University of Graz

About: University of Graz is a education organization based out in Graz, Steiermark, Austria. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 17934 authors who have published 37489 publications receiving 1110980 citations. The organization is also known as: Carolo Franciscea Graecensis & Karl Franzens Universität.

The roles of associative and executive processes in creative cognition

Abstract: How does the mind produce creative ideas? Past research has pointed to important roles of both executive and associative processes in creative cognition. But such work has largely focused on the influence of one ability or the other—executive or associative—so the extent to which both abilities may jointly affect creative thought remains unclear. Using multivariate structural equation modeling, we conducted two studies to determine the relative influences of executive and associative processes in domain-general creative cognition (i.e., divergent thinking). Participants completed a series of verbal fluency tasks, and their responses were analyzed by means of latent semantic analysis (LSA) and scored for semantic distance as a measure of associative ability. Participants also completed several measures of executive function—including broad retrieval ability (Gr) and fluid intelligence (Gf). Across both studies, we found substantial effects of both associative and executive abilities: As the average semantic distance between verbal fluency responses and cues increased, so did the creative quality of divergent-thinking responses (Study 1 and Study 2). Moreover, the creative quality of divergent-thinking responses was predicted by the executive variables—Gr (Study 1) and Gf (Study 2). Importantly, the effects of semantic distance and the executive function variables remained robust in the same structural equation model predicting divergent thinking, suggesting unique contributions of both constructs. The present research extends recent applications of LSA in creativity research and provides support for the notion that both associative and executive processes underlie the production of novel ideas.

Observations of an extreme storm in interplanetary space caused by successive coronal mass ejections

Abstract: Space weather refers to dynamic conditions on the Sun and in the space environment of the Earth, which are often driven by solar eruptions and their subsequent interplanetary disturbances. It has been unclear how an extreme space weather storm forms and how severe it can be. Here we report and investigate an extreme event with multi-point remote-sensing and in situ observations. The formation of the extreme storm showed striking novel features. We suggest that the in-transit interaction between two closely launched coronal mass ejections resulted in the extreme enhancement of the ejecta magnetic field observed near 1 AU at STEREO A. The fast transit to STEREO A (in only 18.6 h), or the unusually weak deceleration of the event, was caused by the preconditioning of the upstream solar wind by an earlier solar eruption. These results provide a new view crucial to solar physics and space weather as to how an extreme space weather event can arise from a combination of solar eruptions.

The European climate under a 2 C global warming

Abstract: A global warming of 2 C relative to pre-industrial climate has been considered as a threshold which society should endeavor to remain below, in order to limit the dangerous effects of anthropogenic climate change. The possible changes in regional climate under this target level of global warming have so far not been investigated in detail. Using an ensemble of 15 regional climate simulations downscaling six transient global climate simulations, we identify the respective time periods corresponding to 2 C global warming, describe the range of projected changes for the European climate for this level of global warming, and investigate the uncertainty across the multi-model ensemble. Robust changes in mean and extreme temperature, precipitation, winds and surface energy budgets are found based on the ensemble of simulations. The results indicate that most of Europe will experience higher warming than the global average. They also reveal strong distributional patterns across Europe, which will be important in subsequent impact assessments and adaptation responses in different countries and regions. For instance, a North‐South (West‐East) warming gradient is found for summer (winter) along with a general increase in heavy precipitation and summer extreme temperatures. Tying the ensemble analysis to time periods with a prescribed global temperature change rather than fixed time periods allows for the identification of more robust regional patterns of temperature changes due to removal of some of the uncertainty related to the global models’ climate sensitivity.