High test-retest reliability of a neural index of rapid automatic discrimination of unfamiliar individual faces

An important aspect of human individual face recognition is the ability to discriminate unfamiliar individual. Since many general processes contribute to explicit behavioural performance in individual face discrimination tasks, isolating a measure of unfamiliar individual face discrimination ability in humans is challenging. In recent years, a fast periodic visual stimulation approach (FPVS) has provided objective (frequency-locked) implicit electrophysiological indices of individual face discrimination that are highly sensitive at the individual level within a few minutes of testing. Here we evaluate the test-retest reliability of this response across scalp electroencephalographic (EEG) recording sessions separated by more than two months, in the same 30 individuals. We found no test-retest difference overall across sessions in terms of amplitude and spatial distribution of the EEG individual face discrimination response. Moreover, with only 4 stimulation sequences corresponding to 4 min of recordings per session, the individual face discrimination response was highly reliable in terms of amplitude, spatial distribution, and shape. Together with previous observations, these results strengthen the diagnostic value of FPVS-EEG as an objective and rapid flag for specific difficulties at individual face recognition in the human population.     

Neurocounseling: Promoting Human Growth and Development Throughout the Life Span

Professional counselors must understand both psychological and neurological factors that impact human development across the life span. Despite an emerging body of literature about neurocounseling, little is known about how to integrate this information into supervision or the counseling curriculum. This article provides an overview of neuroscience topics applicable to professional counselors and recommendations for learning about neurocounseling.     

Toward a Life Course Framework for Studying Vulnerability

Interest in the study of vulnerability has experienced impressive growth across various disciplines. To contribute to this major but scattered development in the study of vulnerability, this article argues for a multidisciplinary life-course framework. This framework promotes a systemic and dynamic perspective focused on three complementary research directions: multidimensional, multilevel, and multidirectional. On the basis of this life course perspective, the authors also propose a definition of vulnerability as a dynamic process of stress and resources across various domains of life (i.e., work, family, health, migration, etc.), levels (i.e., person, group, collective), and time (i.e., long-term processes).     

Analogous selection processes in declarative and procedural working memory: N-2 list-repetition and task-repetition costs

Working memory (WM) holds and manipulates representations for ongoing cognition. Oberauer (Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 51, 45–100, 2009) distinguishes between two analogous WM sub-systems: a declarative WM which handles the objects of thought, and a procedural WM which handles the representations of (cognitive) actions. Here, we assessed whether analogous effects are observed when participants switch between memory sets (declarative representations) and when they switch between task sets (procedural representations). One mechanism assumed to facilitate switching in procedural WM is the inhibition of previously used, but currently irrelevant task sets, as indexed by n-2 task-repetition costs (Mayr & Keele, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129(1), 4–26, 2000). In this study we tested for an analogous effect in declarative WM. We assessed the evidence for n-2 list-repetition costs across eight experiments in which participants switched between memory lists to perform speeded classifications, mental arithmetic, or a local recognition test. N-2 list-repetition costs were obtained consistently in conditions assumed to increase interference between memory lists, and when lists formed chunks in long-term memory. Further analyses across experiments revealed a substantial contribution of episodic memory to n-2 list-repetition costs, thereby questioning the interpretation of n-2 repetition costs as reflecting inhibition. We reanalyzed the data of eight task-switching experiments, and observed that episodic memory also contributes to n-2 task-repetition costs. Taken together, these results show analogous processing principles in declarative and procedural WM, and question the relevance of inhibitory processes for efficient switching between mental sets.     

On the (numerical) ranking associated with any finite binary relation

We generalize the concept of a ‘ranking associated with a linear order’ from linear orders to arbitrary finite binary relations. Using the concept of differential of an object in a binary relation as theoretical primitive, we axiomatically introduce several measurement scales, some of which include the generalized ranking as a special case. We provide a computational formula for this generalized ranking, discuss its many elegant properties and offer some illustrating examples.     

Characterizing Simpler Recognizable Sets of Integers

For a given numeration system U, a set X of integers is said to be U-star-free if the language of the normalized U-representations of the elements in X is star-free. Adapting a result of McNaughton and Papert, we give a first-order logical characterization of these sets for various numeration systems including integer base systems and the Fibonacci system. For k-ary systems, the problem of the base dependence of this property is also studied. Finally, the case of k-adic systems is developed.     

人类行为遗传学的伦理问题

行为遗传学是试图定位与行为特性有关的特殊基因或基因组及了解基因与环境之间复杂关系的一种研究.行为遗传学是研究正常范围内的非病理变化,与人类疾病遗传学存在差异.行为遗传学研究面临许多伦理学问题,诸如,智力的遗传性,基因能否决定一切,生物社会学与人类文化评估,生命伦理学与行为遗传学的关系等,因此,对行为遗传学研究结果的阐述必须十分谨慎.     

Combinatorics and probability: six- to ten-year-olds reliably predict whether a relation will occur

Young children are able to judge which of two possibilities is more likely to occur when these possibilities are characterized by a simple property, like color (“Is it more likely to draw a red chip or a blue chip?”). Here we ask whether they can do so when the possibilities concern a relation between simple properties (“Is it more likely to draw two chips of the same color or two different colored chips?”). Three studies show that from the age of six children are able to predict the occurrence of a relation on the basis of its probability, and that from the age of nine their performance reaches adult levels. These results corroborate the theory of naive extensional reasoning, and are inconsistent with the hypothesis that children need the help of instruction to reason correctly about relations.     

Matte Blanco's thought and epistemological pluralism in psychoanalysis

It can be seen that, although psychoanalytic pluralism is widespread, there is still a spirit of intolerance among the different theoretical schools. Matte Blanco's work allows us to think about these questions in a fresh way. Direct psychic experience, felt to be an indivisible whole, is characterized by the symmetrical mode (close to the unconscious) and projects itself in a multiple and decondensed manner on to the asymmetrical mode (consciousness, thought). Thus, psychical facts (for example, what the patient says and feels during the session) can be accounted for by multiple conscious representations which, however, are not mutually contradictory (e.g. in different theoretical approaches). Affective factors linked to the hope of reviving 'oceanic feelings' of fusion with a unified and unifying theory of the subject-analyst are also explored insofar as they lead to the tendency of analysts to exclude one another.