A scoping review on the extent and nature of anxiety-related research within the research domain criteria (RDoC) framework: Limited coverage using non-disorder-specific search terms

The need for research on modifiable risk factors in anxiety has been highlighted in previous reviews synthesizing literature on the etiology and maintenance of anxiety. The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) provides a useful framework to lead this body of work. A scoping review was conducted to examine the extent and nature of research evidence on each RDoC domain as they have been investigated in anxiety via relevant correlates, with the end goal of informing future research priorities. The coverage of this review was limited to search terms bound within non-disorder-specific anxious pathology. The adopted selection criteria resulted in 170 cases (across 94 studies) where RDoC-relevant correlates of anxiety were studied. Results highlight disparate research focus across domains (limited research on processes within the Positive Valence Systems, Systems for Social Processes, and Arousal/Regulatory Systems), inconsistent findings within domains (Cognitive Systems), and a lack of research on cross-domain interactions.     

Domain effects in lexical development: learning words for foods and toys

We investigated 3-year-olds’ and adults’ use of domain cues in learning words for solid and nonsolid material entities. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants heard a novel neutral noun (e.g., “my X”) for a standard solid or nonsolid entity described as either a toy or a food. They then were asked to extend the word to one of two other entities. Both options matched the standard in solidity; but one differed from it in an object-relevant property (shape) and the other in a substance-relevant property (color, texture, or smell). Both children and adults were more likely to select the same-shaped entity if the standard was (1) solid than if it was nonsolid, and (2) described as a toy than if it was described as a food. Their interpretations of novel words for material entities were thus affected not only by perceptual information (about solidity) but also by conceptual information (about domain). In Experiment 3, the novel noun was presented in a syntactic context that suggested the solid entity should be interpreted as an object (e.g., “an X”) and that the nonsolid entity should be interpreted as a substance (e.g., “some X”). For adults, these changes largely eliminated the effect of the entity’s domain (toy, food) on interpretation. We interpret these findings in terms of the proposal that domain cues, like solidity cues, furnish information about whether an entity’s structure should be thought of as arbitrary or nonarbitrary and, hence, about whether a word should be interpreted as naming an object or a substance construal.     

PROCESS ECOLOGY: STEPPING STONES TO BIOSEMIOSIS

Many in science are disposed not to take biosemiotics seriously, dismissing it as too anthropomorphic. Furthermore, biosemiotic apologetics are cast in top‐down fashion, thereby adding to widespread skepticism. An effective response might be to approach biosemiotics from the bottom up, but the foundational assumptions that support Enlightenment science make that avenue impossible. Considerations from ecosystem studies reveal, however, that those conventional assumptions, although once possessing great utilitarian value, have come to impede deeper understanding of living systems because they implicitly depict the evolution of the universe backward. Ecological dynamics suggests instead a smaller set of countervailing postulates that allows evolution to play forward and sets the stage for tripartite causalities, signs, and interpreters—the key elements of biosemiosis—to emerge naturally out of the interaction of chance with configurations of autocatalytic processes. Biosemiosis thereby appears as a fully legitimate outgrowth of the new metaphysic and shows promise for becoming the supervenient focus of a deeper perspective on the phenomenon of life.     

The Devil Is in the Details: Why the Answer to Most Questions About Creativity Will Always Be “It Depends”

“Creativity” is an abstract concept. To make progress, creativity research needs to think about creativity in more concrete ways.