The minimal self hypothesis

For millennia self has been conjectured to be necessary for consciousness. But scant empirical evidence has been adduced to support this hypothesis. Inconsistent explications of “self” and failure to design apt experiments have impeded progress. Advocates of phenomenological psychiatry, however, have helped explicate “self,” and employed it to explain some psychopathological symptoms. In those studies, “self” is understood in a minimalist sense, sheer “for-me-ness.” Unfortunately, explication of the “minimal self” (MS) has relied on conceptual analysis, and applications to psychopathology have been hermeneutic, allowing for many degrees of interpretive latitude. The result is that MS’s current scientific status is analogous to that of the “atom,” at the time when “atom” was just beginning to undergo transformation from a philosophical to a scientific concept. Fortunately, there is now an opportunity to promote a similar transformation for “MS.” Discovery of the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) opened the door to neuroimaging investigations of self. Taking the DMN and other forms of intrinsic activity as a starting point, an empirical foothold can be established, one that spurs experimental research and that enables extension of research into multiple phenomena. New experimental protocols that posit “MS” can help explain phenomena hitherto not thought to be related to self, thereby hastening development of a mature science of self. In particular, targeting phenomena wherein consciousness is lost and recovered, as in some cases of Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS), allow for design of neuroimaging probes that enable detection of MS during non-conscious states. These probes, as well as other experimental protocols applied to NREM Sleep, General Anesthesia (GA), and the waking state, provide some evidence to suggest that not only can self and consciousness dissociate, MS might be a necessary precondition for conscious experience. Finally, these findings have implications for the science of consciousness: it has been suggested that “levels of consciousness” (LoC) is not a legitimate concept for the science of consciousness. But because we have the conceptual and methodological tools with which to refine investigations of MS, we have the means to identify a possible foundation—a bifurcation point—for consciousness, as well as the means by which to measure degrees of distance from that foundation. These neuroimaging investigations of MS position us to better assess whether LoC has a role to play in a mature science of consciousness.     

Help-seeking: An understudied problem-solving skill in children

Traditional approaches to the study of young children's behavior in helping relationships are examined and criticized as inadequate because they have failed to represent the child's perspective from the role of “active helpee” (i.e., help-seeker in such relationships). By failing to look at helping from the perspective of the one who seeks help, researchers have neglected to pursue an important lead in understanding why some children are able to learn and progress independently when confronted with the same obstacles that serve to defeat other children. This article focuses on instrumental help-seeking defined as an active, complex social-cognitive activity that is essential to learning and achievement. In the first sections of this article, it is argued that instrumental help-seeking can be formally distinguished from passive dependency as well as from the actual giving and receiving of help. In following sections, a heuristic model of the help-seeking process is offered, prior research relevant to the model is reviewed, and ideas for research on help-seeking in children are suggested within the framework of this model.     

国内领导干部职业人格特征的研究进展

通过对国内研究文献的回顾，介绍了人格研究的发展历程。对领导干部研究的进展和研究中的不足进行了总结，并建议应加大研究的系统性和协作性，加强干预性研究的力度，将研究成果指导实践工作以提高领导干部的职业适应性。     

Positron brain imaging--normal patterns and asymmetries

Regional brain physiology was investigated in 11 normal resting right-handed subjects using positron emission tomography. Cerebral blood flow was studied in all subjects. Cerebral oxygen metabolism was studied in six subjects, and cerebral glucose metabolism was also studied in one subject. In five subjects, physiological activity was higher in left frontotemporal regions than right. These findings may be related to structural cerebral asymmetries or to activation of brain language centers.