional organization
and connectivity of our brains—and also render us either more or less likely to sustain
agility of mind both in immediate or shorter term contexts, and across years and
even decades.
At the outset, we first considered the broad notion of brain plasticity, as well as
evidence that both sensory-motor and more complex forms of learning lead to associ-
ated changes that also can be demonstrated to have specific functional behavioral rel-
evance. After an introduction and several illustrative examples of the concepts of
brain reserve, cognitive reserve, and “compensation,” we then considered the exten-
sive, but still in some cases surprisingly inconclusive and mixed findings from longitu-
dinal and epidemiological investigations of the role of such factors as years of formal
education, the nature of one’s occupation, one’s social interactions, and one’s leisure
pursuits in contributing to later-life cognitive performance and to the likelihood and
probable age of onset of dementia. We found that there was considerable support for
the role of social and occupational factors (and also the regular use of a second lan-
guage) in promoting longer term adaptive cognitive function, and for the benefits of
engaging in cognitively stimulating leisure activities in reducing dementia risk and/or
age of onset. Benefits of physical exercise and cardiovascular fitness were demon-
strated in a number of longitudinal studies, with regular exercise associated with
reduced cognitive decline and also improved performance on such outcome measures
as working memory, visual-spatial performance, and conceptualization.
Turning, for one section, to focus primarily (although not exclusively) on the other
end of the developmental spectrum, we noted the adverse consequences of many
forms of physical and psychosocial stressors that are associated with poverty and
deprivation in children. We considered evidence that some functional neurocognitive
systems, such as those involving language, memory, and cognitive control may be
particularly vulnerable to disruption by stress. Possible pathways to such detrimental
effects, such as increased allostatic load, changes in the automatic processing of
novelty in prefrontal cortex, and the adverse effects of particularly prolonged and
intense stress on glucocorticoid receptors in the hippocampus, leading to possible
alterations in hippocampal function, were noted.
Returning to interventions with older individuals, two “field experiments,” includ-
ing the Experience Corps program in Baltimore and the Senior Odyssey program, were
found to lead to such benefits as increased physical strength and greater perceived
social support, as well as modest improvements on some standardized neuropsy-
chological outcome measures (e.g., inhibitory processing and inductive reasoning).
These field experiments bridged to interventions that specifically use fully random-
ized assignment to experimental and comparison groups and that provide the most
persuasive evidence for the benefits of a given factor in fostering mental agility.
We saw that investigations of “environmental enrichment” with a wide range of
animals, though primarily rats and mice, and involving the opportunity for both
novel and varied exploration and learning, yielded strong evidence for enhanced
performance on multiple behavioral indices that could be construed as measures of
adaptive flexibility. Animals from enriched environments (e.g., involving tunnels,
balls, ladders, and other toys, as well as “social” opportunities), demonstrated improved
reversal and discrimination learning, more rapid “unlearning” of no longer appropri-
ate behaviors, and greater success in finding hidden food in a novel environment, than
did animals from nonenriched environments. Equally important, we saw that these
behavioral forms of greater adaptive flexibility were accompanied by numerous

changes in brain morphology, such as greater numbers of synapses per neuron,
enhanced dendrite length, and increased neurogenesis particularly in the dentate
gyrus of the hippocampus. We noted the connection between environmental enrich-
ment and the notion of exposure to multiple instances or exemplars of objects, events,
places, and/or ideas, and the recent proposal that, together, sustained cognitive chal-
lenges and sustained physical exercise (involving greater motor activity) may maintain
the “pool of new neurons that might be recruited if the need arises in a situation of
cognitive complexity” (Kempermann, 2008, p. 165).
Pioneering investigations of changes in the brain in relation to extensive practice
on working memory tasks and of a novel visual-spatial attentional activity—learning
to juggle—were also considered. We saw that these studies provided evidence, in both
younger and older adults, for changes in gray-matter density as a function of newly
acquired juggling expertise in a motion-sensitive area of midtemporal cortex and
other regions and, of equal importance, that these changes were largely reversed when
these same individuals refrained from juggling for a period of time and so lost their
hard-won expertise. Additionally, exciting new demonstrations of both enhanced fluid
reasoning and reductions in the binding potential of cortical dopamine D1 receptors
as a function of training-induced increases in working memory capacity were seen.
The final seven sections marshaled together findings from several different forms
of interventions with both younger and older adults, as well as children, that have
demonstrated improvements in mental agility. Physical and cardiovascular fitness
interventions, “deliberate practice” in the subcomponents and processes (e.g., rule-
finding) required during fluid reasoning tasks, incrementally more difficult training in
memory retrieval on a task demanding precise recollection of the “source” of familiar-
ity of items, and training in tasks requiring individuals to both coordinate tasks and to
rapidly change priorities as circumstances changed, all led to benefits. In particular,
benefits were found on measures such as executive function and visuospatial perfor-
mance (physical exercise–older adults), working memory and symbol substitution
(recollection training–older adults), and resistance to attentional blink and increased
useful field of view (action video games–younger adults).
We saw that young preschool children also benefited from attention training,
showing improvements on abstract fluid reasoning. Similarly, the Tools of Mind
program, explicitly designed to enable children to build on social-interactional and
various forms of sensory-perceptual support, was shown to significantly improve
their performance on complex executive tasks that required high levels of inhibitory
control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. In research with younger adults,
we saw that marked improvements in particularly executive attention were found
after even comparatively brief opportunities for “restoration” of directed attention
following a difficult sustained attention task, and that, in older adults, significant
benefits on measures of fluid reasoning and visual-spatial performance were shown
after a somewhat longer (10–12 week) intervention that invited participation in a
diverse set of multimodal, creative, and constructive activities.
Although clearly varied, and differing from one another on multiple aspects, each
of these interventions help to extend the “oscillatory range” of individuals’ levels of
control—sometimes extending and stretching their capability for deliberate top-down
control directly, but in other cases encouraging a diminishment of “top-down control”

as in the attention restoration interventions, and also, as we saw earlier in the first
section of Chapter 3, through experiences such as mindfulness training or integrative
mind-body meditation.
These interventions also involve several explicit attempts to more fully incorporate
and capitalize on multiple levels of representations and the ways in which we “think
with our senses.” This was seen especially in the Tools of the Mind program for
preschool children, with its emphasis on providing concrete physical and social-
interactional support for effective self-regulation. It also, though, characterizes the
working memory training interventions used with both younger and older adults
that placed demands on the integration of information from more than one modality,
both auditory and visual, and in real time.
Notably, several of these successful interventions also involved very clear efforts to
ensure that the difficulty level of the tasks was carefully adjusted such that individuals
were continuously at a level of performance at the “outer envelope” of their ability.
Each person was therefore continually challenged to extend his or her skills and to
adaptively modify his or her approach to the tasks to optimize performance. The inter-
ventions, then, were often explicitly designed with a full recognition of the dynamic
interplay and interpenetration of all of the “domains”—cognition, emotion, motiva-
tion and action, and perception—in fostering agility of mind.
12
Implications and Applications
of the iCASA Framework for
Fostering Agile Thinking
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
—Wallace Stevens (“Thirteen Ways of Looking
at a Blackbird,” 1954/1990, p. 93)
In this final chapter, we will consider implications and applications of the iCASA
framework, and we will outline some of the many important research questions that
remain regarding when, and how, we can more consistently and more optimally realize
the forms of adaptive flexibility in thought and action that our agile minds can make
possible.
The chapter is organized in the form of broad questions that are then expanded by
selected reminders of key findings, additional evidence regarding possible applications
or implications, and more specific questions and research directions. My primary aim
in this concluding chapter is to “put the iCASA framework to work” and to identify the
sometimes surprising implications and possibilities opened up by this way of looking
at our minds. A secondary aim, accomplished through the question-plus-elaboration
format, is both to underscore some of the central findings we have considered and to
interrelate and integrate findings across and within chapters. To this end, the ques-
tions span all three parts of the book—memory, categorization, and concepts; motiva-
tion and emotion; and brain and environment. Additionally, although many of the
outstanding research questions will involve experimental efforts with individual
participants, others will involve larger scale empirical investigations, of formal and
informal groups and organizations. The questions are very broadly grouped into four
sections, concerning (a) oscillatory range in levels of specificity and levels of control;
(b) environmental enrichment and stimulation; (c) the interpenetration of concepts
with perception, action/motivation, and emotion; and (d) broader educational, policy,
and ethical implications.
573
Oscillatory Range in Levels of Specificity

and Levels of Control
H O W C A N I N D I V I D UA L S B E E N C O U R A G E D TO M O R E F U L LY
O P T I M I Z E T H E U S E O F VA R Y I N G L E V E L S O F R E P R E S E N TAT I O N A L
S P E C I F I C I T Y ( L O S ) A N D VA R Y I N G L E V E L S O F C O N T R O L ( L O C ) ?
We have begun to learn about some of the factors that may lead to “micro” or transient
oscillations in both levels of specificity and levels of control, such as the effects of
positive emotion on flexible categorization and momentary increases in cognitive
flexibility (see, for example, the third section of Chapter 3 and the subsection on
“Task Switching” in Chapter 8). However, there is much more to be learned about
these and many other factors, and how they interrelate with one another to enable
optimal agility of mind. For example, as we saw in Chapter 3, in the work by Ark and
colleagues (2006, 2007), although people might spontaneously use combined reason-
ing strategies to some extent, explicit direct instructions to use both automatic simi-
larity-based processes and controlled feature-based search led them to use combined
strategies more consistently—and also led to significant gains in accuracy on a percep-
tually based diagnostic reasoning task (reading electrocardiograms). Are similar
benefits from direct instructions to intentionally rely on varying levels of specificity
(LoS) and levels of control (LoC) found in domains that do not require predominantly
perceptually guided judgments? Ark and colleagues (2006, 2007) also observed largely
equivalent increases in diagnostic accuracy in their task when using direct explicit
instructions and when providing more indirect or implicit encouragement to use both
automatic similarity-based processes and controlled feature-based search. Are such
parallel benefits across direct versus indirect instructional manipulations also found
for other problem-solving and reasoning domains? Can direct/explicit instructions be
combined with indirect/procedural manipulations to further bolster performance,
beyond that observed for either form of instruction alone?
Preliminary findings from our lab (Qin & Koutstaal, unpublished data) suggest
that direct instructional guidance to use varying levels of specificity and/or varying
levels of control may prove particularly beneficial for some types of tasks or task items
(e.g., difficult remote associate problems; complex analogical reasoning problems).
However, instructional interventions designed to bolster oscillatory range also will
need to take into account differences in spontaneously adopted problem-solving
approaches for different types of problems and the “fit” between differential emphases
on one or the other portions of the LoS and LoC continua and the particular task. This
therefore requires more detailed understanding of possible biases or preferences
toward a given LoS or LoC in a task domain, and also individual and contextual differ-
ences (for instance, related to age, temporal orientation, or approach vs. avoidance
orientation) in such biases. We saw in Chapter 3, in the section on “The Benefits of
Using Both Processing Modes,” that promoting task appropriate shifts in an emphasis
on different learning modes, such as seeking to find rules (abstraction) versus simply
remembering the instances that are presented with no attempt to find a higher-order
classification principle (exemplar-based learning), is likely to be difficult and
Impl ications and Appl icat ion s of iC ASA 575
that shifts in the processing mode we adopt are unlikely to occur automatically.
Rather, as succinctly summarized by A. C. Olsson et al. (2006, p. 1381) “there may be
nontrivial constraints on people’s ability to shift to the process that is appropriate to
the task.”
Interventions to aptly modify the predominant LoS and/or LoC that individuals
adopt during a given task could be more precisely targeted and calibrated so as to
optimize performance if frequent or even continuous measures of an individual’s
LoS and/or LoC could be obtained. These measures might be comparatively indirect,
taking the form of talk-aloud protocols, similar to those that allowed relatively con-
tinuous tracking of LoS during the computer programming design problem-solving
tasks examined by Guindon (1990), and that are graphically portrayed in Figures 7.2
and 7.3. Alternatively, the measures might be more direct, in the form of a continuous
“radio-dial-like” report during an ongoing task, or of discrete self-reports of the level
of control that had been required for particular items or portions of a task, similar to
those that have recently been reported by Morsella et al. (2009) during the perfor-
mance of control-demanding tasks such as the flanker and Stroop color word interfer-
ence tasks. Morsella and colleagues (2009) found that participants’ self-reports of
perceptions of control, as well as of difficulty and competition, systematically varied
with experimental conditions that manipulated the level of response interference that
was present on individual trials. As proposed by these investigators, just as response
times “can reveal aspects of cognitive processing that may not be detectable through
less subtle behavioral measures (e.g., response accuracy), measures of the subjective
aspects of processing may illuminate features of cognitive processing that are unde-
tectable in standard behavioral and psychophysiological measures” (Morsella et al.,
2009, p. 1822).
Recent approaches such as that of Badre and colleagues (2010) to evaluate the
neural correlates underlying self-initiated discovery of rules at different levels of
abstraction (discussed in Chapter 8, in the section on “Neuroimaging Evidence for
Hierarchical and Functional Distinctions within Frontal and Prefrontal Cortex”) may
also provide guidance as to the conditions that can bolster versus impede adoption of
a strategy that is well matched to the particular stimuli and task demands currently in
hand. Based on their behavioral findings that, using trial-by-trial feedback, partici-
pants successfully acquired both a concrete and a higher order rule, combined with
their neuroimaging results pointing to corresponding changes in patterns of activa-
tion along the anterior to posterior axis, these investigators argue that the anterior-
to-posterior architecture of the frontal cortex “may support rapid learning of action
rules at multiple levels of abstraction.”
When encountering a novel behavioral context, we may search for relation-

ships between context and action at multiple levels of abstraction simultane-
ously, a capability that underlies our remarkable behavioral adaptability and
our capacity to generalize our past learning to new problems. Hence, how we
address novel problems in reasoning, decision-making, and selecting actions
under uncertainty may very well reflect both the adaptability and the
constraints conferred by the basic functional organization of the frontal
cortex. (Badre et al., 2010, p. 322)
The extent to which such “parallel search” at multiple levels of abstraction might
predominantly involve deliberate, top-down controlled search, versus also momen-
tary or interspersed phases of less deliberate, perhaps intuitive, familiarity-based or
automatic processes, remains unclear, though additional interregional connectivity
analyses performed by Badre et al. (2010) suggested complex dynamic interactions in
which the frontal cortex both influences, and is influenced by, the striatum.
Two additional implicit procedural interventions that may encourage changes
(or greater oscillatory range) in LoS and LoC are engaging in a simple cognitive-
perceptual task requiring the generation of alternative uses of common objects
(the Alternative Uses Task), and thinking about one’s core values, goals, and ideals
(self-affirmation). We saw (in the third section of Chapter 2) that performing alterna-
tive uses categorization for a brief period of time (10–15 minutes) before attempting
to solve problems reliably improved performance on ill-defined tasks that are typically
solved through insight (Chrysikou, 2006) and also significantly enhanced perfor-
mance on tasks requiring novel, on-the-spot visual-spatial analogical and fluid reason-
ing (Wen, Butler, & Koutstaal, in preparation). A brief period of self-affirmation,
requiring participants to think and write about personally important values, similarly
bolstered both subsequent insight and visuospatial fluid reasoning performance
(Chapter 6, “Self-Affirmation and Flexible Thinking”).
This then raises the question of how combining these interventions might affect
thinking and problem solving: What aspects of the alternative uses categorization
task, specifically, are responsible for the observed beneficial transfer effects to insight
and fluid reasoning problem solving? If self-affirmation and alternative uses categori-
zation lead to changes in cognitive flexibility, and cognitive flexibility is itself an aspect
of executive function, can the intervention effects be isolated to one or more subcom-
ponents of executive function that have been identified by other researchers (e.g.,
Miyake et al., 2000), such as shifting, or updating?
As noted, there is evidence to suggest that one of the immediate effects of self-
affirmation interventions is to increase the level of abstraction at which individuals
identify common actions (Chapter 6; Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009; Wakslak & Trope,
2009). This, then, also raises the question as to whether this intervention—similar to
what has been found in relation to changes in construal level as a function of changes
in an individual’s temporal orientation (Chapter 3; especially Förster, Friedman, &
Liberman, 2004)—may also sometimes be detrimental, on the one hand fostering
improved performance on tasks that require greater abstraction (or, at least, a higher
level of abstraction than individuals tend to spontaneously adopt for the task) but, on
the other hand, detracting from performance in endeavors that require greater item-
specific, feature-based, or analytical attention. Evidence for just such context-depen-
dent effects of a form of values affirmation was recently provided (Schmeichel, Vohs,
& Duke, 2011). Whereas a more abstract orientation (induced by asking individuals to
think about why they pursued an important value) was beneficial on an inhibitory
“stop-signal” task that required both response inhibition and goal maintenance in
working memory, a more concrete orientation (induced by asking individuals to think
about how they pursued an important value) benefited performance on the stop-signal
task when no working memory was required, and instead performance needed to be
guided by the immediate concrete stimulus environment. Stated differently, there was
a significant interaction between the level of construal induced (relatively abstract vs.
relatively concrete) and the particular demands of the stop-signal task to be per-
formed, with an abstract construal beneficial for the inhibitory task that required a
form of temporal distancing (keeping track of stimuli on both the current and several
earlier trials) but not for the task that did not demand such temporal distancing.
W H AT A R E T H E N E U R A L M E C H A N I S M S I N V O LV E D I N
T R A N S I T I O N I N G B E T W E E N TO P - D O W N E X E C U T I V E
C O N T R O L A N D T H E “ D E F A U LT M O D E ” A N D H O W D O T H E S E
N E T W O R K S D Y N A M I C A L LY I N T E R A C T I N C R E AT I V E T H O U G H T ?
In Chapter 9, we considered a small portion of the rapidly expanding set of empirical
findings and theoretical accounts relating to the so-called default mode network of the
brain. We saw that there are convergent findings, across multiple methodologies, that
the default mode network includes regions of the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior
cingulate/retrosplenial cortex, and the inferior parietal lobule. We further saw that
this network may include a number of subnetworks, such as a subsystem especially
involved in providing associations and relational information from memory (involv-
ing the hippocampal formation, the posterior cingulate cortex, inferior parietal lobe,
and portions of the medial prefrontal cortex) and a second subsystem (involving par-
ticularly dorsal ventromedial prefrontal cortex) that may be involved in self-relevant
mental simulations or, more generally, in forms of thinking that require one to con-
ceive of others or other things or beings “as being social, interactive, and emotive like
oneself” (Buckner et al., 2008, p. 24). We also encountered differing proposals regard-
ing how the executive control and the default mode networks may interact.
Although the executive and default networks have most often been seen as acting
in opposition to one another, such that when the executive network becomes acti-
vated, the default network becomes deactivated or actively suppressed—or as involv-
ing an extrinsic system comprising areas associated with the processing of external
inputs and an intrinsic system that largely overlaps with the task-negative default-
mode network (Golland et al., 2007)—this view may be somewhat oversimplified. We
saw that Christoff and colleagues (2009) presented evidence that two key regions of
the executive network, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and a dorsal region
of the anterior cingulate, were recruited during phases of “mind wandering” and,
furthermore, that activation in these regions tended to be greatest when participants
were unaware that their minds had wandered from the difficult sustained attention
monitoring task they were supposed to be performing. This raises the important
possibility that, at least under some circumstances, the executive and default net-
works may be recruited in parallel, and it coheres with other findings suggesting that
these networks may not be entirely discrete or that there may be a third system that is
“anatomically interposed between the task-positive and task-negative networks” (Fox
et al., 2009, p. 3281; see Vincent et al., 2008). Shehzad and colleagues (2009) likewise
recently observed that, in cluster analyses, the cluster membership of the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex with the “task-positive network” was particularly low and that this
region was unique in clustering with the task-positive network in one investigation,
but with the task-negative network in another study.
More recently, adopting a novel paradigm, Spreng and colleagues (2010) contrasted
the regions recruited during an externally focused goal-oriented visual-spatial
planning task (a visually presented Tower of London task) and an internally focused
goal-oriented task involving self-related autobiographical planning. In the latter
task, participants were asked to plan successive steps to meet different personal goals
(e.g., achieving academic success; traveling). Consistent with previous research, the
visual-spatial planning task engaged regions often recruited during attentional tasks,
including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and superior parietal lobule, whereas the
autobiographical planning task engaged the default network. Critically, however, both
the externally directed visual-spatial planning task and the internally directed auto-
biographical planning task engaged the frontoparietal control network, including
anterior insula/frontal operculum, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and anterior infe-
rior parietal lobule. As proposed by Spreng and colleagues, these findings suggest that
“the frontoparietal control network may flexibly couple with the default and dorsal
attention networks according to task domain, serving as a cortical mediator linking
the two networks in support of goal-directed cognitive processes” (Spreng et al., 2010,
p. 303, emphasis added). Further articulation of the relations between these large-
scale networks is needed, with direct implications for understanding the neural mech-
anisms that enable us to effectively exercise oscillatory range in levels of control across
tasks that demand our externally focused attention and those that involve predomi-
nantly internalized—but nonetheless goal-guided—cognition.
On a closely related note, we considered the hypothesis that right fronto-insular
cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex may be important in switching between
the central executive and default networks (e.g., Sridharan et al., 2008). We addition-
ally considered evidence that right fronto-insular cortex may assume a causal role by
signaling the salience of a stimulus, together with the more speculative proposal by
Craig (2009a; see also Hakeem et al., 2009) that this region, based on the combination
and integration of multiple forms of saliency maps, ranging from highly internal
interoceptive to motivational, social, and cognitive conditions, is involved in the
representation of the “now” that crucially contributes to a sentient self, leading to a
“meta-representation” of the “global emotional moment.” However, we know com-
paratively little about how, precisely, multiple forms of salience maps interrelate with
one another, in time, to dynamically and effectively guide ongoing behavior,
judgments, and thinking.
Many further questions with respect to the roles and operation of the “default net-
work” in creatively adaptive and flexible thinking remain. For example, how does the
ability to effectively “lose oneself” in one’s work, as shown by attenuation of activity in
the default mode network during full engagement with a task (e.g., Golland et al., 2007;
also compare with our consideration in Chapter 9 of the research by Sheline et al.,
2009, showing a disruption in such capacity in individuals who are clinically depressed),
relate both to the extent to which individuals are able to generate creatively adaptive
alternative perspectives on problems and problematic situations (perhaps because the
default network is allowed to more fully “reset” or “reconfigure” during task engage-
ment) and to changes in subnetworks relating to memory and recollection?
We saw (in Chapter 9) that the preexisting or preceding “neural context” from
which we encounter events and stimuli may markedly influence how those events are
processed, such as whether remote associate problems are more or less likely to be
solved through a process of systematic search versus insight (Kounios et al., 2006;
Kounios et al., 2008) or whether a given stimulus is likely to later be forgotten (Otten
& Rugg, 2001; Uncapher & Wagner, 2009). To what extent are such changes in “neural
receptivity” correlated with subjective or introspective evaluations of, for example,
one’s momentary readiness to encounter new information? Can we become “attuned”
to such changes, or to their temporal patterns (cf. Schroeder & Lakatos, 2009), thereby
allowing a better fit between our ongoing task engagements, the need for stimulus
processing, and our neural/neural system’s readiness for them?
Far-reaching implications for how we think about our investigations of the mind
and its activity arise from the apparently simple notion that intrinsic dynamic brain
connectivity that is present before a stimulus occurs itself shapes how that stimulus is
processed and classified and remembered. As remarked by Fox and colleagues (2005),
recognition of the dynamic contributions of the brain’s underlying intrinsic organiza-
tion: “encourages shifting one’s perspective of brain function from the view of a system
simply responding to changing contingencies to one operating on its own, intrinsically,
with sensory information modulating rather than determining the operation of the
system” (Fox et al., 2005, p. 9677). Additionally, as recently observed by Barrett, rather
than thinking about mental causation in mechanistic and linear terms, such as
“Psychological Process A localized in Brain Area 1 causes the separate and distinct
Psychological Process B localized in Brain Area 2, and so on,” from this more probabilis-
tic model we might, instead, think of how: “Brain State A at Time 1 [. . .] makes it easier
to enter Brain State B [. . .] than Brain State C at Time 2” (L. F. Barrett, 2009, p. 334).
This perspective also clearly connects to extensive neurophysiological evidence
relating to ongoing and extensive neuronal oscillations in cortical networks—spanning
five orders of magnitude in frequency (Buzsáki & Draguhn, 2004; for in-depth treat-
ment see Buzsáki, 2006; X. J. Wang, 2010)—and providing a potential mechanism
enabling larger-scale alterations in whole-brain neural connectivities. Such network
oscillations have been shown to bias input selection, to temporally link neurons into
assemblies, and to facilitate synaptic plasticity. Growing evidence suggests that com-
prehending “the coupling of oscillatory activities at different frequencies between brain
regions is crucial for understanding the brain from a functional ensemble perspective”
(C. K. Young & Eggermont, 2009, p. 61; see also Schroeder & Lakatos, 2009).
Long-range phase synchrony of oscillatory neuronal population activity has been
found between multiple regions during tasks such as visual short-term memory main-
tenance, visual object processing, attention tasks, and multisensory integration, and
current evidence suggests that such synchrony can act as a dynamic mechanism sup-
porting large-scale functional interactions in the brain (Bressler & Menon, 2010). In a
recent exploration, episodes of widespread synchrony were found in all frequency
bands, not only before and after external stimuli but also in background EEG, as well
as in both common and average-referenced data (Pockett, Bold, & Freeman, 2009).
These brief episodes of synchrony across the entire head evolved over a period of about
100 milliseconds, and were found in all participants in all pass bands studied, but they
were more common in some bands and were never observed in noise.
Yet, despite many promising advances, the precise role of long-range phase
synchrony in conscious thought is still very unclear (see, for example, Pockett &
Holmes, 2009), and there are multiple, complex, and complexly interconnected
methodological and empirical issues that constrain interpretation and urge the need
for caution (X. J. Wang, 2010). Understanding the role of long-range synchrony, and
the broader neurophysiological bases of when, and how, we transition between brain
states, will be essential to attaining a deeper understanding of mental agility.
W H AT A R E T H E R E L AT I O N S B E T W E E N T H E S E V E R A L D I F F E R E N T
G R A D I E N T S O F “ R E P R E S E N TAT I O N A L S P E C I F I C I T Y ” T H AT H AV E
BEEN IDENTIFIED IN THE BRAIN, AND HOW DO THEY
D Y N A M I C A L LY C O N T R I B U T E TO T H O U G H T ?
We have considered evidence for an anterior-to-posterior gradient in relation to the
control of actions, with increasingly higher order and more abstract representations
in more anterior cortex (e.g., Badre & D’Esposito, 2007; Christoff, Keramatian et al.,
2009; Koechlin et al., 2003; Chapter 8). We also have reviewed some of the evidence
for a “coarse semantic field” account of hemispheric differences in the processing of
words and concepts, according to which, in contrast to more focused activations in the
left hemisphere, larger semantic fields in the right hemisphere may—with sufficient
processing time—allow weak but remotely associated concepts to become activated,
thereby particularly facilitating such processes as insight and inference (e.g., Beeman,
1998; Beeman et al., 1994; Ben-Artzi et al., 2009; Stringaris et al., 2006; Chapter 9).
How do these two gradients, relating to the level of representational or process speci-
ficity required for action control on the one hand, and for semantic processing on the
other hand, conjointly influence cognition? And how do they relate to evidence for
possible lateralization effects in abstract/categorical versus specific/exemplar object
processing in posterior occipito-temporal cortex?
Specifically, there is both behavioral evidence using the divided visual field paradigm
(e.g., Marsolek, 1999; see also Kensinger & Choi, 2009) and neuroimaging evidence
(e.g., Koutstaal et al., 2001; J. S. Simons et al., 2003; see also Doehrmann et al., 2010) to
suggest that there are two posterior object processing subsystems that may differ in
level of representational specificity: an abstract-category subsystem that operates com-
paratively more effectively in the left hemisphere that is less sensitive to the specific
characteristics of stimuli, and a specific-exemplar subsystem that operates relatively
more effectively in the right hemisphere. According to the dual subsystem account for-
warded by Marsolek and colleagues (e.g., Marsolek, 1999; Marsolek & Burgund, 2008)
whereas the left hemisphere/abstract-category subsystem is relatively more efficient at
analytic or features-based processing and neurocomputation (e.g., Marsolek, 2004), the
right hemisphere/specific-exemplar subsystem is relatively more proficient at holistic or
whole-based processing and neurocomputation. There is also evidence that correspond-
ingly lateralized differences in the amount of activation in right versus left occipitotem-
poral (fusiform) cortex during an individual’s initial encounter with a stimulus are
predictive of subsequent memory performance, with greater activity—at encoding—in
right occipitotemporal cortex predictive of subsequent item-specific rather than cate-
gory-based memory for the stimulus (Garoff, Slotnick, & Schacter, 2005).
But how do differing levels of specificity with respect to how stimuli are perceived
and encoded relate to the forms of conscious and deliberate processing that
individuals undertake, such as classifying objects with basic-level names such as

“chairs,” “tables,” and “elephants” (e.g., Lupyan, 2008)? In Chapter 3, we considered
evidence (Koutstaal & Cavendish, 2006) that requiring participants to adopt a
sustained categorical orientation in recognition judgments impeded their subsequent
ability to correctly discriminate between studied and categorically related objects that
were not themselves retrieved but that had been encoded in the same spatiotemporal/
episodic context. Does this behavioral pattern reflect a “representational shift” in the
comparative predominance of the left hemisphere/abstract-category object subsys-
tem, and/or a representational shift toward more lexical/semantic processing (cf. J. S.
Simons et al., 2003)? And how does inferential semantic processing relate to the
extent and nature of activation in the “concrete” processing of visual form informa-
tion about objects and situations?
In work related to this latter question, Zwaan and Yaxley (2004) found that par-
ticipants were slower to indicate that two words were unrelated to one another if the
referents of the words (e.g., ladder–railroad) had similar shapes, and they also pre-
sented divided visual-field evidence that this effect was localized in the left hemi-
sphere. The extent to which information about object shape influences processing has
additionally been found to differ depending on whether shape is explicitly or only
implicitly mentioned. In Chapter 4, we saw that participants gave faster naming and
classification decisions about pictured objects if the objects were spatially oriented in
a manner congruent with the actions conveyed in the sentence (e.g., an eagle is
pictured as flying, when the sentence likewise referred to the eagle as in flight).
Naming and classification were slowed if there was a mismatch between the pictured
object and the actions conveyed in the sentence (e.g., an eagle in its nest, when the
sentence described it as flying; Stanfield & Zwaan, 2001; Zwaan, Stanfield, & Yaxley,
2002). In further work, Lincoln, Long, and Baynes (2007) found differing patterns
depending on whether shape was explicitly versus only implicitly mentioned. Whereas
the activation of implied (but not stated) relevant shape information during sentence
comprehension appeared to occur in the left hemisphere (with only the left hemi-
sphere showing a cost related to a “mismatch” between the perceptually imagined/
simulated stimulus and a presented stimulus), when shape was explicitly mentioned,
both hemispheres showed a “mismatch” cost.
These findings point to close interactions between “on-line” semantic processing
that is based on what is only inferred, versus what is directly stated, and the extent to
which the neural system may “commit to” a concrete and specific simulation of an
event. Such commitment may be greater when more than one perceptual feature (e.g.,
not only shape but also color) is stated or implied, particularly given recent evidence
that information about perceptual features may be multiplicatively integrated rather
than simply additive (Richter & Zwaan, 2010). From this perspective, there are also
related questions regarding the degree of susceptibility to mistaken or false recognition
as a function of shared perceptual features of presented stimuli, such as the similarity
of object shapes—apart from their semantic categories or their labels—in individuals
such as older adults (e.g., Henkel, Johnson, & DeLeonardis, 1998). Additionally, we
might ask how increased vulnerability to shape-related errors in older individuals
relates to other processing changes associated with aging, such as the posterior to ante-
rior shift (discussed in the third section of Chapter 10; e.g., S. W. Davis et al., 2008),
involving reduced brain activity in posterior cortical regions together with increased
activity in frontal regions in older compared with younger adults, and also to the evi-
dence (introduced in Chapter 10, in the section on “Brain Reserve, Cognitive Reserve,
and Compensation”) of age-related reductions in “neural specificity” across different
object categories (e.g., D. C. Park et al., 2004; J. Park et al., 2010).
Arriving at a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of the ways in which
word comprehension leads to perceptual simulations that are themselves more versus
less detailed, and more versus less vividly “real and concrete” but nonetheless still
“virtual enactments” of objects and actions, promises to provide deep—conceptually
and empirically grounded—understanding of the relations between “words” and
“world.” It will involve refinement of our understanding of how our brains bring
together the diverse and multifaceted aspects of what comprises an individual action
or object, such as the taste, fragrance, weight, name, and other conceptual features of
a grapefruit (see Chapter 8), including articulation of the dynamic interrelations
between multiple neural “convergence zones,” or regions of “multisensory interplay”
(e.g., Doehrmann et al., 2010; Driver & Noesselt, 2008; Talsma et al., 2010) and
whether, indeed, there is one (or more) “amodal hubs,” that are, as it were, “superordi-
nate” convergence zones, or convergences of convergence zones. Fittingly enough, the
efforts to arrive at such an understanding will also increasingly bring together research
aimed to address questions about perception and action, and questions that originate
in problems of language, categorization, and semantics (e.g., Bub & Masson, 2010;
Bub, Masson, & Cree, 2008; Yee, Drucker, & Thompson-Schill, 2010).
W H AT A R E T H E S O U R C E S A N D L I M I TAT I O N S
O F I N T E R V E N T I O N S T H AT M AY C O U N T E R A C T
S E L F - R E G U L ATO R Y R E S O U R C E D E P L E T I O N ?
We now know a great deal of the multiple ways in which self-regulatory resource
depletion may occur, and the many different ways that such resource depletion may
manifest itself (detailed particularly in the second section of Chapter 5). In contrast,
we know much less regarding how to counteract depletion or to replenish self-regula-
tory resources, or of how, and if, our engagements with the world can be interleaved
such that we remain at a near optimal level throughout (“replenishing as we go”). We
also know little about individual differences in how to optimize such alterations. Do
some people tend to naturally or spontaneously structure their days to enable such
near-optimality throughout? Might such “spontaneous structuring” of one’s days and
efforts be an underlying behavioral difference factor that enables some individuals to
be “super-achievers” in creative domains, without apparent accompanying costs to
their physiological and interpersonal well-being? Do individuals differ in their explicit
and implicit understanding of how “aptly” varying their LoC can promote mental
agility? Is such metacognitive knowledge, or perhaps “metaexperiential” awareness,
another frequent contributor to resilience—along with such widely acknowledged
factors as optimism and positive affectivity that we considered in Chapter 6 and
Chapter 9? Conversely, are some individuals perhaps subtly or progressively under-
mining their longer term resilience, and perhaps also forfeiting ongoing opportunities
for creative insight and synthesis, through relentless “on-time” during their waking
hours—in the form of continual uninterrupted responsiveness to digital media such

as electronic mail, cellular phones, and so on? (The following section takes up the
latter general question in some detail).
There is, as we have seen, evidence for a few very promising interventions to
counter self-regulatory depletion. Interventions that encourage individuals to think
about their more enduring and deeper values, involving a form of “self-affirmation”
(Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009; Wakslak & Trope, 2009; Chapter 6), and immersion in
“restorative” experiences such as walking in the woods or along a river (Chapter 11)
have both been shown to help to counteract the depletion of deliberate attention
and volitional control capacities. But many questions remain even in these cases. For
example, when/how exactly does self-affirmation help? Can one “self-apply” self-affir-
mation, or must it occur indirectly or implicitly without one’s awareness of the precise
nature of the activity? (Indeed, Sherman, Cohen, et al., 2009, have provided evidence
that individuals might be “affirmed yet unaware” but that the effects of self-affirma-
tion were attenuated when individuals were explicitly informed that self-affirmation
was intended to bolster self-esteem.) Does self-affirmation continue to help, or to help
as much, if engaged in repeatedly? If self-affirmation, in part, operates through chang-
ing one’s construal level or level of action identification to a more abstract level (e.g.,
Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009; Wakslak & Trope, 2009), can other interventions change
construal level more directly or effect a similar change in the focus on higher level
goals and values?
Given evidence that an individual’s level of action identification needs to appropri-
ately match current circumstances and must be appropriately calibrated to one’s level of
expertise in a domain (see the discussion of action identification in Chapter 3, and
Chapter 5), might self-affirmation in some circumstances prove detrimental to perfor-
mance because it moves individuals toward a level of action identification that is too
removed from the concrete particulars of the action to be performed? Likewise,
although recognizing the importance of providing methods for the restoration of
directed attention capacity, there is also a contrary and equally important pole that
emphasizes the need for ongoing stimulation and challenge. Here we might recall
Ulrich’s early reminder that views on to natural scenery from a hospital room might not
be restorative for everyone; rather, as noted in Chapter 11, “perhaps to a chronically
understimulated patient, a built view such as a lively city street might be more stimulat-
ing and hence more therapeutic than many natural views” (Ulrich, 1984, p. 421).
This contrary pole underscores, as we have seen, the benefits for agility of mind
that can be derived from sustained engagement and diversity of cognitive stimulation
(Chapters 10 and 11), from “learning to vary” (Chapter 5), and also from at least some
sorts of chronically sustained demands on inhibitory control (e.g., bilingualism, con-
sidered in Chapter 10). Furthermore, as we saw in Chapter 5, there is evidence that
individuals can increase self-regulatory strength through regularly engaging in tasks
that require effortful control (e.g., Gailliot, Plant, Butz, & Baumeister, 2007; Oaten &
Cheng, 2006; 2007). This again suggests that the interrelations between resource
depletion and levels of cognitive stimulation always need to be taken into account.
Taking a somewhat different perspective, the vast majority of research on self-reg-
ulatory resource depletion has emphasized the negative consequences that may arise
from such depletion. However, we have seen that optimal functioning sometimes
requires that we relinquish too stringent and too unrelenting self-regulatory control.
We have also seen that, in some contexts, our efforts at control may, paradoxically,
undermine the aims we seek as, for example, in the case of efforts to fall asleep or to
engage in well-practiced skills (e.g., the sections in Chapter 7 on “Trying Not” and
“Absorption, Flow, and ‘Hypoegoic’ Self-Regulation”). Thus, it seems that there may be
circumstances under which the “depletion” that sustained self-regulatory efforts bring
in their wake might yield positive effects.
Here, the recent work by Apfelbaum and Sommers (2009) showing positive effects
of self-regulatory depletion on the interactions of individuals discussing issues of
diversity in an interracial context provides a concrete example. These researchers found
that White participants who had earlier performed a resource-demanding computer
task and then engaged in a conversation with a Black person about diversity issues on
campus reported that they enjoyed the experience more, and they displayed less inhib-
ited behavior. Equally important, they were judged to be less prejudiced by Black observ-
ers than were White control participants who had performed a nondepleting version of
the computer task. On the one hand, studies have shown that, in many cases, prejudice
emerges as a result of failures of self-control, including as a result of resource depletion
(e.g., Govorun & Payne, 2006; Muraven, 2008; Richeson & Trawalter, 2005). On the
other hand, this does not mean that, for all persons and in all contexts, additional self-
control will be beneficial, particularly if self-regulatory efforts are misguided, and
result in overly constrained and excessively closed interaction styles.
It can also be asked if there is an “inverted U” function relating to self-regulatory
resources, such that optimal performance may sometimes arise after utilizing self-
executive control for a moderate (but not too long) period of time. Do “flow” states
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1996; Keller & Bless, 2008), or phases during which we
become deeply absorbed and engaged in pursuing an activity, with little awareness of
the passage of time and intense attention on an unfolding task, tend to emerge under
such conditions? Increasing research exploring so-called “effortless attention” (Bruya,
2010) and also relating this construct to that of flow (de Manzano et al., 2010) suggest
that some forms of intense task engagement may not inevitably draw on effortful
“top-down” control mechanisms.
H O W S H O U L D T H E D AY - TO - D AY S C H E D U L E S O F I N D I V I D UA L S
A N D G R O U P S B E S T R U C T U R E D TO B E S T A L L O W F O R D I F F E R E N T
L E V E L S O F P R O C E S S I N G C O N T R O L S O A S TO M A X I M I Z E
C R E AT I V I T Y A N D L E A R N I N G ?
A salient example here is a child’s recess during the school day. Pellegrini and Bjorklund
(1997, p. 35) note that “although recess has been part of formal educational systems
since their inception, it is incredibly understudied.” Nonetheless, and “despite the
paucity of empirical guidance for policy decisions, many school systems around the
country are eliminating recess from the curriculum or replacing it with teacher-guided
physical education, based on the belief that it detracts from school’s primary mission:
teaching the Three R’s” (Pellegrini & Bjorklund, 1997, p. 35; see also Panksepp, 1998).
Entirely in accord with these claims, recent analyses of data from more than 10,000
American third-grade children (between the ages of 8 and 9) showed that nearly 30%
of the children received either no recess break or only a brief recess of less than 15
minutes during the school day (Barros, Silver, & Stein, 2009). This study also found
that the children not given more than a minimal recess were disproportionately from
lower-income families and from Black and Hispanic ethnic groups.
Other studies likewise show that the amount of free, unstructured time that
American school-age children are given has decreased in the last 20 years (e.g., Ridgway
et al., 2003), including both decreased play and especially decreases in unstructured
outdoor activities. Yet teachers’ ratings of the children’s group classroom behavior
indicated that there was significantly less frequent misbehavior for children who
received at least one break of greater than 15 minutes (Barros et al., 2009). And when
Grade 4 children in a large southern urban school who were not usually given a recess
were given a recess once a week—so that researchers could compare their behavior on
recess and nonrecess days—it was found that the children showed significantly less
fidgeting and more time on task during the postrecess portion of their classes (Jarrett
et al., 1998). These benefits were observed for most of the children, with about 60% of
the children benefiting considerably, and all five of those with attention-deficit disor-
der showing improvements, leading Jarrett et al. (1998, p. 126) to conclude that “for
most children, uninterrupted instructional time may be a paradoxically inefficient use
of instructional time.”
Beyond excessively taxing their executive and self-regulatory resources, long peri-
ods of directed attention during structured class time do not adequately accommodate
children’s natural need for physical activity (e.g., Panksepp, 1998; see also Deslandes
et al., 2009) or individual differences in attentional control (e.g.,Tantillo, Kesick,
Hynd, & Dishman, 2002). Using recordings of daily arm-and-leg movements in indi-
viduals from infancy to 16 years of age, Eaton, McKeen, and Campbell (2001) observed
an inverted U pattern of activity across age. There was a peak in the number of arm
and leg movements per hour found in children of 8 years of age, and gradually decreas-
ing levels observed at both increasingly younger and increasingly older ages. Eaton
and colleagues (2001) postulated that high rates of activity at this age might, in part,
reflect the children’s efforts to draw on concrete objects and interactions with their
environment to facilitate cognition, with the decreases in movement in early adoles-
cence signaling or accompanying a shift toward greater engagement in more abstract,
cognitive activities. Other researchers (e.g., Pellegrini & Bjorklund, 1997) have sug-
gested that recess breaks may help to overcome the buildup of proactive interference
in memory and cognition linked to prolonged periods of learning. Despite these sug-
gestions there is, overall, remarkably little systematic empirical research on the opti-
mal timing and duration of recess for children, or of the conditions under which other
activities, such as teacher-guided engagement in physical activities, provide a suitable
alternative to unstructured time.
We also need to understand more about “adult recess” times—breaks in attention-
demanding work and variations in levels of cognitive control—that can maximally
promote mental agility. What are optimal “in between time” activities, and the dura-
tion of those activities, to help individuals maximize creatively adaptive thinking,
deciding, and acting? Despite the importance of this question, there is comparatively
little sound empirical research, even with respect to such aims as minimizing the risk
of accidents and injuries in industrial settings, though there is some evidence that, for
example, more frequent, briefer breaks may help to offset fatigue and increase produc-
tivity (P. Tucker, 2003).
One clear potential starting point would be empirical evaluation of proposals, such
as that by Elsbach and Hargadon (2006), briefly alluded to in Chapter 5, of the value
of encouraging “knowledge workers” to intersperse phases of cognitively challenging
and high-pressure work within their work weeks with what might be called “recharge
times.” Such times would comprise phases of work that are low in cognitive difficulty
(e.g., that place minimal demands on directed attention) and are low in performance-
related pressures. Elsbach and Hargadon (2006) argued that “relentlessly mindful
work,” particularly work that exerts continuous demands on such core job dimensions
as skill variety and autonomy, if combined with high workload pressure (e.g., multiple
and often unpredictable time demands and deadlines, and multiple complex projects
with differing time horizons), could undermine the ability of individuals to experience
the positive psychological states that, in turn, foster and sustain creativity—such as
high levels of experienced meaningfulness of work, knowledge of the actual results of
work activities, and experienced responsibility for work outcomes.
Figure 12.1 provides a schematic of the hypothesized effects of such “relentlessly
mindful work.” The figure is a modification of an earlier model of job characteristics
developed by J. R. Hackman and colleagues (1975), indicating (with the “broken arrows”)
the potentially weakening effect of high workload pressure on the connectivity between
Relentlessly mindful work
Critical Personal
Implementing Core job High psychological and work
concepts dimensions workload states outcomes
pressure
Combining tasks Skill variety Experienced High internal

meaningfulness work motivation
Formal natural Task of work
work units identity High-quality
Experienced work performance
Establishing client Task responsibility for
relationships significance work outcomes High satisfaction
with the work
Vertical loading Autonomy Knowledge of the
actual results of Low absenteeism
Opening feedback Feedback the work activities
channels High creativity
High
Strong effect workload
pressure
Weakened effect
Figure 12.1. Characterization of the Hypothesized Effects of Chronic

Workload Pressures and “Relentlessly Mindful Work” on Work Design,
Based on the Job Characteristics Model of J. R. Hackman et al.
(1975). Reprinted from Elsbach, K. D., & Hargadon, A. B. (2006, p. 474), Enhancing
creativity through “mindless” work: A framework for workday design, Organization
Science, 17, 470–483, with permission from the Institute for Operations Research and
the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Copyright 2006, INFORMS.
core job dimensions, such as skill variety and task significance, and emergent critical
psychological states, such as experienced meaningfulness of work and experienced
responsibility for work outcomes.
To overcome such chronic workload pressures, Elsbach and Hargadon (2006) recom-
mend the use of “legitimate and scheduled mindless work.” Figure 12.2 schematically
depicts the hypothesized benefits of interposed phases of “mindless work”—that is, com-
paratively brief periods of time during which individuals work on easily mastered, rou-
tine, or automatically accomplished but nonetheless “productive” tasks (e.g., filling supply
cabinets, performing routine maintenance, or cleaning of equipment). Such times could
“allow professionals to experience breaks from their chaotic mindful work to allow them
to feel a sense of predictability and control, as well as to provide them with the cognitive
capacity to work creatively on other problems” (Elsbach & Hargadon, 2006, p. 480).
Additionally, as shown in Figure 12.2, such recharge times are hypothesized to elicit
critical psychological states such as high cognitive capacity, psychological safety, and pos-
itive affect. Brief “recharge times” of this form might also provide opportunities for the
incubation of ideas, given evidence (e.g., Sio & Ormerod, 2009), considered in Chapter 7,
that incubation may be particularly likely to occur in phases of low cognitive load.
In a conceptual analysis, Jett and George (2003) differentiated between several
forms of interruptions that may be experienced in the work environment, including
intrusions, breaks, distractions, and discrepancies. They identified each as, depending
on circumstances, leading to either, or both, positive and negative consequences for
the person being interrupted. Whereas, for instance, breaks may lead to costs in time
spent relearning essential details of the work being performed, they may also provide
opportunities for incubation of ideas (e.g., see the section on “Working Well with the
Unconscious” in Chapter 7). Breaks may provide the opportunity for both passive
Legitimate and scheduled mindless work
Critical Personal
Implementing Core job
psychological and work
concepts dimensions
states outcomes
Required and Low High cognitive

scheduled cognitive capacity
High creativity
completion of difficulty
simple, easily Psychological
mastered tasks Low safety
performance
Time orientation pressure Positive affect
of work
Figure 12.2. Characterization of the Hypothesized Effects of Legitimate

and Scheduled Mindless Work, to Counteract Chronic Workload
Pressures, Based on the Job Characteristics Model of J. R. Hackman
Et al. (1975). Reprinted from Elsbach, K. D., & Hargadon, A. B. (2006, p. 475),
Enhancing creativity through “mindless” work: A framework for workday design,
Organization Science, 17, 470–483, with permission from the Institute for Operations
Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Copyright 2006, INFORMS.
unconscious processing (e.g., leading to decreased accessibility of misleading or

unfruitful approaches) and active unconscious processing (e.g., emergence of new
solutions given a changed “competitive landscape” of possibilities in one’s mental
representations). Breaks may also foster positive affect and other social-affective
responses that can increase flexibility of thinking and creativity (e.g., Mainemelis &
Ronson, 2006; Trougakos, Beal, Green, & Weiss, 2008; see also Chapter 6).
Recent work by Perlow and Porter (2009) has clearly demonstrated the benefits of
making time off predictable—and required—for consultants, investment bankers,
and other people in professional services. Although individuals in these forms of work
often show an appropriate relishing of the intensity of their work lives, and of “being
in the thick of things, with all the learning and adrenaline buzz that engenders,” such
high-pressure intensity also has another and darker side. “What professionals don’t
like is the bad intensity—having no control over their own work and lives, being afraid
to ask questions that could help them better focus and prioritize, and generally oper-
ating in ways that are inefficient. Still, professionals accept the bad intensity without
hesitation, believing it comes with the territory.” Yet this is ultimately detrimental,
and it “only perpetuates a vicious cycle”:
Responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness. When people are
“always on,” responsiveness becomes ingrained in the way they work,
expected by clients and partners, and even institutionalized in performance
metrics. There is no impetus to explore whether the work actually requires
24/7 responsiveness; to the contrary, people just work harder and longer,
without considering how they could work better. Yet, what we discovered is
that the cycle of 24/7 responsiveness can be broken if people collectively
challenge the mind-set. Furthermore, new ways of working can be found
that benefit not just individuals but the organization, which gains in quality
and efficiency—and, in the long run, experiences higher retention of more of
its best people. (Perlow & Porter, 2009, np)
Another important question concerns opportunities for the replenishment and

revitalization of attention and other cognitive resources that contribute to resiliency
and adaptive functioning on a longer time scale of weeks, months, and even years. In
a recent meta-analysis of the comparatively few systematic research studies that have
examined the effects of vacation on health and well-being, de Bloom et al. (2009)
found an average positive effect size d of 0.55 for a measure of exhaustion (mean of
four studies, range of 0.35 to 0.92), an average d of 0.68 for health complaints (mean
of three studies, range of 0.21 to 1.01) and an average d of 0.24 for life satisfaction
(mean of three studies, range from 0.04 to 0.40). Although the studies did not include
extensive postvacation measures, there was evidence that some but perhaps not all of
the positive effects of vacation tended to fade out within 2–4 weeks post vacation.
In a study of the effects of vacation on workers in one large industry, Etzion (2003)
found that, compared with demographically similar controls at the same industry
who did not take a vacation, vacations decreased self-reported stress and “burnout”
immediately after vacation; by 3 weeks post vacation, stress had returned to prevaca-
tion levels but self-reported burnout had not. Briefer vacations (7–10 days) and long
vacations (more than 10 days) showed similar effects on stress and burnout, suggest-
ing that multiple short vacations might be more beneficial than one longer annual
vacation. Nonetheless, although these studies are suggestive and encouraging, overall
there is very little rigorous research on the effects of vacations. Particularly needed is
investigation of the moderators of vacation effects, involving appropriate control
groups and also utilizing multiple within-person physiological, psychological, and
behavioral measures that would permit comprehensive objective evaluation.
Other promising directions with regard to the question of opportunities for revi-
talization of attention and other cognitive resources that contribute to resilient and
adaptive functioning are provided from the perspective of “attention restoration
theory” (S. Kaplan, 1995, 2001), and the broader but closely related account of Ulrich
(1993; Ulrich et al., 1991, 2008). As we have seen, Ulrich has hypothesized that
certain natural settings—specifically those that have been evolutionarily favorable to
our ongoing well-being and survival, such as grassland savannah-like spaces—may
help to rapidly offset stressors, shifting us toward a more positively toned emotional
state, counteracting stress-induced mobilization of the sympathetic nervous system,
and influencing attention, conscious processing, and behavior. (See Chapter 11; see
also the discussion of “virtue regrets” versus “indulgence regrets” in Chapter 5, in the
section on “Levels of Control, Spontaneity, and Openness to Experience”). The theory
of “allostatic load” (e.g., McEwen, 2008) in relation to stressors (discussed in Chapter
10 in the section “Socioeconomic Status, Stress, and Brain Paths to Agile Thinking”)
also provides conceptual guidance here (e.g., Geurts & Sonnentag, 2006). As noted
earlier, allostatis can be viewed as the “active process by which the body responds to
daily events and maintains homeostasis” or is able to achieve “stability through
change,” whereas allostatic load refers to “the wear and tear that results from either too
much stress or from inefficient management of allostatis” (McEwen, 2008, p. 175).
Sluiter and colleagues (2000) have distinguished different time-scales of recovery
from demanding or stressful work based on the duration of the respite and time since
work was discontinued. They differentiate four temporally based categories that cor-
respond to the way in which working life is organized in many countries: microrecov-
ery (the first minutes after task performance), mesorecovery (10 minutes to 1 hour
after task performance), metarecovery (1 hour to 2 days after work, with the upper
end of the range such as might be true for a weekend), and macrorecovery (more than
2 days after work). Based on a review of studies that examined neuroendocrine reac-
tivity and recovery from mental, combined mental and physical, or physical tasks, and
including occupational, health, laboratory, and sports research, Sluiter et al. (2000)
suggest that there are important parallels between findings on sports related over-
training and that of people with occupationally induced chronic fatigue.
Although research on the neuroendocrinology of occupational tasks greatly lags
behind that found for sports activities, outcomes suggest that, depending on circum-
stances, parallels to both overtraining of the sympathetic nervous system and of the
parasympathetic system may be observed. The former may be characterized by, for
example, increased sympathetic activity at rest, such as increased resting heart rate,
decreased appetite and weight loss. The latter may be characterized by decreased sym-
pathetic and increased parasympathetic activity involving, for example, low resting
heart rate, more hours sleeping, and a “phlegmatic” or depressive state.
To classify sportsmen as overtrained or not overtrained is often difficult

because the process is seen as a continuum from well trained to overreached
and eventually to overtrained. This idea is analogous to the development of
chronic fatigue in occupational settings in which repeated lack of recovery is
seen as the start of a vicious circle from acute to chronic fatigue. (Sluiter
et al., 2000, p. 311)
These authors recommended that future occupational neuroendocrine research

should focus on methods to monitor the course of recovery and should include repeated
simultaneous measurements of health complaints and the working environment, with
the overall goal of gaining “knowledge about the (partly) assumed role of recovery as
an aetiological factor of chronic fatigue relative to work demands, and thus possibly
prevention of future cases of chronic fatigue” (Sluiter et al., 2000, p. 313).
Other recommendations for future research in this domain include the need for
research to take into account individual differences in modes of responding to stress,
such as rumination and worry (cf. the discussion of impaired problem solving linked
with excessive reliance on abstract categorical thought in chronic worry in Chapter 2)
or other perseverative cognition such as anticipatory stress that may exacerbate con-
tinued stress responsiveness (Brosschot, Pieper, & Thayer, 2005; Pieper & Brosschot,
2005). Perseverative cognition may directly trigger physiological activation through
“the representation of the original (or expected) stressor and the repeated reevocation
of this representation and concomitant stress experience and physiological activa-
tion” (Pieper & Brosschot, 2005, p. 94). The effects of learned contingencies and
expectancies relating to such factors as experienced control and optimism/pessimism
(cf. the discussion, in Chapter 6, of positive emotions in helping to bolster and sustain
psychological resilience) also require consideration and may, in turn, be among the
psychobiological mechanisms contributing to socioeconomic differences in health and
resilience (e.g., Kristenson et al., 2004; Chaix, 2009; Daniel, Moore, & Kestens, 2008;
also see the section on “Socioeconomic Status, Stress, and Brain Paths to Agile
Thinking” in Chapter 10).
Equally important, in addition to the adverse effects of acute or cumulative work
stress, it is essential to take into account the costs of an individual’s abstention from,
or reductions in, leisure time or non-work-related activities that might foster positive
affect and motivation (compare with the discussion of longitudinal and epidemiologic
research on the benefits of environmental stimulation in Chapter 10). The failure to
take part in leisure-related activities, such as hobbies, creative pursuits, and social
activities may also significantly contribute to failures to recover from work-related
stress. Winwood and colleagues (2007) explicitly point to the potential contributions
of nonwork engagement to total allostatic load:
It is thus arguable that if a worker’s response to acute work stress and fatigue
includes a progressive reduction in exercise and creative and social activities,
there is a commensurate loss of important sources of personal fulfillment,
which might otherwise stimulate the release of pleasure-reward neurotrans-
mitters with their stress-reducing, allostatic load-opposing potential. This
behavioral change may lead to a prolongation of work stress spillover effects
in non-work time, thereby increasing the overall period of allostatic load in

any 24-hour sequence. (Winwood, Bakker, & Winefield, 2007, p. 864, origi-
nal italics)
Supporting this suggestion, in a correlational study of more than 300 full-time

workers in a wide range of occupations (e.g., education, engineering, health care, and
management), Winwood et al. (2007) found that recovery from occupational fatigue
exhaustion, as measured by questions such as “I often feel I’m at the end of my rope
with my work” and “I’m often still feeling fatigued from one work period by the time I
start the next one” (reverse coded) was significantly predicted by levels of nonwork
time engagement in exercising (beta = 0.141), creative or hobby activities (beta =
0.135), and social activity (beta = 0.236). Together these three forms of activity
explained about 20% of the variance in recovery from occupational fatigue. Additionally,
mediation analyses revealed that nonwork time activity was a significant mediator of
the relation between recovery and chronic fatigue, and that the quality of sleeping
mediated the relation between nonwork time activity and recovery. Paradoxically,
however, assessment of the types of activities that individuals engage in after work on
a day-to-day basis has shown that, on days following high levels of stress, people tend
to be less likely to take part in sports and physical activities that would help to counter-
act the stress (Sonnentag & Jeiden, 2009; see also Sonnentag & Niessen, 2008).
Other research has similarly shown that higher levels of engagement while one is
at work (involving greater vigor, dedication, and absorption in one’s work-related
activities) together with disengagement or psychological detachment from work when
one is away from work are associated with more positive affective states (Sonnentag
et al., 2008). “Time away” in leisure and other non-work activities potentially provides
individuals with “the opportunity to interrupt resource loss spirals and instead create
resource gain spirals” (Shimazu & Schaufeli, 2007, p. 430). Nonetheless, Bakker et al.
(2008, p. 195) have also raised the important question of whether the level of work
engagement (linked to controlled processing) can be “too high if employees are in a
continuous state of high engagement” and also have asked whether absorption is “a
core aspect of work engagement or an outcome of energy and identification” (Bakker
et al., 2008, p. 196). These authors emphasized that future research on engagement at
work “would benefit from a resolute focus on interventions:”
The research literature is supplied abundantly with cross-sectional studies

demonstrating burnout’s correlates and too few demonstrating planned
change. We urge researchers to go beyond investigating work engagement’s
causes and consequences. The greatest contribution will come from system-
atic studies that evaluate the impact of new management procedures or per-
sonal routines on work engagement. Interesting questions are whether
engagement can be trained, and whether the engagement frame facilitates
interventions. (Bakker et al., 2008, p. 195)
In conjunction, multiple findings argue for the importance of short-term, medium-

term, and longer-term forms of “recess” or “respite” from our occupational and learn-
ing pursuits at both the individual and societal level, with implications for not only
attention and cognition but also our health, productivity, and ultimately our creativity
and adaptive flourishing. Here, as so often, William James both recognized, and artic-
ulated for us, something that is so simple and so fundamental, that we need to remind
ourselves of it, and others too.
The fact is that every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday
of a full month in the year, whether he feel like taking it or not. First, for the
reason we have considered hitherto—that the capacity for irresponsible
enjoyment which is like air space in the character, may not become wholly
atrophied within him—though many cannot and many will not treat this as
a “practical” reason. But second, for the reason that all must consider practi-
cal, namely, tone of mind and health of body. No man, were he composed of
catgut and whalebone, can work for five years unremittingly at the same
kind of work with impunity. None can work ten years even at a very varied
occupation. One year may make no difference, a second and a third may
follow, and the subject not suffer consciously. But ten years of the two sys-
tems will turn out two different human beings at their end. The patient may
be loth to get away, but this is a distinctly morbid symptom, a cramp-like
closure of the mind upon the subject of its cares, which should be an impera-
tive signal to some friend to come and push him willy-nilly out of doors.
(William James, 1873/1987, pp. 4-5)
W H AT A R E T H E R E L AT I O N S B E T W E E N D I R E C T E F F O R T F U L
“AT T E N T I O N T R A I N I N G ” I N T E R V E N T I O N S A N D L E S S D I R E C T E D
I N T E R V E N T I O N S S U C H A S M E D I TAT I O N , M I N D F U L N E S S
T R A I N I N G , A N D AT T E N T I O N R E S TO R AT I O N ?
In a recent review, Tang and Posner (2009, pp. 222–223) contrasted what they termed
“attention training” methods, involving “practice in some cognitive skill by repetitive
trials on tasks similar to those used in schools or cognitive psychology laboratories”
versus “attention state training” interventions that “have in common an altered state
of mind and body” but “use different sensory inputs to achieve their effects on mind
and body and improve performance.” Examples of “attention training” methods that
we have considered (see Chapter 11) include the attention training of children exam-
ined by Rueda et al. (2005), the dual-task variable-priority training and real-time
video gaming examined by researchers such as Kramer et al. (1995) and C. S. Green
and Bavelier (2003, 2006), respectively, and the multimodal working memory training
used by Jaeggi and colleagues (2008). In contrast, “attention state training” interven-
tions that we have considered include the “attention restoration” manipulations based
on S. Kaplan’s (1995, 2001) theory, such as engagement with nature (Chapter 11), and
mindfulness training or integrative body-mind training (discussed in the first section
of Chapter 3).
In contrasting these two approaches, Tang and Posner (2009) emphasized differ-
ences on five aspects. Specifically, they underscored that attention training versus
attention state training can be contrasted with respect to the immediate effects of the
training (whereas attention training trains executive attention networks, attention

state training produces changes of body-mind state), the processes involved in training
(whereas attention training requires directed attention and effortful control, atten-
tion state training requires effortful control only in the early stage but later this
becomes effortless exercise), the brain/body systems that are targeted (in the case of
attention training, nonautonomic control systems, but the autonomic system in the
case of attention state training), the effects of training (readily produced mental fatigue
for the former, but aiming for a relaxed and balanced state in the latter), and the forms
of transfer found (transfer to other cognitive abilities in the case of attention training,
but broader transfer, including transfer to cognition, emotion, and social behaviors in
the latter). In remarkable concurrence with the iCASA framework’s emphasis on a
continuum of control from highly controlled to highly automatic, Tang and Posner
(2009) proposed that the aim of attention state training is to achieve an “attention
balance state” that is intermediate between, on the one hand, an effortless, largely
automatic state, involving a “wandering mind” and, on the other hand, a fully con-
trolled, effortful mental state that will, however, with continued effort, lead to “mental
fatigue.” They further proposed that the “attention balance state” produces better per-
formance.
There are clearly many empirical questions concerning the optimal timing, dura-
tion, and frequency of both attention training and attention state training for indi-
viduals at different ages and characterized by different personality, affective, and
physiological profiles. Other clearly pressing empirical research questions include
questions about the conjoint use of attention training and attention state training: In
what ways can the two methods be effectively used conjointly—perhaps increasing
the unique benefits associated with each? Are there other feasible and reliable “routes”
to something like the “attention balance state”? For instance, can engaging in the
visually creative arts, or dance, or narrative or film, lead to a similar state?
It is notable that S. Kaplan’s (1995, 2001) theory of “attention restoration” specifi-
cally postulates that activities such as storytelling may be restorative, and that several
of the key aspects needed for restorative effects according to this account, such as
experiencing the feeling of “being away,” and of becoming immersed in a coherently
ordered environment of substantial scope or “extent,” may occur either physically
(e.g., in experiencing expansive horizons) or conceptually (e.g., in experiences of a
historical and cultural expanse). Do certain forms of visual art and other arts (e.g.,
music) provide just such restorative experiences? Also, how does the postulated
“attention balance state” relate to the apparently somewhat similar states of “effort-
less attention” or “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1996; Keller & Bless, 2008), dis-
cussed earlier, and in Chapter 7?
Particularly from the point of view of the iCASA framework’s emphasis on the need
for (appropriate) oscillatory range, another central question concerns the relation
between the amount of time spent in the “middle” range of levels of control (nearer
the “spontaneous” portion) and one’s ability to move to more extreme modes of con-
trol—either more controlled or more automatic. If, as has been argued here, there are
dangers from reduced “oscillatory range” in levels of control, then too often or
too uniformly attaining states within the “middle” range levels of control might not
ultimately be ideal. Yet, if so, how much movement toward the endpoints, and for how
long, and under what conditions is ideal?
Environmental Enrichment and Stimulation

H O W C A N I N D I V I D UA L S T H R O U G H O U T T H E L I F E S PA N
B E E N C O U R A G E D TO E N G A G E I N D I V E R S E C O G N I T I V E
A N D S O C I A L A C T I V I T I E S T H AT C O N T I N U O U S LY A I D
PLASTICITY AND GROWTH?
As a foundational step, we need to understand more about the factors that encourage
individuals to take up and to continue to pursue enduring interests, hobbies, and avo-
cations. Here new research enquiries probing the nature of interest and of curiosity
(e.g., Silvia, 2008, 2010; Kang et al., 2009), of the “need for cognition” (e.g., Fleischhauer
et al., 2010), and of “cognitive pleasure” or “perceptual pleasure” (e.g., Biederman &
Vessel, 2006) are likely to prove especially illuminating. For example, what is the rela-
tion between more momentary or apparently transitory feelings of interest and longer
term enduring pursuits of topics of interest? How can individual differences in open-
ness to experience and associated differences in adaptive learning and orienting sen-
sitivity (Chapter 6)—and also dual motivational structure, involving high levels of
both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Chapter 5)—be best taken into account so as
to maximize lifelong learning and engagement?
In Chapter 5, we saw that our level of perceived or experienced autonomy in per-
forming or choosing a task has a mediating effect on the extent to which particular
tasks prove to be depleting of self-regulatory resources (e.g., Muraven, Gagné, &
Rosman, 2008). This suggests that it is not only what the task requirements are, but
also the reasons behind, and the broader context in which a given activity is pursued
that determine the degree to which it draws upon self-regulatory capacity. Equally
important, we may have options in how we ourselves choose to “frame” activities (e.g.,
emphasizing approach goals vs. avoidance goals) that will then have carryover conse-
quences for how “depleting” we experience a given activity as being. S. Kaplan (2001,
p. 497) has expressed this point with regard to the “fascination” aspect of attention
restoration theory (discussed in Chapter 11), noting that “Forcing oneself to do some-
thing requires considerable inhibition and is thus costly. Bringing intrinsic motivation
into one’s life and activities is a way to reduce such costs because it introduces a fasci-
nation component into the equation. This both makes the task more attractive and
makes its more unpleasant aspects feel worthwhile.”
We also saw (in Chapter 5) that both flexible thinking more broadly, and creativity
more specifically, may not be maximally advanced through an exclusive reliance
on intrinsic motivation but needs to be also guided and fueled by more controlled
processes, including external contingencies or rules that one imposes on oneself
precisely to set the potential conditions for intrinsically driven engagement to emerge
(and also more identified forms of extrinsic motivation). We need to recognize
that often the balance and type of motivation changes during a task, such that our
construal and formulation of the task “from the outside” is often excessively simplistic
and almost a caricature of the task. Very often, if we’d only get started, we will find
that many imagined difficulties disappear or that the solutions to them emerge
through the broad and diverse support provided by reimmersion in the relevant
physical and symbolic context.
We need to encourage individuals who are learning a new domain, or are experienc-
ing overly abstract and global fears and anxieties regarding how to move forward with
respect to a given problem (e.g., “writer’s block”), to recognize that their mind and the
“representational accessibility landscape” that they are in when they are remote from
actually working on a given problem is markedly different than when they are
immersed in the problem context, and have at hand myriad contextual cues from the
environment and from their own interactions with the environment. There is a much
(much!) wider range of information and many more possibilities that will be “ready to
mind” once one becomes immersed in the appropriate problem-solving context, which
allows processes such as automatic reminding and the triggering of “if-then” rules and
so on to come to the fore and “share the load” of thinking with our conscious and
deliberate efforts at control. As noted by Guindon:
Information that becomes the focus of attention—partial solutions,

problem domain scenarios, requirements, and external representations—
can trigger knowledge rules. As these data-driven rules are applied, the prob-
lems become better structured. In fact, the data-driven recognition of partial
solutions is advantageous. The designer increases the number of constraints
on the solution and decreases the daunting size of the solution problem
space at very little cognitive cost. (Guindon, 1990, p. 329)
These points also interlink with the notions of the benefits of being able to flexibly
shift between “making” versus “finding” depending on context and other demands, so
that aims become something that have multiple origins, in our selves and in what the
world offers (see Chapter 7, particularly Excursion 7, “Goals, Making and Finding, and
Oscillatory Levels of Control”).
Although, to date, considerable (and rapidly growing) research effort has been
directed at evaluating the benefits of direct “training” approaches to compensate for
age-related losses in such domains as memory and fluid reasoning, comparatively less
research has been directed at determining the benefits of intervention approaches
that provide more natural, multimodal, complexly meaningful opportunities—and
self-reinforcing ongoing invitations—to sustained cognitive, socioemotional, and
physical activities that will preserve, foster, and fuel ongoing capacities in all those
domains. As underscored by Stine-Morrow:
Intellectually rich contexts that invite self-regulatory efficacy (an education/

engagement model as opposed to a training model) may stimulate vitality
by providing opportunities to exercise attentional engagement to skill
development in ways that are sufficiently meaningful and emotionally
satisfying to be self-perpetuating. Key issues that require empirical examina-
tion include conditions (e.g., novelty) that support the development and
maintenance of attentional and activity engagement, the way in which
these two forms of engagement interact, and psychosocial mechanisms (e.g.,

self-efficacy, control, mindfulness) through which exposure to novelty
and nonroutine challenge might engender engagement. (Stine-Morrow,
2007, p. 299)
Nicely illustrative of multimodal engagement are activities such as amateur acting

(e.g., Noice & Noice, 2009) and amateur dance. As noted by Kattenstroth et al. (2010,
p. 1), “Dance, in addition to physical activity, combines emotions, social interaction,
sensory stimulation, motor coordination, and music, thereby creating enriched
environmental conditions for human individuals.” In a longitudinal investigation,
these researchers found that, compared with an age-, gender-, and education-matched
control group, older adults (aged 61 to 94 years) who had been engaged in amateur
dancing for many years showed significantly higher performance on measures of
everyday competence, fluid reasoning, and reaction times; they also demonstrated
improved posture, balance, and motor performance, as well as lower two-point-
discrimination thresholds, reflecting superior spatial tactile acuity.
Another important potential benefit of environmental enrichment may be to help
counteract the occurrence of severe clinical depression in aged individuals. As noted
by Jessberger and Gage (2008, p. 688; see also L. Clark, Chamberlain, & Sahakian,
2009), one “clinical feature of depression is the inability to successfully integrate new
experiences.” It has been speculated that adult hippocampal neurogenesis might be
centrally involved in major depression (Sahay & Hen, 2007), particularly in view of
evidence that, first, many antidepressant drugs increase the number of neurons in the
area of the dentate gyrus (H. D. Schmidt & Duman, 2007), and, second, that the effec-
tiveness of some antidepressants, such as fluoxetine, appears to require ongoing neu-
rogenesis, at least in models using young mice (Santarelli et al., 2003).
We also need to acquire a broader understanding and application of findings relat-
ing to alternative forms of environmental enrichment (e.g., video gaming, or the use of
multimedia) for individuals with reduced or restricted opportunities for external stim-
ulation (e.g., due to mobility or sensory impairments) or as a means of voluntarily
engaging the intrinsic interest of individuals who would otherwise resist or decline
opportunities. Particularly in situations such as poverty and deprivation, creating
environments that make access and engagement with diverse, stimulating, meaning-
ful activities easier and more frequent may yield tremendous individual and societal
benefits. Such benefits may arise both from reducing the multiplicative detrimental
effects of stress (e.g., McEwen & Gianaros, 2010, see also the section in Chapter 10,
on “Socioeconomic Status, Stress, and Brain Paths to Agile Thinking”) and by helping
to channel healthy curiosity and exploration into domains that can yield longer
term psychological and material rewards rather than longer term costs and impedi-
ments to advancement such as addiction, or a spiraling involvement in a life of vio-
lence, and crime.1 The findings from field research on the benefits of even modest
amounts of nature in an urban environment for cognitive function, including improved
backward digit span and self-regulatory inhibitory capacity (F. E. Kuo & Sullivan, 2001;
A. F. Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2002), particularly when combined with experimental
demonstrations of similar restorative effects on executive attention (Berman et al.,
2009; Berto, 2005; Chapter 11), likewise suggest that efforts to increase park space
and greenery in urban areas may yield considerably more than “merely cosmetic”
benefits.
W H AT F O S T E R S I N D I V I D UA L I S M A N D “ U S E F U L VA R I AT I O N ”
IN OUR HABITS OF THOUGHT AND ACTION?
The philosopher Josiah Royce—a long-time friend and philosophical antagonist
of William James—asked this question in 1898 and suggested that both an induce-
ment to try to vary as well as greater self-criticism and evaluation of what one
produces in response to that attempt to vary was important . . . “What sort of influ-
ence is it that puts the individual on his mettle, that awakens him to valuable
and independent variability of habit, that, as they say, makes him let himself go”?
(Royce, 1898, p.124)
One tremendously overlooked impetus for innovative behavior is—as we saw in
Chapter 5—reinforcement for varied behavior. We considered how such reinforce-
ment might apply at the level of the individual (e.g., in children), and we saw examples
of animals (e.g., dolphins) also learning to creatively respond in accordance with a
“rule” that only the generation of novel, not previously performed, behaviors would be
rewarded. However, “learning to vary” may also apply at the level of the group or orga-
nization. For example, S. Kaplan and Henderson (2005) argue that, in organizations,
incentives and cognition coevolve: “organizational competencies or routines are as
much about building knowledge of ‘what should be rewarded’ as they are about ‘what
should be done.’” Furthermore, they propose that recognizing the common coevolu-
tion of incentives and cognition can lead to important insights into the sources of
“organizational inertia” in the face of changing environments (S. Kaplan & Henderson,
2005, p. 509). Similarly, Simsek (2009) provides a conceptual review of the multiple
factors that may contribute to “organizational ambidexterity” involving a close bal-
ance between what has been termed “exploitation” and “exploration.” As concisely—
and incisively—characterized by March (1991):
Exploration includes things captured by terms such as search, variation, risk

taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation. Exploitation
includes such things as refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection,
implementation, execution. Adaptive systems that engage in exploration to
the exclusion of exploitation are likely to find that they suffer the costs of
experimentation without gaining many of its benefits. They exhibit too many
undeveloped new ideas and too little distinctive competence. Conversely,
systems that engage in exploitation to the exclusion of exploration are likely
to find themselves trapped in suboptimal stable equilibria. As a result, main-
taining an appropriate balance between exploration and exploitation is
a primary factor in system survival and prosperity. (March, 1991, p. 71)
Both creative and innovative variation—and efficient stereotypy and habits—in

behavior are central: “Contingent reinforcement can promote the dual educational
objective of efficiency and creativity, if variables relevant to differential reinforcement
are properly understood and judiciously employed” (Wong & Peacock, 1986, p. 160).
Also important here is the notion of a “behavioral cusp” that has been developed by
Rosales-Ruiz and Baer (1997; see also Hixson, 2004), in which repeated cycles of
reinforcement and selection of behaviors lead to cumulative-hierarchical learning.
To take one specific example, learning to walk enables a child to gain access to a new
array of reinforcers that then further develops his or her behavioral repertoire.
Behavioral cusps are those that expose an individual’s “repertoire to new environ-
ments . . . new contingencies, and new communities of maintaining or destructive
contingencies” (Rosales-Ruiz & Baer, 1997, p. 534).
More recently, R. Epstein, Schmidt, and Warfel (2008) have proposed and provided
evidence in support of the notion that creative expression in individuals can be accel-
erated through strengthening any of four basic competencies: capturing (preserving
new ideas as they occur, finding places and times where new ideas can be observed
easily), challenging (taking on difficult tasks, setting open-ended goals, and managing
fear and stress associated with failure effectively), broadening (seeking knowledge and
skills outside one’s current areas of expertise), and surrounding (changing one’s physi-
cal and social environments regularly, seeking out new unusual stimuli or combina-
tions of stimuli). Each of these basic competencies (even if not explicitly named) has
been underscored at various points in the previous chapters—see, for example, the
discussion of the “broaden and build” theory of positive emotion, and of openness to
experience, interest, curiosity, and variety seeking in Chapter 6, the role of epistemo-
logical beliefs and of intolerance of uncertainty versus intolerance of ambiguity treated
in Chapter 7, as well as all of Chapters 10 and 11 regarding how our environments
may, or may not, promote “brain paths” to mental agility.
The Interpenetration of Concepts with Perception,

Action/Motivation, and Emotion
H O W C A N W E U S E O U R U N D E R S TA N D I N G O F T H E I N T I M AT E LY
I N T E R M E S H E D N AT U R E O F R E P R E S E N TAT I O N S I N T H E M I N D ,
T H E W O R L D , A N D O U R B O D I E S , S O T H AT W E O P T I M A L LY
“THINK WITH OUR ENVIRONMENT”?
We have seen that mind and intelligence do not arise in some materially and symboli-
cally distant realm, untouched by more earthy and mundane considerations, such as
our concrete and specific ways of moving, acting, and perceiving in the world (Chapter
4). Thinking, and mental agility, is a much more materially anchored and physical
affair than we may oftentimes recognize. Thus, as Andy Clark has argued, we need to
see mind and intelligence as “mechanically realized by complex, shifting mixtures of
energetic and dynamic coupling, internal and external forms of representation and
computation, epistemically potent forms of bodily action, and the canny exploitation
of a variety of extrabodily props, aids, and scaffolding” (A. Clark, 2008, p. 219). This
means also that, although we recognize the immense capabilities and plasticity
and importance of the brain, that we should not lose sight of the body, or of the world,
in what renders adaptive flexibility and agility of minds possible. The succinct and
powerful summary of Andy Clark (2001, p. 132), earlier considered in Chapter 4, pro-
vides a superb reminder on multiple fronts that bears repeating:
The brain’s role is crucial and special. But it is not the whole story. In fact, the
true (fast and frugal!) power and beauty of the brain’s role is that it acts as a
mediating factor in a variety of complex and iterated processes which continually
loop between brain, body and technological environment. And it is this larger
system which solves the problem. […] The intelligent process just is the spa-
tially and temporally extended one which zig-zags between brain, body and
world. (A. Clark, 2001, p. 132)
The question of how can we better put to use our understanding of the intermeshed
nature of representations—in the mind, the world, and our bodies—to best enable
agility of thought and action is vast, with potential implications and applications
across virtually all areas of our lives. Nonetheless, four specific examples where
remaining or again becoming cognizant of these interdependent relations could help
to guide us toward greater agility of mind can provide anchors here (see also, for exam-
ple, Kirlik, 2006).
First, as we have seen, there is clear evidence that encouraging a view of intelli-
gence as malleable and subject to incremental change can be highly beneficial in
encouraging persistence and learning (Chapter 7). What, then, are the effects of
explicitly encouraging a view of intelligence as a joint product of a person’s mind/brain
and the environment that he or she has set up or chosen in which to work or play? Can
emphasizing the interrelations between the ease with which we can think and attend
and the particular environments that we are in, help to guide children—and adults—
to structure physical and symbolic space in more optimal ways, to enable creatively
adaptive thinking?
Second, research efforts could more fully explore ways to put the environment, and
environmental cuing, to “work” for individuals. For instance, the tendency of indi-
viduals with frontal lobe lesions, and also of other patients such as some persons with
traumatic brain injury, to be overly guided by habitual or automatic responses to envi-
ronmental cues may—under the right conditions—actually be adapted to help them.
Specific condition-to-action cues could, for instance, be used to help individuals to
improve their daily planning abilities and initiation (cf. Cicerone, Levine, Malec, Stuss,
& Whyte, 2006), through the thoughtful and imaginative preplanning of specific
prompts and prods to initiate activities. Additionally, as noted in Chapter 5, develop-
ing specific implementation intentions may be a powerful means to counteract the
pull of a well-established habit, placing a different mode of “automaticity” against a
habitually cued goal or behavior, to decrease the likelihood that the new intention is
derailed by the older habitual response. This approach may also lead to improved
memory for intentions in individuals who experience difficulties with deliberate con-
scious remembering, but not with relatively automatic forms of processing, such as
some older adults (e.g., Chasteen, Park, & Schwartz, 2001; Jacoby, Jennings, & Hay,
1996). As noted previously, older individuals who were given guidance in how to use
such “implementation intentions” showed improved prospective memory in a realistic
glucose monitoring task relative to control participants who merely repeatedly

rehearsed the times that they were to take the glucose readings, or individuals who
were asked to deliberate concerning the pros and cons of testing their sugar level (Liu
& Park, 2004). More broadly we need to creatively think about and further empirically
evaluate contexts in which we can use “strategic automatization” (Gollwitzer & Schaal,
1998) involving the formation of specific implementation intentions to effectively
promote intended health- and safety-related behaviors (e.g., Sheeran & Orbell, 2000;
Sheeran & Silverman, 2003; also see Koestner, Lekes, Powers, & Chicoine, 2002).
Third, additional research efforts are needed to more fully understand behavioral
interventions to change long-term habitual or largely automatic behaviors, based on
the recognition that it is not only the frequency with which a behavior has been under-
taken in the past that comprises a habit, but also the consistency of the contexts in
which a behavior is undertaken (e.g., time, place, other persons present; cf. Dolnicar &
Grün, 2009). Variability in the contextual and environmental cues to a given behavior
(e.g., driving rather than taking public transportation) can be capitalized on to strate-
gically and deliberately change what is a source of inertia and resistance into a proac-
tive means for fostering “desired” habits. For example, according to the “habit
discontinuity hypothesis” (Verplanken et al., 2008; see also D. T. Neal, Wood, & Quinn,
2006; Verplanken & Wood, 2006; Wood, Tam, & Witt, 2005), when a stable context is
disrupted, this provides a unique “window of opportunity” for reconsidering the habit,
and changing behaviors such as the use of public transportation (Bamberg, 2006) or
snacking, or drinking alcohol (Danner, Aarts, & de Vries, 2008).
Fourth, we have seen the sometimes surprising ways in which both our situated-
ness in our body and in the immediate environment can influence mental agility,
such as the evidence that whether we are sitting or standing may influence the
ease with which we can access remotely associated concepts (Chapter 9) and that
apparently incidental characteristics of our immediate environment, such as the
height of ceilings (Meyers-Levy & Zhu, 2007; Chapter 3, note 7), may change what
forms of processing or representations—abstract and relational versus concrete
and item specific—are most readily accessible. Should we design or deliberately use
alternative work and architectural spaces for different sorts of tasks: a different
space for “big-picture” planning and evaluation than for detailed implementation or
assessment?
More broadly, if we must (as I think we must) acknowledge that we as thinkers are
“more than a little voice controller inside our heads,” then we need to find ways to
both allow for, and to maximally tap into, the tremendously efficient parallel process-
ing that is possible via the complex intricate dynamic and intermeshed representa-
tional networks that we have formed over a lifetime of experience. How can we
structure our ways of approaching projects and undertakings to build in the opportu-
nity for more receptive forms of attention, such as G. Mandler’s “mind popping”
(1994)? (This question is closely related to that of how should the day-to-day working
and studying schedules of individuals and groups, in organizations and broader work
environments, be structured to best allow for different levels of processing control in
ways that maximize creatively adaptive potential and learning). How can we find new
creative ways to express the “other origins” of some of our innovative and most valued
insights, to articulate our indebtedness to “subcognitive mechanisms” in enabling
fluid thought (such as those we explored earlier in Excursion 2) and to deepen our
level of “attunement” to the sorts of moments that may signal to us new opportuni-
ties, directions, or insights? Should workplaces provide more opportunities for “ludic”
activity?
We need to be alert for, and to take seriously, those moments in which we realize
that we are making a connection to deeper experiences, that are of our felt and
sensed—not “only thought” or coolly cognized—responses to the world around us.
Such moments are those, as the poet Seamus Heaney describes with regard to a par-
ticular moment of his own writing, long (long) before he was and knew he was, a poet.
A moment that was different in just this way:
I had no particular gift for writing what were called “compositions,” and no
particular enjoyment of it. But I do remember a moment, early on at
St Columb’s, when the topic was “A Day at the Seaside” and I made a connec-
tion between the performative student in me and a more inward creature,
the writer-in-waiting, if you like. In the middle of the list of usual, expected
activities such as diving and swimming, neither of which I could do, I wrote
about going into an amusement arcade to escape from a shower and being
depressed by the wet footprints on the floor and the cold, wet atmosphere
created by people in their rained-on summer clothes. This had actually hap-
pened to me, so the image and the recording of it had a different feel.
Something in me knew that I was on the right, intimate track—but it took
me years to follow up. (Heaney, in O’Driscoll, 2008, pp. 35–36)
Mental agility will more often and more strongly emerge if we can recognize such
moments when we’re “on the right, intimate track”—a pathway that is forged not by
our mind alone, but by our minds intersteeped and copenetrated with the world,
through our senses, and as we, as physical (embodied), emotional, and “interest-
pierced” beings, try to navigate that world.
H O W C A N W E B E T T E R U N D E R S TA N D T H E O R I G I N S O F
R E P E T I T I V E A U TO M AT I C T H O U G H T S A N D O V E R LY V E R B A L -
L I N G U I S T I C P R O C E S S I N G A N D T H E I R E F F E C T S O N F L E X I B LY
C R E AT I V E P R O B L E M S O LV I N G ?
Findings from different domains, such as research on clinical depression, and chronic
worry and rumination, point to the potential costs of modes of thinking that are too
exclusively abstract or verbal-linguistic, and, furthermore, that reduced specificity of
autobiographical memory may contribute to impediments in flexibly creative problem
solving (Chapters 2 and 3). Partially similar patterns may be observed in other popula-
tions. For instance, recent findings suggest that individuals with avoidant, dependent,
or obsessive-compulsive personality disorders show markedly reduced memory speci-
ficity compared with nonclinical controls, with more moderate increases in overgener-
ality of memory (Spinhoven et al., 2009). There is also evidence that modes of
rumination may characterize forms of psychopathology beyond depression and worry,
such as eating disorders (e.g., Rawal, Park, & Williams, 2010).
At a broader, more encompassing level, recent findings using experience sampling

in a large and diverse sample of adults pointed to a significant relation between
self-reported mind wandering during everyday activities and reported happiness
“right now” (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). What people reported thinking about—
particularly whether they were anchored in the here and now or had mentally wan-
dered elsewhere—explained a larger, and also largely independent, proportion of both
within-person and between-person variance in happiness than was explained by what
people were doing. Time-lag analyses suggested that mind wandering was “generally
the cause, and not merely the consequence, of unhappiness” (Killingsworth & Gilbert,
2010, p. 932). Additionally, although people’s minds were more likely to wander to
pleasant topics (42.5% of samples) than to either unpleasant topics (26.5% of
samples) or neutral topics (31% of samples), the mind wandering to pleasant topics
did not boost happiness above that observed when individuals were thinking about
their current activity, and mind wandering to either neutral or unpleasant topics was
significantly linked to unhappiness.
We need to more thoroughly understand the factors that lead to the development
of various forms of detrimental mind wandering, across an entire spectrum of
“normal” to increasingly maladaptive conditions characterized by repetitive, overly
abstract, and ruminative thinking that remains distanced from more richly experien-
tial modes of processing. The “functional avoidance” proposal that reduced specificity
in memory retrieval arises from efforts to avoid unwanted psychological and physio-
logical effects (e.g., negative affect and distress) that are associated with accessing cer-
tain thoughts or memories, such as those relating to previous trauma, needs to be
more extensively tested so as to better delineate the conditions under which reduced
specificity of autobiographical memory following trauma may, indeed, prove to be
adaptive, at least in the shorter term, or in certain groups.2 Development is needed for
methods that allow the early detection of, and potential alteration of, modes of think-
ing and memory recall that, though adaptively beneficial in the shorter term may
prove detrimental if they become habitually sustained. The association between the
experience of traumatic events and the development of overly general memory also
needs to be examined prospectively,. Additionally, each of the factors in the multicom-
ponent model of overgeneral memory and impaired problem solving proposed by J. M.
G. Williams and colleagues (2007), and that we discussed in Chapter 2—including the
“capture” of retrieval by abstract-conceptual (ruminative) structures, reduced cogni-
tive executive resources, and functional avoidance—need to be examined concurrently
in the same population.
For instance, in a study comparing suicidal adolescent/young adult inpatients with
age-matched nonsuicidal healthy controls and age-matched psychiatric controls, Arie
et al. (2008) found significant positive correlations between impairment in the ability
to produce specific autobiographical memories and difficulties with interpersonal
problem solving, the number of negative life events, and the extent of hopelessness
and of suicidal behavior. Suicidal behavior was also significantly correlated with a self-
reported cognitive style of repression (that is, a general style of attempting to exclude
distressing thoughts, memories, and feelings from awareness). However, there was
not a significant correlation between repression and negative life events. These
researchers therefore speculated that individuals may develop a repressive cognitive
style independently of life events, but that persons developing such a style might
then be “more vulnerable to the chain of events leading from negative childhood
life events through generalized autobiographical memory and poor interpersonal
problem solving to suicide attempts” (Arie et al., 2008, p. 27).
With respect to the development and maintenance of rumination, evidence that
recurring ruminative thoughts may not be uniquely or exclusively tied to emotional
processing, but may reflect more global mental inflexibility in “trait ruminators”
(Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Whitmer & Banich, 2007, 2010), with rumination
being a “manifestation of a more general tendency toward cognitive inflexibility, or
perseveration” (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000, pp. 700–701, see also note 7 in
Chapter 2) likewise suggests the need to take into account additional factors. The role
of other possible “benefits” or potential adaptive aspects of rumination (e.g., Watkins,
2008) similarly merits further exploration, as in the recent work of Altamirano and
colleagues (2010) showing that rumination was associated with enhanced goal main-
tenance on a task that required continued adherence to a single goal in the face of
distraction, but was detrimental in a task that required rapid and flexible movements
between goals.
In line with the multicomponent model of overgeneral memory and impaired prob-
lem solving, there is also evidence that depressive rumination may reflect deficits in
the central executive process of cognitive inhibition (Joormann, 2010) such that
depressed individuals and those at risk of depression have particular difficulty in pre-
venting negative material from entering and remaining in working memory, leading
to rehearsal and elaboration of negative content, and also undermining attempts at
processing new information that might allow for more effective emotion regulation.
For example, Bernblum and Mor (2010) found that brooding rumination, in particu-
lar, was associated with impaired “refreshing” of memory—an aspect of memory
updating that involves briefly thinking back to a just-activated thought or percept (M.
K. Johnson, 1992; M. K. Johnson et al., 2005). For brooding ruminators, impaired
refreshing was found not only following task-relevant, but also for task-irrelevant,
emotional words (cf. M. K. Johnson et al., 2006). Neuroimaging findings such as those
of Siegle et al. (2007) showing that self-reported rumination was related both to sus-
tained activity in the amygdala following challenge (with amygdala remaining acti-
vated throughout nonemotional processing trials for depressed but not control
participants), and to hypoactivity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, likewise point to
inefficient “top-down” regulation of emotion (see Banich et al., 2009; Ochsner &
Gross, 2005, for review).
Interventions that aim to counteract rumination by encouraging greater concrete-
ness and specificity in thinking (Watkins et al., 2009) and training in memory specific-
ity (Raes et al., 2009) were noted in Chapter 2, and the potential benefits of mindfulness
interventions in reducing habitual responding and improving executive attention—in
both depressed and healthy individuals—were highlighted in Chapter 3. In other
recent work, Heeren, Van Broeck, and Philippot (2009) found that, compared to
matched controls, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in a mixed community adult
sample was associated with pre- to postintervention increases in autobiographical
memory specificity, decreased overgenerality of autobiographical memory, and
improved cognitive flexibility, as assessed by category, letter, and verb fluency tasks;
furthermore, the changes in overgeneral memory were partially mediated by the
effects on the cognitive flexibility measure.
Although, as noted, it is possible that rumination is neither uniquely nor exclu-

sively tied to emotional processing, there is growing evidence that the regulation of
affect assumes an important role in rumination, and that mindfulness interventions
may help to alter either the ability to disengage from negative emotional processing
or to change the ways in which emotional states are categorized and conceived.
For example, participants who were randomly assigned to a 7-week mindfulness
intervention compared to relaxation control or wait list control showed reduced emo-
tional responsiveness to negatively valenced pictorial scenes as measured by skin con-
ductance response. Whereas all groups initially responded (1 second post stimulus) to
the negatively valenced scenes, the mindfulness group showed a reduction in skin con-
ductance at 4 seconds post stimulus, suggesting that mindfulness may enhance an
individual’s ability to disengage from negative emotional processing (Ortner, Kilner, &
Zelazo, 2007).
An alternative account of the reasons for the effectiveness of mindfulness training
focuses on the way in which emotional states are broadly categorized or comprehended
(cf. L. C. Delgado et al., 2010; Hargus et al., 2010), or the individual’s metacognitive
assumptions about the meaning and implications of a given emotional state. (Also see
Mitmansgruber et al., 2009, for the potential importance of “emotions about emo-
tions,” or “meta-emotions” involving emotional reactions about one’s own emotions.)
Farb and colleagues (2010, p. 26) suggest that mindfulness training may not necessar-
ily alter an individual’s evaluation of negative emotional states (as in reappraisal) but
may lead him or her to experience negative emotions “more as fluctuations in body
state sensations and less as affective mental states reflecting what is good or bad for
the self.” In a recent fMRI study, these researchers observed that mindfulness training
did not alter individual’s subjective reports of sadness in response to sadness provoca-
tion (watching sad compared with neutral film clips) compared with the subjective
reports of wait-listed control participants, but did alter the predominant regions that
were activated during mood challenge. Whereas in the wait-list control participants,
sadness provocation led to activation of left-lateralized language areas and deactiva-
tion in right insula, individuals in the mindfulness-training group showed reduced
reactivity in both of these regions. That is, mindfulness training led to less deactivation
of right insula and also less activation of language areas; furthermore, the magnitude
of deactivation in right insula and of activation in language-related regions correlated
with depression scores and activity in the insula and language-processing regions of
interest were negatively correlated with one another.
As proposed by Farb et al. (2010, p. 31) this pattern might reflect greater attention
toward sensory integration in the mindfulness trained group, reflecting “interoceptive
recovery.” These investigators suggest that “there may be some tradeoff between lan-
guage and interoception-based reactions to mood challenge, with more language-
laden regulatory efforts” predicting higher depression scores, and mindfulness
training helping to offset excessive reliance on secondary appraisal systems in response
to dysphoric challenge. Similarly, in earlier work, and drawing on the distinction of
William James (1890/1981) between an explanatory “me” that helps to make sense of
a continually changing “I” acting in the present moment, Farb et al. (2007) proposed a
dual-mode hypothesis of self-awareness. This dual-mode account differentiates
between narrative forms of self-reference that maintain continuity of identity across
time through, for instance, memory for self-traits and aspirations for the future,
perhaps associated with activity in the default mode network, and a more “immediate,
agentic ‘I’ acting in the present moment,” perhaps associated with right-lateralized
exteroceptive somatic and interoceptive insular cortices. (See the discussion of the
frontal anterior insular cortex in Chapter 9, particularly the proposal that this region
“plays a critical role in interoceptive awareness of both stimulus-induced and stimu-
lus-independent changes in homeostatic states;” Sridharan et al., 2008, p. 12572; also
see Craig, 2002, 2003, 2009a, 2009b).
Specifically, Farb and colleagues hypothesize that there may be “a fundamental
neural dissociation in modes of self-representation that support distinct, but habitu-
ally integrated, aspects of self-reference”:
(i) higher order self-reference characterised by neural processes supporting

awareness of a self that extends across time and (ii) more basic momentary
self-reference characterised by neural changes supporting awareness of the
psychological present. The latter, represented by [evolutionarily] older neural
regions, may represent a return to the neural origins of identity, in which
self-awareness in each moment arises from the integration of basic intero-
ceptive and exteroceptive bodily sensory processes […]. In contrast, the nar-
rative mode of self-reference may represent an overlearned mode of
information processing that has become automatic through practice, consis-
tent with established findings on training-induced automaticity. (Farb et al.,
2007, p. 319)
Additional efforts to explore the differences between these and other modes of
self-reference may help to inform our understanding of when self-reflective thinking
is adaptive and when, instead, it may lead to spiraling detrimental effects that pro-
gressively undermine an individual’s ability to optimally—adaptively and creatively
and with the full use of her or his executive and attentional resources—respond to
new challenges and setbacks.
How we approach positive emotion is also important (Chapter 6). Treatments of
mindfulness characteristically emphasize the importance of “being present.”
Rumination and worry also may be exacerbated by “low savoring” of positive events.
Variability or what has been termed “regulatory diversity” in how one makes the most
of positive experiences was recently found to specifically enhance overall subjective
happiness: “the happier participants were the ones that typically savored various situ-
ations using various strategies” (Quoidbach, Berry, Hansenne, & Mikolajczak, 2010,
p. 371) rather than consistently adopting only a few specific approaches. These find-
ings are in line with other evidence that has underscored the key role of flexibility in
both biological and psychological processes in sustaining well-being. Especially illus-
trative here are the findings of Bonanno and colleagues (2004; see also Coifman &
Bonanno, 2010; Westphal, Seivert, & Bonanno, 2010) that, even after controlling for
levels of initial distress, both the ability to express emotions, and to suppress emotions,
in response to changing experimental requirements (i.e., “expressive flexibility”), was
predictive of longer term adjustment of undergraduate students living in New York
City in the 2 years immediately after the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Drawing upon the growing research literature relating to the differing effects of
positive versus negative affect on attention and cognition, particularly evidence that,
as we saw in Chapter 6, positive affect tends to promote exploration and social interac-
tions, and modes of approach such as playfulness, enquiry, interest, flexibility, and
creativity, Tarrier (2010) recently developed a cognitive-behavioral intervention
termed the “broad minded affective coping” procedure. The procedure aims to elicit
positive emotion in individuals through encouraging and guiding the detailed recol-
lection and imaging of positive past memories. The technique involves guided imagery
of positive memories, with particular prompts for engaging various senses (e.g.,
sounds, smells, touch, or sensation) and encouragement to reexperience the associ-
ated emotion. Afterwards, the patients are helped to “interrogate” the memory and
their experience, so as to become aware of the associations between memory, their
modes of cognition and appraisal with respect to the events, and emotion. Individuals
are encouraged to practice such recollection both within further treatment sessions
and independently and to recall a variety of different positive memories.
The rationale provided to individuals for this approach of recalling and reexperi-
encing memories with positive affect, is multipronged, but straightforward, with
elements relating to mindfulness and responsiveness to the particular sensory-
perceptual aspects of experience, cognitive appraisal (and reappraisal), and simple
information about how cognition and affect interact with one another and also with
motivation and action. For instance, patients are told that often negative emotions,
such as fear, depression, anger, or shame, are threat-related and that they serve to
focus and narrow attention to remain vigilant or aware of potential threat—raising
the possibility that “the constant experience of negative emotions creates a mental,
tunnel vision.” In contrast, positive emotions are characterized as eliciting a broader
and more varied and variable range of responses such as curiosity and creativity. Such
increasing emphasis on interventions that are aimed to facilitate positive emotions,
rather than only countering negative affect (see Garland et al., 2010, for recent review),
combined with efforts to more specifically train attention and executive control
through mindfulness and other attention-training interventions within domains such
as clinical therapy (e.g., Siegle, Ghinassi, & Thase, 2007), are very promising. Similarly
encouraging are efforts to employ pretrauma/prestress preventive interventions that
may enhance executive control and emotional positivity as a buffer against upcoming
times of high physical, psychological, and emotional duress (Jha et al., 2010). Each of
these are very welcome steps toward more balanced, powerful—and more fully
equipped—interventions for promoting optimal psychological flexibility (Kashdan &
Rottenberg, 2010) and agility of mind.
Broader Educational, Policy, and Ethical Implications

H O W C A N W E D R AW O N O U R U N D E R S TA N D I N G O F T H E
P O W E R F U L I N F L U E N C E O F M E TA C O G N I T I V E A S S U M P T I O N S
A B O U T T H E N AT U R E O F L E A R N I N G A N D I N T E L L I G E N C E TO B E S T
I N F O R M O U R F O R M A L A N D I N F O R M A L M E N TO R I N G ?
Whereas according to an “entity” view of intelligence, intelligence is “fixed,” from the
contrasting incremental view it is a malleable quality that can, at least partially, be
modified and increased (e.g., Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Dweck &
Leggett, 1988; Mueller & Dweck, 1998). We have seen an array of evidence document-
ing the considerable benefits to multiple forms of adaptive learning and persistence
that arise from encouraging an incremental view of intelligence. We have also consid-
ered further pervasive effects of our epistemological beliefs on thinking and acting
(particularly considered in Chapter 7). These findings have clear, direct, and profound
implications for formal education and for the practice of teaching. But are there also
other domains, beyond general education, where interventions aimed to challenge
entity construals and to promote incremental construals of the mind and of intelli-
gence might be highly effective in fostering greater cognitive flexibility and openness
to change and growth? A recent demonstration that exposing adolescents to an incre-
mental view of the mind’s abilities helped to alleviate school-related anxiety in indi-
viduals with generalized anxiety disorder (Da Fonseca et al., 2008) is an excellent
example of the forms of application and extension that might be undertaken. It is also
consistent with other research in domains such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and
mindfulness training interventions (for example, as considered in the first section of
Chapter 3), showing the importance of teaching individuals to challenge negative
thoughts that underlie problematic behaviors and thinking.
Incremental versus entity views have also been explicitly linked to whether indi-
viduals will undertake behaviors that are remedial of a problem or problematic situa-
tion (e.g., extra review of a concept or procedure that one has not learned or mastered
by one’s initial attempts) versus behaviors that, instead, primarily defensively shield
one from recognizing or emotionally and psychologically acknowledging the problem
(Nussbaum & Dweck, 2008). A differential tendency to engage in remedial behaviors
versus defensive behaviors—stemming in part from views regarding whether intelli-
gence is malleable versus fixed, and also from other beliefs about the nature of knowl-
edge and learning, such as that learning is “all or none”—if undertaken repeatedly and
over the longer term, would widen the achievement and knowledge gap between indi-
viduals or groups. Those with an incremental view would be more likely to overcome
identified shortcomings in their knowledge and skills, and to substantially extend
their competencies. Persons with an incremental view might set in motion an upward
“broaden and build” cycle, rather than a downward spiral of increasing lack of motiva-
tion and involvement, such as may accompany a fixed view of intelligence or ability,
with accompanying tendencies to avoid confronting apparently unalterable shortcom-
ings or to downplay their importance.
We have clear evidence regarding the potential “snowball” efficacy of interventions
such as self-affirmation (e.g., G. L. Cohen et al., 2006; see Chapter 6). Recent follow-up
findings show that self-affirmation may interrupt a recursive cycle—leading to effects
on measures such as school grade-point average and whether individuals are assigned
to remedial classes or, instead, to advanced math placement, as long as 2 years later (G.
L. Cohen et al., 2009; see also the brief “social belongingness” intervention with minor-
ity college students developed by Walton & Cohen, 2011). However, we need additional
systematic evaluation of these and similar interventions in different contexts, includ-
ing the proposal that the performance of individuals, and their psychological trajec-
tory, “can be strongly influenced by timely actions, even when apparently small, that
alter or reset the trajectory’s starting point” (G. L. Cohen et al., 2009, p. 403).
A related aspect of “metacognitive instruction” draws on the evidence that we con-

sidered, in Chapter 6, that individuals high in trait resilience and hardiness tend to
interpret the need for change and the occurrence of stressful events as positive chal-
lenges—inviting from them a response of attempted positive mastery. Viewing change
and adverse events as potential sources for positive growth may not only help to min-
imize the immediate and longer term detrimental effects of stress but could also lead
to progressively more enriching environments as individuals master knowledge and
skills that are needed to overcome obstacles or problems. Explicit and implicit instruc-
tion in approaches to challenges may be particularly valuable in encouraging those
individuals who do not readily or spontaneously adopt helpful approaches to dealing
with setbacks and failure. (Recall Samuel Beckett’s strangely positive injunction—“No
matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”—that we also encountered in Chapter 7.)
Research persuasively points to the often pivotal importance of how we view intelli-
gence and feedback on our efforts, yet the many ways in which we might imaginatively
promote a more malleable, iteratively acquired and environmentally sustained view of
mental agility have been largely untapped.
A R E T H E R E O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L A N D G R O U P “ S T R U C T U R A L ”
G U I D E S A N D S A F E G UA R D S T H AT M I G H T B E A D O P T E D
TO E N C O U R A G E G R E AT E R A D A P T I V E O S C I L L ATO R Y
RANGE IN LOS AND LOC?
In Chapter 5, we noted that the adoption of an implementational mindset may shift
us in “representational space,” such that we may become especially attuned to the fac-
tors that are relevant to the action and will tend to adopt a positively biased view of
the “situational affordances” for accomplishing the hoped-for goal (Gollwitzer &
Kinney, 1989; S. E. Taylor & Gollwitzer, 1995). Our sensitivity to the effects of imple-
mentation versus deliberative mindsets, and particularly how an implementational
frame may constrain our level of representational specificity, suggests that it may be
beneficial to deliberately plan for (or require) periods of deliberative reevaluation
during the course of larger scale projects. Deliberative reevaluation phases might be
interposed at more natural “choice points” in the development of a project. At these
times, the explicit aim would not be to implement further steps, but to reevaluate and
if necessary reorient and rethink planned directions and goals. Planned deliberative
pauses of this form may also help to offset common decision making and other orga-
nizational dangers, such as “sunk-cost effects” or “mission creep.”
In some contexts, individuals or groups deliberately request that someone take on
the role of the “healthy skeptic” or of the “devil’s advocate,” in an effort to explicitly
encourage the identification and voicing of contrary evidence and viewpoints. It may
be that in some situations someone could similarly take on the role of a “metacogni-
tive” monitor for the group’s or project’s trajectory with respect to LoS and/or LoC in
different tasks or task aspects. If optimizing mental agility requires that we show
appropriate oscillatory range in our LoS and our LoC, can we “offload” at least a small
part of the effort that may be required to prompt appropriate variations in level of
specificity and level of control to institutional or organizational procedures or
guidelines? In addition to a “healthy skeptic,” might we partially formalize the roles of
monitoring a group’s trajectory with respect to level of specificity, with such

designated monitors encouraging the group’s movements in either a more abstract or
a more specific direction as needed? Might a similar approach sometimes be beneficial
with respect to more deliberately tracking and monitoring a group’s trajectory across
differing levels of control, thereby helping to more often ensure that the potential
assets associated with not only highly controlled and deliberate thinking by the
group or team but also more spontaneous and improvised interactions and explora-
tions can emerge?
H O W C A N T H E i C A S A F R A M E W O R K H E L P TO I N F O R M O U R
T H I N K I N G A B O U T E T H I C S A N D VA L U E S ?
We have seen many compelling illustrations of the vulnerability of our thinking and
information processing to “self-regulatory resource depletion” (Chapter 5), as shown
by such measures as significantly decreased persistence in simple motor or puzzle-
solving tasks, or diminished likelihood of appropriately inhibiting a strong habitual
tendency to respond in a way consistent with an often-made response. However,
several studies also have examined the possible costs of sustained efforts at self-
regulatory control on the performance of such morally relevant behaviors as ostensi-
bly volunteering to help the victim of a recent tragedy (DeWall, Baumeisteer, Gailliot,
& Maner, 2008), an individual’s tendency to respond violently to provocation by an
intimate partner (Finkel, DeWall, Slotter, Oaten, & Foshee, 2009), and dishonestly
inflating the amount of payment to be received for “correct” answers on a general
knowledge task (Mead, Baumeister, Gino, Schweitzer, & Ariely, 2009). The findings
from these studies have closely paralleled those found with more strictly cognitive or
non-ethically relevant behaviors, suggesting that behaviors that have ethical and
moral dimensions are likewise potentially vulnerable to disruption through condi-
tions that deplete self-regulatory resources.
Equally important, however, we have also seen that whether or not self-regulatory
failures are likely to occur is not simply a matter of the degree or number of self-
regulatory challenges we have recently faced: Self-regulatory success is moderated by
such factors as our beliefs or implicit theories about the nature of willpower (Job,
Dweck, & Walton, 2010; Chapter 5; cf. Bandura et al., 2001), the predominant level of
construal or action identification that we adopt as influenced by such factors as self-
affirmation (Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009; also see Wakslak & Trope, 2009; Chapter 6),
and the extent to which we perceive our actions and choices as self-determined as well
as our experienced autonomy in the actions we undertake (Muraven, Gagné, &
Rosman, 2008; Chapter 5). Additionally, and also of equal importance, we have seen
that, with experience, we can become more or less practiced and proficient at self-
regulatory control, with sustained training in self-regulatory control leading to
improved performance on self-control tasks and attenuated self-regulatory depletion
(e.g., Gailliot, Plant, Butz, & Baumeister, 2007; Muraven, 2010; Oaten & Cheng, 2007;
see Hagger et al., 2010, for meta-analytic findings; Chapter 5 and Chapter 11).
Taken collectively, these findings urge us to exercise particular care in the expres-
sion of claims about the processes that support or undermine successful self-regula-
tory control in our choices and actions, including those that may have ethical import.
As succinctly noted by Job, Dweck, and Walton (2010, p. 1692), “It is important that
people understand that their own beliefs about willpower as a limited or nonlimited
resource can affect their self-regulation. It is also important that psychologists
appreciate the impact of powerful and widely shared lay theories about the self and
distinguish their effects from seemingly immutable biologically driven processes.”
These findings also prompt us to recall some further advice of William James—the
same William James who, as we saw earlier, strongly recommended the regular taking
of holiday breaks to sustain our “tone of mind and health of body,” advises us also to
not allow our ability to attend and to expend effort to dissipate through lack of regular
(daily) use:
[I]t is not simply particular lines of discharge, but also general forms of dis-
charge, that seem to be grooved out by habit in the brain. Just as, if we let
our emotions evaporate, they get into a way of evaporating; so there is reason
to suppose that if we often flinch from making an effort, before we know it
the effort-making capacity will be gone; and that, if we suffer the wandering
of our attention, presently it will wander all the time. Attention and effort
are […] but two names for the same psychic fact. To what brain-processes
they correspond we do not know. The strongest reason for believing that
they do depend on brain-processes at all, and are not pure acts of spirit, is
just this fact, that they seem in some degree subject to the law of habit, which
is a material law. As a final practical maxim, relative to these habits of the
will, we may, then, offer something like this: Keep the faculty of effort alive in
you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or
heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no
other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of
dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand
the test. (William James, 1890/1981, p. 126, italics in original)
The philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1958), in a paper titled, “On forgetting the difference
between right and wrong,” took the position that the phenomenal and experiential
content of ethics, or of that realm of knowledge that involves knowing “the difference
between right and wrong,” is so deeply interconnected with noncognitive aspects of
experience—with caring and with doing—that the notions of “forgetting” and “recol-
lection” simply do not apply. Ryle maintained that after a certain maturational point
has been reached in our ethical development, namely that point after which we can be
said to “know” the difference between right and wrong, these notions are irrelevant or
inapplicable.
Encountering this paper as a graduate student, studying human learning
and memory, I was decidedly unsettled by this assertion: It seemed to make values
something that were outside of (perhaps above) the “pale” of the usual vicissitudes of
representational accessibility, of forgetting, or failures to access ideals and standards,
and of the effects of recent encounters and exemplars of behaviors that one did, or did
not, wish to emulate. In contrast, my sense of the human mind, and of its capacities,
resonated much more closely with the view taken by William James, in his Principles
of Psychology and also in his Lowell Lectures on Pragmatism (1907/1975), in which

selectivity and forgetting were at the very heart of consciousness and even the knower
of “widest possible expanse” might be liable to forget (see Koutstaal, 1993, “Lowly
notions: Forgetting in William James’s moral universe”). In a paper titled “situating
ethics and memory” (Koutstaal, 1995), I therefore argued against Ryle’s view on
grounds that—I now see—are closely related to those more systematically developed
here, such as the importance of our current environment in making certain sorts of
thoughts and aspirations accessible to awareness, and the close interconnections of
emotion and the ability to experience certain emotions as “one’s own” as not exclu-
sively influencing one’s “knowledge” or one’s “caring” but as foundational to both.
If “concrete particulars” are part of the warp-and-woof of our concepts, including
our concepts of an ethical and moral sort, such as honesty, and courage, and fortitude,
or respect for nature and respect for others, then questions about the exemplars to
which we and others are regularly exposed, by what we read and see and experience,
and the friends and projects and vocations that we hold dear, become increasingly
important. Neuroimaging findings increasingly show that the networks and subnet-
works of the brain that are called upon during tasks that involve complex moral judg-
ments involve regions such as the anterior temporal lobe that is similarly recruited in
many other sorts of semantic judgments and forms of socioemotional processing
(Chapter 9, e.g., S. Green et al., 2010; Zahn et al., 2007, 2009). Additionally, the
regions called upon in moral judgment tasks may also overlap considerably with those
of the “default network” (Chapter 9, e.g., J. D. Greene et al., 2001; B. J. Harrison et al.,
2008) that is called upon during several other sorts of complex tasks—particularly
retrieving autobiographical memories, construing the mental state of another person,
and our attempts to construe the future and to envision ourselves in circumstances
different from our current ones. Although these findings are still only suggestive, and
are not yet entirely understood, they do suggest that we should not place too much of
a divide between our forms of “ethical knowing” and our knowledge of other sorts
(cf. Escobedo & Adolphs, 2010; Moll et al., 2005). Similarly, diverse and compelling
behavioral findings showing that recent experiences in our environment can both
directly and indirectly and nonconsciously help to promote or “prime” various sorts of
behavior, including behaviors that may have ethical implications (Bargh et al., 2001;
see also Bandura, 1990; Kish-Gephart et al., 2010), such as suppressing rather than
expressing one’s anger in response to provocation (Mauss, Cook, & Gross, 2007), reap-
praising one’s emotions (L. E. Williams et al., 2009), and increasing or decreasing one’s
willingness to cooperate with another to protect a common resource (Bargh et al.,
2001) or to help a stranger (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003; see Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2010,
for review), likewise argue that we must also take into account the immediate and
recent environments in which individuals find themselves (not always by choice) or
that they choose to make for themselves, to achieve a full understanding of ethical
behavior.
From the perspective of the iCASA framework, our ideals and values also live within
a “representational accessibility landscape” of the overlapping domains of cognition,
emotion, action, and perception that is continuously and reciprocally shaped by our
environment and our brains in dynamic interchange with the environment. Those
ideals and values are therefore vulnerable to remarkable failures, including failures
of not always coming (or remaining) in the fore of consciousness to guide our actions
and judgments when needed. Equally important, however, they are therefore
also open to the remarkable potential for reemergence—and strengthening and
heightened accessibility—that may be engendered by our own choices and acts, and by
the environments that we choose and make for ourselves and for each other.
Notes
Chapter 1
1. For some of the possible reasons for the predominant alignment of emotional processing
with System 1 and the experiential system, see, for example, Loewenstein et al. (2001) on
“risk as feelings.”
2. Hodgkinson et al. (2008) remark particularly on the point that, given that intuition and
rationality in the cognitive-experiential self theory proposed by Epstein and colleagues may
be separate dimensions (rather than ends of a single continuum), this theory ascribes “greater
agency to individuals, arguing that analytic and intuitive processing capabilities are served
by cognitive systems that permit individuals to switch back and forth strategically from one
approach to the other, as required, albeit moderated to some extent by stylistic preferences”
(Hodgkinson et al., 2008, p. 8, emphasis added).
3. Note that recognition-primed decision making in this sense, of skilled pattern-based or
exemplar-based judgments, should not be confused with the “recognition heuristic” charac-
terized by Gigerenzer and colleagues (e.g., Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 2002; cf. Oppenheimer,
2003), where one’s ability to either recognize a stimulus, or not, is taken as a simplifying
“stand in” for another attribute that one does not know. In this latter case, recognition is used
as a simplifying heuristic, as a rule of thumb involving “attribute substitution” (e.g.,
Kahneman, 2003). For further discussion of heuristics, see note 10 for this chapter.
4. Similarly, Osbeck (1999, p. 231) remarks that, within experimental psychology, “Intuition is
frequently assumed to be the basis for judgments made rapidly and easily, without aware-
ness of the inferences supporting them. [. . .] Typically, performance based on ‘intuitive’
judgments of the correct solution to a problem [is] compared with some established,
‘scientific’ procedure for arriving at a solution. Much of the research of this nature, particu-
larly in earlier studies, focuses on the shortcomings of intuition in comparison with rational
processing.” Osbeck (1999) reviews and contrasts multiple interpretations of intuition in
psychology and philosophy, and ultimately concludes that narrowly construing it only in
terms of providing unconscious inferential grounds for judgments and decisions is to over-
look its central role throughout cognition. It involves a significant failure to recognize other
psychological phenomena that are also notably close to the principal philosophical mean-
ings of this notion, such as that of “direct perception” in J. J. Gibson’s (1979) ecological
theory, Gestalt notions of the priority of relationship/form (e.g., Kohler, 1925), and the
relations between intuition and implicit learning (A. S. Reber, 1989, 1993) and ideas of tacit
knowledge (Polyani, 1967). She argues that “a developed theory of intuition would be an
integrative one, incorporating indications of direct, noninferential apprehension within
theories of perception, development, emotion, and language use, making links, where
appropriate, with evidence from neuroscience” (Osbeck, 1999, p. 246). As an example of the
613
614 N O T E S T O PA G E S 22–29
such links, Osbeck (1999) points to neuropsychological evidence, using the Iowa Gambling
Task, provided by Bechara et al. (1997, p. 1294), that “covert biases . . . facilitate the efficient
processing of knowledge and logic necessary for conscious decisions,” as “suggesting their
foundational relationship to logic and conscious thought” (Osbeck, 1999, p. 246). Although
the relative roles of cognitive and emotional/somatic processing in the Iowa Gambling Task
continue to be debated (e.g., see Guillaume et al., 2009, for review), and the task may
specifically pose a problem of reversal learning (Fellows & Farah, 2005, discussed in Chapter
8), the incorporation of neuroscience findings into the study of intuition (see Chapter 9)
and of decision making more broadly (e.g., R. Yu, Mobbs, Seymour, & Calder, 2010) has
greatly accelerated since the time of Osbeck’s review.
5. The concept of “cognitive flexibility” might also clearly be considered here—and is explicitly
treated later in this section particularly in connection with the concept of creativity. Here,
however, it might be noted that the range of application of this term in the cognitive and
cognitive neuroscience literatures has also frequently been quite specific, and centered on the
deliberate/controlled side of the levels of control continuum. “Cognitive flexibility” has been espe-
cially used to denote an aspect of executive function pertaining to an individual’s capacity to
notice and appropriately respond to changing contingencies or rules, such as “switching” the
rule used to guide responding during a task that requires attention to different dimensions
of a stimulus (e.g., in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task), and where the changing contingen-
cies are themselves often “unannounced.” This term has not typically denoted changes
between more deliberate/controlled processing and more spontaneous or habitual respond-
ing, and it generally refers to attention-demanding controlled shifts in responding, involving
subprocesses or submechanisms such as set shifting, updating, and maintenance of set.
Other more specific constructs related to cognitive flexibility, and referring to particular
aspects of behavior in laboratory-based paradigms such as card sorting and other tasks,
include the following: intradimensional vs. extradimensional set shifts, where the attentional
shifts are made, respectively, within an already relevant stimulus dimension versus to a
newly relevant stimulus dimension; reversal learning, denoting the capacity to learn that a
stimulus-reinforcement association has been reversed and characterized as entailing a form
of affective shifting; and task switching, usually but not always involving the requirement to
switch between particular tasks and task goals in response to externally provided signals.
Distinctions between these more focused constructs are taken up in Chapter 8, in the
section titled, “Neurochemical and Neuroanatomical Contributions to Three Forms of
Cognitive Flexibility: Set Shifting, Reversal Learning, and Task Switching.”
The further concept of spontaneous flexibility—denoting internally prompted changes in
especially strategic versus automatic responding, and typically viewed as especially influen-
tial in tasks designed to tap both fluency and originality of responding such as divergent
thinking tasks—is also considered in Chapter 8, as well as at multiple additional points
(e.g., see the discussion of the benefits of performing the Alternative Uses Task on subse-
quent insight problem-solving performance in the third section of Chapter 2; see also the
section on “adaptive flexibility” in relation to the personality dimension of openness to
experience in Chapter 6, and “Brain Correlates of Insight Problem Solving” in Chapter 9).
6. Martindale (1999, pp. 148–149) concluded a review of the biological bases of creativity with
the statement that “All of the theories of creativity reviewed say essentially the same
thing—that creative inspiration occurs in a mental state where attention is defocused,
thought is associative, and a large number of mental representations are simultaneously
activated. Such a state can arise in three ways: low levels of cortical activation, compara-
tively more right- than left-hemisphere activation, and low levels of frontal-lobe activation.”
However, intriguingly, and more in line with the iCASA framework suggested here, unlike
these proposals, Martindale proposes that, rather than being a stable trait of creative
people, defocused attention is a variable state, such that “creative people are better at adjust-
ing their focus of attention depending on task demands [. . .] and that this adjustment is auto-
matic and reactive rather than one involving self-control. In essence, creative people exhibit
Not e s t o pag e s 2 9 – 4 0 615
differential rather than reduced focusing of attention. In earlier phases of problem solving when
the problem is relatively ill defined, creative people are more likely to defocus attention.
This tendency makes the central task more susceptible to interference by seemingly
irrelevant information, some of which may provide the building blocks for solutions.
However, this widening of attention comes at the cost of slowing down processing on the
task. In later stages of problem solving when creative people are verifying developed ideas,
performance will benefit through the inhibition of irrelevant stimuli and added focus on the
task. This narrowing of attention speeds up processing on the task” (Vartanian, Martindale,
& Kwiatkowski, 2007, p. 1471, emphasis added; also see L. Dorfman, Martindale,
Gassimova, & Vartanian, 2008).
7. For example, based on a recent extensive analysis of the interrelations between a large
number of different measures, Salthouse and colleagues (2008) concluded: “Although
motivated from different research traditions and usually studied separately, the results of
this and other recent studies suggest that research with cognitive, psychometric, and
neuropsychological variables may have been characterizing essentially the same dimension of
individual differences among normal healthy adults. Whether this dimension is labeled
Gf [fluid intelligence], working memory, executive processing, or some form of cognitive
control may reflect the research tradition of the investigator more than any fundamental
differences among the concepts because it appears that individuals would be ordered in
nearly the same way with variables from each of these perspectives” (Salthouse, Pink, &
Tucker-Drob, 2008, p. 483, emphasis added; for additional discussion, see Ackerman, Beier,
& Boyle, 2005, and Kane, Hambrick, & Conway, 2005).
8. Research conducted within this approach has also provided recent and intriguing
evidence of detrimental effects arising from “too much” control. Under some circumstances,
requiring additional processing during a task may actually enhance performance because it
“forces” the individual to rely to a greater extent on parallel processing mechanisms.
Participants “forced” to forego step-by-step processing appeared to avoid a processing
bottleneck in which new perceptual information that is rapidly repeated may be missed
(i.e., “repetition blindness,” see Taatgen et al., 2009).
9. Parallel encoding of representations at different levels of representational specificity need
not exclude a possible role for the effects of repeated retrieval or reactivation of a memory in
the extraction of a schematic or gist-based representation of events from autobiographical
memories, as in the Multiple Trace Theory proposed by Moscovitch et al. (2005). According
to this account, each reactivation of a memory trace (recollection or remembering) leads to a
reencoding of the information by the hippocampus/medial temporal lobe system, resulting
in “multiple traces” of the event or place, some of which may be highly detailed and episodic,
but others that may be more schematic or gist-like. As succinctly summarized by Moscovitch
(2009, p. 68), “With respect to semantic memory, reactivation of memory traces accom-
plishes two things: Because each reactivated trace shares some neocortical representations
with previous traces, reactivation slowly instructs the development of neocortical traces that
reflect the statistical properties of the world and/or of memories—the gist or semantic core
is extracted [. . .]. Reactivation of memory also facilitates formation of links between repre-
sentations of elements of episodes.” See also Rosenbaum et al. (2009).
10. A highly salient comparison here concerns the use of heuristics, such as the “recognition heu-
ristic,” which are “fast and frugal” routes to reaching a decision (e.g., Gigerenzer & Goldstein,
1996) because—broadly stated—they ignore part of the information and consider only one
or a few aspects (e.g., whether one recognizes one of the alternatives). There has been a tre-
mendous resurgence of research on the use of heuristics, related to the question of the use of
“simple heuristics that make us smart” (see Todd & Gigerenzer, 2000, for précis). Shah and
Oppenheimer (2008) suggest that all heuristics act to reduce one or more of the effortful
steps involved in applying the “weighted additive rule” and its variants in reaching a decision.
The weighted additive rule is a complex algorithm for arriving at optimal decisions and
accurate judgments (Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1992). To apply the weighted additive
616 N O T E S T O PA G E S 40–58
rule, the decision maker must consider all of the available alternatives and cues for each
alternative; weight each cue according to his or her subjective or objective impressions as to
how much it contributes to an alternative’s overall value; and then calculate the value of
each alternative by multiplying each cue by its corresponding weight and summing all of
these values to obtain the overall value for an alternative. Shah and Oppenheimer outline
five possible methods for “effort-reduction” in applying this algorithm, including examining
fewer cues, reducing the difficulty associated with retrieving and storing cue values, simpli-
fying the weighting principles for cues, integrating less information, and examining fewer
alternatives.
Notably, Gigerenzer has explicitly contested several common misconceptions regarding
heuristics, such as that more information and computation is always better, arguing that
“good decisions in a partly uncertain world require ignoring part of the available informa-
tion” so as, for example, to foster robustness. Shah and Oppenheimer (2008, p. 220)
similarly explicitly remark that “heuristics may sometimes appear as optimal or suboptimal,
expected or surprising, but they should foremost share the common goal of reducing the
effort associated with a task.”
See Gigerenzer (2008), “Why heuristics work;” Shah and Oppenheimer (2008), “Heuristics
made easy: An effort-reduction framework;” and Weber and Johnson (2009), “Mindful
judgment and decision making” for integrative review and discussion. The “fluency
heuristic” is discussed in Chapter 4 in the subsection on “The Perils of Repetition, Rhyming
Truths, and Such: The Overreaching Effects of Fluent Processing.”
11. See Solomons & Stein (1896), and Stein (1898). For a historical consideration of the work of
Gertrude Stein and Leon Solomons, see Koutstaal (1992).
Chapter 2
1. Some children with autism who demonstrate superior memory in a particular domain may
show a similar retention of the physical aspects of language. Wilding and Valentine point to
the case of Elly, who had “virtually perfect memory for any route she had travelled” and
“could often repeat large parts of conversations she had heard about topics that were unfa-
miliar to her”—but could not understand metaphor. She was “obsessed with discovering
regular physical patterns in the world, in language and especially in numbers” (1997, p. 49).
2. The memory and categorization performance of patients with semantic dementia (Hodges
et al., 1992; Hodges & Patterson, 2007) provides a very different example of the potential
costs of a near-exclusive reliance on specific perceptual and episodic memory. Semantic
dementia is a form of progressive brain disorder (the “temporal variant” of frontal-temporal
dementia) that, in its early stages, involves largely circumscribed atrophy of the anterior
temporal lobes. Unlike in Alzheimer’s disease, memory for recent events (episodic memory)
is mostly spared during the early course of semantic dementia. However, the disease leads to
a progressive loss of semantic memory or knowledge of concepts, such as what a lamp is, or
what an elephant is, their important and defining characteristics, what they are called, and
so on. This loss of conceptual knowledge impedes the individual’s ability to extrapolate
relevant knowledge from one member of a category to other instances of the same general
sort. Although these patients often show isolated islands of preserved knowledge of the
functions of the particular common objects that they use everyday (e.g., their own hairbrush
or scissors), and for other objects that are very perceptually similar to those objects, they
cannot draw upon more abstract knowledge of objects and so may have no idea how to use,
for example, an unfamiliar set of scissors (Bozeat et al., 2002; Hodges et al., 1992; Ikeda
et al., 2006; Snowden et al., 1996; also see Graham et al., 2000). The first section of Chapter
9 details several important insights into how concepts are represented in the brain that have
been derived from considering the semantic cognition of persons with semantic dementia.
3. Simner et al. (2009, p. 1249) underscore five characteristics of AJ’s “mental calendar” that
suggest it reflects a form of synaesthesia for time and space. They note that her mental
Not e s t o pag e s 5 8 – 6 7 617
calendar: “appears in specific mental arrays, which date back as long as she can remember,
whose roots are unknown to her, but which are highly consistent over time, and which
conform to known shapes common among other time-space synaesthetes.” According to
this suggestion, AJ’s “obsessive tendencies [may] give her not only an obsession with the
past (the first trait of hyperthymestic syndrome), but [may] have also allowed the superior
recall normally associated with time-space synaesthesia to become heightened and refined
over time, into a savant-like ability (the second trait of hyperthymestic syndrome).
A related, but more conservative proposal might simply be that synaesthetic mental calen-
dars increase the likelihood of hyperthymestic syndrome” (Simner et al., 2009, p. 1256).
4. There are several discrete circuits between the dorsal and ventral striatum and prefrontal
cortical regions, including circuits that have been designated as motor, oculomotor, dorso-
lateral, ventral/orbital, and anterior cingulate circuits (G. E. Alexander et al., 1986). In an
extensive review of the cognitive functions of the caudate nucleus, Grahn, Parkinson, and
Owen (2008, p. 141) concluded that “the caudate nucleus contributes to behaviour through
the excitation of correct action schemas and the selection of appropriate sub-goals based on
an evaluation of action-outcomes; both processes [are] fundamental to successful goal-
directed action.” In contrast, they concluded that the putamen “appears to subserve cogni-
tive functions more limited to stimulus-response, or habit, learning” and that “this modular
conception of the striatum is consistent with hierarchical models of cortico-striatal func-
tion through which adaptive behaviour towards significant goals can be identified (motiva-
tion; ventral striatum), planned (cognition; caudate) and implemented (sensorimotor
coordination; putamen) effectively.”
5. There is another type of general memory that involves an extended time period, such as
“our first trip to Rome,” that, like categorical memories, also refer to events that did not
occur on a single day. The frequency with which depressed or parasuicidal individuals
provide instances of such “extended memories” does not reliably differ from the frequency
with which nondepressed people generate such memories (e.g., J. M. G. Williams &
Dritschel, 1988). This suggests that it is the processes of event categorization, and of access-
ing particular individuated events within an event category, that are particularly important in
the phenomenon of overgeneral memory in depression. This suggestion is in line with the
models of memory access proposed by researchers such as M. A. Conway and Pleydell-
Pearce, and J. M. G. Williams and colleagues, considered later in this section.
6. Specifically, in line with each of the R. M. Baron and Kenny (1986) criteria, separate regres-
sion analyses demonstrated that (a) the experimental condition (1 = concrete, 0 = abstract
self-focus) was a significant positive predictor of change in problem solving, (b) the experi-
mental condition was a significant positive predictor of change in concreteness of problem
descriptions, (c) changes in concreteness were significantly associated with changes in
problem solving, (d) this association between concreteness and change in problem solving
remained significant even when experimental condition was also included in the regression
equation, and, contrariwise (e) when change in concreteness was entered into the regres-
sion equation, experimental condition was no longer a significant predictor of change in
problem solving.
7. There is also some evidence that rumination is itself associated with cognitive inflexibility,
even in healthy young individuals (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000). Compared with indi-
viduals who reported no or very few ruminative tendencies, individuals who reported that
they often engaged in ruminative patterns during depressed mood states, including self-
focused responding (e.g., “I think, ‘Why do I react this way?’”), symptom-focused thoughts
(e.g., “I think about how hard it is to concentrate”), and a focus on the possible causes and
consequences of their mood (e.g., “I think, ‘I won’t be able to do my job if I don’t snap out of
this’”), showed more frequent perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task.
They also more frequently failed to maintain cognitive set even after successfully switching
to a new category sorting rule, suggesting that they may have difficulty adapting and main-
taining their cognitive set in accordance with changing environmental contingencies.
618 N O T E S T O PA G E S 68–79
8. Worrying in both self-reported worriers and nonworriers was significantly reduced by

concurrent performance of a random letter generation task that engaged both the phono-
logical loop and central executive processes, but not by the simpler more purely phono-
logical task of repeating the word “one” at approximately 1-second intervals.
9. Experiential avoidance was measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire of
Hayes and colleagues (2004) and, more precisely, has been defined by these researchers as
“the phenomenon that occurs when a person is unwilling to remain in contact with particu-
lar private experiences (e.g., bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories, images,
behavioral predispositions) and takes steps to alter the form or frequency of these experi-
ences or the contexts that occasion them, even when these forms of avoidance cause behav-
ioral harm” (S. C. Hayes et al., 2004, p. 553; S. C. Hayes et al., 1996).
10. There is also an important component of “automatization” in worry behavior; indeed, as
Stöber et al. (2000, p. 225) observe, “repeatedly worrying about a certain topic may have led
to a ‘compilation’ of the associated mental representations” (e.g., J. R. Anderson, 1987,
2007; see discussion of automatization through procedural compilation in the section on
“Convergent Theoretical Perspectives on Automaticity” in Chapter 1). These researchers
further observe that this then raises a question regarding the degree of concreteness of
the mental representation as evaluated by an external observer versus how the mental
representation might be subjectively experienced by the individual himself or herself. Thus
whereas a compiled (vs. noncompiled) representation might seem less concrete to an exter-
nal observer, it is an open empirical question as to whether it appears equally less concrete
to the individuals themselves. Beyond obtaining subjective ratings of the concreteness of
particular worry themes, aspects, and words or phrases, neuroimaging analyses aimed at
examining the degree of recruitment of associative sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor
networks during worrying might also be highly informative on this point.
11. Other recent work from our lab, including additional comparison conditions, has suggested
that an account that emphasizes only the encouragement of greater variability in responding
cannot, on its own, provide an explanation for the benefits of the Alternative Uses Task
intervention. In an experiment with younger adults (Wen, Butler, & Koutstaal, unpublished
data), we have replicated Chrysikou’s finding that Alternative Uses Task training signifi-
cantly enhanced insight problem solving above that found for the Simple Association condi-
tion. In this experiment, a new Variable Association condition, in which participants gave
multiple varied associations to each word, also was included. Varied Association led to
numerically higher insight problem-solving performance than did the Simple Association
task, but the difference between the two association conditions was not significant, and
insight performance in the Alternative Uses Task condition still surpassed that in the Varied
Association condition. Thus, inducement of greater variability in responding alone is not
the key difference. These findings from our Variable Association condition also suggest that
the second alternative interpretation raised here, regarding greater induction of automatic
responding in the control than in the experimental condition, is also not likely a sufficient
account of the boost to later problem solving induced via brief prior performance of the
Alternative Uses Task. Unlike the Simple Association task, the Variable Association condi-
tion likely required deliberate and strategic search for alternatives, yet the Alternative Uses
Task still elicited significantly higher insight performance.
12. It might be noted that, in contrast to the Word Association Task, the Embedded Figures
Task would have encouraged attention to perceptual information. However, that task
required analytical or feature-based visual search for a single particular matching shape and
so involved a sort of convergent, externally guided, and highly specific form of visual search.
In contrast, the Alternative Uses Task involves few constraints on the forms of sensory-
perceptual information that might be accessed, and the object-related information that is
accessed may entail multiple and integrated cross-modality sensory-perceptual details.
13. Researchers differ on the extent to which they view contextually linked learning as problem-
atic. For instance, from a situative learning perspective, it may be assumed that learning
Not e s t o pag e s 7 9 – 9 2 619
and knowledge are inextricably situated in their social and material contexts (e.g.,
J. S. Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; R. Hall, 1996). However, it is argued that transfer
requires additional mechanisms to allow cross-situational transfer. Given the association of
abstraction with decontextualization—as in the quotation from L. S. Fuchs et al. (2003)
later in this section—R. A. Engle (2006) opted instead to use the term “generalization,”
concurring with many situative theorists that “there is no reason that generalizations
cannot be deeply tied to the contexts in which they arise” (R. A. Engle, 2006, p. 454).
14. Although this study involved direct reminding probes in which participants were asked to
read stories and then write down as accurately as possible any of the stories rated earlier of
which they were reminded, a further experiment, requiring participants to write all stories
they were reminded of showed similar outcomes for the first retrieved remindings. These
convergent outcomes suggest that the remote-analogy over remote-disanalogy advantage
did not simply reflect “postretrieval editing” of stories (where participants only reported
the remote analogy stories they perceived as relevant, even though they also retrieved
remote disanalog stories).
15. This strategy also is particularly likely to be relied upon in situations where the decision
maker is under time pressure, and where there is uncertainty and/or ill-defined goals.
It is less likely to be adopted in other circumstances, such as where the views of multiple
stakeholders need to be taken into consideration, or justifications are required (Lipshitz
et al., 2001).
Chapter 3
1. In a detailed conceptual analysis of mindfulness, S. L. Shapiro and colleagues (2006)
argued that it involves three components: (i) intention, corresponding to the notion of
“on purpose,” or why one is practicing mindfulness, and which may change over time; for
example, from an initial aim of self-regulation, to that of self-exploration, and then to that
of self-liberation; (ii) attention, including several subcomponent skills, particularly the
ability to attend for long periods of time to a particular object or task (vigilance or sustained
attention; e.g., Parasuraman, 1998; Posner & Rothbart, 1992), the ability to shift the focus of
one’s attention between objects or mental sets (switching; Posner, 1980), and the ability to
selectively and appropriately inhibit thoughts, feelings, and sensations (cognitive inhibition;
J. M. G. Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996); and (iii) attitude or mindfulness qualities, in
which, by “intentionally bringing the attitudes of patience, compassion and non-striving to
the attentional practice, one develops the capacity not to continually strive for pleasant
experiences, or to push aversive experiences away” (S. L. Shapiro et al., 2006, p. 377).
2. For a consideration of how mindfulness meditation differs from the cognitive model of
mindfulness forwarded by E. Langer and colleagues (e.g., Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz, 1978;
Langer & Moldoveanu, 2000; Langer & Piper, 1987), see Baer (2003) and Sternberg (2000).
Although the approaches share an emphasis on flexible awareness in the present, Langer
and Moldoveanu (2000, pp. 1–2) suggest that the latter can be best characterized as
“the process of drawing novel distinctions”—a process that then has several further effects,
such as helping to keep us “situated in the present” and “more aware of the context and
perspective of our actions than if we rely upon distinctions and categories drawn in the
past.” Such reliance on past distinctions and categories is held to make it more likely that
our behavior will be governed by rules and routines without regard to the current circum-
stances, and “this can be construed as mindless behavior.”
Mindfulness interventions based on this model often include a focus on external materials,
and active, goal-oriented cognitive tasks, such as solving problems. It is proposed that
there are diverse (beneficial) consequences from drawing novel distinctions, including:
“(1) a greater sensitivity to one’s environment, (2) more openness to new information,
(3) the creation of new categories for structuring perception, and (4) enhanced awareness
of multiple perspectives in problem solving” (Langer & Moldoveanu, 2000, p. 2). These
620 N O T E S T O PA G E S 92–103
authors further observe that the predominant feeling, subjectively, of mindfulness is that
of “a heightened state of involvement and wakefulness or being in the present” and that
“mindfulness is not a cold cognitive process. When one is actively drawing novel distinc-
tions, the whole individual is involved.” It is thus clear that mindfulness in this sense and
“agility of mind” are also conceptually related. However, like the concepts such as “executive
control” or “executive attention,” discussed in Chapter 1 in the section on “Distinguishing
Agile Thinking,” mindfulness too selectively and too exclusively emphasizes the relatively
more “controlled” portions of the automatic-spontaneous-controlled continuum, under-
weighting the substantial contributions of less controlled and more automatic processing to
creatively adaptive thinking and problem solving.
3. Although the Stroop task is often thought of as a paradigmatic example of highly automatic
responding, other research similarly demonstrates that the extent to which we are likely to
be “automatically captured” by the highly habitual tendency to read text or other meaning-
ful symbols can be modulated by task and attentional factors. Besner (2001, p. 324), for
example, has suggested that although the more common (default) set may be to process
words to the highest (semantic) level, “these reading processes are (contextually) controlled
rather than ballistic.” Other investigators have reported that performance on the Stroop
task may be modified by suggestion, such as the posthypnotic suggestion that the words
will appear as meaningless symbols that feel like characters of a foreign language that one
does not know (Raz, Fan, & Posner, 2005; Raz, Kirsch, Pollard, & Nitkin-Kaner, 2006),
leading to the conclusion that “cognitive processes that have been automatized through
practice can be de-automatized and brought under cognitive control” (Raz et al., 2006, p.
94). In Chapter 5, we also consider evidence that forming a specific implementation inten-
tion, to the effect that “as soon as a word appears, I will ignore its meaning” similarly may
help to circumvent such interference effects.
4. One possible alternative account of these findings might be that there is simply an advan-
tage to performing the same sort of recognition decision throughout the testing situation
(as in the III condition) than if individuals need to change the level of specificity with which
they make their recognition decisions part way through the testing (as in the CCI condi-
tion). However, additional comparisons, with further experimental conditions (Koutstaal &
Cavendish, 2006), argue that these effects do not simply reflect an advantage in the III
group from performing the same task across all three tests. Unlike what would be expected
from this same task account, there is no corresponding benefit for category-based recogni-
tion if individuals are asked to consistently retrieve information in a category-based manner
(CCC group) versus initially retrieving item-specific information and then switching to cate-
gory-based retrieval (IIC group). For these latter conditions, there was no advantage for the
CCC group relative to the IIC group on any measure and, if anything, numerical differences
in sensitivity favored the group that initially engaged in item-specific retrieval.
5. The claim that individuals generally prefer higher level, more abstract construals of their
activities and actions rather than lower ones echoes one of the points made in Chapter 2 in
connection with failures to transfer knowledge to new situations or problems. There, it was
asked whether it is really the case that individuals have a general propensity toward noticing
and retrieving superficial, surface details of situations and the stimuli that they encounter. It
was argued that experimental findings in the analogical problem-solving and learning litera-
tures pointing to “surface superiority” or the “primacy of the mundane” are moderated by
many factors, including expertise. With regard to the interpretation of our own actions and
those of others, most individuals might generally be thought to be at least moderately profi-
cient if not quite “expert,” even if also prone to error and bias in some contexts, and so might
mainly adopt a relatively higher level of action identity with regard to many everyday actions.
6. Note that these stated contrasts seem to suggest that higher level construals are not only
more abstract but also more “valuable” in some normative sense. I have quoted here
the terms and descriptors used in Fujita et al. (2006); it is not my own view that lower
level construals are necessarily of less value—clearly it will depend; furthermore, what is
Note s t o pag e s 1 0 3 – 1 3 5 621
“incidental” depends on a given set of purposes or constraints, and what is “unique and
specific” may, again, depending on circumstances, be valued precisely for those very
characteristics.
7. For instance: Might a dimly lit, cluttered, and difficult-to-navigate space lead to a more
“low-level” construal of what one is doing and the choices one is making (e.g., in an old
factory warehouse) than if one were in a large, spacious, and luxurious space that seems to
make all of one’s movements gracefully effortless (e.g., in the entry lobby of a five-star
hotel)? Some recent findings suggest that these questions may not be quite as far-fetched as
they, at first, seem. For example, when individuals are aware of height, high ceilings may
activate abstract relational thinking, whereas low ceilings more strongly activate concrete,
item-specific processing (Meyers-Levy & Zhu, 2007). Clearly this does not mean that high
ceilings are necessarily best; it will depend on the tasks and purposes at hand, but it does
strongly suggest that we are “situated beings,” shaped and primed by our environment in
many ways, not all of them obvious, or readily fully charted.
8. Schunn and Dunbar even suggest that, “Given the constructive nature of human memory
[. . .] it is highly likely that many of the reports of the origins of specific hypotheses in
science are incorrect. The scientists may not have a memory of where their hypotheses
came from because their hypotheses were the result of priming, and they must construct a
non-veridical story that gives the origin of their hypotheses” (1996, p. 282).
Chapter 4
1. Research such as that by Barsalou and Wiemer-Hastings (2005) persuasively argues
that even abstract concepts, such as “truth,” “freedom,” and “invention,” are grounded in
complex perceptual simulations involving combined physical and introspective events
(e.g., affect/emotion and evaluation). However, these and related findings, such as those of
J. M. Mandler (2004a, 2004b), Gibbs (2006), and Boroditsky (2000; Boroditsky & Ramscar,
2002) showing an important role of image-schemas and of spatially grounded metaphor in
understanding many abstract notions such as “containment” or “time,” do not support the
much stronger claim that all conceptual thinking necessarily or exclusively depends on a
grounding in the perceptual senses. As Goldstone et al. (2005) argue, even highly concrete
concepts, such as “horse” are associated with many further concepts that are less concrete
than “horse” itself, such as “freedom,” “domesticated,” and “strength.” Neither such inter-
conceptual relations, nor the more concrete, experientially derived relations that are
anchored in perception and action, need be forfeited: “Sensory reduction can be avoided by
positing interconceptual relations such as these, that coexist with perceptual groundings.
We do not have to choose between meaning based on interconceptual relations or percep-
tual senses, and by not choosing we make it much more plausible that all of our concepts
have perceptual-motor components. Moreover, it is not simply that these complementary
aspects of meaning coexist. Internal and external bases of meaning are mutually reinforcing,
not mutually exclusive” (Goldstone, Feng, & Rogosky, 2005, pp. 310–311, emphasis added).
2. There are differing versions of the candle problem, and Duncker (1945, p. 86) actually
referred to this as the “box problem.” In Duncker’s version, there were three larger candles,
and three small pasteboard boxes, that were either filled with, respectively, several thin little
candles, tacks, and matches, or were unfilled. In his version, the solution was to use the
tacks to mount the boxes to the door. The problem in the text is a simplified version.
3. Although here we are focusing on the effects of perceptual simulation in relation to objects,
it is important to note that the particular movements associated with actions may also be
covertly reinstantiated during language comprehension. Listeners or readers with greater
experience in a given domain (e.g., ice hockey) showed larger “action-match” effects: that is,
greater facilitation for pictured individuals whose actions matched those implied in the sen-
tence relative to pictured individuals whose actions did not match those implied by the sen-
tence (Holt & Beilock, 2006). Participants also showed greater activation in left dorsal
622 N O T E S T O PA G E S 135–156
premotor cortex during comprehension of sentences about a directly experienced domain

(hockey players) or indirectly experienced domain (hockey fans) than shown by novices
(Beilock et al., 2008). Although motor activation during the processing of action-related
language might be attributed to postlexical motor imagery, electroencephalogram (EEG)
findings reported by van Elk et al. (2010) also argue for a stronger functional role. These
researchers found that activation in motor and premotor cortex (reflected in mu-power and
beta-power) in response to verbs temporally preceded a classical measure of semantic
integration (the N400) and that the strength of the motor activation was inversely related
to the size of the N400 effect—suggesting reduced meaning integration for actions that
evoked less early activation in motor and premotor regions. Motor activation may thus also
support lexical-semantic retrieval of action-related meanings, as well as being a consequence
of such retrieval, as shown in subsequent imagery of implied actions.
4. This characterization of the roles of perceptual noticing and abduction is similar to the most
promising role that K. S. Bowers and colleagues (1990) ascribe to intuition (to be discussed in
the section on “Intuitive Processing” in Chapter 9, and also earlier briefly discussed in Chapter
1, in the section on “Levels of Control and Representational Processes”), with intuition espe-
cially important in the context of discovery rather than in the context of justification. These
researchers suggest that one reason that intuition may have acquired a less-than-ideal reputa-
tion from the extensive research on judgment under uncertainty is that in such experiments,
participants are “typically required to generate final solutions intuitively, whereas intuition
might better be conceptualized as the process of generating hunches or hypotheses that
require further testing before they are accepted as valid” (K. S. Bowers et al., 1990, p. 73).
5. All three of these studies also are consistent with a much earlier remark by Gick and Holyoak
(1980) pointing to a potentially important contribution of visual-spatial imagery in
enabling transfer between the General problem and the radiation problem. They stated:
“Numerous subjects in our experiments commented on the importance of the reference in
the story to roads radiating outward ‘like spokes on a wheel.’ Intuitively, this phrase seems
to elicit a spatial image that represents those essential aspects of the dispersion solution
that can be applied to both the military and the medical problems. Even though the stories
and the target problem were always presented verbally in our experiments, the problems
essentially describe spatial relationships. Our use of a propositional representation to
describe the correspondences between the stories and the radiation problem does not pre-
clude the possibility that some form of analog representation plays an important role in the
mapping process” (Gick & Holyoak, 1980, pp. 346–347).
6. Grant and Spivey (2003), p. 466.
7. Such unhelpful collusion of multiple factors may also make later memory recall of the
solution difficult.
8. Other types of gestures differentiated by McNeill (1992) include beats, which are simple
two-phase movements, such as in/out or up/down, that often emphasize words or phrases
that are significant from the point of view of pragmatics or discourse processing (e.g., they
accompany the introduction of a new character or theme); metaphorics, which are like iconic
gestures in that they are pictorial, but represent more abstract ideas through visual or
kinesthetic aspects that seem similar to the abstract concept, such as suggesting processes
of change or transition through rotation or a continuous sweep of the hand, and cohesives,
which can be any of the other forms, but show continuity through repetition of the gesture
itself (e.g., when an object that was referred to earlier is revisited after an intervening topic,
and the same gesture is used by the speaker on both occasions).
9. Additional research examining students’ speech and gestures in science classroom laborato-
ries supports the notion that gestures may indicate initial understandings that precede the
emergence of verbally articulated scientific concepts. Based on an analysis of several hundred
hours of videotaped conversations in small groups and classes involving students from Grade
4 through to university, W. M. Roth (2000) arrived at three broad generalizations regarding
the relation between speech and gestures in the science lab: First, laboratory talk is “highly
Note s t o pag e s 1 5 6 – 1 6 6 623
elliptic and indexical” and diverges considerably from written language; second, laboratory
talk is accompanied by a large number of gestures that help to disambiguate students’ ellipti-
cal speech, particularly gestures that “point to, or stand in iconic relation to, the representa-
tions and phenomena at hand,” and third, the precision and clarity of laboratory talk evolves
over time, gradually becoming more scientifically appropriate. Both deictic and iconic
gestures would sometimes considerably precede an individual’s verbal mastery of a concept,
so that “gestures appear to scaffold the emergence of students’ observational and theoretical
language about the phenomena they study” (W. M. Roth & Lawless, 2002, p. 287).
10. Further research shows that, even without a “conversational intention” the motor actions
that we perform, including such simple actions as pressing versus pulling a lever, or nodding
versus shaking our head, may have intersections with thought. How we ourselves physically
respond to words or objects, that is, the particular motor actions that we use in expressing
an evaluative judgment about the object, may not be entirely neutral or inconsequential
activities, but may be either congruent with the decision (e.g., pushing away from the self
when making an evaluative judgment about an undesired or to-be-avoided object, or pulling
toward the self when making an evaluative decision about a desired object) or incongruent
(pushing away desired objects; pulling undesired objects inward). Cacioppo et al. (1993)
showed that novel stimuli (ideographs) that were first presented during arm flexion were
rated more positively than were ideographs first presented during arm extension. M. Chen
and Bargh (1999) showed that individuals responded more quickly to words shown on the
computer screen when they were asked to perform a pulling movement, and the word was
positive in valence (approach), or to perform a pushing movement, and the word was nega-
tive in valence (avoid), than if there was a mismatch or movement incompatibility.
Using an ingenious manipulation of an individual’s representation of herself in space relative
to associated objects—by projecting the person’s first name into a “virtual corridor” such
that the name appeared in the middle of the corridor and then placing positive and negative
words either in front of, or behind, the individual’s name—Markman and Brendl (2005)
demonstrated that the movement compatibility effect concerned not the individual’s body
(where she was in physical space) but her name. That is, the compatibility effect was still
observed in this projected world experiment, but the compatibility effect was in relation to
the location of the name (the projected self, involving pushing vs. pulling negatively or posi-
tively valenced objects towards the person’s own name) rather than the actual physical
movements in relation to the body (pushing vs. pulling toward the body).
Additional recent research (van Dantzig, Zeelenberg, & Pecher, 2009) has shown that simi-
lar movement compatibility effects can be obtained with virtually projected words and
stimuli other than one’s name (e.g., a category name, or even just a box on the screen), argu-
ing that the movement compatibility effect involves flexible complex representations of
one’s task goals, rather than an automatic fixed association to where one is (literally) in phys-
ical space. As van Dantzig and colleagues (2009, p. 350) observed, “The idea that cognition
is grounded in the systems of perception and action does not necessarily imply that cogni-
tive concepts are mapped directly onto very low-level sensorimotor representations. It is
more likely that concepts are linked to the perceptual and motor system at a higher level of
representation (e.g., the level of the action goal). Such higher-level representations obvi-
ously are more abstract than the low-level representations, but they are still firmly grounded
in perception and action.”
11. The intimate connectedness of the ways in which words are physically realized externally in
the outside world and the process of writing is poignantly underscored by the case of the
playwright Eugene O’Neill who, after developing Parkinson’s disease, was unable to make
the transition from handwriting his works to dictating them. Sharon Cameron speculates
that the difficulty experienced by O’Neill, compared with the relative ease experienced
by Henry James in the transition to dictating his novels, might originate in the differing
conceptions that the two writers had of consciousness itself. Cameron writes, “For O’Neill,
who stopped being able to write his plays when he stopped being able to write them down,
624 N O T E S T O PA G E S 166–192
consciousness flows from the brain, through the arm, into the pencil, and onto the paper,
where it ends. For the Henry James of the novels, as for his characters, that is where it
starts: at the limits of the self, it is ultimately defined by its sweep or its range. Outside and
between persons, therefore undemarcated, consciousness may be said to be or begin”
(Cameron, 1989, p. 82).
12. The text of the following two sections is a modified excerpt from a longer paper exploring
the many roles of the physical nature of words in cognition: Koutstaal (2001), The edges of
words. Semiotica, 137, 57–97. Excerpted text is reprinted here with permission from De
Gruyter Mouton. For the earlier paper, see http://www.reference-global.com/doi/
pdf/10.1515/semi.2001.108.
13. The so-called mere exposure effect involves an increase in individuals’ ratings of how much
they like a stimulus (particularly unfamiliar novel objects) as a result of prior exposure to
the stimulus (repeated objects), relative to a stimulus that has not been previously exposed
(new objects). Although the mere exposure effect has been assumed to be a subtype of
“repetition priming” (e.g., Seamon et al., 1997), some characteristics clearly differentiate it
from standard forms of perceptual priming. For instance, whereas both mere exposure and
repetition priming effects are found for nonword stimuli, real words may produce repetition
priming but not mere exposure (L. T. Butler, Berry, & Helman, 2004; see L. T. Butler &
Berry, 2004, for review). The mere exposure effect also recruits brain regions that are
involved in emotional processing (e.g., amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and posterior
cingulate) and that are not necessarily recruited during a standard perceptual “repetition
priming” procedure such as perceptual identification (Koutstaal, Butler, Coates, & Simons,
unpublished data).
Chapter 5
1. Given that many of the higher level goals endorsed by the obsessive-compulsive patients
and the clients at the alcohol treatment center related to achieving a particular internal
emotional or cognitive state, it might be suggested that it was, in part, this focus on internal
states that was the “true” source of the difficulty with the higher-level identifications. Yet,
this, in turn, raises the question of the ultimate source of “evidence” that any of our higher
level goals have been achieved. For instance, how does an artist know (or decide) that a
given work of art is done, versus still in need of “one more move”? What is the “signal” that
it is, or is not, complete?
2. This particular example also might be seen as involving the formation of an “implementa-
tion intention,” because it takes the form of “when I encounter situation x, I will do y” (e.g.,
Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997). As developed in the next section, on remembering inten-
tions and control, implementation intentions may boost the likelihood of successful inten-
tion fulfillment both as a result of their high level of specificity and because they recruit
more associatively and automatically based processes that help us to remember at the
opportune time and place without the need for extensive conscious monitoring.
3. There is an ongoing debate concerning the relative advantages and disadvantages of an
approach based on personality types versus dimensions to the study of personality, although
also some emerging consensus that both may prove beneficial under some circumstances, or
for different purposes (e.g., Asendorpf, 2003; Asendorpf & Denissen, 2006; Costa et al.,
2002). The aim here is to characterize contributors to agile thinking, and findings relating to
ego resilience and ego over-/undercontrol, obtained using the typological Q-sort technique,
are highly relevant to this aim. However, personality dimensions are likewise extremely
important and informative with regard to agile thinking—for instance, the dimension of
openness to experience, as particularly developed in the section on “Openness to Experience,
Creativity, and Adaptability” in Chapter 6. Arriving at a clearer understanding of the rela-
tions between these constructs and related biological and environmental underpinnings
and modulators (e.g., Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000; Hart, Eisenberg, & Valiente,
2007) is crucial in developing a fuller understanding of the agile mind.
Note s t o pag e s 1 9 4 – 2 2 0 625
4. Summarizing key ideas that also have been proposed by others, Martel et al. (2007, p. 544)
suggest that constructs such as resiliency and executive functions “are different levels of
analysis of the same basic psychological or even neural operations” and that “traits (or emo-
tion regulation) and executive functions (or cognitive control, here referring to strategic
but not reactive control) work together in an additive or interactive manner to shape action
selection, cognition, and behavior.”
5. Effortful control appears to be a relatively stable capacity. Using a comprehensive battery
of age-appropriate tasks involving effortful control in a variety of domains, and a variety
of response types (motor, vocal, or cognitive), within-child retest correlations on the
battery between ages of 2.5 and 5.5 years range between .58 and .69. Effortful control is
also multidimensional—composed of a number of different but related abilities, including
the abilities to delay, to slow fine or gross motor movements, and to suppress an ongoing
prepotent response and initiate an alternate response instead. Questionnaire data
indicate that (American) children high in effortful control tend to be low in negative
affect (Ahadi et al., 1993); a similar relation (high attentional control associated with low
negative affect) has been found in self-reports of adults (Evans & Rothbart, 1999; unpub-
lished manuscript cited in Rothbart, Ahadi, & Evans, 2000). Note that other investigators
have used different terms for the two forms of control, such as impulse and constraint
(Carver, 2005), reflective and impulsive processes (Strack & Deutsch, 2004), x-system and
c-system (Lieberman, 2007; Satpute & Lieberman, 2006), and good self-control and poor
self-control (e.g., T. A. Wills et al., 2006). See Dvorak and Simons (2009) for additional
discussion.
6. In his essay, “Vacations,” William James memorably defended the need for at least 2 weeks
of respite from the demands and routine of work each year, arguing that we need to protect
that “capacity for irresponsible enjoyment which is like air space in the character”
(1873/1987, p. 4) so that it does not become wholly atrophied within us. Chapter 12
discusses the question of both short-term and longer term ways of structuring our work
and learning lives to take appropriate heed of William James’s advice.
7. Other studies examining possible “real world” and also potential ethical implications of
self-regulatory depletion include evaluations of how academic examination stress impairs
self-control (Oaten & Cheng, 2005) and how prior self-regulatory challenges influence
sexual restraint (Gailliot & Baumeister, 2007) and aggressive responses with and without
provocation (DeWall, Baumeister, Stillman, & Gailliot, 2007). The effects of increased
self-regulatory demands during interracial interactions on interference control in a version
of the Stroop color-word task (Richeson & Trawalter, 2005) have also been shown. The self-
regulatory demands of stereotype suppression are considered later in this section with
regard to the work of Gailliot, Plant, Butz, and Baumeister (2007) on training interventions
to increase self-regulatory capacity.
8. Another biological measure that has been examined, using an outcome task of handgrip
strength following a cognitive depletion task (a modified Stroop color word task), is neuro-
muscular electromyographic (EMG) activity. Bray, Ginis, Hicks, and Woodgate (2008) found
that following depletion participants showed reduced handgrip endurance and also higher
forearm EMG activation, indicating greater muscle fatigue, on the postmanipulation
handgrip trial than did controls. Other work suggests that heart rate variability may be
another correlate of self-control, with individuals who show greater heart rate variability in
demanding self-control situations showing an increased level of self-regulatory strength
and effort (Segerstrom & Nes, 2007).
9. See also Higgins (2006), “Value from hedonic experience and engagement,” Psychological
Review, 113, 439–460.
10. In this section, we focus on the behavioral reinforcement of variable responding and of
originality. Nonetheless, many ways of eliciting variety can be imagined, including simply
the verbal imposition of explicit task constraints that require novel responses. Maltzman
(1960) suggests that Josiah Royce (1898), a philosopher and colleague of William James, may
have been the first to experimentally evaluate such verbal instruction as a straightforward
626 N O T E S T O PA G E S 220–230
method for eliciting originality, in experiments in which he required participants to attempt

to produce nonsense figures unlike any they had ever seen, or to produce figures that were
as different as possible from each of several provided examples. Based on the qualitative
changes that he observed, Royce concluded that such task requirements could, indeed, help
to foster originality. Other work similarly supports the importance of explicit task instruc-
tions in encouraging innovative responses in laboratory tasks (e.g., O’Hara & Sternberg,
2000-2001), though implicitly generated expectations for creativity are also important (e.g.,
Eisenberger, Haskins, & Gambleton, 1999).
11. The requirement to continuously generate novel behaviors and to avoid repetition of
previously emitted responses rapidly becomes a highly demanding and difficult task. The
researchers note that in the later sessions Hou showed recognizable signs of frustration or
aggression during the training, such as slapping the water with her head and pectoral fin
(also cf. Schusterman & Reichmuth, 2008). Maltzman (1960, p. 239) similarly noted signs
of frustration in his studies with undergraduates who were asked to continuously produce
novel associative responses to words; he argued that these signs of frustration suggested
that the requirement for continuously novel responses “may not be trivial and does
approximate a non-laboratory situation involving originality or inventiveness, with its
frequent concomitant frustration.”
12. See Neuringer (2002) and Page and Neuringer (1985) for persuasive arguments for why one
often cited study, by B. Schwartz (1982), failed to demonstrate learning of variable
responses.
13. Intriguingly, evidence suggests that the neuromodulatory processes that govern this
variability in response to extinction are different from those that produce a decrement
in reward value through dopaminergic blockade (Rick, Horvitz, & Balsam, 2006). Whereas
both extinction and pharmacological blockade of D1 or D2 receptors suppressed
previously learned (and rewarding) lever responding in rats, only extinction was associated
with increased behavioral variability, as shown in pressing any of the eight other—not
previously rewarded—levers that were available to the animals. Only the animals under
extinction showed a change in the distribution of key presses that they made from
baseline to test. These findings help to constrain accounts of the role of dopaminergic phar-
macological interventions on learned and appetitive behavior and emphasize the impor-
tance of examining behavioral variability as well as “repetition” to gaining a complete
understanding of how behavior changes under different reward conditions (Rick et al.,
2006). Although both D1 and D2 antagonists disrupted previously reinforced responding in
the same way as did extinction, only extinction had a variability increasing effect, suggest-
ing that dopamine receptor blockade has a more focal effect that is at least partially inde-
pendent of broader motivational and behavioral changes that are induced by behavioral
extinction.
14. A strong example of an adaptively creative approach to “failure,” not just by individuals
but also by organizations, is that provided by the American company, Corning Incorporated.
A producer of specialty glass and ceramics for such end users as high-technology
systems for consumer electronics, telecommunications, and life sciences, it is a company
for which innovation and failure have been explicitly recognized as closely linked:
Innovation at Corning was also about being willing and able to take failed
ideas and apply them elsewhere. As Weeks [the President and Chief Operating
Officer of the company] explained, “When an idea fails, we take that capabil-
ity set and say, ‘What else can we apply it to?’ From failure comes knowledge.
We aren’t usually successful with the first thing we try.”
(Henderson, R. M., & Reavis, C., 2009, Corning Incorporated: The growth
and strategy council. MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources. https://
mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/IndustryEvolution/CorningIncorporated/Pages/
default.aspx
Note s t o pag e s 2 3 1 – 2 7 0 627
15. As one of Wallace Stevens’ colleagues recollected, while Stevens was at work at his office at a
Hartford, Connecticut, insurance company: “He’d be writing them [lines of poetry] right
there at his desk, because he would stop dictating to [his secretary] Mrs. Baldwin. He would
stop right in the middle of dictating, and he would reach down in his right-hand drawer, and
he would just write down [something], put it back. I’ve seen him do that. He had a peculiar
filing system. He always filed his poetry notes in his lower right corner of his desk, which
was open most of the time to a degree. It seemed to me there were sheaves and sheaves. And
sometimes he would reach down, and he’d shuffle through three or four. He’d scratch out
something or put something in. Or he might take the top one and just add a line or two. All
of a sudden, he’d be reading a case, and I’ve seen him reach down in his drawer and just pick
something up. His private copies of his commercial work or his business letters would go in
his lower left-hand drawer.” P. Brazeau (1983), Parts of a world: Wallace Stevens remembered;
An oral biography. New York, Random House, p. 38.
16. Also see Charman and Howes (2003) on the circumstances under which computer users
develop more efficient approaches. These proposals are also in broad agreement with the argu-
ment that the development of conceptual and procedural knowledge involves bidirectional
causal relations between conceptual and procedural knowledge, and that these two forms of
knowledge often develop “in a gradual, hand-over-hand process” involving an iterative devel-
opment in both types of knowledge (Rittle-Johnson, Siegler, & Alibali, 2001, p. 358), each
often mediated by (and also producing) an improved representation of the problem.
Chapter 6
1. Notably, this study also provided some support for the converse pattern, with creativity also
fostering positive affect.
2. To date, most investigations of self-affirmation have involved the presentation of informa-
tion or messages that are relevant to the self, and often potentially threatening to the self.
Briñol et al. (2007) present preliminary findings that suggest that self-affirmation may
influence feelings of self-confidence, and thereby influence the degree of information
processing that is undertaken.
3. The term “Big Five” is generally restricted to measures derived from analysis of the
trait-descriptive lexicon, whereas factors derived from the questionnaire approach of
McCrae and Costa are termed the “Five Factor Model.” These approaches yield highly
correlated factors and the model is thus sometimes referred to as the Big Five/FFM
(e.g., D. E. Evans & Rothbart, 2007).
4. As noted, the precise term that should be used to designate the fifth factor is a matter of
considerable debate, and, perhaps in the effort to accommodate the divergent aspects
associated with the factor it is often designated with the combined terms “openness to
experience/intellect.” R. R. McCrae (1994) presents several sources of evidence suggesting
that the term “intellect,” although it may encompass many characteristics of the fifth factor,
is rather misleading. This is, in part, because certain aspects of intelligence (e.g., foresight,
analytical ability) also correlate strongly with the Big Five Conscientiousness factor. More
important, however, the term “intellect” may be misleading because it is overly narrow.
Many characteristics that contribute to the fifth factor of “Openness” do not necessarily
have a clear linkage to intelligence or intellectual ability per se, but are more psychologically
diverse than this term suggests. The six facets of Openness to Experience that are part of
the frequently used personality questionnaire, NEO-PI-R, and that are further character-
ized later in this section, namely Ideas, Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings, Actions, and Values,
clearly attest to considerable psychological diversity—diversity across multiple domains of
experience that is not well captured by the narrower term “intellect.”
5. Unlike most other aspects of personality, which do not consistently relate to measures
of intelligence, it has been shown that openness to experience is positively correlated
with general intelligence, with reported correlations on the order of .33 to .42 (e.g., Ashton,
628 N O T E S T O PA G E S 270–286
Lee, Vernon, & Jang, 2000; also see J. A. Harris, 2004). However, perhaps counter-
intuitively, the correlations between openness to experience and intelligence are higher for
“crystallized” intelligence than for “fluid” intelligence. For example, Ackerman and Goff
(1994) found a correlation of .32 between crystallized ability and Openness to Ideas,
whereas the correlation for fluid ability was only .13. Ashton et al. (2000) reported a similar
differential pattern when considering the overall fluid ability measure (correlation of .18)
compared to crystallized intelligence (.37). However, when considering particularly
pictorial aspects of fluid intelligence that involve pictures of objects, living things, or social
situations the correlation with openness was somewhat higher and significant (.24) than
when nonpictorial aspects were considered (arithmetic, spatial, and digital symbol, correla-
tion between nonpictorial fluid intelligence and openness of .08). A possible (but not
entirely satisfying) explanation for this pattern is that openness may relate more to a
broader approach to experience than to strictly “cognitive” measures and may not be fully
drawn out in the typical cognitive or neuropsychological testing situation during which fluid
intelligence is assessed.
6. Although here emphasizing the connections between reduced latent inhibition, creativity,
and openness to experience, it is important to note that there are also strong and well-
documented links between reduced latent inhibition and some forms of psychopathology,
particularly schizophrenia (e.g., Lubow & Gewirtz, 1995). The association of reduced latent
inhibition both with conditions involving maladaptive thinking and with highly creative and
innovative thinking requires an account of how attenuated preconscious attention gating
might apparently be associated with beneficial outcomes in one case, but harmful outcomes
in the other (e.g., G. F. Miller & Tal, 2007).
Multiple factors may be relevant here. One important factor may be the individual’s general
cognitive capacity for constructively grappling with the increased number and range of
sensory and cognitive stimuli to which reduced gating might leave the person exposed.
As suggested by Carson et al. (2003, p. 505), such a general cognitive capacity “may allow an
individual to override a ‘deficit’ in early selective attentional processing with a high-
functioning mechanism at a later, more controlled level of selective processing.” From this
perspective, “The highly creative individual may be privileged to access a greater inventory
of unfiltered stimuli during early processing, thereby increasing the odds of original recom-
binant ideation,” and “a deficit that is generally associated with pathology may well impart a
creative advantage in the presence of other cognitive strengths such as high IQ.”
7. Tolerance of ambiguity is one of five personality characteristics that Sternberg and Lubart
(1992) suggest is necessary for individuals who manifest sustained creativity.
8. Beyond focusing on situational or contextual factors that may differentially foreground the
positive features of openness to experience, it may also be important to consider subcompo-
nents of the openness to experience construct. For instance, B. Griffin and Hesketh (2004)
provide some suggestive preliminary evidence that predictions of job performance might be
improved through separately considering the three facets of openness to experience that
they propose mainly involve areas external to the person (Actions, Ideas, and Values) versus
those that are either internal to the person (Fantasy and Feelings) or essentially involve an
internal experience (Aesthetics), with only the former predicted to bear a relationship to job
performance. However, this approach, too, may require further modulation to accommo-
date differences in the nature of an individual’s occupational demands; for example,
high sensitivity to internal associative processes or feelings might be differentially more
important in contexts that require independent creative activity.
Chapter 7
1. See http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/portrait/sbec/
2. The beads task also has been used in individuals who have developed delusions. Similar to
anxious individuals, persons with delusions may “jump to conclusions” even for these very
neutral stimuli (beads in a jar) that have little emotional or personal significance (see Freeman,
Note s t o pag e s 2 8 6 – 3 4 1 629
2007; Garety & Freeman, 1999, for review). Although space constraints preclude a full consid-
eration of reasoning in individuals with delusions, it is worthwhile to note here that multiple
factors contribute to delusions, including not only reasoning biases but also the patient’s lack
of awareness and knowledge of internal anomalous experiences and a difficulty in conceiving
alternatives that provide a compelling account of those experiences. Jumping to conclusions is
negatively correlated with what has been termed “belief flexibility”—a metacognitive ability
to generate alternative hypotheses for one’s beliefs and to reflect on the evidence for one’s
beliefs (Freeman et al., 2004; Garety et al., 2005). Environmental factors are also important.
For example, convergent findings in different countries suggest that the frequency of
psychoses is increased in urban compared with rural environments (e.g., Sundquist et al.,
2004), and a recent field study demonstrated that, compared to a nonstressful mindfulness
control condition, even a brief exposure to an unfamiliar stressful urban environment exacer-
bated symptoms such as jumping to conclusions and paranoia in individuals with delusions
(Ellett, Freeman, & Garety, 2008).
3. Although the instructions in the think/no-think paradigm may also elicit reports of
unintended thoughts, this requirement (if given) is superimposed on the ongoing series of
think/no-think trials in which the mental content that is to be focused on or to be excluded
from awareness is itself repeatedly changing.
4. The opera soprano Danielle de Niese has said that she needs to be careful discussing music
late at night because it makes her “manic”: “I start to think about what I need to do better
onstage and how to fix my voice, and one thought bleeds into another, and suddenly I’m
thinking about studies, practicing, contracts, roles coming up, life, and I won’t be able to
sleep all night. I went through a phase when I was listening to music before bed, but now
music reminds me of too many other things.” This is a proactive way of avoiding the need for
thought suppression—by attempting to minimize the cues and associative linkages that
prompt unwanted or untimely thoughts. Quoted in Chip Brown, “Opera’s coolest soprano,”
New York Times, Sept. 16, retrieved May 2011, from www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/
magazine/20deniese-t.html?_r=1&hpw
5. Although the classic earlier study by George Miller (1956) suggested that most individuals
possess a working memory capacity of approximately seven items (plus or minus two), more
recent research has led to definite downward estimates of this capacity. When researchers
have used tighter experimental control conditions that reduce participants’ ability to rely
on longer term semantic memory and other strategies such as relational encoding to aid
them during working memory tasks, then visual and semantic working memory capacity
have been estimated at approximately four items (e.g., Haarmann, Davelaar, & Usher, 2003;
H. Olsson & Poom, 2005; also see Halford, Cowan, & Andrews, 2007). Capacity may be even
smaller (close to only one item!) when the stimuli to be remembered are highly similar
intracategorical visual items such as composites of similarly colored ovals for which
preexisting semantic representations are of little benefit (H. Olsson & Poom, 2005).
6. Additional findings derived from examining the work processes of so-termed agile program-
ming developers also point to the concurrent use of both elements of rational decision
making (aiming to optimize design) and elements of naturalistic decision making (involving
a “satisficing” goal rather than optimizing goal), with naturalistic decision making tending
to predominate, but supported by rational decision making. See Zannier and Maurer (2006),
“Foundations of agile decision making from agile mentors and developers”; also compare
with the discussion of recognition-primed decision making in the final section of Chapter 2,
including the evidence that surface information is often validly informative and that experts
also may rely on surface information.
Chapter 8
1. For example, Montague and Berns (2002) suggested a model according to which neural
responses in the orbitofrontal-striatal circuit play a role in converting different types of
stimuli and actions into a common scale, to allow comparison of the value of future acts or
630 N O T E S T O PA G E S 341–382
stimuli, with the orbitofrontal-striatal circuit acting as a “common pathway” for the
representation of both rewards and predictors. Specifically, they proposed that the orbit-
ofrontal-striatal circuit “computes an ongoing valuation of potential payoffs (including
rewards), losses, and their proxies (predictors) across a broad domain of stimuli [. . .] By
providing a common valuation scale for diverse stimuli, this system emits a signal useful for
comparing and contrasting the value of future events that have not yet happened—a signal
required for decision-making algorithms that assign attention, plan actions, and compare
disparate stimuli” (Montague & Berns, 2002, pp. 275–276).
2. Here I am reminded of Premack’s (1978) linking of abstractness and concepts of actions.
If one has the concept of “jumping,” then, for example, one may jump a stream in many dif-
ferent ways, depending on the individual, circumstances, inclination, and so on.
Chimpanzees, too, show considerable variation in how they jump. Premack (1978) notes
that there are sketches from van Lawick-Goodale of chimps jumping a stream and landing
not only arms first but feet first and head first. By contrast, the number of manifestations
(or “styles”) of jumping seen in the horse, dog, rabbit, and so on is more limited; one has
never seen them jump a stream backwards, for example.
3. Beyond the anterior to posterior axis, there is accumulating evidence for another functional
gradient in the inferior frontal gyrus or the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, involving
distinctions in the abstraction and hierarchical level between the anterior versus the
midregions of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (Badre et al., 2005; Badre & Wagner, 2007;
Gold et al., 2006) and between more anterior and mid- or posterior regions/adjacent to and
including premotor cortex (Koechlin & Jubault, 2006; Poldrack et al., 1999). Badre and
D’Esposito (2007) propose that these other gradients might be more relevant to the retrieval
and initiation of sequences of actions, and the retrieval and organization of lexical, seman-
tic, and phonological codes involved in verbal behavior. For instance, Koechlin and Jubault
(2006) provided fMRI evidence that, within the posterior frontal region broadly correspond-
ing to Broca’s area and its homolog in the right hemisphere, overlearned simple action motor
chunks were associated with more posterior activation whereas superordinate (higher order)
chunks that were also overlearned were associated with more anterior activation.
There also is evidence for hierarchical differences in the processing of language in Broca’s
area (see Bookheimer, 2002, for review, and P. M. Gough et al., 2005, for evidence using
the technique of transcranial magnetic stimulation), such that more posterior regions
(i.e., BA44/BA6) are preferentially recruited for phonological processing (e.g., phonemes
and syllables), whereas more anterior regions are preferentially involved in syntactic pro-
cessing (i.e., BA 45/BA 44) and semantic processing (i.e., BA 47/BA 45), involving words,
phrases, and sentences that are linguistically “higher order.” Gough et al. (2005) note that
this “rostrocaudal division of labor” is consistent with evidence that there are separate
cortico-cortical pathways linking these prefrontal areas to distinct regions in the temporal
lobe, with anterior left inferior frontal cortex linked to temporal pole regions associated
with semantic memory, but the posterior regions connected to temporoparietal regions
involved in auditory processing and speech perception, while a further set of reciprocal
connections between the anterior and posterior left inferior frontal cortical areas allows the
integration of semantic and phonological information.
4. These findings involve systemic effects of tryptophan. Using a procedure that allowed
selective depletion of serotonin in the prefrontal cortex in the marmoset, Clarke and
colleagues (2004) showed that depletion of prefrontal serotonin produced perseverative
responding in a serial visual discrimination reversal task (with no misleading feedback
trials). Notably, this perseverative responding was not accompanied by difficulties in
learning new discriminations postoperatively, and the animals still showed intact discrimi-
nation for stimulus pairs learned preoperatively.
5. Intriguingly, there were also both individual differences and between-trial differences in
whether the activity during the delay period reflected the initial cue stimulus throughout
(a form of retrospective coding, holding the cue stimulus in mind throughout the delay) or
Note s t o pag e s 3 8 2 – 4 0 8 631
if, instead, there was a switch close to the time of the probe stimulus, anticipating the
“correct” associate (a form of prospective coding, representing the anticipated probe
stimulus). These results suggest that this methodology might also provide a potentially
important means of assessing individual differences in strategy use that does not rely only
on self-report.
Chapter 9
1. More specifically, the conceptual topography theory of Simmons and Barsalou (2003)
combines the idea of convergence zones with the “similarity-in-topography principle,”
according to which the proximity of two neurons coding a given conjunction of features or
properties increases with the similarity of the features they conjoin—such that nearby con-
junction neurons code for similar combinations of features. In the theory, besides modality-
specific convergence zones (postulated for visual, auditory, somatosensory, motor,
gustatory, olfactory, and also for emotional processing) and cross-modal convergence zones,
there are also (lower level) analytic and holistic convergence zones that conjoin conjunc-
tions of features (from feature maps) into analytical versus holistic conceptual properties.
2. A related finding, from our own work, is that individuals with semantic dementia show a dis-
proportionate impairment in episodic recognition memory under conditions when many cat-
egorically related items are shown during study (conditions that would benefit from the
extraction of the conceptual commonalities across items) but not when only one item per
category is shown (conditions where recognition memory is more strongly dependent on
item-specific recollection). We found that although patients with semantic dementia showed
significantly lower levels of recognition than did matched control participants for both stud-
ied items and categorically related lure items when many different exemplars from a given
semantic category had been presented, they showed more similar levels of recognition for
items for which only one exemplar had been presented, suggesting they were able to use item-
specific episodic recollection to support their performance to a similar degree as the control
participants (Simons et al., 2005; see Koutstaal & Schacter, 1997a, for additional discussion).
3. One notable exception is the fMRI study by Noppeney and Price (2004), discussed earlier in
this section, contrasting brain regions that were more activated for judgments relating to
abstract than to visual, auditory, or motor-movement judgments. Technical difficulties in
clearly imaging the temporal pole and other brain regions near tissue interfaces (such as air-
filled sinus/brain interfaces) in fMRI arise due to distortions from macroscopic susceptibility
effects, which become more pronounced at higher magnetic field strengths (Devlin et al.,
2000). It is of interest, then, that the study by Noppeney and Price (2004) involved a lower
magnetic field strength (2-Tesla) than used in the direct fMRI versus PET comparison of acti-
vations during a semantic task reported by Devlin et al. (2000, 3-Tesla) and also some other
recent investigations that likewise did not show semantically related modulations in ante-
rior temporal cortex (e.g., Pexman et al., 2007, 3-Tesla). In recent meta-analyses of both PET
and fMRI studies on text comprehension, using the “replicator dynamics” procedure devel-
oped by Neumann et al. (2005), Ferstl et al. (2007, p. 588) observed that “the most striking
result” was “the stability of activation” in the anterior temporal lobes: “In all four analyses,
which were in part based on different studies from different laboratories using different
scanning methods, modalities, and materials, bilateral involvement of this region emerged.”
4. Compare with Tranel (2006, p. 9): “the structures involved in word retrieval, including inter-
mediary structures in left [temporal pole], are not conceptualized as rigid centers; rather,
they are seen as flexible, probability-driven system components [. . .] I contend that in most
individuals, convergence zones involved in various classes of naming tasks are likely to be
found in the same large-scale convergence region of the brain—for example, in left [tempo-
ral pole] in the case of unique names. However, I would not expect that microscale conver-
gence zones would be found in equal sites across individuals. Depending on factors such as
the exact nature of the stimulus, task demands, and the nature of a particular individual’s
632 N O T E S T O PA G E S 408–470
abilities (such as special expertise with certain classes of items), the same task might engage
different convergence zones across relatively comparable individuals.”
5. Grabner et al. (2007) also found a hemispheric effect (right > left) in the upper alpha
frequency band (10–12 Hz), but this effect was not modulated by the self-reported original-
ity of the generated ideas. Thus, there may be higher event-related synchrony in this upper
alpha frequency band in the right cerebral hemisphere during divergent thinking more
generally (rather than especially during the generation of novel ideas).
6. Notably, the momentary lapses of attention were also associated with reduced stimulus-
linked activity in visual processing regions (bilateral inferior occipital cortex), suggesting
that the brief lapses of attention, linked to a reduction in top-down biases signaling to the
sensory cortices, may also result in comparatively low quality representations of stimuli
that are relevant to the task (see also Greicius & Menon, 2004; Smallwood et al., 2009), and
again suggesting a way in which we really do, “think with our senses.”
7. The “somatic marker” hypothesis of A. Damasio (1994) is an important early precursor
within this broad class of accounts that links bodily awareness to social functioning;
however, as noted by Hakeem and colleagues (2009) the more recent accounts place greater
emphasis on the specialized circuitry found within the frontal insular and anterior
cingulate cortices.
8. A third system, the fight/flight system, is not discussed here.
Chapter 10
1. It is important to note that although brain plasticity is often linked to beneficial or positive
outcomes, and such positive effects are the focus in this chapter, not all plasticity is advanta-
geous. Plasticity also may have negative consequences, as in cases of repetitive strain injuries
or repetitive motion injuries and in focal hand dystonia. The conditions that might lead to
negative consequences were clearly delineated by Byl and colleagues (also see Quartarone,
Siebner, & Rothwell, 2006; Wang, Merzenich, Sameshima, & Jenkins, 1995): “In the com-
petitive cortical processes that underly changes induced in learning, the dynamic network
machinery interprets each not-precisely-simultaneous input source as separate and differ-
ent. At the same time, the normal operations of this cortical plasticity machinery can also
lead to degraded representations in the more artificial input circumstances in which afferent
activities are (1) highly repetitive, (2) highly spatially stereotyped, (3) synchronously engag-
ing normally differentiated sensory feedback inputs, and (4) cognitively important, e.g.,
delivered in an attended behavior” (Byl, Merzenich, & Jenkins, 1996, p. 509, original italics).
In an animal learning analog, these researchers demonstrated that two adult New World
owl monkeys that were extensively trained on a repetitive handgrip task developed a move-
ment control disorder. Electrophysiological mapping of the representations of the hand
within the primary somatosensory cortex of the monkeys following the extended repetitive
training showed that the hand representation was markedly degraded; for example, cortical
representations of the skin on the hand were dedifferentiated such that their receptive fields
were 10 to 20 times larger than normal, and there were many receptive fields that emerged
that extended across the entire surface of a digit or across two or more digits. Based on
these and related findings, these researchers suggest that successful treatment of repetitive
strain injuries may require “learning-based restoration of differentiated representations of
sensory feedback information from the hand” (p. 508, emphasis added). As observed later
in this chapter with respect to the high levels of acquired visual-spatial navigational exper-
tise of London taxi drivers (see note 2), plasticity in the hippocampus, involving a shift in
the relative distribution of grey matter volume from anterior to mid-posterior hippocam-
pus, may also be associated with decrements in acquiring other forms of novel visuospatial
and associative information.
2. Additional findings suggest that the reorganization observed in highly expert taxi drivers
may carry with it some cognitive costs, specifically with respect to the ability to acquire and
Note s t o pag e s 4 7 0 – 4 8 7 633
retrieve new visuospatial and associative information—functions that may particularly

recruit anterior hippocampus. Compared with controls, London taxi drivers showed reduced
learning on object-place and word-pair associative tasks and also, in two separate studies,
significantly reduced delayed recall of a complex geometrical figure (the Rey-Osterrieth
Complex Figure; Maguire et al., 2006; Woollett & Maguire, 2009).
3. See He et al. 2009, for evidence that formerly illiterate Chinese speaking adults who learned
to read 100 Chinese characters, or more, showed enhanced activity in the presumed visual
word form area of left lateral fusiform cortex during reading, whereas before learning to
read this region showed no evidence of script-related selectivity. As noted by He and
colleagues, these findings point to the highly adaptive character of the human brain;
additionally—given that training adults who were illiterate to read led the same anatomical
region to become sensitive to written scripts as is found in individuals who learn to read
much earlier in development—these findings suggest that this region “must have intrinsic
properties that are especially suited for the processing of visual written scripts.”
4. Notably, although the concept of brain reserve capacity is often applied to aging and age-
related dementia, this broad construct is not limited to these domains, but is relevant to a
wide range of conditions that may affect cognitive functioning, such as acquired immune
deficiency syndrome or AIDS (e.g., Basso & Bornstein, 2000; Satz et al., 1993; R. A. Stern
et al., 1996). For example, although patients in the late stages of the illness associated with
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection are likely to show cognitive deficits, across
disease status not all individuals show parallel cognitive difficulties, and cognitive impair-
ment is more likely to emerge in individuals with lower cerebral reserve scores (Pereda et al.,
2000), defined (R. A. Stern et al., 1996) as below the median of the sample on a combined
measure of educational level, vocabulary knowledge and occupational achievement.
5. J. M. Logan et al. (2002) also suggest that the relatively nonselective activation in frontal
cortical regions observed in older adults, including greater bilateral involvement than is
found in younger adults, might arise from a failure to resolve competition among brain
regions. In younger adults, tracing the emergence of the activations across time suggests
that multiple regions may be initially activated (e.g., both left and right BA 6/44), but then
activity becomes more selective to those regions most appropriate for task performance
(Konishi, Donaldson, & Buckner, 2001; J. M. Logan et al., 2002). Strong fMRI evidence that
decreases in the performance of older individuals on working memory tasks are specifically
related to impaired top-down suppression of irrelevant information (rather than deficits in
the enhancement of task-relevant information) was provided by Gazzaley, Cooney, Rissman,
& D’Esposito (2005).
6. Perhaps not surprisingly, there nonetheless were still age-related differences in response
times, with older adults responding on average more slowly than younger adults. Although
this might still point to a group difference in levels of task difficulty, the key findings
described in the next paragraph remained when response times were included in the
analyses as a covariate, and the regions that showed the posterior-to-anterior effect did not
overlap with those that showed significant response time effects.
7. Although normal aging has many effects on cognition and brain function, one review singled
out the following neurobiological changes of normal aging that may contribute to the risk
for Alzheimer’s disease symptoms: “loss of neurons, loss of synapses, decrease in the size of
the dendritic domain of neurons, reduction in neuronal number and size in the nucleus
basalis of Mynert, and decrease in cortical [acetylcholine]” (Cummings et al., 1998, p. 89).
8. For example, examination of the early linguistic ability of participants in one well-known
longitudinal study on Alzheimer’s disease conducted with Catholic nuns (Riley et al., 2005;
Snowdon et al., 1996) provided evidence that higher linguistic ability at an early age
was associated with a lower incidence of cognitive impairment and of neuropathological
measures associated with Alzheimer’s disease at the ages of 75 to 95. A measure of
“idea density,” derived from autobiographies written by the participants when they were,
on average, about 22 years of age, was significantly related to both later life measures of
634 N O T E S T O PA G E S 487–518
cognitive function (e.g., higher idea density was associated with less cognitive impairment)
and several neuropathological measures. Lower idea density was associated with lower brain
weight, a higher degree of cerebral atrophy, more severe neurofibrillary pathology, and an
increased likelihood of meeting neuropathologic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease. Particularly
given the relative similarity of the adult lifestyles of this population these very early differ-
ences argue that factors “responsible for poor performance earlier in life contribute to both
levels of education and to the subsequent development of impairment” (Milgram et al.,
2006, p. 356).
9. An additional source of evidence for the potential protective effects of education derives
from the consideration of other conditions that may lead to dementia, such as AIDS.
Satz et al. (1993) examined the effects of educational level in sero-positive men on neuro-
psychological function. Approximately 10% of the cohort had 12 grades of education or less,
whereas the remainder of the cohort had higher education. Cognitive abnormality was
defined as performance that was 2 or more standard deviations below the mean for the total
group on at least one of five neuropsychological tests (Grooved Pegboard, Verbal Fluency,
Digit Span, Symbol Digit Modalities, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning). Whereas the perfor-
mance of 38% of those with no more than 12 years of education met this impairment
criterion, fewer than 17% of those in the higher educational level group showed impair-
ments of this magnitude, and this effect remained after statistically controlling for the
possible confounding effects related to such factors as age, race/ethnicity, depression, prior
drug history, and learning disability.
10. See also note 8 in this chapter for evidence relating to this issue derived from the longi-
tudinal study on Alzheimer’s disease conducted with Catholic nuns (Riley et al., 2005;
Snowdon et al., 1996).
11. The index of flexible thinking was based on seven measures, including: performance on an
embedded figures task; two indices from a projective task (the Draw-A-Person test); the
judged adequacy of the participant’s responses to questions asking (a) for arguments for
and against allowing cigarette commercials on television, and (b) factors to consider, from a
business perspective, in choosing between two potential locations for a hamburger stand;
the overall number of “agree” responses during the interview; and interviewer ratings of
the individual’s intelligence. Nearly all of these measures include a strong subjective compo-
nent and are susceptible to biases from the examiner.
12. Presumably because education strongly correlated with the substantive complexity of the
occupations achieved, when education was included as a covariate, substantive complexity
was no longer predictive.
13. In a Japanese 10-year longitudinal study, cognitive decline in men as assessed by a short-
term visual memory test was also predicted by occupation of longest duration, with individ-
uals in blue-collar occupations showing greater decline on this measure than shown by
those in white-collar occupations (Deeg et al., 1992).
14. Relatively specific positive transfer benefits from the frequent engagement in solving cross-
word puzzles to a task of anagram solution were reported by Witte and Freund (1995,
Experiment 2): Whereas for infrequent solvers of crosswords, younger adults’ anagram
solution performance significantly exceeded that of older adults, there was no age differ-
ence in anagram solution performance for younger versus older adults who reported engag-
ing in crossword puzzles once a week or more.
15. Recent work using a chronic stress paradigm with rats (Dias-Ferreira et al., 2009) has also
shown that chronic stress may induce changes in fronto-striatal organization, such that
stressed animals showed atrophy of the associative corticostriatal circuits but hypertrophy of
the circuits running through the sensorimotor striatum. Chronic stress biased the animals
to respond on the basis of habitual strategies and decreased their ability to flexibly alter
their habitual behavior when the consequences of their behavior (e.g., a change from
a palatable reward to a degraded reward) changed, even though both control and stressed
animals showed that they preferred the nondegraded food. As the authors note, “the more
Note s t o pag e s 5 1 8 – 5 3 6 635
rapid shift to habits after chronic stress could be a coping mechanism to improve perfor-
mance of well-trained behaviors, while increasing the bioavailability to acquire and process
new information, which seems essential for adaptation to complex environments. [. . .]
However, when such objectives need to be re-updated in order to make the most appropri-
ate choice, the inability of stressed subjects to shift from habitual strategies to goal-directed
behavior might be highly detrimental” (Dias-Ferreira et al., 2009, p. 625). If chronic stress
similarly biases cognitive processing toward habitual or automatic responding in humans,
whether children or adults, this might also contribute to diminished mental agility. For the
clear detrimental effects of a preference for what is familiar under short-term sources of
pressure, such as time pressure, or pressure to reach a performance benchmark, see Litt
et al. (2011).
Chapter 11
1. Effects of enriched environments on the adult primate brain have also been demonstrated.
In particular, Kozorovitskiy et al. (2005) found that moving adult marmosets (New World
monkeys) from standard laboratory conditions to a complex environment for 1 month was
associated with increased dendritic spine density, dendritic length, and dendritic complex-
ity of neurons in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. This study did not, however,
include behavioral measures, so the extent to which these brain changes in the primate
influenced cognitive-behavioral performance is unknown.
2. A very early, but clearly less controlled, demonstration of the increased flexible problem-
solving abilities of animals raised in an enriched compared to an impoverished environment
was reported, in 1947, by D. O. Hebb. Hebb compared the on-the-spot problem-solving abil-
ity of 25 normal rats reared in laboratory cages, to that of 7 rats that were reared at home as
pets, with much of their time spent outside of their cages. He reported that there was a
“definite [. . .] superiority of the group with the greater infant experience.” Based on these
and related data, Hebb reached two important conclusions: “1. There is a lasting effect of
infant experience on the problem-solving of the adult rat. 2. This difference may not be
detectable in rote learning scores, but appears when a method is used that is more like a
human intelligence test: that is, with an index based on a large number of problems which
some normal animals solve promptly” (Hebb, 1947, p. 307).
3. Most intriguingly, these researchers (Kolb et al., 1998) observed a similar dissociation of
changes in dendritic length versus dendritic spine density in an environmental enrichment
study in which they lesioned the hippocampus of rats on one side of the brain (unilateral
lesions), but left the hippocampus on the other side of the brain intact. Whereas the hip-
pocampus that was still intact showed both enrichment-related increases in dendritic length
and an increase in spine density, the lesioned hippocampus showed increases in dendritic
length together with a decrease in spine density, as though the lesioned portion of the brain
was responding more like the immature hippocampus of a younger animal.
4. These positive results, reflecting improved problem solving in a novel context, contrast with
findings reported by K. R. Light et al. (2008) in which, although repeatedly exposing
juvenile or young-adult mice to novel environments (e.g., 12 different novel environments
for 20 minutes per day over a period of 14 days) did promote the animals’ subsequent
exploratory behaviors (e.g., in an elevated plus maze), novel environmental exposure had
no effect on subsequent measures of the animals’ general learning performance (assessed by
a battery of five tasks, including Lashley maze, passive avoidance, spatial water maze, odor
discrimination, and associative fear conditioning). These researchers further found
that repeated exposure to a single different environment (apart from the home cage) also
bolstered exploratory behaviors, but likewise did not influence general learning. It is possi-
ble that, with more extensive or prolonged exposures to the novel environments, effects on
general learning might have been found. Additionally, however, one notable difference
between the two paradigms involves whether animals were reinforced for variable behavior;
636 N O T E S T O PA G E S 536–551
reinforcement of variable behavior may have imposed working memory demands on the
animals, as successful variation of responding will be facilitated by keeping track of, and
updating, information about recently emitted responses (Neuringer, 2004; also cf. Mercado
et al., 1998).
In more recent work, K. R. Light et al. (2010) found that training mice in a task placing
strong demands on working memory (navigating two eight-arm radial arm mazes that
shared common extramaze visual cues for reward) did promote general cognitive perfor-
mance. Furthermore, this beneficial outcome was attenuated (but not eliminated) if the
working memory training posed fewer demands on selective attention, because the two
mazes each had separate, nonoverlapping, rather than shared, extramaze cues. These
findings provide important convergent support for earlier findings, obtained with human
participants, and discussed in later sections of this chapter, that working memory training
can lead to generalized improvements on never-trained tasks, such as measures of fluid
reasoning. Based on other (in progress) work, Light et al. (2010) speculate that the working
memory training may have up-regulated the expression of a cluster of genes related to
dopamine signaling in the prefrontal cortex.
5. As developed in the final section of this chapter, in our lab (Tranter & Koutstaal, 2008), we
also earlier demonstrated significant improvements on a measure of fluid reasoning in older
adults; specifically, experimental assignment to 10–12 weeks of increased engagement in
novel home and in-lab activities led to a significant pre-post increase in Cattell Culture Fair
scores, compared with the pre-post difference found in a social contact control group.
6. See, for example, Draganski et al.’s (2006) research examining structural changes in the
brain arising from medical students’ intensive preparations for medical examinations.
7. Blocking BDNF action also prevented an exercise-induced increase in CREB mRNA levels
and in synapsin I mRNA levels. Vaynman et al. (2004) therefore suggest that exercise might
lead to enhanced memory consolidation by facilitating the expression of CREB, which is
believed to be essential for long-term memory formation, and also (through synapsin I) by
boosting reserves of synaptic vesicles. See Vaynman et al. (2004) for additional details.
8. Nonetheless, a meta-analysis of a range of cognitive training interventions in Alzheimer’s
disease provides tentative grounds for supposing that cognitive training also may be benefi-
cial in such cases (Sitzer, Twamley, & Jeste, 2006). Interventions that involved so-termed
“restorative strategies,” such as general cognitive stimulation (e.g., problem-solving, reading,
engaging in creative activities) or computerized visual-spatial drills were found to be more
effective (average effect size d of 0.54) than were “compensatory strategies” (average effect
size d of 0.36) aimed at circumventing impairments (e.g., through taking reminder notes).
Although the beneficial effects of cognitive training were greater in studies that did not use
an attention-placebo control condition than in those that did, this may itself actually under-
score the benefits of increased cognitive stimulation, as in these studies the attention-pla-
cebo control condition participants may also have benefited from the modest increase in
stimulation they received, and this could act to attenuate differences between the groups.
Animal work using transgenic mice also broadly suggests that increased environmental
stimulation may be beneficial in dementia: Compared with standard-housed mice, trans-
genic mice co-expressing familial Alzheimer’s disease-linked APP and PS1 variants that were
housed in enriched environments showed reduced cerebral B-amyloid peptide levels and
reduced amyloid deposits, and selective up-regulation in levels of transcripts encoded by
genes associated with (among others) learning and memory and neurogenesis. See Lazarov
et al. (2005) for details.
9. See Willis and Nesselroade (1990), for a study that meets some of these concerns.
Unfortunately, however, the training benefits they report from multiple phases of cognitive
training are confounded with specific practice on the materials used at pre- and posttest to
assess treatment gain.
10. One noteworthy study that involved training older adults in the method of loci over a
5-week period not only found significant behavioral improvements but also found, using
Note s t o pag e s 5 5 1 – 5 6 3 637
magnetic resonance spectroscopy, that training was accompanied by significant biochemical

changes in the hippocampus. Compared with the control group, the experimental group
showed elevation of creatine and choline signals in the hippocampus; in addition, those
participants who had lower neurometabolites at baseline, and were at risk for neural
dysfunction, demonstrated the largest increases (Valenzuela et al., 2003).
11. Significant improvements in symbol substitution performance also were reported in a
recent randomized controlled study in which 124 community-dwelling seniors, aged 70 to
86 years, were assigned to cognitive training versus control conditions—but where the
intervention, over 6 months, simply involved solving basic problems in reading and arithmetic
(Uchida & Kawashima, 2008). In this study, significant improvements also were observed
on a frontal assessment battery, that included subtests related to abstract conceptualiza-
tion (similarities), mental flexibility (letter fluency), motor programming, sensitivity to
interference, and inhibitory control. Some broad transfer benefits for memory performance
also were reported by Mahncke, Bronstone, and Merzenich (2006), following an intensive
training task that focused on the acoustic organization of speech, with tasks such as syllable
discrimination and spoken sentence completion.
12. See C. S. Green, Pouget, and Bavelier (2010) for evidence that improved probabilistic infer-
ence—involving more efficient use of sensory evidence, including across the visual and audi-
tory modalities—is likely one of the routes that supports generalized positive transfer of
action video game experience. As these authors note (p. 1577), “Unlike standard learning
paradigms, which have a highly specific solution, there is no such specific solution in action
video games because situations are rarely, if ever, repeated. Thus, the only characteristics
that can be learned are how to rapidly and accurately learn the statistics on the fly and how
to accumulate this evidence more efficiently.” They further speculate concerning three pos-
sible neural mechanisms that might support such improved use of evidence, across modali-
ties, including the possibility that areas implicated in evidence accumulation might be under
the influence of shared fronto-parietal networks.
13. S. Kaplan (1995) differentiates between “hard fascination”—such as that which might be
invoked by watching automobile racing—and soft fascination, which might typically be elic-
ited by certain natural scenes and objects, such as leaves or water or grasses.
14. See Ulrich (1984) for a pioneering study investigating the effects of having a window facing
a natural scene with trees, versus a window facing a plain brick wall, on postoperative recov-
ery from surgery. Surgical patients with a “tree view” had shorter postoperative hospital
stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses’ notes, and—on days 2
through 5 post surgery—took fewer moderate and strong pain doses (and more mild doses)
than did closely matched patients in similar rooms that had, however, only a “wall view”
from their windows. Ulrich has been in the forefront in arguing for the broader physiologi-
cal, affective, and cognitive restorative effects of nature. As we saw in Chapter 6, partly
based in psycho-evolutionary theory (e.g., Parsons et al., 1998; Ulrich, 1993; Ulrich et al.,
1991, 2008) and E. O. Wilson’s (1984) concept of biophilia, Ulrich proposes that, often begin-
ning with “immediate, unconsciously triggered and initiated emotional responses” (1991, p.
207), natural settings favorable to ongoing well-being and survival (e.g., a savannah-like
area or a setting with water), rapidly help to offset or counter stressors, shifting us toward a
more positively toned emotional state, counteracting stress-induced mobilization of the
sympathetic nervous system (e.g., elevated blood pressure and electrodermal activity) and
influencing attention, subsequent conscious processing, and behavior. More rapid physio-
logical recovery, and also recuperation of self-rated affect, from a laboratory-induced stres-
sor after exposure to nature scenes than to urban scenes was shown by Ulrich et al. (1991).
Also see Elings (2006) for an overview of (mostly preliminary) studies that have examined
the cognitive, physical, and psychosocial effects of working with plants in various groups.
15. Generalized performance improvements on a matrices reasoning task (Raven’s Colored
Progressive Matrices) were also reported following computerized training in working
memory by Klingberg, Forssberg, and Westerberg (2002; see earlier discussion of the work
638 N O T E S T O PA G E S 563–602
by Olesen, Westerberg, & Klingberg, 2004). In the Klingberg et al. study the participants
were children between the ages of 7 and 15 years who had been diagnosed with attention-
deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Generalization of training benefits to tests of abstract rea-
soning in these experiments and also in a further experiment using the Advanced
Progressive Matrices with adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Experiment
2 of Klingberg et al., 2002) may reflect common demands on prefrontal networks for the
control of attention and of working memory. Although matrices are only one form of fluid
intelligence measure, they are a highly central measure; the across-study and across-popula-
tion improvements on this measure as a result of training in attention and working memory
argue against conceptions of “fluid intelligence” as a fixed quantity; rather, fluid intelligence
is also shaped by ongoing environmental stimulation and challenges (cf. C. Schooler, 1998).
16. Luria (1965), for instance, provides several examples of the directive meaning of words fail-
ing to influence the child’s behavior (e.g., to “take off the ring” rather than to “put on the
ring”), even though the child does “know” the meaning of the words—but the words con-
flict with the child’s own immediate motor activity, sensory input, or previously repeated
motor actions. He observes that “The directive role of the word at an early age is maintained
only if the word does not conflict with the inert connections which arose at an earlier
instruction or which began with the child’s own activity” (p. 353), and that phrases such as
“Don’t press the ball” have both a semantic aspect (pointing to abstaining from pressing)
and an immediate impulsive impact (that conflicts with abstaining from pressing, and
instead, leads to pressing). Only gradually does the semantic aspect become sufficiently
strong to counteract the impulsive impact; often, at this point, and typically at the age of
about 4 or 4½ years, “external speech becomes superfluous” (p. 362).
17. These social group meetings helped to maintain the control participants’ interest in the
study and also increased their familiarity with the testing location, thereby providing a
tighter and fairer comparison for the experimental group than would a simple pre-post test
only comparison group. Notably, once participants had committed to the research, there
was very little attrition from the study, with only one participant being lost from the experi-
mental group.
Chapter 12
1. In his autobiography, A Jazz Odyssey: My Life in Jazz and in interviews, the jazz pianist Oscar
Peterson (2002) noted the vast potential for involvement in illicit drugs and excessive alco-
hol use among the musicians, particularly given the many weeks that they needed to be on
the road, away from home, with accompanying periods of loneliness, boredom, and so on.
He also pointed to his passion for photography as helping him to avoid more dangerous
diversions—even traveling with his own darkroom, to which he often would retire to
unwind after the intense late-night gigs.
2. See, for example, P. J. Taylor et al. (2010), for findings showing that, in a group of psychotic
outpatients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, even after controlling for depressive
symptoms and trait anxiety, more specific autobiographical memory was predictive of
increased suicide attempts, and that the attempters also found a greater proportion of spe-
cific memories currently distressing. Also see Swales, Williams, and Wood (2001) for evidence
that, within an adolescent clinical sample, repeatedly retrieving specific memories—giving
the same specific memory to multiple cues, and often involving a traumatic memory—was
significantly associated with a history of parasuicide.
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Index
Note: Page numbers followed by f, n, or t indicate content found in figures, notes, and tables, respectively.
abduction, 22, 142, 622n4 in condition-action productions, 95

absorption, 94, 214, 307–13, 311f construals, benefits and costs of, 180–84
abstract content in iCASA framework, 179, 190, 598–606
computational characteristics of, 89, 89t identification
domains and, 12–13 defined, 40, 91
flexibility and, 79–89, 85t, 89t, 344–52, 345f, environmental and contextual determinants
347f–348f of, 101–3, 106–7
in iCASA framework, 11–15 principles guiding, 102
importance of, 49 self-affirmation and, 583
individual differences in emphasis on, 87–89, 89t task difficulty and, 180–81
prefrontal cortex and, 338–52, 345f, 347f–348f mental agility and
problem solving and, 79–89, 85t, 89t construal theory and, 184–85
representational, 11–15 hierarchical models of action control and
abstraction. See also integrated Controlled- motivation, 180–90
Automatic, Specific-Abstract framework intentions and, 185–90
action concepts and, 616n2, 630n2 learning to repeat v. learning to vary and,
bootstrapping, 80, 83–87 220–33
in brain bases of conceptual representation, moderate and changing levels of control,
389–410, 396f, 402f–403f, 631n3 190–214
excessive, mindfulness training dislodging, overview of, 179
91–98 self-regulation and, 184–85
frontal cortex and, 338–43 summarized, 233–34
in functional fixedness, 132 perceptual simulations of, 621n3
in James, William, 49–50, 122–23 self-affirmation and, 268, 583
policy, 342 thinking with senses guided by
relational priming and, 116 epistemic, in physical world, 163–66, 598–99
self-affirmation and, 576 eyes guiding mind, 147–52, 147f
simulation and, 621n1 gestures and, 154–61
temporal, 342 several cues leading astray in, 152–54,
abstract memory 153f–154f
chronic worry and, 68–71 thought and emotion melded with, 307–13, 311f,
depression and, 43–44, 60–68, 61f, 67f 623n10
impaired problem solving and, 60–71, 67f, 617n6 video games, 554–59
importance of, 54 active reserve. See cognitive reserve
overreliance on, 60–71, 61f, 67f active tasks, resting states between, 428–39, 438f
access paradox, 112, 115 ACT-R model. See Adaptive Control of Thought–
across-system interactions, in brain bases of mental Rational model
agility, 374–86, 378f, 383f adaptability
action as brain characteristic, 633n3
abstract content and, 12–13 of controlled processing, 45
boundaries of, 8 in creative problem solving , 112–17
concepts, 33, 598–606, 630n2 discontinuity in, 471
739
740 INDEX
adaptability (Cont’d) interventions for, 636n8

in movement between levels, 4 leisure activities influencing , 499–505
novelty and, 445–51, 448f occupational factors in, 498
openness to experience and, 269–75 risk, 633n7
threshold in, 471 social interactions and, 494–96
adaptive categorization ambiguity, intolerance of, 285–91, 628n7
abstract, rule- or category-based knowledge and, amodal representations
79–89, 85t, 89t brain bases of, 395–96, 399, 404–5, 408, 410
highly detailed specific instances and, 79–89, defined, 145
85t, 89t ampliative reason, 22, 142
physical embodiment and, 81 amygdala, 34, 195, 340, 438f, 439–40, 459, 603
adaptive coding model, 350–51 anagrams, 415–17, 427, 634n14
Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational (ACT-R) analogical thinking
model adaptively creative problem solving and,
automaticity and, 36–39 112–17
condition-action productions in, 95 brain bases of, 410–14, 411f
extensions of, 21, 38–39 categorization contributing to, 112–13
adaptive learning, 269–75 children and, 84
aerobic exercise, 512–513, 533, 546–48 relational priming related to, 44, 115–16
affect. See also emotions in remote analogies, 82–83, 619n14
in broad minded affective coping procedure, 606 subcognitive processes in, 123–24
defined, 292 thinking with senses benefitting, 144–47
in dynamic affect model, 252–53 verbal, as relational reasoning , 413–14
heuristic, 19, 291–92 in visual-spatial analogical problems, 75
intuitive processing related to, 19–20, 20f Analytical-Rational v. Intuitive-Experiential
pain and stress influenced by, 253–55 thinking styles, 15, 613n2
agile programming developers, 629n6 analytical thinking
agility. See mental agility; physical agility possible costs of, 111, 308, 319–20, 322
aging combined with nonanalytical, 107–11
Alternative Uses Task and, 131 concrete construal facilitates, 104
Alzheimer’s disease risk and, 633n7 self-regulation and, 203–04
bilateral activity increasing with, 475–78 anchoring, 246
cascade view of, 484–85, 484f animal research See nonhuman animals
common-cause view of, 484–85, 484f anterior cingulate cortex
decline-compensation view of, 484, 484f dorsal, 434–35, 577–78
depression and, 596 role of, 368, 370, 388, 424, 434–36
hippocampus and, 469–70 anterior insula (AI)
leisure activities and, 499–504, 596 role of, 35f, 47, 434–37
limited plasticity with, 536 saliency maps and, 47, 436
load-shift model of, 482–84, 483f sentient self and, 34, 436–37, 438f
natural environment and, 560 anterior superior temporal gyrus, 422–24
PASA and, 479–80 anterior temporal lobes, 398, 403–6
plasticity and, 549–51 anterior-to-posterior gradient, in prefrontal cortex,
protective factors, 486 354, 356, 357f–358f, 359, 437, 575
recollection training and, 551–54 anterior-to-posterior interactions, in brain bases of
scaffolding theory of, 485–86, 485f mental agility, 374–86, 378f, 383f, 388
agreeableness, 269 anticipation, 563, 630n5
AI. See anterior insula anxiety
AJ, memory of, 55, 58, 67, 616n3 default network and, 435
allostatic load, 519, 589–91 exercise benefitting, 443–44
Alternative Uses Task, 72–75, 118, 120–21, in generalized anxiety disorder, 69, 288
371–73, 618n11 and insight problem solving , 416–17
age differences in, 131 trait, 286–87
positive emotion influencing, 244, 246 appetitive behaviors, 228
spontaneous flexibility and, 371–73 approach orientation
Alzheimer’s disease avoidance orientation v., 11, 388, 451–60, 455f
dementia in, 487–94, 489f, 491f, 493f, 498–505, BAS aligned with, 453
510, 513 artists
early linguistic abilities and, 633n8 goals of, 332–34
I n dex 741
making v. finding by, 29–30, 327, 332–34, 595 habit-based, 91–98, 617n4
motivation and, 220, 230–31, 234–37 hierarchies of gist and, 39–41
works completed by, 624n1 “if, then” conditional rule and, 37–39, 95, 309
associative learning, 367 instance theory of, 35–37
Associative v. Rule-based processing, 16 levels of specificity and, 91–98
attention in object naming and identifying , 135–36
BIS and, 452 in remembering intentions, 187–90
concentrative v. receptive, 93, 121–22 repetitive, 601–6
conceptual, 451 strategic automatization, 190, 600
creativity and, 44, 117–22, 614n5 in theory of event coding , 36–37, 367
deliberation without, 313–14 verbal fluency and, 372–73
directed, 559 word association and, 73
ego depletion and, 203 worry and, 618n10
executive, 375 automatic optimism, 291
in focused attention meditation, 93 automatic writing, 49–50, 175–76, 616n11
importance of, 42 avoidance orientation
restoration, 201, 559–62, 583, 588, 592–94 approach orientation v., 11, 388, 451–60, 455f
training BIS aligned with, 453
in children, 562–67 avoidance theory of worry, 68–69, 288
direct effortful, 592–94
experimental interventions, 554–59, 562–67
flexibility improved by, 562–67 balanced time perspective, 199–200
less directed, 592–94 BAS. See Behavioral Activation System
oscillatory range and, 592–94 basic-level naming advantage, 401–2, 403f
video gaming and, 554–59 BDNF. See brain-derived neurotrophic factor
pupil dilation in, 279 behavior
unfocused, 91, 117–22, 315 appetitive, 228
voluntary, 559 consumatory, 228
Attention Network Task, 561 correlational structure of, 342–43
attunement, 68, 132, 161, 410, 579, 601 data-driven, 325
auditory association cortex, 391 foraging, 225
autism, 616n1 instrumental structure of, 342–43
autobiographical memory intentions differing from, 260
AJ’s, 55, 58, 67, 616n3 plasticity influencing , 463–68, 466f
default network and, 431 suicidal, 62, 602–3, 638n2
elements of, 33 variability of
hierarchical structure of, 60–62, 61f controlled, 227–29
overly general, 60–63, 66–68, 67f in natural selection, 226–27
suicidal behavior and, 62, 602–3, 638n2 reinforced, 45, 222–24, 227–29
automatic cognitive modes. See also integrated Behavioral Activation System (BAS), 452–58, 455f
Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract behavioral cusp, 598
framework behavioral engagement, emotions and, 239–40, 240f
ACT-R model and, 36–39 behavioral extinction, 227–29, 626n13
benefits of, 21–22 Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), 452–58, 455f
in controlled-automatic distinction, 54, 139–41 belief
convergent theoretical perspectives on, 35–41 epistemological, 283–85, 329, 599
deautomatization and, 95–96 flexibility, 628n2
deliberate v., 15, 318–22 Big Five personality dimensions, 192–93, 627n3.
ease of construing objects and events at different See also five-factor model of personality
levels of specificity and bilateral activity, increasing with aging, 475–78
effects of emotion on categorization, 105–7 bilingualism, 507–13, 509f
environmental and contextual determinants of BIS. See Behavioral Inhibition System
action identification, 101–3, 106–7 blood glucose levels, 206–7
overview of, 101 body-mind training , 97–98
psychological or temporal distance effects on bootstrapping
construal level, 103–7 abstraction, 80, 83–87
flexibility and, 21 flexibility in noticing and, 144
fuzzy trace theory and, 36, 39–40 bottlenecks, in processing, 36, 38
goals and, 21, 304–5, 617n4 Braille reading, 464–65
742 INDEX
brain. See also specific structures broaden and build theory, 242, 250, 278, 280, 317,
activity, nature of, 388 369, 607
adaptive character of, 633n3 broad minded affective coping procedure, 606
bases, of mental agility burnout, 588–89
across-system interactions, 374–86, 378f,
383f, 388
of adaptive responding to novelty, 445–51, 448f candle problem, 127, 244, 621n2
of amodal representations, 395–96, 399, cardiovascular fitness, 512–13, 546–48
404–5, 408, 410 cascade architecture, 352–53, 353f
of analogical thought, 410–14, 411f cascade view, of aging , 484–85, 484f
anterior-to-posterior interactions, 374–86, categorical memory, overly abstract, 43–44, 60–68,
378f, 383f, 388 61f, 67f
approach v. avoidance, 11, 388, 451–60, 455f categorization
of conceptual representation, 389–410, 396f, adaptive
402f–403f abstract, rule- or category-based knowledge
fluid intelligence and, 374–86, 378f, 383f and, 79–89, 85t, 89t
goal neglect and, 374–86, 378f, 383f highly detailed specific instances and, 79–89,
implications, 579 85t, 89t
of insight, 417–18, 420–28, 421f, 423f physical embodiment and, 81
of intuition, 417–19 ad hoc or goal-derived, 71–72, 133
noradrenaline in, 414–17 analogical thinking and, 112–13
of oscillatory range, 439 flexible abstract representation of, 344–52, 345f,
overview of, 46–48, 337–38, 386–88, 460–61 347f–348f
of relational thought, 410–14, 411f in Halstead Category Test, 56
of resilience, 388, 439–45 microcategorization, 113
resting states and, 428–39, 438f negative emotion influencing , 451–52
spontaneity and, 388 positive emotion influencing , 105–7, 250,
of thinking with senses, 389–410, 396f, 451–52
402f–403f social, 327–28
working memory and, 374–86, 378f, 383f visual, by monkeys, 344–52, 345f, 347f–348f
bilateral activity, in older persons, 475–78 in weather-prediction task, 481
competition among regions, 633n5 in Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, 55–56, 138–39
conceptual knowledge locations in, 126, category-based knowledge
390–91 adaptive categorization and, 79–89, 85t, 89t
fluid reasoning correlates, 410–14, 411f cognitive fluency task requiring, 71–75
functional and connectivity mapping of, 30–35, overreliance on, 98–99
32f, 35f of recently experienced events, 78
paths, to mental agility category-based retrieval cost, 99, 620n4
bilingualism and multilingualism, 507–13, 509f Cattell Culture Fair test, 30, 75, 78, 375, 568–69
cognitively stimulating leisure activities and, central executive networks
499–506 default network interacting with, 34, 35f, 117,
environmental stimulation and, 486–504, 388, 433–35, 577–80
489f, 491f, 493f, 527–38, 530f, 532f, 534f functions of, 27–28, 67
experimental interventions, 539–69 neural mechanisms, 577–80
multidimensional interventions in community, salience networks interacting with, 25, 34,
521–25, 524f, 595–96 35f, 435
overview of, 462–63, 526–27, 569–72 children
physical exercise and, 512–13, 546–48 attention training in, 562–67
plasticity in, 463–86, 466f, 474f, 483f–485f with autism, 616n1
socioeconomic status and, 482, 513–21, 517f Child Attention Network Test for, 563–64
reserve exercise needed by, 585
cognitive reserve compared to, 473–74, 497 functional fixedness in, 127–31
compensation and, 471–86, 474f, 483f–485f naivety advantage and, 128–130
conditions related to, 633n4 poverty and, 514–21
passive models of, 472 recess and, 584–85
schematic rendering of, 474f rules acquisition by, 23–24
threshold in, 471–72 self-regulation by, 564–65
brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), 548 Tools of the Mind program for, 565–67
breadth-first strategy, 325–26 choking under pressure, 307–8
I n dex 743
chronic rumination. See rumination load-shift model of, 482–84, 483f

chronic worry, 14, 618n8 neurogenic view of, 480–81
abstract memory and, 68–71 PASA , 479–80
automatization and, 618n10 psychogenic view of, 480–81
avoidance theory of, 68–69, 288 thinking with senses and, 484–85
in images, 70–71 compound remote associates task, 121, 244–45,
intolerance of uncertainty v. ambiguity and, 415–16, 424
288–90 concentrative attention, receptive attention v., 93,
oscillatory range limited by, 71 121–22
reduced concreteness of representations in, concepts, 4, 136, 387–88
68–71 action, 33, 598–606, 630n2
treatment of, 288–89 automatic activation of, in relation to goals,
classification. See also categorization 304–5
exemplars and, 110–11 brain bases of representation, 389–410, 396f,
explicit instructions enhancing, 107–11 402f–403f
rules, 23–24 creative problem solving and, 598–606
clinical depression distributed-only view of, 395–97, 396f
aging and, 596 distributed-plus-hub view of, 395–97, 396f,
default network influencing, 433 399–400
environmental enrichment and, 596 interpenetration with perception, action,
exercise and, 443–44 motivation and emotion, 598–606
mindfulness training for, 92–93, 96 making new, 161–62
oscillatory range limited by, 71 repetitive automatic thoughts and, 601–6
overly abstract categorical memory and, 43–44, concreteness, 125, 617n6
60–68, 61f, 67f, 617n5 fading condition, 88
rumination and, 64–66, 93, 603–4 introduction condition, 88
stress influencing, 439–41 reduced, 68–71
therapeutic methods for, 68 of representations, 64–65, 65t, 68–71
thought content in, 14 confidence
cognition. See also thought overconfidence v. underconfidence, 291–98
contextually situated, 19 self-confidence, 627n2
emotion’s interplay with, 19, 451–60, 455f connectionist model, 401–4, 402f–403f
as internal activity, 125 connectivity and functional mapping, of brain,
need for, 280, 500 30–35, 32f, 35f
scaffolding theory of, 485–86, 485f connotation, 169
semantic, 408 conscientiousness, 269, 627n4
cognitive architecture models, 36–38 constrained flexibility, 416–17
Cognitive Complexity and Control Theory, 23–24 constraints
cognitive control. See control in nine-dot problem, 153–54, 153f–154f
cognitive fluency tasks, 71–75 relaxed, 149–52
cognitively stimulating leisure activities, 499–506 self-generation of, 235
cognitive misers, 137 undone, 153
cognitive reserve construals
brain reserve compared to, 473–74, 497 action, benefits and costs of, 180–84
capacity, 472 appropriateness of, 320
compensation and, 471–86, 474f, 483f–485f ease of construing objects and events at different
in healthy individuals, 472–73 levels of specificity and
testmanship and, 492, 493f effects of emotion on categorization, 105–7
cognits, 31, 33 environmental and contextual determinants of
cohort activation, of words, 167–69 action identification, 101–3, 106–7
common-cause view, of aging, 484–85, 484f overview of, 101
community, multidimensional interventions in, psychological or temporal distance effects on
521–25, 524f, 595–96 construal level, 103–7
compensation higher level, 620n6
bilateral activity in older persons, 475–78 lower level, 620n6, 621n7
brain reserve and, 471–86, 474f, 483f–485f motivation and, 184–85
in cascade view, 484–85, 484f self-affirmation and, 268
cognitive reserve and, 471–86, 474f, 483f–485f theory of, 103, 184–85
in decline-compensation view, 484, 484f context of discovery, context of justification v., 22
744 INDEX
contextually linked learning, 618n13 cortical maps, plasticity of, 463–68, 466f, 632n1
contrastive learning approach, 109 creativity
control. See also Adaptive Control of Thought– association horizons and, 415
Rational model; integrated Controlled- attention and, 44, 117–22, 614n6
Automatic, Specific-Abstract framework; biological bases of, 614n6
levels of control environmental enrichment and, 230
action, 180–90 everyday, 243
of behavioral variation, 227–29 executive networks–default mode interactions
continuum of, 4 influencing , 577–80
controlled-automatic distinction, 36–39, 54, failure and, 626n14
139–41 gating of stimuli and, 426–27
controlling of, 451–60, 455f hypomania influencing , 245–46
effortful importance of, 597–98
limits of, 21–22 mental agility distinguished from, 4, 5f, 29–30
motivation and, 194–98 mind popping and, 117–22
orienting sensitivity and, 273 motivation and, 217–20
stability of, 625n5 openness to experience and, 269–78, 628n6
ego, 29, 191–94 opportunistic design and, 326
episodic, 353–54 in problem solving, 112–17, 598–606
executive, 27–28, 305–6 reinforcement of variability influencing , 228,
frontal cortex and, 338–43 597, 625n10
intentions and, 187–90, 298–307 remote alternatives in, 244–45, 414–17
minimal control principle, 38 rewarded, 218–20
negative control effect, 300 schedules maximizing , 584–92, 586f–587f
overcontrol, 29, 192–93, 196, 198–201, 615n8 in workplace, 212, 219
prefrontal cortex and, 338–43 critical incident training approach, 110
of processing, 30, 45, 54, 372–73 crossword puzzles, 496, 634n14
reactive, 194–98 cultural factors, 41
resiliency and, 197 cumulative-hierarchical learning , 598
self-control, 195–99 curiosity, 198, 214, 278–80, 284–85, 594
semantic, 408
sensory, 352–54
temporal, 353–54 dance, 596
thinking with senses and, 139–41 day-to-day schedules, for maximizing creativity and
of thought learning , 584–92, 586f–587f
controlled losing of, 307–13, 311f deautomatization, 95–96
diversity and, 327–29 decentering, 95–97
environment and, 329 decision making
flexible thinking and, 283–85 beads task and, 286–87, 628n2
incubation, complex decision making and, complex, incubation and, 313–22
313–22 intuition in, 613n4
intentional forgetting and, 298–307 myopia in, v. hyperopia in, 200
intolerance of uncertainty v. ambiguity, openness to experience influencing, 276–77, 277f
285–91 recognition-primed, 86, 613n3
learning to learn and, 283–85 unconscious processing and, 317–22, 613n4
movement between higher and lower level unfocused attention and, 315
goals, 323–27, 323f–324f declarative memory, 37–38
noncontrol v., 282–83 decline-compensation view, of aging , 484, 484f
optimism v. pessimism, 291–98 dedifferentiation, 475–77
overconfidence v. underconfidence, 291–98 default network. See also salience network
overview of, 282–83, 329–30 anxiety and, 435
self-affirmation influencing, 262–66 autobiographical memory and, 431
convergence zones, 395, 582, 631n1, 631n4 central executive network interacting with, 34,
coping strategies 35f, 388, 433–35, 577–80
for breast cancer surgery, 293 defined, 428–29
broad minded affective coping procedure, 606 depression influenced by, 433
Krohne’s model of, 288, 290 functional roles of, 430–31
positive well-being enhanced by, 254 gateway hypothesis and, 430
self-affirmation, 258 neural mechanisms, 577–80
I n dex 745
resting states and, 428–39, 438f fuzzy trace theory as, 14, 39
salience network interacting with, 34, 35f, 435 intuitive processing and, 17–23
simulations influenced by, 432–33 overview of, 15–16
subsystems, 431–32 difficulties with, 17–22
defensiveness, 258–60 dual-task variable-priority training , 554–59
deliberate cognitive modes dynamic affect model, 252–53
without attention, 313–14
automatic v., 15, 318–22
thought suppression and, 298–307 education
deliberate practice, of agile thinking, 549–51 dementia influenced by, 487–94, 489f, 491f,
dementia 493f, 634n9
in Alzheimer’s disease, 487–94, 489f, 491f, 493f, environmental enrichment influencing , 487–94,
498–505, 510, 513 489f, 491f, 493f
bilingualism influencing, 510 epistemological beliefs and, 284, 606–08
cognitively stimulating leisure activities and, iCASA implications for, 606–12
499–506 measurement of, 488–89
education influencing, 487–94, 489f, 491f, 493f, effortful control
634n9 limits of, 21–22
occupational factors in, 498 motivation and, 194–98
physical exercise influencing, 513 orienting sensitivity and, 273
semantic, 397–401, 404, 410, 631n2 stability of, 625n5
defined, 616n2 ego control, 191–94
frontal variant contrasted with, 411–12, 411f ego depletion
stroke aphasia compared to, 407–8 attention and, 203
social interactions and, 494–96 executive function and, 204–5
twin studies of, 490, 491f illustrations of, 202–3
dentate gyrus, 531, 596 motivation and, 45, 201–14
depression See clinical depression ego resiliency, 191–94, 200–201
depth-first strategy, 325–26 Embedded Figures Task, 72–73, 618n12
design stance, 130–34 emotional complexity, 254–55
detectives, 142, 174–75 emotional empathy, 199, 405, 432
developmental psychology, 23–25, 128 emotions
devil’s advocate, 608 abstract content and, 12–13
dietary restraint, 202–3 behavioral engagement and, 239–40, 240f
directed attention, 559 boundaries of, 8
directed forgetting, 298–307 cognition’s interplay with, 19, 20f, 451–60, 455f
direct effortful attention training, 592–94 concept interpenetration with, 598–606
direct instructions, 574 goals influenced by, 239–40, 457–58
discontinuity, in adaptability, 471 granularity of, 251–57
discovery, context of, 22 inferred, 404–5
distributed-only view, of concepts, 395–97, 396f interest as, 278
distributed-plus-hub view, of concepts, 395–97, joy, 278
396f, 399–400 meta-emotions, 604
divergent thinking, openness to experience and, negative
270–75 broad minded affective coping procedure and, 606
diversity error-related, 453–54
discussion of, 584 influence of, 239, 248–49
functional, 327 mood clarity and, 254–55
in thoughts and views of others, 327–29 narrower categorizations and, 451–52
DLPFC. See dorsolateral prefrontal cortex positive emotions interacting with, 252
dopamine, 362–66, 371–72, 545–46 self-sustaining feedback loop of, 305
dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, 434–35, 577–78 overview of, 238–39
dorsal raphe nucleus, 444 positive
dorsal ventromedial prefrontal cortex, 432 Alternative Uses Task influenced by, 244, 246
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), 35f broad minded affective coping procedure
dual motivation, 234–37 and, 606
dual-process mode categorization influenced by, 105–7, 250,
hypothesis of self-awareness, 604–5 451–52
theories flexibility influenced by, 45, 243–51
746 INDEX
emotions (Cont’d) episodic memory, 61–62, 75–78, 117

functional role of, 45, 239–43, 241f, 605 epistemological beliefs, 283–85, 329, 606–08
goals and, 239–40 equivocality, uncertainty v., 331
natural settings and, 251, 637n14 ERN. See error-related negativity
negative emotions interacting with, 252 ERP. See event-related potential
overview of, 280–81 error-related negativity (ERN), 453–54
problem solving influenced by, 244–47 ethical implications, of iCASA framework, 606–12
resilience influenced by, 251–57, 441, 451–52 event coding, theory of, 36–37
task switching influenced by, 367–69 event files, 17, 36–37, 367
types of, 239 event-related potential (ERP), 160, 169, 482
regulation of, 19, 28, 202, 439–40 everyday creativity, 243
representational content and, 12 excursions
stability of, 269 dual motivation, 234–37
thought and action melded with, 307–13, 311f goals, making and finding, and levels of control,
enactment, thinking with senses and, 144–47 332–34
entity views, incremental v., 607 levels of specificity in Hofstadter’s subcognitive
entrepreneurs, 236–37 mechanisms of fluid thought, 122–24
environment oscillatory range and, 49–50, 332–34
action identification influenced by, 101–3, 106–7 overview of, 42–43
defined, 9 perceptual simulation in The Hound of the
exploration of, 26–27, 225, 242, 387–88, 635n4 Baskervilles (Doyle), 174–75
influence of, 7, 9, 11, 41, 44 thinking with senses, 174–76
intelligence and, 599 uncertainty v. equivocality, 331
natural executive attention, 375
aging and, 560 executive control
benefits of, 559–62, 583, 596–97, 637n14 self-regulation supported by, 27–28
experimental interventions, 559–62, 583 thought suppression and, 305–6
positive emotion and, 251 executive function. See also central executive
stimuli, gating of, 426–27 networks
thinking with, 598–601 cardiovascular fitness and, 512, 546–47
thought control and, 329 deficit, 66–67, 93
environmental complexity hypothesis, 499 defined, 6, 27
environmental cuing, 163–66, 599 dynamic filtering model and, 27
environmental enrichment ego depletion and, 204–5
attention training in children influenced by, factor analytic work and, 28
562–67 flanker task and, 547
benefits of, 486–504, 489f, 491f, 493f load-shift model of, 482–84, 483f
in brain paths to agility, 486–504, 489f, 491f, mental agility distinguished from, 4, 5f, 27
493f, 527–38, 530f, 532f, 534f executive memory, 31, 32f, 33
causal connections established, 527–38, 530f, exemplar(s)
532f, 534f classification relying on, 110–11
creativity and, 230 environmental enrichment influencing, 27
defined, 9 exemplar-based fixation, 118–19
depression and, 596 intuitive judgments based on, 18–19
education, 487–94, 489f, 491f, 493f memory, 111
exemplars influenced by, 27 exercise
experimental work on, 48 aerobic, 512–13, 546–48
hippocampus and, 530–35, 530f, 532f, 534f, benefits of, 443–44, 512–13
635n3 brain paths to agility influenced by, 512–13,
in iCASA framework, 26–27, 535, 594–98 546–48
individualism and, 597–98 children needing , 585
leisure activities, 499–504 experimental interventions, 546–48
nonhuman animals and, 527–38, 530f, 532f, expectancy challenge, 208
534f, 635n1, 635n2 expectation
occupational factors, 496–99 novelty and, 445–51, 448f
plasticity and, 26, 594–97 self-regulation influenced by, 208–9
problem solving influenced by, 528, 635n2 semantic expectancy effects, 169
self-generated, 274, 329 Experience Corps program, 521–23, 524f
social interactions, 494–96, 537 experiential avoidance, 68–71, 288–89, 618n9
I n dex 747
Experiential subsystem, Rational subsystem v., 16 flexibility. See also spontaneous flexibility
experimental interventions abstract content and, 79–89, 85t, 89t, 344–52,
using Alternative Uses Task, 71–75, 618n11 345f, 347f–348f
attention restoration theory and, 559–62 in accessing semantic knowledge, 75
attention training, 554–59, 562–67 attention training improving , 562–67
for brain paths to agility, 539–69 automatic cognitive modes and, 21
difficulty level of, 572 belief, 628n6
natural environment, 559–62, 583 category-based knowledge and, 79–89, 85t, 89t
physical exercise and cognitive performance, constrained, 416–17
546–48 control of thought and, 283–85
playful practice, 567–69 definitions of, 29–30, 614n5, 634n11
practicing agile thinking, 549–51 frontal cortex and, 338–43
recently acquired expertise and brain plasticity, highly detailed specific instances and, 79–89,
539–46 85t, 89t
recollection training, 551–54 intentional forgetting and, 298–307
summary of, 48, 570–72 neurocomputational, 473–74, 474f
thinking with senses and, 572 neurotransmitters and, 362–66, 371–72
using self-affirmation, 264, 269 in noticing, 143–44
video games and, 556–559, 637n12 occupational factors, 496–99
expertise, recently acquired positive emotions influencing , 45, 243–51
juggling , 540–42 prefrontal cortex and, 338–52, 345f, 347f–348f
of pianists, 539–40, 545 reactive, 370–71
plasticity and, 539–46 in remembering recent events at differing levels
working memory training, 543–46, 637n15 of specificity, 75–78
expertise-based approach, to intuitive rules and, 24–25, 79–89, 85t, 89t, 344–52, 345f,
processing, 17 347f–348f, 575
explicit instructions, 107–11, 574 self-affirmation and, 257–69, 267f
exploration stability trade-off with, 370, 531
of environment, 26–27, 225, 387–88, 635n4 thought suppression and, 298–307
exploitation and, 446, 597 unconstrained, 416–17
by problem-explorers, 549 whole person influencing , 44–46
extension memory, 247–48 flexible remembering , 78
external regulation, 216 flow, 307–13, 311f, 593
extinction, 227–29, 626n13 fluency effects, 169–73
extraversion, 239, 269, 273–74 fluid intelligence
extrinsic motivation, 214–18, 220, 229, 234–37 brain bases of mental agility and, 374–86,
eyes, mind guided by, 147–52, 147f 378f, 383f
executive attention and, 375
interventions to improve, 74–75, 97–98, 264,
failure, creative approach to, 608, 626n14 544, 567–69
fascination, 560, 594, 637n13 mental agility distinguished from, 4, 5f, 30
feedback-mediated learning, 364, 449 openness to experience and, 627n5
feelings-as-information model, 243 resource depletion and, 212
finding. See making and finding shaping of, 502, 637n15
five-factor model of personality. See also openness working memory and, 375, 615n7, 637n15
to experience fluid reasoning, 636n5
agreeableness in, 269 brain correlates of, 410–14, 411f
conscientiousness in, 269, 627n4 flexibly remembering recent events at differing
defined, 192, 627n3 levels of specificity and, 75–78
extraversion in, 239, 269, 273–74 interventions to improve, 74–75, 97–98, 264,
meta-analyses of, 274 544, 567–69
plasticity and, 239, 274 subcognitive mechanisms of, 122–24
resilience and, 192–93 focused attention meditation, 93
stability in, 239, 274 forgetting
fixation. See also functional fixedness directed, 302, 298–307
dissipation of, 118 ethics and, 610–12
exemplar-based, 118–19 fixation, 315–17
forgetting, 315–17 importance of, 610–11
fixed intelligence, 284, 606–7 intentional, 298–307
748 INDEX
form, meaning and, 167–69 categorization derived from, 71–73, 75, 133
frontal cortex emotion influencing , 239–40, 457–58
abstraction and, 338–43 higher and lower level, movement between,
flexibility and, 338–43 323–27, 323f–324f
hierarchical and functional distinctions within, instrumental, 343
352–59, 353f, 357f–358f learning influenced by, 284
lesions, 361, 370–73, 449 motivation and, 184–85
levels of control and, 338–43, 358–59 neglect, 139, 374–86, 378f, 383f
levels of specificity and, 339–40, 358–59 open, 185–90, 317
medial orbital, 418–19 positive emotions and, 239–40
parietal cortex interacting with, 377 prefrontal cortex and, 456–57
role of, 58–60, 59f, 151, 338–43 working memory influencing , 457–58
spontaneous flexibility and, 359–73 granularity
frontal pole. See rostrolateral prefrontal cortex defined, 11
frontostriatal system, 58, 195, 371, 617n4, 629n1, of emotions, 251–57
634n15 varying levels of, 11–12, 15
functional and connectivity mapping, of brain, granule cells, neurogenesis of, 530–35, 530f,
30–35, 32f, 35f 532f, 534f
functional avoidance, 66, 602
functional fixedness
defined, 14, 118 habits
priming and, 127–28 automatic, mindfulness training reducing, 91–98
thinking with senses and, 127–33 cortico-striatal bases of, 617n4, 634n15
fuzzy processing preference, 40 fostering, 600
fuzzy-to-verbatim continua, 12 habit-based blindness, 128
fuzzy trace theory reperceiving and, 95–97
automaticity and, 36, 39–40 self-regulatory depletion and, 202
as dual-process account, 14, 39 stereotypy of responding in, 544
levels of specificity and, 14 useful variation in, 597–98
hardiness, 253–54, 274, 608
HAROLD. See Hemispherical Asymmetry Reduction
gambling task, 361, 613n4 in OLDer adults
generalized anxiety disorder, 69, 288 healthy skeptic, 558, 608
General story source problem, 145 Hemispherical Asymmetry Reduction in OLDer
gestures adults (HAROLD), 475, 478
indexical hypothesis of, 157–58 Hemispherical Encoding Retrieval Asymmetry
during learning, 156–57 (HERA) theory, 475, 478
organizational structure and, 160 hemispheric differences, 421–22, 428, 580, 632n5
during problem solving, 154–56 HERA theory. See Hemispherical Encoding
in science laboratories, 157, 622n9 Retrieval Asymmetry theory
speech and, 154–55 heterarchical organization, 33
thinking with senses and, 154–61 heuristics
types of, 154, 622n8 affect, 19, 291–92
visual-spatial aspect of, 157 in cognitive-experiential self-theory, 16
working memory influenced by, 159–60 fluency, 170–173
gist recognition, 613n3
bias toward, 551 use of, 22, 137, 615n10
capturing of, 40–41 heuristics and biases approach, 17–18
hierarchies of, 12, 39–41 hierarchical organization
intuition and, 417–19 of autobiographical memory, 60–62, 61f
memory and, 53–54, 615n9 cumulative-hierarchical learning and, 598
overreliance on, 98–99 in executive memory, 33
sensitivity to, 100 in frontal and prefrontal cortex, 352–59, 353f,
global processing default bias, 248 357f–358f
glucose levels, 206–7 language and, 630n3
goal(s) models of action control and motivation, 180–90
artist’s, 332–34 of relations, 116
automatic activation of concepts in relation to, hierarchies of gist, 12, 39–41
304–5 higher order rules, 23–24
I n dex 749
hippocampus, 636n10 deficits in, 603, 633n5

aging and, 469–70 latent, 273, 281
environmental enrichment and, 635n3 of prepotent responses, 28, 95, 565–66
neurogenesis in, 530–35, 530f, 532f, 534f, 596 innovation, 119–122, 220–33, 236–37, 327–29,
stress and, 518 597–98
hyperopia, 200 inside view, 297–98
hyperthymestic syndrome, 57–58 insight
hypoegoic self-regulation brain bases of, 417–18, 420–28, 421f, 423f
characteristics of, 310 intuition compared to, 417–18
controlled losing of control and, 307–13, 311f noradrenaline and, 416
defined, 308 problem solving, 72, 230–31, 420–28, 421f, 423f
oscillatory range and, 313 trait-related variation in, 426–27
promotion of, 310–12, 311f instance representation, 36
hypomania, creativity influenced by, 245–46 instance theory of automaticity, 35–37
hypothesis generation instrumental goals, 343
context of discovery and, 22, 141–44 instrumental learning , 225–26
noticing and, 143–144, 174–75 integrated Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract
Peirce, Charles Sanders on, 22, 142 (iCASA) framework, 75, 107, 461
positive affect and, 246 abstract content in, 11–15
priming and, 621n8 action and, 179, 190, 598–606
convergent theoretical perspectives on, 35–41
defined, 8–11, 9f–10f
iCASA framework. See integrated Controlled- emotion–cognition interplay and, 460
Automatic, Specific-Abstract framework emphasis of, 41–42
idea density, 633n8 environmental enrichment in, 26–27, 535,
idealized representations, 64, 65t 594–98
identity functional and connectivity mapping of brain in,
fragmentation, 181 30–35, 32f, 35f
inflation, 181 implications and applications
represented through time, 436–37, 438f concept interpenetration with perception,
self-affirmation and, 261–62 action, motivation and emotion, 598–606
self-complexity and, 255–57 educational implications, 606–12
“if, then” conditional rule, 37–39, 95, 188–90, 309 environmental enrichment and stimulation,
imageability, of retrieval cue words, 64–65 594–98
images, worrying in, 68, 70–71 ethical implications, 606–12
immunosuppression, optimism and, 293 optimization of levels of representational
implementation intentions, 188–90, 599–600, 624n2 specificity and control, 574–77
implicit encouragement, 574 oscillatory range and, 577–94, 586f–587f
implicit learning, 418 overview of, 573
improvisation, 9f, 50, 161–62 policy implications, 606–12
incrementalism, 334, 607 levels of control in, 15–23, 20f, 574–77
incubation motivation and, 179, 190, 218
complex decision making and, 313–22 movement between higher and lower level
effects, 314 goals in, 324
memory-sensitization hypothesis of, 317 oscillatory range in, 8, 11, 25–26, 71, 559
problem solving and, 316 attention training and, 592–94
indexical hypothesis, 157–58, 162 executive networks–default mode interactions
individualism, 597–98 and, 577–80
indulgence regrets, 45 implications and applications, 577–94,
inert knowledge problem, 73, 80 586f–587f
inferences interventions for self-regulatory resource
of emotions, 404–5 depletion, 582–84
generation of, 141–44, 419, 422 optimization of levels of representational
probabilistic, 637n12 specificity and control and, 574–77
in transitive inference problems, 410–12 representational specificity gradients and,
inhibition 580–82
in BIS, 452–58, 455f schedule structures and, 584–92, 586f–587f
in bilingualism, 507–10 principles of, 8–9, 9f
creativity and, 273, 281, 614n6 repetitive automatic thoughts and, 601–6
750 INDEX
integrated Controlled-Automatic (Cont’d) intradimensional shift, 360, 614n5

representational processes in, 15–23, 20f intrinsic motivation, 214–15, 220, 229, 234–37
specific representational content in, 11–15 intuition
thinking with environment and, 598–601 accumulative, 20
thinking with senses and, 173–74 associative, 20
values and, 609–12 brain bases of, 417–19
variable-priority training and, 555 constructive, 20
working memory and, 385–86 defined, 417, 613n4
intelligence in discovery, 622n4
environment and, 599 gist and, 417–19
fixed, 284, 606–7 implicit learning compared to, 418
fluid insight compared to, 417–18
brain bases of mental agility and, 374–86, Kahneman, Daniel v. Klein, Gary on, 17–18
378f, 383f matching, 20
executive attention and, 375 overview of, 387–88
mental agility distinguished from, 4, 5f, 30 partially informed guessing and, 417–19
openness to experience and, 627n5 prediction with, 417–19
resource depletion and, 212 rationality and, 613n2
shaping of, 637n15 Intuition v. Reasoning systems, 16
working memory and, 375 Intuitive-Experiential v. Analytical-Rational
malleability of, 284, 606–7 thinking styles, 15
praise for, 285 intuitive processing
intentional forgetting, 298–307 affect related to, 19–20, 20f
intentions central role of, 22–23
action, agile thinking and, 185–90 dual-process theories and, 17–23
behavior differing from, 260 exemplar-based, 18–19
control and, 187–90, 298–307 expertise-based, 17
implementation, 188–90, 599–600, 624n2 heuristics and biases approach to, 17
levels of specificity and, 185–87 memory and, 17
remembering, 185–90 skilled, 18
interest, 278–80, 560, 594 tarnished reputation of, 22
internal relations, similarity of, 115 types of, 19–20
interoceptive recovery, 251–52, 604 ironic processes, theory of, 303–4
interventions item-specific knowledge, 71–75, 78
for Alzheimer’s disease, 636n8
attention restoration, 592–94
experimental jumping to conclusions, 285–91, 628n2
Alternative Uses Task, 71–75, 618n11 justification, context of, 22
attention restoration theory and, 559–62
attention training, 554–59, 562–67
for brain paths to agility, 539–69 knowledge
difficulty level of, 572 category-based
natural environment, 559–62, 583 adaptive categorization and, 79–89, 85t, 89t
physical exercise and cognitive performance, cognitive fluency task requiring, 71–75
546–48 overreliance on, 98–99
playful practice, 567–69 of recently experienced events, 78
practicing agile thinking, 549–51 conceptual, 390–91, 621n1, 627n16
recently acquired expertise and brain ethical, 611
plasticity, 539–46 heterarchical organization of, 33
recollection training, 551–54 inert, 73, 80
summary of, 48, 570–72 item-specific, 71–75, 78
thinking with senses and, 572 procedural, 627n16
multidimensional, in community, 521–25, 524f, semantic
595–96 connectionist model and, 401–4, 402f–403f
oscillatory range, 575, 582–84 flexibility in accessing, 75
self-affirmation, 576, 583, 607 in nonhuman primates, 392
for self-regulatory resource depletion, 582–84 prefrontal cortex in retrieval of, 406–7
snowball efficacy of, 607 priming paradigm, 406–7
workplace, 591–92 skilled, 37
I n dex 751
social, 404–5 defined, 4, 9–10, 9f–10f

transfer, 79–80, 85–86, 112, 618n13 explicit instructions and, 107–11
transitional state of, 155–56 frontal cortex and, 338–43, 358–59
Krohne’s model of coping modes, 288, 290 in functional and connectivity mapping of brain,
30–35, 32f, 35f
in hierarchical and functional distinctions in
language frontal and prefrontal cortex, 352–59, 353f,
early abilities, Alzheimer’s disease and, 633n8 357f–358f
hemispheric differences in, 421–22 in iCASA framework, 15–23, 20f, 574–77
hierarchical differences in processing, 630n3 levels of specificity related to, 6, 23–25, 90–91,
learning, 470 122–23, 341–43
mindfulness training and, 604 moderate and changing levels of, 190–214
in multiple-language use, 507–13, 509f openness to experience and, 198–201
physical nature of, 44, 125, 166–73, 616n1 optimization of, 574–77
in Scrabble, 163–64, 500–501 predispositions for adopting , 6, 10, 10f
in second-language use, 507–13, 509f processing modes bundled with, 21
latent inhibition, 273, 281, 628n6 spontaneity and, 50, 190–91, 198–201
learned helplessness, 443 Stein, Gertrude and, 49–50
learning levels of representational specificity (LoS), 44, 71.
abstraction of, 132 See also oscillatory range
adaptive, 269–75 automatic thinking and, 91–98
all-or-none, 283 continuum, 4, 12, 15, 54
associative, 367 convergent theoretical perspectives on, 35–41
automatic, 367 defined, 4, 9–10, 9f–10f
contextually linked, 618n13 dynamic contributions of, 580–82
contrastive approach, 109 ease of construing objects and events at
cumulative-hierarchical, 598 effects of emotion on categorization, 105–7
curiosity promoting, 280 environmental and contextual determinants of
feedback-mediated, 364 action identification, 101–3, 106–7
gestures during, 156–57 overview of, 101
goals influencing, 284 psychological or temporal distance effects on
implicit, 418 construal level, 103–7
instrumental, 225–26 explicit instructions and, 107–11
language, 470 frontal cortex and, 339–40, 358–59
to learn, 283–85 in functional and connectivity mapping of brain,
plasticity induced by, 540–41, 636n6 30–35, 32f, 35f
to repeat, 220–33 fuzzy trace theory, 14
reversal in Hofstadter’s subcognitive mechanisms of fluid
deficits, 362 thought, 122–24
defined, 360, 614n5 James, William and, 42, 49–50
Iowa Gambling Task and, 613n4 levels of control related to, 6, 23–25, 90–91,
set shifting and, 359–66 122–23, 341–43
socioeconomic status and, 516–17 optimal, 41, 574–77
schedules maximizing, 584–92, 586f–587f predispositions for adopting , 6, 10, 10f
tryptophan depletion influencing, 363 prefrontal cortex and, 339–43
to vary, 220–33, 527, 583, 597 problem solving and, 104
left hemisphere, right hemisphere compared to, relations between, 580–82
421–22, 428, 580 in remembering and acting on intentions, 185–87
leisure activities remembering recent events at differing levels of,
affect and, 242 75–78, 98–101
aging and, 499–504 resilience and, 29
in brain paths to agility, 499–506 self-regulatory capacity and, 210
dementia influenced by, 499–506 Life Orientation Test, 292, 294–95
education and, 502 load-shift model, of executive function, 482–84, 483f
environmental enrichment and, 499–504 LoC. See levels of control
reduction in, 590 local processing default bias, 248
travel, 200 locus coeruleus
levels of control (LoC). See also oscillatory range adaptive responding to novelty and,
in Alternative Uses Task, 74 445–51, 448f
752 INDEX
locus coeruleus (Cont’d) remembering recent events at differing levels of

in nonhuman primates, 446–48 specificity, 75–78
role of, 444 semantic, 389–90, 395–97, 396f, 399–400
long-range phase synchrony, of oscillatory neuronal short-term, 382–85, 383f
population activity, 579–80 specific, 54–60
long-term complex experiential input, plasticity superior, 43, 53, 56–57
with, 468–71 supra-normal
LoS. See levels of representational specificity AJ’s, 53–58, 67, 616n3
costs of, 53–57
possible mechanisms, 57–60
making and finding systems, 16
by artists, 29–30, 327, 332–34, 595 working
shifting between, 595 brain bases of mental agility and, 374–86,
match/mismatch rules, 349–51, 356 378f, 383f
matchstick arithmetic problems, 148–52 capacity, 629n5
maximizing, satisficing compared to, 361 childhood poverty influencing , 519–20
meaning fluid intelligence and, 375
form and, 167–69 gestures influencing , 159–60
gestures and, 154–61 goals influenced by, 457–58
unification space of, 160 iCASA framework and, 385–86
Means-Ends Problem-Solving Task (MEPS), 63, 65 low capacity of, 318
meditation prefrontal cortex and, 377
attention restoration and, 592–94 spatial, 458
focused attention, 93 systems enabling, 47, 380–86
mindfulness training and, 93–95, 98, 619n2 thinking with senses and, 386
open monitoring, 93 training, 543–46
memory verbal, 458
abstract video games and, 557
chronic worry and, 68–71 memory-based judgments, 320–21
clinical depression and, 43–44, 60–68, 61f, memory-independence effect, 39
67f, 617n4 mental agility
impaired problem solving and, 60–71, 61f, 67f action and
importance of, 54 construal theory and, 184–85
overreliance on, 60–71, 61f, 67f hierarchical models of action control and
autobiographical motivation, 180–90
AJ’s, 55, 58, 67, 616n3 intentions and, 185–90
default network and, 431 learning to repeat v. learning to vary and,
elements of, 33 220–33
hierarchical structure of, 60–62, 61f moderate and changing levels of control,
overly general, 60–63, 66–68, 67f, 617n4 190–214
schizophrenia and, 638n2 overview of, 179
suicidal behavior and, 62, 602–3, 617n4, 638n2 self-regulation and, 184–85
categorical, 43–44, 60–68, 61f, 67f summarized, 233–34
declarative, 37–38 brain bases of
episodic, 61–62, 75–78, 117 across-system interactions, 374–86, 378f,
ethics and, 610–12 383f, 388
executive, 31, 32f, 33 of adaptive responding to novelty, 445–51,
exemplar, 111 448f
extension, 247–48, 617n5 of amodal representations, 395–96, 399,
familiarity-based, 98 404–5, 408, 410
gist and, 53–54, 615n9 of analogical thought, 410–14, 411f
heterarchical organization of, 33 anterior-to-posterior interactions, 374–86,
intuitive processing and, 17 378f, 383f, 388
perceptual, 31, 32f approach v. avoidance, 11, 388, 451–60, 455f
procedural, 37 of conceptual representation, 389–410, 396f,
reactivation, 615n9 402f–403f
recognition, 481 fluid intelligence and, 374–86, 378f, 383f
recollection training and, 551–54 goal neglect and, 374–86, 378f, 383f
refreshing of, 603 implications, 579
I n dex 753
of insight, 417–18, 420–28, 421f, 423f micro-oscillations, 25, 574

of intuition, 417–19 mindfulness
noradrenaline in, 414–17 cognitive therapy based on, 603
of oscillatory range, 439 components, 619n1
overview of, 46–48, 337–38, 386–88, 460–61 meditation v. cognitive model of, 619n2
of relational thought, 410–14, 411f novel distinctions drawn in, 619n2
of resilience, 388, 439–45 in relentlessly mindful work, 586–87, 586f
resting states and, 428–39, 438f training
spontaneity and, 388 attention restoration and, 592–94
of thinking with senses, 389–410, 396f, body-mind training , 97–98
402f–403f defined, 44, 91
working memory and, 374–86, 378f, 383f for depression, 92–93, 96
brain paths made to excessive abstraction dislodged by, 91–98
bilingualism and multilingualism, 507–13, habit-based automatic thinking reduced by,
509f 91–98
cognitively stimulating leisure activities and, in healthy individuals, 90–91, 93, 95
499–506 language and, 604
environmental stimulation and, 486–504, meditation and, 93–95, 98, 619n2
489f, 491f, 493f, 527–38, 530f, 532f, 534f purpose of, 92
experimental interventions, 539–69, 637n11 mindless work, 212, 587, 587f
multidimensional interventions in community, mind popping
521–25, 524f creativity and, 117–22
overview of, 462–63, 526–27, 569–72 defined, 121
physical exercise and, 512–13, 546–48 role of, 44
plasticity in, 463–86, 466f, 474f, 483f–485f minimal control principle, 38
socioeconomic status and, 482, 513–21, 517f Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), 491–92,
defined, 3–5, 27 496, 501, 511–12
distinguished from other concepts, 4–5, 5f, MMSE. See Mini-Mental State Examination
27–30, 619n2 mnemonic-interlock, 67
habits and repetition in, 229–33 mood clarity, 254–55
intolerance of uncertainty interfering with, motivated cognitive flexibility. See openness to
287–88 experience
making and finding in, 332–34 motivation
motivation and abstract content and, 12–13
construal theory and, 184–85 artists and, 220, 230–31, 234–37
forms of motivation, 214–20 BAS and, 452
hierarchical models of action control and concept interpenetration with, 598–606
motivation, 180–90 creativity and, 217–20
intentions and, 185–90 dual, 234–37
learning to repeat v. learning to vary and, effortful control and, 194–98
220–33 ego depletion and, 45, 201–14
moderate and changing levels of control, extrinsic, 214–18, 220, 229, 234–37
190–214 goals and, 184–85
overview of, 179 in iCASA framework, 179, 190, 218
self-regulation and, 184–85 identified, 217
summarized, 233–34 intrinsic, 214–15, 220, 229, 234–37
multidimensional nature of, 8 mental agility and
practicing, 549–51, 567–69 construal theory and, 184–85
of programming developers, 629n6 forms of motivation, 214–20
reinforcement of variability of behavior and, 45 hierarchical models of action control and
whole person and, 44–46 motivation, 180–90
mental reenactment, 390. See also simulations, intentions and, 185–90
perceptual learning to repeat v. learning to vary and,
mental ruts, 127 220–33
MEPS. See Means-Ends Problem-Solving Task moderate and changing levels of control,
mere exposure effect, 624n13 190–214
meta-cognitive system, 233, 606–8 overview of, 179
meta-emotions, 604 self-regulation and, 184–85
microcategorization, 113 summarized, 233–34
754 INDEX
motivation (Cont’d) learning to vary in, 222–30

for participation in diverse activities, 594–97 primates
reactive control and, 194–98 locus coeruleus neurons in, 446–48
variation and, 229 semantic knowledge in, 392
motor activation, 621n3 visual categorization by, 344–52, 345f,
multidimensional interventions, in community, 347f–348f
521–25, 524f, 595–96 noradrenaline
multilingualism, 507–13, 509f adaptive responding to novelty and,
multimodal engagement, 594–97 445–51, 448f
Multiple Errands task, 374–75 in brain bases of mental agility, 414–17
multiple-language use, 507–13, 509f exercise influencing , 443–44
Multiple Trace Theory, 615n9 insight and, 416
multivoxel pattern classification analysis (MVPA), medium-term effects of, 446
381–82 reset function of, 447–48
musicians, 470, 539–40, 545, 629n4, 638n1 role of, 366, 369, 373
MVPA. See multivoxel pattern classification stress influenced by, 416
analysis norepinephrine. See noradrenaline
noticing, flexibility in, 143–44
novelty
NAM. See Neighborhood Activation Model adaptive responding to, 445–51, 448f
naming, object, 135–36 capturing of, 230–31, 627n15
natural environment continual generation of, 626n11
aging and, 560 expectation and, 445–51, 448f
benefits of, 559–62, 583, 596–97, 637n14 mindfulness and, 619n2
experimental interventions, 559–62, 583 oddball paradigm and, 448–50
positive emotion and, 251 playful practice and, 567–69
natural selection, 226–27 reward and, 445–51, 448f
need for cognition, 280, 500 in Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, 448–49
negative emotions
broad minded affective coping procedure and, 606
error-related, 453–54 object naming and identifying , 135–36
influence of, 239, 248–49 obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), 182–83, 362,
mood clarity and, 254–55 624n1
narrower categorizations and, 451–52 occupational factors, in environmental
positive emotions interacting with, 252 enrichment, 496–99
self-sustaining feedback loop of, 305 occupational fatigue exhaustion, 591
negative feedback, hypersensitivity to, 440 OCD. See obsessive-compulsive disorder
Neighborhood Activation Model (NAM), 167 older adults. See aging
neural context, 578–79 on-line judgments, 320–21
neural specificity, 476 on-the-spot problem solving, 30, 71–75
neurocomputational flexibility, 473–74, 474f open goals, 185–90, 316–17
neuroconstructionism, 13 open monitoring meditation, 93
neuroendocrinology, workplace and, 589–90 openness to experience
neurogenesis, 530–35, 530f, 532f, 534f, 596 adaptability and, 269–75
neurogenic reserve hypothesis, 533, 534f creativity and, 269–78, 628n6
neurogenic view, of compensation, 480–81 decision making influenced by, 276–77, 277f
neuroimaging evidence, for hierarchical and defined, 269, 627n4
functional distinctions in frontal and development of, 329
prefrontal cortex, 352–59, 353f, 357f–358f divergent thinking and, 270–75
neurotransmitters importance of, 144
flexibility and, 362–66, 371–72 intelligence and, 627n5
resilience influenced by, 440–41, 443–44 levels of control and, 198–201
N400, 160, 169–70 orienting sensitivity and, 162, 270–75
No-Go N2 component, 453–54 role of, 45, 122
noncontrol, of thought, 282–83 subcomponents, 628n8
nonhuman animals open question, 317, 323
environmental enrichment and, 527–38, 530f, operant repetitions, variations v., 228
532f, 534f, 635n1, 635n2 opportunistic design
executive depletion in, 207 creativity and, 326
I n dex 755
defined, 325 pattern-based recognition, 17–18, 108

data-driven automatic associations in, 325 PCC. See posterior cingulate cortex
movement between higher and lower level goals perception
and, 323–27, 323f–324f boundaries of, 8
optimism concept interpenetration with, 598–606
automatic, 291 emphasis of, 4
bias toward, 291–93, 441 fluent, of words, 169–73
immunosuppression and, 293 hypothesis generation and, 141–44
need for preparedness and, 294–95 thinking with senses guided by
pessimism v., 291–98 epistemic, in physical world, 163–66
resilience influenced by, 441 eyes guiding mind, 147–52, 147f
organizations, strategic planning of, 333–34 gestures and, 154–61
orienteering, 164–65 several cues leading astray in, 152–54, 153f–154f
orienting sensitivity, 162, 270–75 perceptual input, in candle problem, 127
originality, training of, 220–21, 625n10, 626n11 perceptual judgment, abduction related to, 142,
oscillatory range 622n4
brain bases of, 439 perceptual memory, 31, 32f
defined, 8, 11 perceptual simulations, 74, 81
depression limiting, 71 of actions, 621n3, 623n10
in domains, 25–26 eyes and, 148
excursions, 49–50, 332–34 flexible abstraction in, 623n10
extension of, 571–72 functional fixedness and, 133
guides and safeguards encouraging, 608–9 in The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle), 174–75
hypoegoic self-regulation and, 313 hypothesis generation and, 141–44
in iCASA framework, 8, 11, 25–26, 71, 559 in object naming and identifying , 135–36,
attention training and, 592–94 581–82
executive networks–default mode interactions schematic characterization of, 137–39, 138f
and, 577–80 in thinking with senses, 135–39, 138f, 141–44,
implications and applications, 577–94, 390, 582
586f–587f perfectionism, 196
interventions for self-regulatory resource perseverative errors, 21, 24, 55, 338–39, 360, 369,
depletion, 582–84 374, 617n7
optimization of levels of representational personal epistemology, 283–85
specificity and control and, 574–77 personality. See also five-factor model of personality
representational specificity gradients and, overview of, 238–39
580–82 in personality systems interaction theory, 247
schedule structures and, 584–92, 586f–587f plasticity and, 239, 274
interventions, 575, 582–84 types v. dimensions, 624n3
quantitative aspect of, 25 pessimism, optimism v., 291–98
self-regulatory capacity and, 211, 313, 582–84 PFC. See prefrontal cortex
temporal aspect of, 25 physical agility, 3–5
worry limiting, 71 physical embodiment, 81
outside view, 297–98 physical enactment, 146
overconfidence, underconfidence v., 291–98 physical exercise
overcontrol, 192–93, 196, 198–201, 454, 615n8 aerobic, 512–13, 546–48
benefits of, 443–44, 512–13
brain paths to agility influenced by, 512–13,
pain, affect influencing, 253–55, 637n14 546–48
parallel prototyping, 119–20 children needing , 585
parallel search, 576 experimental interventions, 546–48
parietal cortex, 35f, 377 physicians, decision making and reasoning in, 246
parieto-frontal integration theory, 377–79, 378f Piagetian conservation tasks, 154–55
Parkinson’s disease, 363–65, 372, 623n11 pianists, 539–40, 545
parks, 562, 596–97 plasticity
partially informed guessing, 417–19 aging and, 536
partial matches, 17, 37 behavioral changes from, 463–68, 466f
partial representations, 14 in brain paths to agility, 463–86, 466f, 474f,
PASA. See posterior-to-anterior shift in aging 483f–485f
passive models, of brain reserve, 472 of cortical maps, 463–68, 466f
756 INDEX
plasticity (Cont’d) dorsolateral, 35f

defined, 463 flexibility and, 338–52, 345f, 347f–348f
dopamine and, 545–46 goals and, 456–57, 617n4
environmental enrichment and, 26, 594–97 hierarchical and functional distinctions within,
of granule cells, 530–32, 530f 352–59, 353f, 357f–358f
interventions for, 539–46 left inferior, 406–7
juggling and, 540–42 lesions, 339, 351, 360–61, 374
learning-induced, 540–41, 636n6 levels of specificity and, 339–43
limits on, 536 medial rostral, 430
with long-term complex experiential input, neurochemical and neuroanatomical
468–71 contributions to spontaneous flexibility,
negative consequences of, 632n1, 632n2 359–70
personality and, 239, 274 in relational thought, 412–14
recently acquired expertise and, 539–46 resilience and, 439–45
reading and, 633n3 in retrieval of semantic information, 406–7
role of, 47–48 role of, 58–60, 59f, 338–43, 407
social activities aiding, 594–97 rostrolateral, 412–14
taxi drivers and, 468–69, 541–42, 632n2 single neurons in, 344–52, 345f, 347f–348f
play, 231, 242, 527, 536, 556-59, 567 think/no-think paradigm and, 301
playful practice, 567–69 ventromedial
positive emotions lesions, 361, 432
Alternative Uses Task influenced by, 244, 246 role of, 35f, 439–40, 442, 444, 630n3
broad minded affective coping procedure working memory and, 377
and, 606 premonitory activity, 445
categorization influenced by, 105–7, 250, 451–52 premotor cortex, 351–52, 354
flexibility influenced by, 45, 243–51 preparedness, need for, 294–95
functional role of, 45, 239–43, 241f, 605 prepotent responses, inhibited, 28, 95, 565–66
goals and, 239–40 primary somatosensory cortex, cortical territory
natural settings and, 251, 637n14 enlarged in, 465
negative emotions interacting with, 252 primates, nonhuman
overview of, 280–81 locus coeruleus neurons in, 446–48
problem solving influenced by, 244–47 semantic knowledge in, 392
resilience influenced by, 251–57, 441, 451–52 visual categorization by, 344–52, 345f,
task switching influenced by, 367–69 347f–348f
types of, 239 priming
positive reappraisal, 253 functional fixedness and, 127–28
posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), 35f, 430 of individual concepts, 116–17
posterior-to-anterior shift in aging (PASA), 479–80 N400 and, 169–70
postlexical motor imagery, 621n3 in recognition-primed decision making , 86,
poverty, 514–21 613n3
practice relational, 44, 115–16
of agile thinking, 549–51, 567–69 repetition, 116–17, 624n13
aging and, 549–51 semantic, 406–7
playful, 567–69 probabilistic inferences, 637n12
of problem solving, 549 probability judgments, 39, 637n12
prediction problem-explorers, 549
intuitive, 417–19 problem solving
punishment, 363 abstract, rule- or category-based knowledge and,
reward, 363 79–89, 85t, 89t
weather, 481 adaptability in, 112–17
prefrontal cortex (PFC) best level of specificity for, 104, 617n6
abstract content and, 338–52, 345f, 347f–348f conceptual-associative, 244–45
adaptive coding model of, 350–51 creativity in, 112–17, 598–606
amygdala modulated by, 439–40 diverse approaches to, 224–27, 327–28
anterior-to-posterior gradient in, 354, 356, environmental enrichment influencing , 528,
357f–358f, 359, 437, 575 635n2, 635n4
asymmetry, 453–56 flexible abstract content use in, 79–89, 85t, 89t
control and, 338–43 frame instantiation in, 72
dorsal ventromedial, 432 gestures during , 154–56
I n dex 757
highly detailed specific instances and, 79–89, recently acquired expertise

85t, 89t juggling, 540–42
impaired, 60–71, 61f, 67f of pianists, 539–40, 545
incubation and, 316 plasticity and, 539–46
insight, 72, 420–28, 421f, 423f working memory training , 543–46
intolerance of uncertainty interfering with, receptive attention, concentrative attention v., 93,
287–88 121–22
learning to vary and, 224–27 recess
in novel context, 635n4 adult, 585–86
nine-dot problem and, 153–54, 153f–154f children’s, 584–85
physical embodiment and, 81 recharge times, 212, 559, 586
positive emotion influencing, 244–47 recognition heuristic, 613n3
practicing, 549 recognition memory, 481
procedural knowledge, 627n16 recognition-primed decision making , 86, 613n3
procedural memory, 37 recollection training , 551–54
production, 35–38 reduced concreteness theory of worry, 68–71
compilation, 35–36 refreshing, of memory, 603
condition-action, 95 regrets, 45
property generation tasks, 135–36 reinterpretation, 420
property verification tasks, 139–40 relational priming, analogical thinking related to,
psychogenic view, of compensation, 480–81 44, 115–16
psychological resilience. See resilience relational thought
P3/P3a response, 448–51 brain bases of, 410–14, 411f
public speaking, fear of, 312 prefrontal cortex in, 412–14
punishment prediction, 363 reasoning, 413–14
verbal analogical thinking as, 413–14
relentlessly mindful work, 586–87, 586f
Q-sort technique, 192–93, 199, 624n3 reminder overkill, 24–25
remote alternatives, 414–17
remote-analogy over remote-disanalogy advantage,
radiation problem, 145, 147–48, 147f, 622n5 619n14
rapid updating, 343 remote associates task, 121, 244–45, 415–16, 424
rationality, intuition and, 613n2 repeating, learning and, 220–33
Rational subsystem, Experiential subsystem v., 16 repetition
reactivation, of memory, 615n9 operant, 228
reactive control, 194–98 perils of, 170–73
reactive flexibility, 370–71, 614n5 priming, 624n13
reading repetition-lag procedure, 552–53
automatization and, 94-95, 190, 620n3 repetitive automatic thoughts, 601–6
Braille, 464–65 representational accessibility landscape, 9f, 211,
buddy, 564 588, 595, 611
learning, 470, 515 representational acuity, 410
real-time video gaming, 554–59 representational content
reasoning abstract, 11–15
clinical, additive model of, 108 context dependence of, 13–14
fluid, 636n5 defined, 6, 54
brain correlates of, 410–14, 411f emotions and, 12
flexibly remembering recent events at differing grounded, 89, 89t
levels of specificity and, 75–78 posterior cortical regions and, 380–81
subcognitive mechanisms of, 122–24 specific, 11–15
by physicians, 246 representational gestures, 154
relational, 413–14 representational processes
self-guided approach to, 109 controlled-automatic distinction and, 54
teaching of, 82 in iCASA framework, 15–23, 20f
Reasoning v. Intuition systems, 16 representational shift, 581
reasons analysis effects, 319–20, 322 representational specificity. See also levels of
recent events, remembering representational specificity
at differing levels of specificity, 75–78, 98–101 defined, 6
later recollection influenced by, 98–101 gradients, dynamic contributions of, 580–82
758 INDEX
representations Rule-based v. Associative processing, 16

activation of, 24 rules
amodal, 145, 395–96, 399, 404–5, 408, 410 acquisition and classification, 23–24
conceptual, brain bases of, 389–410, 396f, flexibility and, 24–25, 79–89, 85t, 89t, 344–52,
402f–403f 345f, 347f–348f, 614n5
concreteness of, 64–65, 65t, 68–71 higher order, 23–24
flexible abstract, of categorization, 344–52, 345f, “if, then,” 37–39, 95, 309
347f–348f match/mismatch, 349–51, 356
grounds for assuming, 42 problem solving and, 79–89, 85t, 89t
intermeshed nature of, 598–601 processing based on, 16–17
partial, 14 reminders about, 24–25
processes compared to, 341–42 self-initiated discovery of, 575
of self, 255–57 weighted additive, 615n10
social knowledge, 404–5 rumination
resilience amygdala and, 603
brain bases of, 388, 439–45 chronic, 71
control and, 197 depression and, 64–66, 93, 603–4
defined, 6, 28–29, 251 inflexibility associated with, 617n7
of ego, 191–94, 200–201 trait, 603
levels of specificity and, 29
mental agility distinguished from, 4, 5f, 28–29
neurotransmitters influencing, 440–41, 443–44 salience network
optimism influencing, 292–96, 441 central executive network interacting with, 25,
overview of, 387–88 34, 35f, 435
personality dimensions and, 192–93 default network interacting with, 34, 35f, 435
positive emotions influencing, 251–57, 441, network-switching role of, 47
451–52 resting states and, 428–39, 438f
prefrontal cortex and, 439–45 saliency maps, 47, 436
trait, 251–54, 257, 274, 608, 625n4 satisficing, maximizing compared to, 240, 361
response space, sculpting, 151 scaffolding theory of aging and cognition,
response variability, 224–26 485–86, 485f
resting states schedules, for maximizing creativity and learning ,
brain bases of, 428–39, 438f 584–92, 586f–587f
connectivity during, 434–35 schizophrenia, 638n2
restorative experiences, 583 science laboratories, gestures in, 157, 622n9
retrieval Scrabble, 163–64, 500–501
capture of, 66–67 second-language use, 507–13, 509f
cost, 99 self
of cue words, imageability of, 64–65 complex representations of, 255–57
of semantic knowledge, 406–7 “me” v. “I”, William James and, 604–05
reversal learning overview of, 238–39
deficits, 362 sense of, in time, 437, 438f
defined, 360, 614n5 sentient, 47
Iowa Gambling Task and, 361, 613n4 self-affirmation
set shifting and, 359–66 abstraction and, 576
socioeconomic status and, 516–17 action and, 268, 583
reward construal level and, 268
for creativity, 218–20 control of thoughts influenced by, 262–66
downshifts in, 227 as coping resource, 258
extinction and, 227–29, 626n13 defined, 45, 257
novelty and, 445–51, 448f flexible thinking and, 257–69, 267f
prediction, 363 identity and, 261–62
rhyming , 170–73 influence of, 238
right hemisphere interventions, 576, 583, 607
anterior superior temporal gyrus of, 422–24 risk-information processing influenced by,
coarse semantic coding theory of, 421 258–60
left hemisphere compared to, 421–22, 428, 580 self-confidence influenced by, 627n2
rigidity, whole person influencing, 44–45 stereotype threat and, 264–66, 267f
risk-information processing, 258–60 theory, 257–58
I n dex 759
self-aspects, 255–56 enacting, 144–47

self-awareness, dual-mode hypothesis of, 604–5 experimental interventions and, 572
self-confidence, 627n2 higher level understanding and, 180
self-control, 195–99 iCASA and, 173–74
self-determination, theory of, 212–13, 217 in making new concepts, 161–62
self-focus, 65 overview of, 125–26, 173–74
self-integrity, 257–58 perception and action guiding
self-monitoring epistemic, in physical world, 163–66
close, 307–8 eyes guiding mind, 147–52, 147f
training in, 551 gestures and, 154–61
self-reference, modes of, 605 several cues leading astray in, 152–54,
self-regulation 153f–154f
action, agile thinking and, 184–85 perceptual simulations in, 135–39, 138f,
by children, 564–65 141–44, 390
depletion of, 45, 201–14, 582–84, 609, 625n7 words in, 125, 166–73
executive control supporting, 27–28 working memory and, 386
expectancies influencing, 208–9 sensory control, 352–54
hand-grip strength and, 202, 208, 625n8 sensory-motor input, cortical map plasticity and,
hypoegoic 463–68, 466f
characteristics of, 310 sensory-perceptual fluency, 169–73
controlled losing of control and, 307–13, 311f sensory-perceptual information. See also thinking
defined, 308 with senses
oscillatory range and, 313 Alternative Uses Task and, 74
promotion of, 310–12, 311f contributions of, 44
interventions, 582–84 sentient self, 47
levels of representation linked to, 210 serial bottlenecks, 38
mental agility distinguished from, 4, 5f, 27–28 serotonin
motivation and, 184–85, 212–14 exercise influencing , 443–44
oscillatory range and, 211, 313, 582–84 role of, 362–63, 440
self-complexity influencing, 256 SES. See socioeconomic status
training enhances, 209–10, 610 set-breaking mechanism, 317
self-relevant simulations, 432 set shifting
self-worth, 258 defined, 28, 359–60
semantic acuity, 397 executive function and, 27–28, 614n5
semantic cognition, 408 intradimensional, 360, 614n5
semantic dementia, 397–401, 404, 410, 631n2 reversal learning and, 359–66
defined, 616n2 short-term memory, 382–85, 383f
frontal variant contrasted with, 411–12, 411f similarity-in-topography principle, 631n1
stroke aphasia compared to, 407–8 similarity neighborhoods, 167–68
semantic knowledge Simon effect, 508, 509f
connectionist model and, 401–4, 402f–403f Simon task, 507–9, 565–66
flexibility in accessing, 75 simulations
in nonhuman primates, 392 abstraction and, 621n1
prefrontal cortex in retrieval of, 406–7 default network influencing , 432–33
priming paradigm, 406–7 perceptual, 74, 81
semantic memory, 389–90, 395–97, 396f, 399–400 of action, 621n3
Senior Odyssey program, 521, 523, 525 eyes and, 148
senses, thinking with functional fixedness and, 133
brain bases of, 389–410, 396f, 402f–403f in The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle), 174–75
centrality of hypothesis generation and, 141–44
benefits for analogical thought, 144–47 in object naming and identifying , 135–36
cognitive-behavioral evidence for, 134–39, schematic characterization of, 137–39, 138f
134f, 138f in thinking with senses, 135–39, 138f,
controlled v. automatic access, 139–41 141–44, 390
design stance and, 130–34 self-relevant, 432
functional fixedness and, 127–33 skilled knowledge, 37
hypothesis generation and, 141–44 skills acquisition, theory of, 38–39
other evidence for, 139–41 sleep, 308, 417, 584
compensation and, 484–85 social categorization, 327–28
760 INDEX
social interactions stress

dementia and, 494–96 affect influencing , 253–55
environmental enrichment and, 494–96, 537 changes induced by, 634n15
plasticity aided by, 594–97 depression influenced by, 439–41
social knowledge, representation of, 404–5 individual responses to, 590
socioeconomic status (SES) noradrenaline influencing, 416
aging and, 482, 488 propranolol and, 416–17
brain paths to agile thinking and, 482, 513–21, reduction, 96–97
517f socioeconomic status and, 513–21, 517f
reversal learning and, 516–17 stroke aphasia, 407–8
stress and, 513–21, 517f Stroop task, 95, 190, 210, 620n3
somatic marker hypothesis, 342, 632n7 structure-mapping theory, of analogies 112–13
spatial navigation, 468–69 subcognitive mechanisms, of fluid thought,
spatial working memory, 458 122–24
specificity. See also integrated Controlled- suicidality, 62, 602–3, 638n2
Automatic, Specific-Abstract framework; suppression, of thought
representational specificity deliberate, 298–307
excessive, 79, 118 ego depletion and, 202–3
individual differences in emphasis on, 87–89, 89t executive control and, 305–6
modulation, 77 rebound of, 263–65
neural, 476 sleep and, 308, 629n4
specific memory, 54–60 theory of ironic processes and, 303–4
specific representational content, 11–15 white bear approach, 302–3, 307, 330
speech supra-normal memory
gestures and, 154–55 AJ’s, 53–58, 67, 616n3
recognition, 167–68 costs of, 53–57
spontaneity possible mechanisms, 57–60
default mode and, 428–39 surface details, sensitivity to, 79–81, 83–87, 85t,
levels of control and, 9f, 50, 190–91, 198–201 620n5
spontaneous flexibility surgency. See extraversion
in abstract content use, 81–83 Sustained Attention to Response Test, 560
Alternative Uses Task and, 371–73 switch cost, 139–40, 366, 557
defined, 370, 614n5 symbols
frontal cortex and, 359–73 concretely embodied, 125
neurochemical and neuroanatomical substitution of, 637n11
contributions to synaesthesia, 56, 58, 616n3
frontal cortex and, 359–70 System 1 v. System 2, 16, 22, 207, 613n1
prefrontal cortex and, 359–70
set shifting and reversal learning, 359–66
task switching, 366–70 tactile reading, 464–65
neuropsychological and lesion evidence, task-active networks. See central executive
370–73 networks
reactive flexibility v., 370–71 task difficulty, action identification and, 180–81
sport psychology, 164–65 task model, 59–60
stability task-positive network, 577
of effortful control, 625n5 task switching
emotional, 269 cost of, 139–40, 366, 557
five personality dimensions and, 239, 274 defined, 614n5
flexibility trade-off with, 370, 531 event files and, 367
need for, 16 positive emotions influencing , 367–69
variability integrated with, 229–33 spontaneous flexibility and, 366–70
stereotype video games and, 557
importance of, 229–30, 597 task-unrelated thought, 429
suppression, 209–10, 625n7 temporal abstraction, 342
threat, 264–66, 267f temporal control, 353–54
stimulus temporal pole, 404–5, 631n3
discrimination, 563 testmanship, 492, 493f
gating of, 426–27, 626n10 theory of event coding , 36–37
strategic automatization, 190, 600, 624n2 theory of ironic processes, 303–4
I n dex 761
thinking with environment, 598–601 relational

thinking with senses brain bases of, 410–14, 411f
brain bases of, 389–410, 396f, 402f–403f prefrontal cortex in, 412–14
centrality of reasoning, 413–14
benefits for analogical thought, 144–47 repetitive automatic, 601–6
cognitive-behavioral evidence for, 134–39, suppression
134f, 138f deliberate, 298–307
controlled v. automatic access, 139–41 ego depletion and, 202–3
design stance and, 130–34 executive control and, 305–6
functional fixedness and, 127–33 rebound of, 263–65
hypothesis generation and, 141–44 sleep and, 308
other evidence for, 139–41 theory of ironic processes and, 303–4
compensation and, 484–85 white bear approach, 302–3, 307, 330
enacting, 144–47 task-unrelated, 429
excursions, 174–76 thinking with environment, 598–601
experimental interventions and, 572 time
higher level understanding and, 180 orientation toward, 199–200
iCASA and, 173–74 sense of self in, 437, 438f
in making new concepts, 161–62 synaesthesia for, 616n3
overview of, 125–26, 173–74 Tools of the Mind program, 565–67
perception and action guiding training
epistemic, in physical world, 163–66 attention
eyes guiding mind, 147–52, 147f in children, 562–67
gestures and, 154–61 direct effortful v. less directed, 592–94
several cues leading astray in, 152–54, experimental interventions, 554–59,
153f–154f 562–67
perceptual simulations in, 135–39, 138f, flexibility improved by, 562–67
141–44, 390 oscillatory range and, 592–94
words in, 125, 166–73 video gaming and, 554–59
working memory and, 386 critical incident, 110
think/no-think paradigm, 299–305, 629n3 dual-task variable-priority, 554–59
thought. See also analogical thinking; thinking with of mental agility, 549–51, 567–69
senses mindfulness
boundaries of, 8 attention restoration and, 592–94
capturing, 313 body-mind training , 97–98
control of defined, 44, 91
controlled losing of, 307–13, 311f for depression, 92–93, 96
diversity and, 327–29 excessive abstraction dislodged by, 91–98
environment and, 329 habit-based automatic thinking reduced by,
flexible thinking and, 283–85 91–98
incubation, complex decision making and, in healthy individuals, 90–91, 93, 95
313–22 language and, 604
intentional forgetting and, 298–307 meditation and, 93–95, 98, 619n2
intolerance of uncertainty v. ambiguity, purpose of, 92
285–91 of originality, 220–21
learning to learn and, 283–85 recollection, 551–54
movement between higher and lower level in self-monitoring, 551
goals, 323–27, 323f–324f transfer benefits of, 554–57
noncontrol v., 282–83 in variability, 221–24
optimism v. pessimism, 291–98 of working memory, 543–46
overconfidence v. underconfidence, 291–98 trait anxiety, 286–87
overview of, 282–83, 329–30 trait resilience, 251–54, 257, 274, 608
self-affirmation influencing, 262–66 trait rumination, 603
divergent, 270–75 transfer
diversity in, 327–29 knowledge, 85–86, 112, 618n13, 622n5
emotion and action melded with, 307–13, 311f processing, appropriate v. inappropriate,
fluid, 122–24 100–101, 104–105
physical guides to, 125, 166–73 transitive inference problems, 410–12
recollection training influencing, 551–54 travel, 200
762 INDEX
tryptophan, 362–63, 440–41, 630n4 voluntary attention, 559

tumor problem, 147–48, 147f von Economo neurons (VENs), 436–37
voxel-based morphometry, 469, 518
uncertainty
equivocality v., 331 WCST. See Wisconsin Card Sorting Task
intolerance of, 285–91 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 56, 78, 379
unexpected, 445–46 weighted additive rule, 615n10
unconstrained flexibility, 416–17 white bear thought suppression approach, 302–3,
underconfidence, overconfidence v., 291–98 307, 330
unexpected uncertainty, 445–46 willpower, 208, 609–10
unfocused attention, 91, 117–22, 315, 614n6 Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), 416–17
“use it or lose it” hypothesis, 463, 503, 534f, categorization in, 55–56, 138–39
567–69 novelty in, 448–49
word(s), 582, 631n4
association, 72–73, 245, 618n12
vacation, 200, 588–89, 592, 625n6 cohort activation of, 167–69
values, 609–12 directive meaning of, 638n16
values affirmation, context-dependent effects fluent perception of, 169–73
of, 576 indexical hypothesis and, 162
variability innovative uses of, 161–62
of behavior meaning and form of, 167–69
controlled, 227–29 repetition and rhyming of, 170–73
in natural selection, 226–27 in Scrabble, 163–64
reinforced, 45, 222–24, 227–29 in thinking with senses, 125, 166–73
generalized, 224, 618n11 in writing process, 165–66
response, 225–26 working memory
stability integrated with, 229–33 in aging and upregulation of, 478
in strategy use, 232 bilateral parietal cortex and, 377
training in, 221–24 brain bases of mental agility and, 374–86,
variable-priority training, 554–59 378f, 383f
variation capacity, 629n5
importance of, 328 childhood poverty influencing , 519–20
in insight, 426–27 emotion and, 457–59
learning to vary, 220–33, 527, 583, 597 fluid intelligence and, 375–80, 615n7
motivation and, 229 gestures influencing , 159–60
operant, 228 goals and, 343, 457–58
Royce, Josiah on, 597, 625n10 iCASA framework and, 385–86
useful, 597–98 low capacity of, 318
variety seeking, 278–80, 625n10 prefrontal cortex and, 377
VENs. See von Economo neurons spatial, 458
ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) systems enabling , 47
lesions, 361, 432 thinking with senses and, 386
role of, 35f, 439–40, 442, 444, 630n3 three-back task and, 376
verbal analogical thinking, 413–14 training, 543–46, 635n4
verbalization, in avoidance theory of worry, updating, 27–28, 343
68–69, 288 verbal, 458
verbal fluency, 372–73 video games and, 557
verbal processing style, 409 workload pressure, 586–87, 586f
verbal working memory, 458 workplace
video gaming, 554–59 burnout and, 588–89
virtue regrets, 45 creativity in, 212, 219
visual categorization, by monkeys, 344–52, 345f, enrichment of, 496–99
347f–348f interventions, 591–92
visual-spatial analogical problems, 75 neuroendocrinology and, 589–90
visual-spatial planning task, 578 pressure in, 586–87, 586f
visuospatial pattern-completion problems, worry, chronic, 14, 618n8
411–13, 411f abstract memory and, 68–71
VMPFC. See ventromedial prefrontal cortex automatization and, 618n10
I n dex 763
avoidance theory of, 68–69, 288 handwriting, 465

dual task in, 618n8 Heaney, Seamus and, 601
in images, 70–71 James, Henry v. O’Neill, Eugene, 623n11
intolerance of uncertainty v. ambiguity and, learning, 470, 633n3
288–90 process, 165–66, 623n11
oscillatory range limited by, 71 Stein, Gertrude and, 43, 49–50, 175–76
reduced concreteness of representations in, 68–71 Stevens, Wallace and 230–31, 627n15
treatment of, 288–89
writing
automatic, 49–50, 175–76, 616n11 Yerkes-Dodson Principle, 364–65

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The Agile Mind

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© Wilma Koutstaal 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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1. Agility of Mind and the Integrated Controlled-Automatic,

Part One: MEMORY, CATEGORIZATION, AND CONCEPTS

3. Flexibly Using Memory and Categorical Knowledge, Part 2:

4. Thinking with Our Senses 125

Part Two: MOTIVATION AND EMOTION

6. Emotion, Self, Personality: Thought Personiﬁed 238

7. Thoughts about Thoughts: The Control versus

Part Three: BRAIN AND ENVIRONMENT

9. Brain Bases of Levels of Speciﬁcity and Levels of Control,

10. Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 1:

11. Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 2:

12. Implications and Applications of the

1. Agility of Mind and the Integrated Controlled-Automatic,

Part One: MEMORY, CATEGORIZATION, AND CONCEPTS

WHE N ME MORY I S TO O SPEC IFIC: T HE PO S SIBL E CO S T S OF S UPE R IOR

T HE CON T R A RY EXT R E ME: EXC E S SI V E R E L I A NC E ON ABS T R ACT

A DA P T I V E C AT E GOR IZAT ION A ND PROBL E M S OLVING R EQ UIR E

3. Flexibly Using Memory and Categorical Knowledge, Part 2:

UNCON S C IOUS , UNR EFL ECT I V E , A ND AU TOM AT IC A LT E R AT ION S

T HE BE NEFI T S OF USING B O T H PRO C E S SING MODE S: EXPL IC I T

UNF O CUSED AT T E N T ION , CR E AT I VI T Y, A ND “MIND POPPING ” 117

4. Thinking with Our Senses 125

Seeing with the Mind’s Eye: When 5-Year-Olds

T HINK ING IN A PHYSIC A L WORLD 163

Part Two: MOTIVATION AND EMOTION

The Benefits and Costs of Higher Level Action Construals 180

6. Emotion, Self, Personality: Thought Personiﬁed 238

What Is the Functional Role of Positive Emotions? 239

7. Thoughts about Thoughts: The Control

JUMPING TO CONCLUSION S A ND IN TOL E R A NC E OF

E X C U R S ION 6 : U N C E RTA I N T Y V E R S U S E Q U I VO C A L I T Y 331

EXCUR SION 7: GOA L S , M AK ING A ND FINDING , A ND

Part Three: BRAIN AND ENVIRONMENT

SINGL E NEURON S A ND FL EXIBL E ABS T R ACT R E PR E SE N TAT ION

NEUROIM AGING EVIDE NC E F OR HIER A RC HIC A L A ND

NEURO C HE MIC A L A ND NEUROA NATOMIC A L CON T R IBU T ION S

9. Brain Bases of Levels of Speciﬁcity and Levels of Control,

ACC E S SING R E MOT E A LT E RNAT I V E S: T HE ROL E OF

B R A I N C OR R E L AT E S OF I N S IG H T PROBL E M S OLV I N G 420

BOUNC ING B ACK : BR A IN B A SE S OF R E SIL IE NC E 439

A PPROAC H V E R S US AVOIDA NC E: CON T ROL , CON T ROL L ING CON T ROL ,

10. Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 1:

Plasticity of Cortical Maps in Response to Alterations

PHYSIC A L EXERC I SE , C A R DIOVA S CUL A R FI TNE S S ,

MULT IDIME N SIONA L IN T E RV E N T ION S IN T HE

11. Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 2:

Recently Acquired (“Experimentally Assigned”) Expertise

Exercising Our Bodies to Enhance Our Minds: Experimental Evidence

12. Implications and Applications of the iCASA Framework

How Can Individuals Be Encouraged to More Fully Optimize

How Can Individuals throughout the Life Span Be Encouraged

What Fosters Individualism and “Useful Variation”

Having the concrete mind of the poet, I am unhappy when

Figure 1.1. Distinguishing Mental Agility. The construct of mental agility is

The Integrated Controlled-Automatic,

◊ Agile thinking always occurs within a representational processing space that is

A schematic of several of these principles is provided in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2. The Integrated Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract