Do children think that inheritance determines height and weight?

Three studies were conducted to investigate if children think that physical growth is determined by inheritance. All three studies employed the “switched‐at‐birth” task. Study 1 investigated if children and adults thought that height and weight were determined by parentage. Study 2 examined preschoolers and elementary school children's and adults' understanding of the role of parentage and nutrition in determining weight. Study 2a examined children's and adults' understanding of the role of parentage and nutrition in determining height. Results indicate that overall, preschoolers and third graders have more of an inheritance bias for height than for weight. However, when nutrition was introduced, apart from third graders, all other grades reasoned that nutrition played a greater role in determining weight. Overall, these results indicate that even young children have a rudimentary but differentiated theory of the role of inheritance in determining height and weight.

Highlights

• Participants were presented with switched‐at‐birth tasks to determine if they thought that parentage and/or nutrition influences height and weight.
• Young children viewed height as determined more by parentage than weight, suggesting that they have a differentiated and autonomous theory for the determination of height.

     

Anticipatory Uncertainty: How Academic and Industry Researchers in the Life Sciences Experience and Manage the Uncertainties of the Research Process Differently

The institutional contexts of research increasingly require researchers to anticipate their productivity and the uncertainties inherent in their research. This applies to both academic researchers and to researchers in start-up companies. This creates a specific kind of uncertainty, anticipatory uncertainty, that we define as the state of being uncertain as to whether research processes will be productive in a specific time frame and along situated definitions of good performance. In the life sciences, this anticipatory uncertainty is experienced and managed differently, depending on how research is organized and the cultural resources available in specific institutional contexts. In biotechnology companies, there is a readiness to embrace dynamic changes in both research strategies and the organization of work in response to new developments in the progress of the overall research agenda. In academia, the ability of research groups to react with similar flexibility seems significantly constrained by the individual attribution of research work and credit, and the correspondingly high level of individual anticipatory uncertainty. This raises questions about how far the current organization of academic research allows epistemic uncertainty to be embraced and corresponding risks to be taken, rather than safe questions to be pursued.     

Integrating Behavioral and Social Sciences in the Medical School Curriculum: Opportunities and Challenges for Psychology

The Institute of Medicine has reviewed and made recommendations concerning current teaching approaches, content, and barriers to the incorporation of behavioral/social sciences in medical school curricula (Cuff & Vanselow, 2004). This paper discusses those recommendations, the history of medical education reform, the barriers to and evolution of behavioral/social sciences’ inclusion, and the implications for psychology’s future role in academic medicine. Psychological concepts and technology permeate medical practice, but little progress has been made in integrating psychological and biological sciences. Looking to its basic science domains (e.g. cognition, learning, development, neuroscience), psychology can take scientific leadership in illuminating the mechanisms by which behavioral/social processes interact with biological functions in health, thereby providing the empirical basis for a truly integrated bio-behavioral curriculum. This article is based upon a symposium, “IOM Report on Enhancing Behavioral & Social Science in Medical Education: Impact and Opportunities for Psychology,” presented at the Annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., August 21, 2005. Suzanne Bennett Johnson, Chair; Elena Reyes, John E. Carr, and Anthony Errichetti, participants; Eugene K. Emory, Discussant.     

睡眠拖延行为背后的心理生理机制解析

摘 要 睡眠拖延行为是健康行为拖延领域提出的一个新概念,其可概括为在没有外部原因阻碍的情况下,仍无法在预定时间上床睡觉的现象。目前的研究认为睡眠拖延行为是导致普通人群睡眠不足的重要原因,睡前日常活动及沉浸式活动常常诱导其发生,探讨其背后机制主要涉及自我调节和生物节律两大因素。利用时限性自我调节理论可尝试解析睡眠拖延行为的发生过程。未来研究可从其神经机制探讨及预防和干预措施等方面尝试展开。     

Postfoundationalism and Interdisciplinarity: A Response to Jerome Stone

Abstract. In my recent work I argued that the religion and sciencedialogue is most successful when done locally and contextually. However, I also argued against theology's epistemic isolation in a pluralist, postmodern world, and for a postfoundationalist notion of human rationality that reveals the interdisciplinary, public nature of all theological reflection. I now want to explore the possibility that, when we look at what the prehistory of thehuman mind reveals about the biological roots of all human rationality, some forms of contemporary evolutionary epistemology may actually hold the key to understanding the kind of cognitive fluidity that enables true interdisciplinary reflection. Philosophically the religion and science dialogue benefits from this move when a postfoundationalist notion of rationality redescribes the dynamic interaction of our various disciplinary dialogues with one another as aform of transversal reasoning. Transversality in this sense justifies and urges an acknowledgment of multiple patterns of interpretation as one moves across the borders and boundaries of different disciplines.     

5岁儿童对生物特征的限制性推理的实验研究

本研究用推理法范式研究5岁儿童在不同条件下,对生长、生病、进食、呼吸和排泄等生物特征的限制于生物类别的限制性推理.结果表明,以人为例引入特征及对特征给予生机论的解释,都能提高儿童的限制性类别推理.儿童对生物特征的认识中,存在拟人化的推理模式和生机论的因果关系解释系统.儿童对动物和植物的认识发展是不均衡的,对动物的认识优先发展;对动植物共有的特征已有所认识,但对各个特征的认识发展是不均衡的.     

SPECIES,TEPEES, SCOTTIES,AND JOCKEYS: SELECTED BY CONSEQUENCES

“Ideas are like species: they must evolve.” This claim forms the conceptual core of an engaging book by Jonnie Hughes (2011), On the Origin of Tepees. Hughes asks: If evolution by natural selection explains the origin of the human species, then does selection by consequences also explain the origin of what we humans make and do? This question prompts consideration of three important analogies: between natural selection and artificial selection, between the law of natural selection and the law of effect, and between biological evolution and cultural evolution. These analogies in turn stimulate examination of the notions of purpose, design, and agency. Finally, discussion moves to the selectionism of Darwin and Skinner; although still controversial, this view remains the best way for natural science to understand the origins of adaptive behavior.     

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory : on Stephen Jay Gould's Monumental Masterpiece

Stephen Jay Gould's monumental The Structure of Evolutionary Theory “attempts to expand and alter the premises of Darwinism, in order to build an enlarged and distinctive evolutionary theory … while remaining within the tradition, and under the logic, of Darwinian argument.” The three branches or “fundamental principles of Darwinian logic” are, according to Gould: agency (natural selection acting on individual organisms), efficacy (producing new species adapted to their environments), and scope (accumulation of changes that through geological time yield the living world's panoply of diversity and morphological complexity). Gould's efforts to contribute something important to each of these three fundamental components of Darwinian Theory are far from successful.     

Spiritual Maturity and Wholeness in the Later Years

SUMMARY

Nuturing spiritual wellness is a prominent goal of most religious groups and is central to wholistic health. Although spirituality is very important to most older people and spiritual well-being and maturity are relevant to gerontological theories, consensus on criteria for evaluating them is not yet complete, and mainstream gerontology tends to ignore the subject. Two paradigmatic orientations are dominant; one extrinsically seeks self-gratification; the other is intrinsic, self-denying, and self-centered. It is important to face the divergent values about this and related topics like death and dying, the afterlife, the “new ageism” in services with and for the aging, the value-denying compromises of alleged neutrality, the danger of reification, and the tendency to ignore spirituality by meeting only empirically observable human needs.