Father Involvement and Young,Rural African American Men’s Engagement in Substance Misuse and Multiple Sexual Partnerships

This study was designed to examine the associations of biological father and social father involvement during childhood with African American young men’s development and engagement in risk behaviors. With a sample of 505 young men living in the rural South of the United States, a dual mediation model was tested in which retrospective reports of involvement from biological fathers and social fathers were linked to young men’s substance misuse and multiple sexual partnerships through men’s relational schemas and future expectations. Results from structural equation modeling indicated that levels of involvement from biological fathers and social fathers predicted young men’s relational schemas; only biological fathers’ involvement predicted future expectations. In turn, future expectations predicted levels of substance misuse, and negative relational schemas predicted multiple sexual partnerships. Biological fathers’ involvement evinced significant indirect associations with young men’s substance misuse and multiple sexual partnerships through both schemas and expectations; social fathers’ involvement exhibited an indirect association with multiple sexual partnerships through relational schemas. Findings highlight the unique influences of biological fathers and social fathers on multiple domains of African American young men’s psychosocial development that subsequently render young men more or less likely to engage in risk behaviors.     

Evolution, Behavior Principles, And Developmental Systems: A Review Of Gottlieb’s Synthesizing Nature-nurture: Prenatal Roots Of Instinctive Behavior.

Gottlieb's developmental psychobiology book provides a base for reexamining the place of the experimental analysis of behavior in the life sciences. His experimental program demonstrating the critical function of the environment in the development of a species‐typical behavior helped force an acceptance of probabilistic epigenesis, the acknowledgment that the developmental genome‐environment system is fully interactional. (Indeed, nature vs. nurture is deader than a doornail.) The repercussions for evolutionary biology and the roles and categorizations of genes, behavior, and environment in behavior‐environment relations are explored in light of current knowledge, including specific implications for the experimental analysis of behavior.     

学前儿童用“人为不介入原理”区分生物、非生物能力的发展

本研究采用访谈法,考查4～6岁儿童对生物的“人为不介入原理”的理解。研究结果表明：1．学前儿童没有表现出明显的“泛灵论”倾向。2．学前儿童对“人为不介入原理”的理解随年龄增长而呈现提高趋势,多数6岁儿童已经能够利用这一原理区分生物和非生物。3．学前儿童对不同领域刺激物的认知表现出不平衡性,对动物的认知优先发展,植物次之,对人造物认知的发展落后于对生物认知的发展。4．学前儿童表现出初步的分类概念。     

What is nature? – ziran in early Daoist thinking

The question of the relation between humans and nature lies at the foundation of any philosophy. With the daily worsening environmental crisis, we are forced to face this ancient question again. Yet when we put it into the form of ‘humans and nature’, a metaphysics is already implied and the problem of nature has not yet been questioned. At this moment, the very question that needs to be put forward is, ‘What is nature’? The question of nature will be interrogated through a comparative view in this essay. First, I argue the modern understanding of nature lies at the root of today’s environmental problems. Then, I go back to early Daoism to explore Daoist thinking on ziran (usually translated as ‘nature’). The meaning of ‘dao emulates ziran’ is brought to light through a detailed interpretation of the ziran of dao and things. Ziran penetrates the dao, the heavenly, the earthly and the human. It is with the understanding of ziran that the nature of humans and all things are illuminated. Heidegger’s thinking on nature in connection with Daoism is briefly examined together with some other significant environmental philosophies.