阴阳五行说的发展演变与中华民族思维方式的基本形成

阴阳五行说的形成经历了一个漫长的历史时期,是我国古代农业文明的结晶,对于秦汉及其以后的封建社会的发展影响深远,成为封建统治者建立政权的历史哲学。与西方文明的发展路径相比有所不同的是,阴阳五行说所体现出的关联思维方式,是中国人的思想律,是古人对于天人之际这一问题加以思考所得出的结论。这一学说在《内经》医学哲学的思想框架中被采纳,并在现实的医学实践中被广泛运用,从而将精神与身体有机地结合在一起。     

Age-related differences in the brain areas outside the classical language areas among adults using category decision task

Older adults perform much like younger adults on language. This similar level of performance, however, may come about through different underlying brain processes. In the present study, we evaluated age-related differences in the brain areas outside the typical language areas among adults using a category decision task. Our results showed that similar activation patterns were found in classical language processing areas across the three age groups although regional lateralization indices in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas decreased with age. The greatest differences, however, among the three groups were found primarily in the brain areas not associated with core language functioning including the hippocampus, middle frontal gyrus, ventromedial frontal cortex, medial superior parietal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. Therefore, the non-classical language areas may exhibit an age-related difference between three age groups while the subjects show a similar activation pattern in the core, primary language processing during a semantic decision task.     

Ethnic differences in mother-infant language and gestural communications are associated with specific skills in infants

We examined gestural and verbal interactions in 226 mother-infant pairs from Mexican, Dominican, and African American backgrounds when infants were 14 months and 2 years of age, and related these interactions to infants' emerging skills. At both ages, dyads were video-recorded as they shared a wordless number book, a wordless emotion book, and beads and string. We coded mothers' and infants' gestures and language/vocalizations. Each maternal utterance was coded as referential (e.g. 'That's a bead') or regulatory (e.g. 'Put it there'). Mothers reported on infants' gestural, receptive, and productive vocabularies at 14 months, and infants were assessed on receptive language, expressive language, and action sequencing and imitation at 2 years of age. Mothers of the three ethnicities differed in their gesturing, distributions of the two types of language, and coupling of language and gestures. Mothers' ethnicity, language, and gestures were differentially associated with infants' 2-year skills. Mother-infant communicative interactions are foundational to infant learning and development, and ethnic differences in modes of early communication portend divergent pathways in the development of specific skills.     

The functional role of alternation advantage in the sequence effect of symbolic cueing with nonpredictive arrow cues

Previous studies have shown that attention orienting is influenced by the orienting processes of previous trials in a spatial-cueing paradigm. This sequence effect is due to the fact that performance is facilitated when cue validity (valid or invalid) repeats between trials. In this study, we investigated the influences of cue direction and target location on the sequence effect of symbolic cueing with a nonpredictive central arrow cue. The cue direction was manipulated to always point in a certain direction in one condition, and to always point in the opposite direction in a second condition. The results showed that sequence effects were enhanced by the alternation of cue direction and target location and were impaired by the repetition of cue direction and target location. The same result pattern was found when the cue direction was chosen randomly in the third condition. The results suggested that both the repetition advantage effect of cue validity and the alternation advantage effect of cue direction and target location are involved in the sequence effect within the symbolic-cueing paradigm.