Writing: Books, Blogs, & Papers

BOOKS

Innovating Minds: Rethinking Creativity to Inspire Change  (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Available from: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Oxford University Press

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  • The overarching question we explore in the book is: How can we enhance our mental flexibly, enabling us to become more creative and realize positive change?
  • Our approach is based in the social, brain, and organizational sciences (lab experiments and real-world studies) from which we extract the key findings into several new metaphors that can help us understand and improve our own and others’ thinking.
  • Throughout the book, we walk through several interrelated practical ways to become more creative as individuals or in groups.
  • The book invites the reader to actively think—and play—through practice-focused questions, thinking and reflection exercises, and visual aids.
  • Introduces the reader to a way of “thinking about thinking” encouraging us to develop helpful lifelong habits, recognizing the ever-unfolding mutual influence of environments on our brains and our brains on our environments.

For a recent book review of Innovating Minds see: Susan K. Perry’s Psychology Today post, “5 Fresh Ways to Meet the Challenge of Creativity.” Innovating Minds also received a strong review in CHOICE by Prof. Bernard Beins and a very positive review in the American Psychological Association’s PsycCRITIQUES by Prof. Liane Gabora.

The Agile Mind  (Oxford University Press, 2012) — Winner of the 2012 APA William James Book Award

Agile_Mind_Cover

  • Develops a new integrative framework for conceptualizing mental agility
  • Provides an interdisciplinary account of innovation and flexible thinking that overarches more limited constructs such as creativity, executive control, or resilience
  • Uniquely takes account of the burgeoning literature on the pervasive importance of levels of representational specificity in thinking
  • Offers science-based approaches to promote adaptively creative thinking across the lifespan
  • For advanced undergraduate and graduate students in any discipline in which understanding creatively adaptive thinking is important
  • Written for an interdisciplinary audience, empirical findings are enriched with insights from the arts and literature. Mastering the many factors that can help to promote mental agility is important to each of us, both individually and collectively, as shapers and makers of our selves and our societies.

BLOGS AND SOCIAL MEDIA

INNOVATING MINDS BLOG

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Here I share some of the latest thinking on innovation, creativity, and mental agility. See: innovatingminds4change.com

 

TWITTER  strawberry

At “Think Afresh” (@think_afresh) we offer: Fresh and stimulating thoughts on innovation, change, and flexible thinking. Yum! See: https://twitter.com/think_afresh

 

PSYCHOLOGY TODAY BLOG   wilma_koutstaal_photo

I blog at Psychology Today. See “Our Innovating Minds: The Many Origins of Creative Thought and Action.”

 

SELECTED PUBLISHED PAPERS (BY TOPIC)

Mental agility, creativity, and problem solving

  • Novel environments and boosting mental agility  (pdf)
  • Brief interventions to boost cognitive flexibility  (pdf)
  • Using space to think about time  (pdf)
  • Fluid reasoning and flexible remembering  (pdf)
  • Flexible remembering  (pdf)

Levels of mental representation – specificity and abstraction

  • Perceptual specificity in representing objects in the brain  (pdf)
  • Semantic knowledge and specificity of object representation in the brain  (pdf)
  • Novel categories of objects and gist abstraction  (pdf)
  • Effectively encoding and using detail in memory  (pdf)
  • Costs of shifting toward abstraction  (pdf)
  • Improving specificity in aging  (pdf)
  • Gist representation of common objects in amnesia  (pdf)
  • Perceptually-based gist representation of novel objects in amnesia  (pdf)
  • Semantic contributions to gist abstraction in semantic dementia  (pdf)
  • Divided attention and false recognition  (pdf)
  • Building gist and memory for everyday objects  (pdf)

Automaticity and priming

  • Perceiving, deciding, and acting in priming  (pdf)
  • A history of experimental investigations of automatic writing  (pdf)
  • Across-modality priming in the brain  (pdf)
  • Task specificity and priming  (pdf)
  • Neural correlates of priming and memory – a review  (pdf)
  • A review of priming  (pdf)
  • An overview of intentional forgetting and voluntary thought suppression  (pdf) 

Environments, memory, and thinking

  • Novel environments and boosting mental agility  (pdf)
  • Incidental memory for real-world objects  (pdf)
  • Facilitation and impairment of memory through photographs  (pdf)
  • Enhancing memory accessibility for everyday events  (pdf)
  • False recollection induced by photographs  (pdf)
  • Situating ethics and memory  (pdf) 

Thinking about thinking (and remembering)

  • When encoding yields remembering – a review  (pdf)
  • Building memories  (pdf)
  • Intentional forgetting and voluntary thought suppression  (pdf)
  • Inaccuracy and inaccessibility in memory retrieval – a review  (pdf)
  • Confidence in different types of decisions  (pdf)
  • Confidence in judgment and depressive realism  (pdf)
  • Depressive realism in depression and dysphoria  (pdf)

Ethics, aesthetics, and literature

  • Situating ethics and memory  (pdf)
  • The ethics of forgetting  (pdf)
  • Framing the picture  (pdf)
  • Words as physical objects  (pdf)

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS (WITH BRIEF SUMMARIES)

Thimmesch-Gill, Z., Harder, K. A., & Koutstaal, W. (2017).  Perceiving emotions in robot body language: Acute stress heightens sensitivity to negativity while attenuating sensitivity to arousal.  Computers in Human Behavior, 76, 59–67.  (brief summary—pdf)

Twedell, E. L., Koutstaal, W., & Jiang, Y. V. (2016/in press).  Aging affects the balance between goal-guided and habitual spatial attention.  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.  (brief summary—pdf)

Jiang, Y. V., Koutstaal, W., & Twedell, E. L. (2016).  Habitual attention in older and young adults.  Psychology and Aging, 31, 970–980.  (brief summary—pdf)

Aizpurua, A., & Koutstaal, W. (2015).  Fluid intelligence.  To appear in S. K. Whitbourne (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Adulthood and Aging.  Wiley-Blackwell.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., & Binks, J. (2015).  Innovating Minds: Rethinking Creativity to Inspire Change.  New York: Oxford University Press.  (chapter summaries—pdf)

Aizpurua, A., & Koutstaal, W. (2015).  A matter of focus: Detailed memory in the intentional autobiographical recall of older and younger adults.  Consciousness and Cognition, 33, 145-155.  (brief summary—pdf)

McMenamin, B. W., Deason, R. G., Steele, V. R., Koutstaal, W., & Marsolek, C. J. (2015).  Separability of abstract-category and specific-exemplar visual object subsystems: Evidence from fMRI pattern analysis.  Brain and Cognition, 93, 54-63. (brief summary—pdf)

Denkinger, B., & Koutstaal, W. (2014).  A set of 265 pictures standardized for studies of the cognitive processing of temporal and causal order information.  Behavior Research Methods, 46, 229-239.  (brief summary—pdf)

Qin, X. A., Koutstaal, W., & Engel, S. A. (2014).  The hard-won benefits of familiarity in visual search: Naturally familar brand logos are found faster.  Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 76, 914-930.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (2012).  The Agile Mind.  New York: Oxford University Press.  [Also published in paperback October, 2013. Recipient of the 2012 William James Book award from the American Psychological Association.]  (chapter summaries—pdf)

Qin, X. A., Bochsler, T. M., Aizpurua, A., Cheong, A. M. Y., Koutstaal, W., & Legge, G. E. (2014).  Incidental memory of younger and older adults for objects encountered in a real world context.  PLoS ONE, 9, e99051, 1-13.  (brief summary—pdf)

Wen, M.-C., Butler, L. T., & Koutstaal, W. (2013).  Improving insight and noninsight problem solving with brief interventions. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 97-118.  (brief summary—pdf)

Fu, T., Koutstaal, W., Poon, L., & Cleare, A. J. (2012).  Confidence judgment in depression and dysphoria: The depressive realism vs. negativity hypotheses.  Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 43, 699-704.  (brief summary—pdf)

Wetzel, B., Anderson, K., Gini, M., & Koutstaal, W. (2012).  If not now, where? Time and space equivalency in strategy games.  In AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE), 81-86.  (brief summary—pdf)

Aizpurua, A., & Koutstaal, W. (2010).  Aging and flexible remembering: Contributions of conceptual span, fluid intelligence, and frontal functioning.  Psychology and Aging, 25, 193-207.  (brief summary—pdf)

Makovski, T., Watson, L. M., Koutstaal, W., & Jiang, Y. V. (2010).  Method matters: Systematic effects of testing procedure on visual working memory sensitivity.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 1466-1479.  (brief summary—pdf)

Southwell, B. G., Gilkerson, N. D., Depue, J. B., Shelton, A. K., Friedenberg, L. M., & Koutstaal, W. (2010).  Aging and the questionable validity of recognition-based exposure measurement.  Communication Research, 37, 603-619.  (brief summary—pdf)

Denkinger, B., & Koutstaal, W. (2009).  Perceive-decide-act, perceive-decide-act:  How abstract is repetition-related decision learning?  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 742-756.  (brief summary—pdf)

Tranter, L. J., & Koutstaal, W. (2008).  Age and flexible thinking: An experimental demonstration of the beneficial effects of increased cognitively stimulating activity on fluid intelligence in healthy older adults.  Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 15, 184-207.  (brief summary—pdf)

Gold, C. A., Marchant, N. L., Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., & Budson, A. E. (2007).  Conceptual fluency at test shifts recognition response bias in Alzheimer’s Disease: Implications for increased false recognition.  Neuropsychologia, 45, 2791-2801.  (brief summary—pdf)

Kvidera, S., & Koutstaal, W. (2008).  Confidence and decision-type under matched stimulus conditions: Overconfidence in perceptual but not conceptual decisions.  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 21, 253-281.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., & Cavendish, M. (2006).  Using what we know:  Consequences of intentionally retrieving gist versus item-specific information.  Journal of Experimental Psychology:  Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 778-791.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (2006).  Flexible remembering.  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 84-91.  (brief summary—pdf)

Fu, T., Koutstaal, W., Fu, C. H. Y., Poon, L., & Cleare, A. J. (2005).  Depression, confidence, and decision:  Evidence against depressive realism.  Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 27, 243-252.  (brief summary—pdf)

Simons, J. S., Lee, A. C. H., Graham, K. S., Verfaellie, M., Koutstaal, W., Hodges, J. R., Schacter, D. L., & Budson, A. E. (2005).  Failing to get the gist:  Reduced false recognition of semantic associates in semantic dementia.  Neuropsychology, 19, 353–361.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (2003).  Older adults encode––but do not always use––perceptual details:  Intentional versus unintentional effects of detail on memory judgments.  Psychological Science, 14, 189-193.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., Reddy, C., Jackson, E. M., Prince, S., Cendan, D. L., & Schacter, D. L. (2003).  False recognition of abstract versus common objects in older and younger adults:  Testing the semantic categorization account.  Journal of Experimental Psychology:  Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 499-510.  (brief summary—pdf)

Simons, J. S., Koutstaal, W., Prince, S., Wagner, A. D., & Schacter, D. L. (2003).  Neural mechanisms of visual object priming:  Evidence for perceptual and semantic distinctions in fusiform cortex.  NeuroImage, 19, 613-626.  (brief summary—pdf)

Wagner, A. D., & Koutstaal, W. (2002).  Priming.  In V. S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Human Brain (Vol. 4, 27-46).  San Diego, CA:  Academic Press.  (brief summary—pdf)

Schacter, D. L., Verfaellie, M., & Koutstaal, W. (2002).  Memory illusions in amnesic patients:  Findings and implications.  In L. R. Squire and D. L. Schacter (Eds.) Neuropsychology of Memory (3rd edition, pp. 114-129).  New York:  Guilford Press.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (2001).  The edges of words.  Semiotica, 137, 57-97.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., & Schacter, D. L. (2001).  Memory distortion and aging.  In M. Naveh-Benjamin, M. Moscovitch, and H. L. Roediger, III (Eds.), Perspectives on Human Memory and Cognitive Aging:  Essays in Honour of Fergus Craik (pp. 362-383).  Philadelphia, PA:  Psychology Press.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., Verfaellie, M., & Schacter, D. L. (2001).  Recognizing identical versus similar categorically related common objects:  Further evidence for degraded gist-representations in amnesia.  Neuropsychology, 15, 268-289.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., & Brenner, C. (2001).  Dual task demands and gist-based false recognition of pictures in younger and older adults.  Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 399-426.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., Wagner, A. D., Rotte, M., Maril, A., Buckner, R. L., & Schacter, D. L. (2001).  Perceptual specificity in visual object priming:  Functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence for a laterality difference in fusiform cortex. Neuropsychologia, 39, 184-199.  (brief summary—pdf)

Wagner, A. D., Koutstaal, W., Maril, A., Schacter, D. L., & Buckner, R. L. (2000).  Task-specific repetition priming in left inferior prefrontal cortex.  Cerebral Cortex, 10, 1176-1184.  (brief summary—pdf)

Dodson, C. S., Koutstaal, W., & Schacter, D. L. (2000).  Escape from illusion:  Reducing false memories.  Trends in Cognitive Science, 4, 391-397.  (brief summary—pdf)

Buckner, R. L., Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., & Rosen, B. R. (2000).  Functional MRI evidence for a role of frontal and inferior temporal cortex in amodal components of priming. Brain, 123, 620-640.  (brief summary—pdf)

Wagner, A. D., Koutstaal, W., & Schacter, D. L. (1999).  When encoding yields remembering:  Insights from event-related neuroimaging.  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B, 354, 1307-1324.     (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., Galluccio, L., & Stofer, K. A. (1999).  Reducing gist-based false recognition in older adults:  Encoding and retrieval manipulations.  Psychology and Aging, 14, 220-237.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., Verfaellie, M., Brenner, C., & Jackson, E. M. (1999).  Perceptually based false recognition of novel objects in amnesia:  Effects of category size and similarity to category prototypes.  Cognitive Neuropsychology, 16, 317-341.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., Johnson, M. K., & Galluccio, L. (1999).  Facilitation and impairment of event memory produced by photograph review.  Memory & Cognition, 27, 478-493.  (brief summary—pdf)

Wagner, A. D., Schacter, D. L., Rotte, M., Koutstaal, W., Maril, A., Dale, A. M., Rosen, B. R., & Buckner, R. L. (1998).  Building memories:  Remembering and forgetting of verbal experiences as predicted by brain activity.  Science, 281, 1188-1191.  (brief summary—pdf)

Schacter, D. L., Buckner, R. L., & Koutstaal, W. (1998).  Memory, consciousness and neuroimaging. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B, 353, 1861-1878.  (brief summary—pdf)

Buckner, R. L., Goodman, J., Burock, M., Rotte, M., Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., Rosen, B., & Dale, A. M. (1998).  Functional-anatomic correlates of object priming in humans revealed by rapid presentation event-related fMRI.  Neuron, 20, 285-296.  (brief summary—pdf)

Buckner, R. L., Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., Dale, A. M., Rotte, M., & Rosen, B. R. (1998).  Functional-anatomic study of episodic retrieval:  II.  Selective averaging of event-related fMRI trials to test the retrieval success hypothesis.  NeuroImage, 7, 163-175.  (brief summary—pdf)

Buckner, R. L., Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., Wagner, A. D., & Rosen, B. R. (1998).  Functional-anatomic study of episodic retrieval using fMRI:  I.  Retrieval effort versus retrieval success.  NeuroImage, 7, 151-162.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., Schacter, D. L., Johnson, M. K., Angell, K. E., & Gross, M. S. (1998).  Post-event review in older and younger adults:  Improving memory accessibility of complex everyday events. Psychology and Aging, 13, 277-296.  (brief summary—pdf)

Schacter, D. L., Norman, K. A., & Koutstaal, W. (1998).  The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory.  Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 289-318.  Extended version reprinted in D. F. Bjorklund (Ed.), False-memory creation in children and adults:  Theory, research, and implications (2000, pp. 129-168).  Mahwah, NJ:  Lawrence Erlbaum.  (brief summary—pdf)

Buckner, R. L., & Koutstaal, W. (1998).  Functional neuroimaging studies of encoding, priming, and explicit memory retrieval.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA, 95, 891-898.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (1998).  Memory for picture frames.  Empirical Studies of the Arts, 16, 47-57.  (brief summary—pdf)

Schacter, D. L., Buckner, R. L., Koutstaal, W., Dale, A. M., & Rosen, B. R. (1997).  Late onset of anterior prefrontal activity during true and false recognition:  An event-related fMRI study.  NeuroImage, 6, 259-269.   (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., & Schacter, D. L. (1997).  Gist-based false recognition of pictures in older and younger adults.  Journal of Memory and Language, 37, 555-583.  (brief summary—pdf)

Schacter, D. L., Koutstaal, W., & Norman, K. A. (1997).  False memories and aging.  Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1, 229-236.  (brief summary—pdf)

Schacter, D. L., Koutstaal, W., Johnson, M. K., Gross, M. S., & Angell, K. E. (1997).  False recollection induced by photographs:  A comparison of older and younger adults. Psychology and Aging, 12, 203-215.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., & Schacter, D. L. (1997).  Intentional forgetting and voluntary thought suppression:  Two potential methods for coping with childhood trauma.  In L. J. Dickstein, M. B. Riba, & J. M. Oldham (Eds.), Review of Psychiatry: Vol. 16 (pp. II-79-II-121).  Washington, D.C.:  American Psychiatric Press.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W., & Schacter, D. L. (1997).  Inaccuracy and inaccessibility in memory retrieval: Contributions from cognitive psychology and neuropsychology.  In P. S. Appelbaum, L. A. Uyehara, & M. R. Elin (Eds.), Trauma and Memory: Clinical and Legal Controversies (pp. 93-137).  New York:  Oxford University Press. (brief summary—pdf)

Schacter, D. L., Norman, K. A., & Koutstaal, W. (1997).  The recovered memory debate:  A cognitive neuroscience perspective.  In M. A. Conway (Ed.), Recovered Memories and False Memories:  Debates in Psychology (pp. 63-99).  Oxford:  Oxford University Press.  (brief summary—pdf)

Schacter, D. L., Koutstaal, W., & Norman, K. A. (1996).  Can cognitive neuroscience illuminate the nature of traumatic childhood memories?  Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 6, 207-214.  Reprinted in L. M. Williams & V. L. Banyard (Eds.), Trauma and Memory (1998, pp. 257-271).  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (1996).  Beyond Content:  The Fate—or Function—of Contextual Information in Directed Forgetting.  Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University.  (Advisor:  Daniel L. Schacter;  Dissertation Committee Members:  Nancy Kanwisher; Steven M. Kosslyn; Michelle Leichtman; Richard J. McNally).  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (1995).  Review of David C. Rubin, Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-Out Rhymes.  Harvard Graduate School Alumni Association Newsletter, Fall, 11-12.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (1995).  Situating ethics and memory.  American Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 253-262.  (brief summary)

Koutstaal, W., & Rosenthal, R. (1994).  Contrast analysis in behavioral research.  In J. Brzezinski (Ed.), Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities: Vol. 39.  Probability in Theory-Building: Experimental and Non-Experimental Models of Scientific Research in Behavioral Sciences (pp. 135-173).  Amsterdam:  Rodopi.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (1993).  Lowly notions:  Forgetting in William James’s moral universe.  Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 29, 609-635.  (brief summary—pdf)

Koutstaal, W. (1992).  Skirting the abyss: A history of experimental explorations of automatic writing in psychology.  Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 28, 5-27.  (brief summary—pdf)