Discrimination of faces by young infants

An experiment was conducted to obtain normative data concerning discrimination between human faces by infants under 6 months of age and to determine the information base required for this performance. Infants were habituated to a specific face and recovery of attention was monitored to a novel face, where one or more features was common to both faces. Results suggested that discrimination between photographs of adult, female faces is possible from 5 weeks of age, with critical information probably lying in the hair-face outline while internal features were relatively unimportant until the 19th week.     

Effects of imaginal exposure to feared disasters in obsessive-compulsive checkers

The combined effects of imaginal exposure to feared catastrophes and in vivo exposure to external stimuli were compared with the effects of in vivo exposure alone in 15 obsessive-compulsives with checking rituals. The first group received 90 min of uninterrupted exposure in imagination, which concentrated mainly on disastrous consequences, followed by 30 min of exposure in vivo to stimuli-situations which triggered rituals. The second group was given 2 hr of exposure in vivo only. Both groups were prevented from performing rituals. Treatment consisted of 10 daily sessions within a 2 week period.Assessments were conducted before and after treatment and at follow-up ranging from 3 months to 2.5 yr with a mean of 11 months. At post-treatment both groups improved considerably and did not differ. But at follow-up those who received imaginal and in vivo exposure maintained their gains, whereas the group who were treated by exposure in vivo alone evidenced partial relapse on four of the six dependent measures. The results tend to indicate that a closer match between a patient's internal fear model and the content of exposure enhances long term treatment efficacy.     

Against definitions

Definitional accounts of language structure are explored in this paper. Several classes of arguments for definitions are reviewed; those which connect to: classical theories of reference, theories of informal validity, theories of sentence comprehension, and theories of concept learning. We suggest that, for each of these areas, accounts which rely upon definition are, in fact, not to be preferred on evidential grounds to plausible non-definitional alternatives. We also present a series of experimental observations bearing on one of these areas — that of sentence comprehension. We show that one widely cited class of examples of definitional structures — that of “causative verbs” — fails to affect subject judgements of those relations among the words of causative sentences which depend upon the putative definitional structures. Such subject judgements are independently demonstrated to be sensitive to structural relations of comparable type for other linguistically non-problematic types.     

Infant search strategies with containers that move but do not alter the location at which contents can be found

A number of hypotheses about infants' delayed search accuracy have been based upon the notion that a location associated with repeated retrieval of the object attains privileged status. Infants may need strong cues to search at a new location. However, a test is reported in which performance of 12- and 15-month-old infants was shown to be indifferent to the location. The results were reliable at an individual level. The data accord with previous research upon the canonicality effect in infant spatial search, an effect which is taken to index an experiential constraint on spatial discrimination. The experimental design thus serves as a discriminative test between three approaches: the original privileged location hypothesis, a newer spatial-contrast hypothesis, and a wider approach which focuses on experiential constraints on learning, including the canonicality effect.     

Hierarchical coding in speech timing

The analysis of syllable and pause durations in speech production can provide information about the properties of a speaker's grammatical code. The present study was conducted to reveal aspects of this code by analyzing syllable and pause durations in structurally ambiguous sentences. In Experiments 1–6, acoustical measurements were made for a key syllabic segment and a following pause for 10 or more speakers. Each of six structural ambiguities, previously unrelated, involved a grammatical relation between the constituent following the pause and one of two possible constituents preceding the pause. The results showed lengthening of the syllabic segments and pauses for the reading in which the constituent following the pause was hierarchically dominated by the higher of the two possible preceding constituents in a syntactic representation. The effects were also observed, to a lesser extent, when the structurally ambiguous sentences were embedded in disambiguating paragraph contexts (Experiment 7). The results show that a single hierarchical principle can provide a unified account of speech timing effects for a number of otherwise unrelated ambiguities. This principle is superior to a linear alternative and provides specific inferences about hierarchical relations among syntactic constituents in speech coding.     

京氏易学中的阴阳对待与流行——兼论京易纳甲、建候、积算的建构原则

本文从《京氏易传》入手,对京氏易学中阴阳二气的对待与流行进行了阐发。文章指出,京氏通过纳甲、卦变、飞伏、游魂、归魂、建候、积算诸说将“一阴一阳”之《易》道具体到实处,构建了一幅生生不息的、立体的阴阳对待流行图;其纳支、建候、积算则依历法及音律之隔八生律法纳入。     

发明本心 易备于我——李顒治易思想浅说

李强调为易旨在洗心 ,反对为易而易 ,认为习易贵在自得 ,故应易备于我、求易于己 ,主张治易当实以足下 ,发明易理。     

论帛书《缪和》《昭力》的内在分别及其成书过程

本文认为帛书《缪和》可以分为三个相对独立的部分 ,其中第一部分是该篇的主体 ,而后两部分则可能是逐步编入其中的。相对于《缪和》来说 ,《昭力》尚处于尝试性的文本编合活动过程之中 ;二者相隔较大 ,仍是两个独立的文本单位。此外 ,《缪和》第二部分的“子曰”文本 ,直接反映了孔子曾经传经和创作《易传》的事实。     

胰岛细胞移植治疗1型糖尿病现状与未来

自2000年加拿大Edmonton报道了7例1型糖尿痛患者施行胰岛细胞移植术成功以来,越来越多的人把注意力投向了胰岛细胞移植的领域。然而,临床移植工作的成功开展还面临两大困难,一方面现有的胰岛细胞来源已经远远不能满足临床移植的需要,另一方面,现有免疫抑制方案造成了很多副作用。近年来,科技工作者正在探索新的途径,寻找新的胰岛来源。特别是包括体外重编程干细胞（iPS）、调节性T细胞和脐血干细胞在内的多种新技术的研究工作取得了许多进展,将为我们提供更多的选择,有可能成为今后的发展方向。本文就胰岛细胞移植治疗1型糖尿病的现状与未来展望进行简要的综述。     

Identification and integration of sensory modalities: Neural basis and relation to consciousness

A key question in studying consciousness is how neural operations in the brain can identify streams of sensory input as belonging to distinct modalities, which contributes to the representation of qualitatively different experiences. The basis for identification of modalities is proposed to be constituted by self-organized comparative operations across a network of unimodal and multimodal sensory areas. However, such network interactions alone cannot answer the question how sensory feature detectors collectively account for an integrated, yet phenomenally differentiated experiential content. This problem turns out to be different from, although related to, the binding problem. It is proposed that the neural correlate of an enriched, multimodal experience is constituted by the attractor state of a dynamic associative network. Within this network, unimodal and multimodal sensory maps continuously interact to influence each other’s attractor state, so that a feature change in one modality results in a fast re-coding of feature information in another modality. In this scheme, feature detection is coded by firing-rate, whereas firing phase codes relational aspects.