Continuity and Meaning

We see symptoms in our restless and disconnected youth and in the aging baby-boom generation indicating that many people are having difficulty experiencing meaning in their lives. One way to address this is to restore and create continuity in the lives of individuals beginning from the time of birth and proceeding throughout the passages of life. The components of continuity are consistent and coherent child care, a sense of realness, a sense of control, a sense of past, present, and future, availability of spaces without fear, childrearing consistent with the socio-economic environment, experiential marking comprised of historical-cultural narrative and ongoing ritual, and communion. While it is often impossible to have all aspects of continuity present at any one time, the successful intertwining of continuity's threads during one's lifetime can help reestablish purpose and meaning where it may have been lost.     

Intergenerational Continuity in Maltreatment

Identification of the causes of child maltreatment perpetration is prerequisite for developing efficacious prevention initiatives to reduce its occurrence. Earlier maltreatment victimization is often suggested as an important cause of subsequent maltreatment perpetration. This study investigates a) whether maltreatment victimization causes subsequent perpetration and b) whether the timing of maltreatment victimization—childhood versus adolescence—alters this relationship. We use data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, a longitudinal study begun in Rochester, New York in 1988, based on a stratified random sample of 1000 seventh and eighth graders. At the most recent followup, 80 % were reinterviewed. Child Protective Services data were collected on substantiated incidents of maltreatment victimization from birth to age 17 and on maltreatment perpetration through average age 33, n?=?816. Using propensity score models to control selection effects, we find that a history of maltreatment victimization significantly increases the odds of becoming a perpetrator of maltreatment. Although childhood-limited maltreatment does not significantly increase the odds of maltreatment perpetration, maltreatment that occurs in adolescence or that begins in childhood and persists into adolescence does. Adolescent maltreatment was found to be more serious in terms of type, chronicity, and severity than childhood-limited maltreatment, offering a possible explanation for this finding. Therefore, maltreatment victimization, especially during adolescence, is a likely cause of subsequent perpetration. Clinical services to interrupt the cycle of maltreatment are needed to protect subsequent generations from experiencing maltreatment and from experiencing the health-risking behaviors that often flow from maltreatment.     

Continuity in childhood depression

It is only in recent years that childhood depression has received widespread attention from mental health specialists. Its status as a clinical syndrome of childhood remains unclear. Many controversies surround various facets of this condition, foremost among these are questions relating to the duration of depressive disorders, the likelihood of recurrence, and the long-term outcome of depressed children. In the course of addressing these issues, attention is devoted to the outcomes as well as the advantages and disadvantages of commonly used research designs (prospective, retrospective, and catch-up prospective), the level of diagnosis used (symptom, syndrome, disorder), the significance of the age of onset on severity, and specific areas in need of further research. Among the tentative conclusions, it is asserted that many depressive symptoms are transient, diminishing or disappearing with age and/or changing environmental circumstances, but that severe depressive disorders do persist, with periods of remission, at least into the early adult years.     

Continuity and geometric logic

This paper is largely a review of known results about various aspects of geometric logic. Following Grothendieckʼs view of toposes as generalized spaces, one can take geometric morphisms as generalized continuous maps. The constructivist constraints of geometric logic guarantee the continuity of maps constructed, and can do so from two different points of view: for maps as point transformers and maps as bundles.     

Continuity and discontinuity in memory for threat

Using a paradigm that allows a quasi-continuous tracking of memory performance over time, two experiments were designed to test the hypotheses that (a) persons with a cognitively avoidant style of coping with threat manifest a dissociation between (intact) short-term and (reduced) long-term retrieval of aversive information and (b) persons with a vigilant coping style recall aversive information particularly well after long retention intervals, provided they are free to think about aversive events. Study 1 (N?=?75) showed that avoiders manifest a poor memory for aversive pictures after long retention intervals only. Study 2 (N?=?95) replicated this finding. In addition, manipulation of the cognitive load during the retention interval influenced vigilants’ recall of aversive information in the predicted way. Results indicate that processes occurring during the retention interval are essential for individual difference in memory for aversive information and require similar attention as encoding, appraisal, and retrieval processes.     

Continuity and Discontinuity in Vocational Development Theory

The main purpose of this paper is to point out that theories of vocational development that are derived from research should be based on relatively heterogeneous samples if they are to apply to males in general. The theories should, in addition, use the same pool of constructs in dealing with continuity and discontinuity of vocational development. An outline of such a theory is presented and one aspect of it investigated. The results suggest that such an approach may have validity. It is demonstrated that there is a positive relationship between stability of vocational field preferences and continuity of vocational development Supporting evidence was found for the validity of Roe's classification of vocational fields in a circular array.     

Systematicity and the Continuity Thesis

Synthese - Hoyningen-Huene (Systematicity: the nature of science, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) develops an account of what science is, distinguishing it from common sense. According to...     

可证伪性、可批评性和科学方法

劳丹等人否认科学划界问题,盖尔纳认为波普尔的思想发展分为前期和后期,前期强调可证伪性,后期强调批评讨论。本文论证,波普尔的划界标准、可证伪性和可批评性是联系在一起的;通过猜测与反驳法或试错法,波普尔构造了一种统一的方法,在一个总体框架中把科学和人类行为理论和解释性理解连接在一起。     

The Mind's Multiplicity and Continuity

The article opens with a fairly detailed overview of the research on nonlinear dynamic systems, deterministic chaos, and complexity theory—referred to collectively as complexity theory. The second part of the article is aimed at applying this research to an interesting discussion that has developed in the psychoanalytic literature regarding the fundamental nature of the self as either singular or multiple. Chaotic systems (a class of nonlinear systems) exhibit staggering variability, sensitivity, and adaptation in response to perturbation (in the form of sensitive dependence on initial conditions), while also demonstrating an enduring and distinctive coherence and continuity in their overall organization (in the form of strange attractors). As such, chaotic systems are useful in conceptualizing how relatively healthy people remain recognizable (or in character) in the midst of their variability, multiplicity, and change. By contrast, pathology of the self from the perspective of nonlinear dynamic systems is characterized by the repetitive, periodic and self-same quality of mental states.