人类基因组计划及基因革命对伦理的挑战

人类基因组序列的测定和研究具有重大的科学价值和经济价值,同时,也带来一系列社会问题。基因组计划和基因革命对伦理造成了致命的冲击。人类基因商品化对公正原则提出了挑战;基因设计引发生命唯物化,引起了人类的尊严危机;优生运动有可能违背自主原则和平等原则。人类基因组计划应坚持那些体现了人类及其社会本性、价值和尊严的伦理原则即不伤害人、尊重人、有益于人、公正对待人,以及人与人之间互相团结等。     

Gene Concepts and Genethics: Beyond Exceptionalism

The discursive explosion that was provoked by the new genetics could support the impression that the ethical and social problems posed by the new genetics are somehow exceptional in their very nature. According to this view we are faced with special ethical and social problems that create a challenge so fundamental that the special label of genethics is needless to justify. The historical account regarding the evolution of the gene concepts could serve us to highlight the limits of what we know about genes and what we can do with genes. The widespread notion about the exceptionality of genetic knowledge and its applicative possibilities is hardly justifiable and leads to misunderstandings regarding the conceptualization of the ethical and social problems we might face. Following a more realistic interpretation of the role of genes in human life we might avoid a whole set of fictive dilemmas and counterproductive regulatory efforts in bioethics. Bioethical discourse should move from the gene-centered scientific discourse toward the more sophisticated and complex discourses where human development represented as a matter of complex interactions between genomes and environments, between genes, educational factors, nutritional regimes, and other different developmental resources. If a gene is seen as one among the different developmental resources that are shaping a given human trait then both genethics and genetic exceptionalism could hardly be represented as a justified approach in discussing the ethical and social problems of genetics.     

The antinomy of science and democracy in modern China

Up to now Chinese academia has been addicted to inviting the twin goddesses of democracy and science, but has regrettably ignored the innate incongruity between them, which has led to the rise of scientism. May 4th pioneers first introduced this value system, but tension between these values subsequently led to a prevailing preference for science over freedom. The early Marxists defined freedom as obedience to social laws formulated in Marxist ‘science’, while Maoism finalized the Sinicization of Marxism with a belief in iron‐bound social laws and in human beings as mere political means, mercilessly suppressing any expression of free will.     

Conceptualizing the autism spectrum in terms of natural selection and behavioral ecology: The solitary forager hypothesis

This article reviews etiological and comparative evidence supporting the hypothesis that some genes associated with the autism spectrum were naturally selected and represent the adaptive benefits of being cognitively suited for solitary foraging. People on the autism spectrum are conceptualized here as ecologically competent individuals that could have been adept at learning and implementing hunting and gathering skills in the ancestral environment. Upon independence from their mothers, individuals on the autism spectrum may have been psychologically predisposed toward a different life-history strategy, common among mammals and even some primates, to hunt and gather primarily on their own. Many of the behavioral and cognitive tendencies that autistic individuals exhibit are viewed here as adaptations that would have complemented a solitary lifestyle. For example, the obsessive, repetitive and systemizing tendencies in autism, which can be mistakenly applied toward activities such as block stacking today, may have been focused by hunger and thirst toward successful food procurement in the ancestral past. Both solitary mammals and autistic individuals are low on measures of gregariousness, socialization, direct gazing, eye contact, facial expression, facial recognition, emotional engagement, affiliative need and other social behaviors. The evolution of the neurological tendencies in solitary species that predispose them toward being introverted and reclusive may hold important clues for the evolution of the autism spectrum and the natural selection of autism genes. Solitary animals are thought to eschew unnecessary social contact as part of a foraging strategy often due to scarcity and wide dispersal of food in their native environments. It is thought that the human ancestral environment was often nutritionally sparse as well, and this may have driven human parties to periodically disband. Inconsistencies in group size must have led to inconsistencies in the manner in which natural selection fashioned the social minds of humans, which in turn may well be responsible for the large variation in social abilities seen in human populations. This article emphasizes that individuals on the autism spectrum may have only been partially solitary, that natural selection may have only favored subclinical autistic traits and that the most severe cases of autism may be due to assortative mating.     

Infant emotion and the vocal affect lexicon

The role of the vocal channel of emotion expression in infancy has been neglected in developmental theory. The present review describes the ontogenetic course of vocal emotional expression as exhibited by human and infrahuman primate young and considers its dynamic relationship to the facial and bodily components of expression. The infant's encoding of negative and positive emotion expression is discussed within a developmental framework. In addition, this review assesses the impact of early social influences. It is concluded that early patterns of infant vocal emotional expression are probably biogenetically determined and that there may be certain universal vocal signals. However, data derived from studies of dyadic interaction indicate that the transition from raw affect expression in early infancy to a more modulated pattern later on is a product not only of neuromuscular maturation but of maternal coaching in affective expression as well.     

What gene-environment interactions can tell us about social competence in typical and atypical populations

Social competence is a complex human behaviour that is likely to involve a system of genes that interacts with a myriad of environmental risk and protective factors. The search for its genetic and environmental origins and influences is equally complex and will require a multidimensional conceptualization and multiple methods and levels of analysis. Behavioural genetic research can begin to address the fundamental yet complex question of how children develop social competence by uncovering the various influences on social development and disentangling variance due to multiple genes, environments and experiences. In this paper, we review the current status of research on sociability, face recognition, emotion recognition, and theory of mind (TOM)--well defined and measured constructs that are likely to be useful indices for detecting genetic and environmental influences on social competence. We also propose specific milestones as indices of further progress in the field: the development of an operational definition of the construct of social competence, the identification of social endophenotypes-psychological processes that are validly and reliably measured components of social competence, and improving specificity and homogeneity with regard to social endophenotypes within a population of study by employing 'extreme social phenotypes'. These efforts will lead to a better understanding of the specific contributions to the normal variation of social competence in the general population as well as to atypical social development.     

人类疼痛表情研究进展

疼痛表情是人类疼痛表达的行为方式之一,具有重要的生存适应和社会交流价值。疼痛表情研究应当遵循行为观察方法,基于面部运动编码系统（Facial Action Coding System, FACS）的表情编码有助于疼痛表情的量化分析。年龄、性别、社会因素、文化背景等多种因素会影响疼痛表情表达,使疼痛表情在不同个体之间表现出共性和个性并存的特性。在不断改进研究方法的基础上,未来可对疼痛表情的生理心理机制作出更多阐述,并有望建立完备的人类疼痛表情信息库。     

有关西方心理学中生物学化思潮的质疑与思考

从基因的角度认识人的社会行为,以遗传决定论的观点看待心理和行为的产生和发展,这种生物还原论的观点近年来在西方心理学中有着很大的市场。社会生物学、进化心理学和对行为遗传学研究成果的错误理解和解释是这一思潮的主要代表。实际上,基因的作用是有限的,它并不能决定个体的行为选择。个体发展是基因和环境共同作用的产物,心理与行为是受文化制约的,文化决定了个体心理的发展过程。     

Pluralism and Ambivalence in the Evolution of Morality

Much good work has been done on the evolution of human morality by focusing on how “selfish genes” can give rise to altruistic human beings. A richer research program is needed, however, to take into account the ambivalence of naturally evolved biopsychological motivators and the historical pluralism of human morality in religious systems. Such a program is described here. A first step is to distinguish the ultimate cause of natural selection from proximate causes that are the results of natural selection. Next, some proximate causes are suggested as possible conditions of biological and emotional valuing as well as of customary social morality and individual rational ethical thought. Finally, different moral perspectives of Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity are briefly presented in order to illustrate how one might inquire about the selection of a variety of biopsychological and cultural proximate causes that enable the evolution of a plurality of religious moral systems.     

Optimizing Expression of the Common Human Genome for Child Development

Molecular biology has moved the gene-environment issue in behavior genetics to how and when expression of the human genome is triggered and maintained. How does environment influence gene expression? How many genes are expressed in producing a given behavior? The genome is a data bank and does not automatically create a working brain. The body and brain grow well when (a) endocrine hormones initiate and promote the expression of genes, (b) nutrition is sufficient to sustain the production of proteins, and (c) stress does not suppress gene expression. The growth of brain synapses also requires appropriate neural stimulation. To study gene expression, it is essential to view the complex biology of the cell from a system context that includes the entire genome plus the biological and psychological environments. Optimizing geneexpression for child growth can be achieved by a balance of medicine, nutrition, and appropriate physical, educational, and psychological environments.     

A Genetics Primer for Social Health Research

The recently completed sequencing of the human genome heralds a new era in the study of social influences upon health. Because the interactions between genes and the environment are bidirectional, expertise in the areas of psychosocial processes and health behaviors will be necessary for elucidating how genes, behavior, and the environment interact to affect health outcomes. For investigators whose primary background is in social health research, the terminology used by geneticists may seem like a foreign language. To help navigate this foreign territory, the nature of genetic variation and gene action is presented in non‐technical terms using the serotonin transporter gene as an example because it is thought to influence sensitivity to the social environment. In addition, we describe several methodological pitfalls to be avoided when associating genetic variation with psychosocial and behavioral risk factors for poor health outcomes.     

In the beginning was the familiar voice: personally familiar voices in the evolutionary and contemporary biology of communication

The human voice is described in dialogic linguistics as an embodiment of self in a social context, contributing to expression, perception and mutual exchange of self, consciousness, inner life, and personhood. While these approaches are subjective and arise from phenomenological perspectives, scientific facts about personal vocal identity, and its role in biological development, support these views. It is our purpose to review studies of the biology of personal vocal identity—the familiar voice pattern—as providing an empirical foundation for the view that the human voice is an embodiment of self in the social context. Recent developments in the biology and evolution of communication are concordant with these notions, revealing that familiar voice recognition (also known as vocal identity recognition or individual vocal recognition) has contributed to survival in the earliest vocalizing species. Contemporary ethology documents the crucial role of familiar voices across animal species in signaling and perceiving internal states and personal identities. Neuropsychological studies of voice reveal multimodal cerebral associations arising across brain structures involved in memory, emotion, attention, and arousal in vocal perception and production, such that the voice represents the whole person. Although its roots are in evolutionary biology, human competence for processing layered social and personal meanings in the voice, as well as personal identity in a large repertory of familiar voice patterns, has achieved an immense sophistication.     

Social relationships in the local church. A comparison of networks in the rural and urban church

Social network theory is a useful tool in charting the relationships which exist between the members of any social group. Any local church consists of people gathered together, and centred round a special interest which is the worship of God and the expression of the Christian faith. The social interaction which occurs within the church community has this special focus, but it creates social relationships which are open to analysis by social network theory. To examine the effectiveness of the theory’s application two contrasting local churches were chosen as case histories to demonstrate ways in which network analysis could illuminate relationships within their constituencies. One local church was in a suburban situation and the other in a rural location. The aim of the study is threefold: to indicate how social network theory can provide a contrast in the churches’ structures as human groups; to indicate the quality and the outcomes of social relationships; and to explore how the application of the theory to other local churches can be useful for mission and outreach in their own neighbourhood communities.     

Socio-cultural selection and the sculpting of the human genome: Cultures’ directional forces on evolution and development

This paper argues for culture as a significant determinant of the modern human genome. As progress in the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology have gained greater insights into evolutionary process, aspects of classical proposals explaining how phenotypic responses to environmental experience could make their way into the genotype have returned in new guises. Recent proposals recognize environmental context as a key source of genetic variation by directly altering selection pressures to mask and unmask adaptive value of expressed traits, by reorganizing the combination and expression of genes during ontogeny to provide novel variants for selection, and by influencing developmental trajectories through epigenetic systems acutely sensitive to ontogenetic contexts. The emergence of a robust human socio-cultural niche, shielding humans from more proximate evolutionary pressures that marked our ancestral evolution, has arguably provided the strongest directive force on modern human evolution. Language is discussed as an exemplar of a cultural niche with a powerful self-organizing dynamic and the potential to dramatically alter the human genome.     

情境信息对模糊表情识别的影响及其作用机制

识别模糊表情对人类社会交往具有重要意义。研究者们发现, 情境信息影响模糊表情识别。基于此, 文章探究了影响模糊表情识别的五种情境信息, 包括文字描述、情绪表情、颜色背景、嗅觉信号和人格因素, 旨在揭示情境信息影响人类识别模糊表情的作用机制。未来研究可以从突出模糊表情的主体研究地位、清晰界定情境信息、探索新的研究范式以及明确影响效价转移的脑区四个方面入手, 进一步拓宽模糊表情识别研究领域。     

Socially Situated Transmission: The Bias to Transmit Negative Information is Moderated by the Social Context

Cultural evolutionary theory has identified a range of cognitive biases that guide human social learning. Naturalistic and experimental studies indicate transmission biases favoring negative and positive information. To address these conflicting findings, the present study takes a socially situated view of information transmission, which predicts that bias expression will depend on the social context. We report a large-scale experiment (N = 425) that manipulated the social context and examined its effect on the transmission of the positive and negative information contained in a narrative text. In each social context, information was progressively lost as it was transmitted from person to person, but negative information survived better than positive information, supporting a negative transmission bias. Importantly, the negative transmission bias was moderated by the social context: Higher social connectivity weakened the bias to transmit negative information, supporting a socially situated account of information transmission. Our findings indicate that our evolved cognitive preferences can be moderated by our social goals.     

Facial expressions modulate the ontogenetic trajectory of gaze-following among monkeys

Gaze-following, the tendency to direct one's attention to locations looked at by others, is a crucial aspect of social cognition in human and nonhuman primates. Whereas the development of gaze-following has been intensely studied in human infants, its early ontogeny in nonhuman primates has received little attention. Combining longitudinal and cross-sectional observational data from Barbary macaques at 'La Forêt des Singes', we show here that gaze-following among conspecifics develops within the first year of life with a rapid increase between 5 and 6 months, reaching adult levels at 1 year. Sex, rank, and relatedness of the animal whose gaze the subject followed did not affect gaze-following rates. Interestingly, however, the behavior was enhanced in all age classes if a gaze-cue was accompanied by a facial expression. Furthermore, the effect of facial expressions had a modulatory influence on the ontogenetic trajectory of gaze-following, suggesting that it is of functional significance in the development of the behavior. Follow-up analyses revealed that one specific facial expression that is given in response to social interactions between third parties was particularly efficient in eliciting gaze-following responses, indicating the importance of cues that are able to guide the acquisition of social information. Taken together, these results suggest that the development and the operation of gaze-following are tuned to the social and physical characteristics of a species' environment.