The Interpenetration of Culture and Biology in Human Development

The central argument of this article is that human development should be viewed as the product of the interpenetration1 of cultural and biological processes. Using developmental system theory, it is argued that our work as investigators of human development is to examine this mutual coregulation: how biology and culture interpenetrate over time in concert with developmental processes. Various findings from developmental research are used to provide evidence on (a) how our biology constrains, gives expression to, mediates, or moderates how culture operates on developmental processes and (b) how culture infiltrates and becomes part of our biology and basic developmental processes. Examples of advances in neuroscience are also used to illustrate this interpenetration and to argue for the pervasiveness of cultural influences on development. To conduct the necessary research, new methodologies are needed. Promise is seen in emerging areas of social cognitive neuroscience.     

Wired for Society: Cognizing Pathways to Society and Culture

While cognitive scientists increase their tentative incursions in the social domains traditionally reserved for social scientists, most sociologists and anthropologists keep decrying those attempts as reductionist or, at least, irrelevant. In this paper, we argue that collaboration between social and cognitive sciences is necessary to understand the impact of the social environment on the shaping of our mind. More specifically, we dwell on the cognitive strategies and early-developing deontic expectations, termed naïve sociology, which enable well-adapted individuals to constitute, maintain and understand basic social relationships. In order to specify the way in which the demanding character of typical social relationships can be recognized in situ, we introduce the concept of “deontic affordances”. Finally, we shed light on the continuum that might relate a primitive naïve sociology, dedicated to the processing of invariant properties of the social life and a mature naïve sociology, necessary for dealing with the variable properties of cultural forms of life.     

现代壮医药教育的创立与壮族文化的传承和发展

通过探索壮医药的起源,论述壮医药教育的主要形式,提出现代壮医药教育的创立,不仅改变壮医药以口耳相传的传统教育形式,更重要的是传承壮族传统文化、发展壮族优秀文化、促进壮族文化与现代文化的结合.     

现代壮医药教育的创立与壮族文化的传承和发展

通过探索壮医药的起源,论述壮医药教育的主要形式,提出现代壮医药教育的创立,不仅改变壮医药以口耳相传的传统教育形式,更重要的是传承壮族传统文化、发展壮族优秀文化、促进壮族文化与现代文化的结合。     

When Astronomy,Biology, and Culture Converge: Children's Conceptions About Birthdays

The authors investigated the development of children's understanding of birthdays using structured interviews of 102 Israeli children aged 4 to 9 years. To fully comprehend the concept of birthday, children must grasp the relationship between the social occasion (the birthday party), irreversible biological growth, and the cyclical nature of the calendar. The authors' findings affirmed that a child's early conception is wholly social and self-contained (birthday parties confer a new age) and that young children believe that age can be affected by multiplying or skipping birthdays. The mature conception is socially based, but it is integrated with additional conceptual subsystems: the irreversible and independent unfolding of biological growth and the cyclical aspect of time. This enables the child to go beyond a magical approach to birthday rituals.     

Biology Precedes, Culture Transcends: An Evolutionist's View of Human Nature

I will, first, outline what we currently know about the last 4 million years of human evolutionary history, from bipedal but small-brained Australopithecus to modern Homo sapiens, our species, through the prolific toolmaker Homo habilis and the continent wanderer Homo erectus. I shall then identify anatomical traits that distinguish us from other animals and point out our two kinds of heredity, the biological and the cultural.
Biological inheritance is based on the transmission of genetic information, in humans very much the same as in other sexually reproducing organisms. But cultural inheritance is distinctively human, based on transmission of information by a teaching and learning process that is in principle independent of biological parentage. Cultural inheritance makes possible the cumulative transmission of experience from generation to generation. Cultural heredity is a swifter and more effective (because it can be designed) mode of adaptation to the environment than the biological mode. The advent of cultural heredity ushered in cultural evolution, which transcends biological evolution.
I will, finally, explore ethical behavior as a model case of a distinctive human trait, and seek to ascertain the causal connections between human ethics and human biology. My conclusions are that (1) moral reasoning—that is, the proclivity to make ethical judgments by evaluating actions as either good or evil—is rooted in our biological nature; it is a necessary outcome of our exalted intelligence, but (2) the moral codes that guide our decisions as to which actions are good and which ones are evil are products of culture, including social and religious traditions. This second conclusion contradicts those evolutionists and sociobiologists who claim that the morally good is simply that which is promoted by the process of biological evolution.     

Assessing the Development of Inflated Responsibility Beliefs: The Pathways to Inflated Responsibility Beliefs Scale

Inflated responsibility beliefs are hypothesized to be a central feature of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; Rachman, 1998, 2002; Salkovskis, 1985), but the etiology of these beliefs remains untested. Salkovskis and colleagues (1999) proposed 5 primary pathways to the development of inflated responsibility beliefs (e.g., heightened responsibility as a child, exposure to rigid and extreme codes of conduct as a child). The current paper presents 2 studies developing a self-report measure—the Pathways to Inflated Responsibility Beliefs Scale (PIRBS)—of these hypothesized pathways. In the first study, an initial version of the scale is developed and the number of items are reduced. In the second study, the revised scale is shown to provide a reasonable match to the proposed structure and to have good internal consistency, retest reliability, and convergent and divergent validity. These initial data suggest that the PIRBS may be useful for studying the etiology of inflated responsibility beliefs that are hypothesized to be central to the development of OCD. Limitations and future directions are discussed.     

以人为本：科学发展观的唯物史观基础

科学发展观是当代中国马克思主义发展理论的总范畴和总概念.它是以唯物史观为其哲学基础的.唯物史观是关于现实的人及其历史发展的科学,这种"现实的人"或者说"以人为本"的实践,则是科学发展观的本质与核心.在唯物史观的"现实的人"上出现盲区,往往会在发展观上陷入误区;偏离科学发展观,必然会导致错误的实践.     

东夷齐文化与华夏文化的融合发展

东夷文化是华夏东部族群文化。华夏文化是由东西部地域邦族融汇而成,东夷是华夏文化的东部源地。从考古看,苏北、淮北一带的史前文化与山东史前文化相同,为同一文化系统。今天的东北,包括辽河、黑龙江流域,同山东文化密不可分,应归属远古东夷族群。族外配偶婚是东夷与华夏西部族系的联系特点。炎帝蚩尤氏,是今天江南苗、瑶各族的先祖,是苗人的族神。齐桓公改革完成华夏融合,华夏融合使华夏民族的同归性强烈,地域疆土的中国认同性强烈。推动富民养农政策让农业发展,是保障民族融合、国家统一的基础。华夏融合统一才能造就中国,才能使中国发展强大。     

Culture and Cognitive Development

Human beings are biologically adapted for culture in ways that other primates are not. The difference can be clearly seen when the social learning skills of humans and their nearest primate relatives are systematically compared. The human adaptation for culture begins to make itself manifest in human ontogeny at around 1 year of age as human infants come to understand other persons as intentional agents like the self and so engage in joint attentional interactions with them. This understanding then enables young children (a) to employ some uniquely powerful forms of cultural learning to acquire the accumulated wisdom of their cultures, especially as embodied in language, and also (b) to comprehend their worlds in some uniquely powerful ways involving perspectivally based symbolic representations.     

Culture and Development of Self-Regulation

In the present paper, I aim to both contribute to a culture-based theory of self-regulation and clarify some mutually constitutive functions of psychological and sociocultural phenomena. I examine the relations between self and culture and the role of these relations in the development of self-regulation. Self-regulation is based on the intention to modify internal processes and behavior to reach one's goals. Because the development of self-regulation is embedded in a cultural context that gives priority to a specific model of agency, processes of self-regulation are assumed to differ cross-culturally. First, I give a brief overview on self-regulation research. Further, I discuss the contribution of a culture-informed perspective to the study of self-regulation and its development, taking into account interpersonal self-regulation. Finally, I present a 'Cultural Model of Agency and Self-Regulation,' which suggests how to link culture and individual agency.     

Individual Pathways to Life Satisfaction: The Significance of Traits and Motives

This article examines the relationship between life satisfaction and specific facets of psychological well-being (positive relations with others and environmental mastery) by considering the moderating effect of significant components of personality, i.e., traits, values, and implicit motives. Constructs were assessed by the Satisfaction With Life Scale, the Scales of Psychological Well-Being (two subscales), the NEO Five-Factor Inventory, the Schwartz Value Survey (two value types), and a picture-story test (implicit motives for achievement and affiliation–intimacy). Analyses revealed that values, implicit motives, and personality traits moderated the relationship between both types of well-being measures. Findings indicate that personality components reflecting significant strivings and needs play a crucial role in seeking well-being by assigning meaning to given life domains.

文化生活脚本理论及其研究进展

为了解释人对于生活事件的回忆出现的记忆隆起现象,出现了文化生活脚本理论。文化生活脚本是文化上共享、关于重要生活事件发生时间及顺序的知识。它是规范事件的图式,可以用来检索和叙述个人过去经历的过程。文章综述了文化脚本的研究及其进展,并对进一步的研究提出了设想。     

The Biology of Morality

Abstract. The morality of human beings, defined here as our ability to determine whether our actions are right or wrong, depends not just on following rules but also on understanding the impact of our actions on another person. How we understand the impact of our actions on another person depends on our state of consciousness, which is mediated by our brain and nervous system. We describe how we understand our morality to flow naturally from the biological state we are living in and how we see our biology and our morality as mutually interactive. A change in one changes the other. Another way of saying this is that changing either our morality or our biology changes both—changes who we are and what we do.