Chronic Stressors and Adolescents’ Externalizing Problems: Genetic Moderation by Dopamine Receptor D4. The TRAILS Study

The existing literature does not provide consistent evidence that carriers of the Dopamine D4 Receptor 7-repeat allele are more sensitive to adverse environmental influences, resulting in enhanced externalizing problems, compared to noncarriers. One explanation is that the adverse influences examined in prior studies were not severe, chronic, or distressing enough to reveal individual differences in sensitivity reflected by DRD4–7R. This study examined whether the 7-repeat allele moderated the association between chronic stressors capturing multiple stressful aspects of individuals’ lives and externalizing problems in adolescence. We expected that chronic stressor levels would be associated with externalizing levels only in 7-repeat carriers. Using Linear Mixed Models, we analyzed data from 1621 Dutch adolescents (52.2% boys), obtained in three measurement waves (mean age approximately 11, 13.5, and 16 years) from the TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS) population-based birth cohort and the parallel clinic-referred cohort. Across informants, we found that higher levels of chronic stressors were related to higher externalizing levels in 7-repeat carriers but not in noncarriers, as hypothesized. Although previous studies on the 7-repeat allele as a moderator of environmental influences on adolescents’ externalizing problems have not convincingly demonstrated individual differences in sensitivity to adverse environmental influences, our findings suggest that adolescent carriers of the Dopamine D4 Receptor 7-repeat allele are more sensitive to chronic, multi-context stressors than noncarriers.     

Spinoza on Ingenium and Exemplarity: Some Consequences for Educational Theory

Studies in Philosophy and Education - This article turns to the neglected pedagogical concept of ingenium in order to address some shortcomings of the admiration–emulation model of Linda...     

How brooding minds inhibit negative material: An event-related fMRI study

Depressive brooding – a passive ruminative focus on one’s problems, negative mood and their consequences – is a thinking style that places individuals at a greater risk to develop future psychopathology. In this study, we investigated whether inter-individual differences in depressive brooding are related to neural differences underlying the inhibition of a dominant response towards negative information in favor of the concurrent (positive) response. To exclude the possibility that information processes would be confounded by sustained negative mood or enhanced stress responses, a sample of thirty never-depressed healthy individuals was selected. The Cued Emotional Control Task (CECT) was used to index the ability to enhance cognitive control when encountering a negative stimulus associated with an incompatible stimulus–response mapping. Individual brooding scores were not related to behavioral performances on the CECT. On the other hand, whole brain analyses demonstrated that trait depressive brooding scores were positively associated with activation in the posterior parts of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (pdACC) while successfully inhibiting a response to negative relative to positive information. These findings demonstrate that brooding minds need to recruit more pdACC activation when inhibiting a dominant response towards negative information (in favor of a response towards positive), although they are performing similarly as low brooders at the behavioral level. Future research should investigate whether and how these brooding related neural adjustments in healthy volunteers are related to future psychopathology.     

中国古代的推理模型

文章主要针对中国古代语言和论证的一些重要方面进行探讨,特别地,我们重点考察了儒家和墨家的观点。我们主张使用轻型的逻辑模型方法（不引进全部的现代逻辑演算）对一些重要的概念提供解释。我们所关注的问题主要有：情景辨别和做出反应、根据合适的反应来正名、以及通过＂法＂和＂因＂两个方面讨论类的外延。我们尝试使用博弈模型来表示古代论证的实际情形,重点讨论关于对象和类之间关系的争辩。在文章的最后,我们讨论了使用博弈建模方法对于理解古代中国推理实践潜在的可能性。     

How does our search engine “see” the world? The case of amodal completion

This article illustrates a dissociation between the perceived attributes of an object and the ability of those attributes to guide the deployment of attention in visual search. Orientation is an attribute that guides search. Thus, a vertical line will “pop out” amid horizontal distractors. Amodal completion can create perceptually convincing oriented stimuli when two elements appear to form a complete object partially hidden behind an occluder. Previous work (e.g., Rensink &; Enns, Vision Research, 38, 2489–2505, 1998) has shown a preattentive role for amodal completion in search tasks. Here, we show that orientation based on perceptually compelling amodal completion may fail to guide attention. The broader conclusion is that introspection is a poor guide to the capabilities of our internal search engine.