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Effects of Essential Oils on Human Cognition
Published in K. Hüsnü Can Başer, Gerhard Buchbauer, Handbook of Essential Oils, 2020
Degel and Köster (Degel and Köster 1999) exposed healthy subjects to either lavender, jasmine, or no fragrance. Subjects were unaware of the presence of odorants. They had to perform a mathematical test, a letter-counting (i.e., selective attention) task, and a creativity test. The authors expected a negative effect on performance of lavender and a positive effect of jasmine. The results, however, showed that lavender decreased the error rate in the selective attention task, whereas jasmine increased the number of errors in the mathematical test. Ratings of odor valence collected after testing demonstrated that lavender was judged more pleasant than jasmine, independent of which odor had been presented during the testing. As subjects did not know that a fragrance had been administered, implicit evaluation of odor pleasantness probably influenced their performance. This relation is supported by the fact that subjects who were not able to correctly identify the odors preferentially associated pictures of the room they had been tested in with the odor that had been present during testing. Improvement of performance as a result of the inhalation of lavender EO has also been reported in another investigation (Sakamoto et al. 2005). In this study, subjects completed five sessions of a visual vigilance task involving tracking of a moving target. During phases of rest in-between sessions, they were exposed to lavender, jasmine, or no aroma. As estimated from the performance decrement in the control group, fatigue was highest and arousal was lowest in the last session. By contrast, tracking speed increased and tracking error decreased in the lavender group in the last session when compared to the no-aroma group. Jasmine had no effect on task performance. The authors argued that lavender aroma decreased arousal during the resting period and hence helped to achieve optimal levels for the following task period. Since no secondary variables indicative of arousal or of subjective evaluation of aroma quality were assessed in this investigation, no inferences can be made on the mechanisms underlying the observed effects. Diego and co-workers in the aforementioned investigation studied the influence of lavender and rosemary EOs after a three-minute inhalation period on a mathematical task (Diego et al. 1998). In contrast to the authors’ expectations, both odorants positively affected performance by increasing calculation speed, although only lavender improved calculation accuracy. In addition, subjects in both fragrance groups reported to be more relaxed. Those in the lavender group had less depressed mood, while those in the rosemary group felt more alert and had lower state anxiety scores. These findings were interpreted as indicating over-arousal caused by rosemary EO, which led to an increase of calculation speed at the cost of accuracy. In contrast, lavender EO seemed to have reduced the subjects’ arousal level and thus led to better performance than rosemary EO. However, since subjects in both fragrance groups felt more relaxed—but obviously only the lavender group benefited from this increase in relaxation—this is a somewhat unsatisfying explanation for the observed results.
A First-in-Man Study with 4-Fluoroamphetamine Demonstrates it Produces a Mild Psychedelic State
Published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2019
K. P. C. Kuypers, E. B. De Sousa Fernandes Perna, E. L Theunissen, S. W. Toennes, N. L. Mason, N. R. P. W. Hutten, J. G. Ramaekers
The Picture Concept Test is a creativity test that assesses both convergent and divergent thinking (Kuypers et al. 2016). It consists of 17 stimuli; each stimulus contains a matrix with 4 to 12 color pictures shown in two or three rows. Participants have to find an association between one of the pictures in each row. They are instructed to provide the correct solution, as there is only one correct answer. In total, 28 stimuli were shown and participants had to respond within a timeframe of one minute per stimulus. The percentage of correct answers was calculated and taken as the dependent measure of convergent thinking.
The Fantasy Questionnaire: A Measure to Assess Creative and Imaginative Fantasy
Published in Journal of Personality Assessment, 2018
David Weibel, Corinna S. Martarelli, Diego Häberli, Fred W. Mast
The primary purpose of this research was to measure the fantasy construct. We created, tested, and validated the Fantasy Questionnaire, which was designed as a self-report measure of individual differences in fantasy. The results reported in this study show that the questionnaire is valid and reliable. First, an initial questionnaire was developed with a set of items based on familiar personality trait scales and complemented by self-constructed items. Second, two dimensions were identified (imaginative fantasy and creative fantasy), and those measures showed good internal consistency and test–retest reliability. Imaginative fantasy refers to the activity of imagining things vividly in combination with the ease of absorption in these images and daydreams. Creative fantasy assesses whether a person uses his or her imagination to produce creative outputs (e.g., poems). The factor structure was confirmed in an additional sample. Third, the two dimensions of the questionnaire have good criterion validity in that certain groups of individuals (artists and role players) display higher scores than “novices” do, whereby medium to strong effect sizes were observed. The questionnaire also adds significant insight to the controversial debate (e.g., Merckelbach et al., 2001) about the relationship between fantasy and the Big Five taxonomy (Costa & McCrae, 1992): We found that participants with more fantasy tend to be more open to experience and—to some degree—more extroverted. Interestingly, we found fantasy to be clearly distinct from neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Fourth, correlations with measures of closely related concepts like absorption, creativity, creative self-efficacy, intuition, imagination, empathy, hallucination, and depersonalization demonstrate construct validity, although the new measure is not redundant with existing scales. This suggests that the Fantasy Questionnaire is associated with outcomes beyond existing measures. Fifth, we found that people with higher fantasy scores are less bored and, hence, they feel that time goes by faster than participants with less fantasy do. Also, the creative fantasy dimension can predict actual creativity in a creativity test, which is further support for validity.