Influences of grasp selection in typically developing children

When reaching towards an object, adults favour grasps which, following the intended action, end in a comfortable position even when this requires them to start in an uncomfortable position (the end-state-comfort effect). However, this strategy is not consistently used by children who instead seem to favour a minimal pre-contact rotation of the hand, even when this results in an uncomfortable end position. In terms of multiple movements, the strategies used for grip selection are unclear; adults may still grasp for end-state-comfort given their propensity to plan to the end of a movement; however, children who are less able to concatenate movement may tend to start-state-comfort movements. The current study considered grip selection in children ranging from 4 to 12 years and in a group of adults. Participants were asked to rotate a disc so that an arrow pointed towards a specific target(s), the number of sequences in a movement was increased from one to three. Planning for end-state-comfort was seen in all participants and a clear developmental trajectory was identified whereby the relative comfort of an end position could be directly predicted by age in months. Adults and 10–12-year-olds favoured an end-state-comfort strategy whereas the younger children gave equal weighting to end-state-comfort, start-state-comfort and no initial rotation strategies. All groups were able to end a movement comfortably when it was composed of three steps; however, the proportion of movements relying on an end-state-comfort strategy decreased as sequence length increase whereas the proportion of start-state-comfort and no initial rotation strategies increased. The current data support the concept that a mechanism for planning grasps may be based on motor experience.     

Testing reward-cue attentional salience: Attainment and dynamic changes

A great wealth of studies has investigated the capacity of motivationally relevant stimuli to bias attention, suggesting that reward predicting cues are prioritized even when reward is no longer delivered and when attending to such stimuli is detrimental to reward achievement. Despite multiple procedures have been adopted to unveil the mechanisms whereby reward cues gain attentional salience, some open questions remain. Indeed, mechanisms different from motivation can be responsible for the capture of attention triggered by the reward cue. In addition, we note that at present only a few studies have sought to address whether the cue attractiveness dynamically follows changes in the associated reward value. Investigating how and to what extent the salience of the reward cue is updated when motivation changes, could help shedding light on how reward-cues attain and maintain their capacity to attract attention, and therefore on apparent irrational attentive behaviors.     

Flanker compatibility effects in patients with Parkinson's disease: impact of target onset delay and trial-by-trial stimulus variation

Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and healthy controls were administered a flanker task that consisted of the presentation of colored targets and distractors. Participants were required to attend to the center target and identify its color. The stimulus displays were either congruent (i.e., the target and flankers were the same color) or incongruent. The time between the onset of the flanker and the target color (the target onset delay) was either short or long. Results indicated that PD patients and controls did not differ in the magnitude of the flanker effect within individual trials in that both groups demonstrated a typical flanker effect at the short target onset delay and neither group demonstrated a flanker effect at the longer delay. However, when performance was examined on a trial-by-trial basis, PD patients demonstrated a slowing of reaction time relative to controls when having to make the same response across consecutive trials at longer inter-trial intervals when the flankers were incongruent across consecutive trials and the display on the second of two trials was incongruent. These results indicate that PD patients are impaired in inhibiting the distractors over an extended delay and that this deficit may impact motor responding in these patients, suggesting that the basal ganglia contribute to the interface of attention and action.     

A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF EVOLUTION AND PARTICIPATION

Recent controversies surrounding the discernment of design in the natural world are an indication of a pervasive disquiet among believers. Can God as creator/sustainer of creation be reconcilable with the belief that God's work is indiscernible behind secondary evolutionary causes? Christian piety requires that the order experienced in the natural world be evidence of God's love and existence. Theistic evolutionary models rarely examine this matter, assuming that God is indiscernible in the processes and order of the world because only secondary causes can be examined. This leaves antievolutionary perspectives to interpret and address the problem of seeing God in the world. I examine these issues in order to gain more credibility for the religious longing to discern God in nature while at the same time affirming the indubitable truth of an evolutionary history. I argue that God's trinitarian nature, hiddenness, and incarnation give us reason to believe that God's presence in the natural world will be discernible, but only within the natural processes, and thereby only in an obscured fashion. I also argue that newer understandings of evolutionary mechanisms are more consistent with theological appropriation than are strictly Darwinian ones.     

进化发展心理学：发展中的人类本性

进化发展心理学研究社会能力与认知能力发展背后的基因与环境机制,以及基因与环境机制在特定社会文化中的表现。进化发展心理学探讨的主要问题与设计到的主要概念包括：（1）自然选择在毕生发展的早期阶段发挥作用;（2）进化发展心理学特别重视适应在婴儿期及儿童期发展中的作用;（3）儿童期的延长有助于儿童学习人类社会的复杂性;（4）发展背景的方法可以用来理解成人外显行为的进化起源;（5）基因与环境因素相互影响约束个体发展;（6）认知能力与行为活动敏感于早期环境,但二者发展也具有可塑性     

Probability and Evolution. Why the Probability Argument of Creationists is Wrong

Summary  Evolution is a time process. It proceeds in steps of definite length. The probability of each step is relatively high, so self organization of complex systems will be possible in finite time. Prerequisite for such a process is a selection rule, which certainly exists in evolution. Therefore, it would be wrong to calculate the probability of the formation of a complex system solely on the basis of the number of its components and as a momentary event.     

THE INTERTWINED ROLES OF GENES AND CULTURE IN HUMAN EVOLUTION

This essay critiques dual-inheritance theory as presented in Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd's book Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (2005). The theory states that culture became prominent in human evolution because it allowed relatively rapid adaptation to changing environments by means of imitation. Imitating the behavior of other members of one's community produces adaptive behaviors more readily than either genetic evolution or individual learning. Imitation follows a number of patterns: imitating high-status individuals, imitating the most common forms of behavior, imitating behaviors perceived to be the most effective solutions to various problems relevant to survival. This process combined with occasional innovations in behavior lead to a process of cultural evolution involving populations of cultural variants. Different local human populations were associated with different local populations of cultural variants, and both the human and the cultural populations evolved over time. Human evolution cannot be understood without taking into account these parallel processes of genetic and cultural evolution. Not by Genes Alone traces the implication of dual-inheritance theory for understanding human evolution and refers to various bodies of evidence relevant to the theory.     

Are investors really willing to agree to disagree? An experimental investigation of how disagreement and attention to disagreement affect trading behavior

Using a series of laboratory markets, this paper provides evidence that a willingness to engage in speculative trade is largely driven by a failure of traders to account for information about value implicit in other traders’ actions and that this behavior arises because traders construct myopic mental models that ignore the perspective of other traders. In a baseline set of markets, where traders are prompted to estimate fundamental value but are not overtly prompted to consider disagreement, I find that traders are generally insensitive to adverse selection and readily engage in suboptimal, speculative trade. Moreover, this effect does not decline across trials suggesting that market feedback alone is unlikely to correct traders’ behavior. In contrast, when traders are prompted to assess disagreement over asset values or when they trade in more transparent markets, they appear less willing to “agree to disagree.” These results provide insight into why investors depart from rational trading strategies and how investor psychology will influence trading behavior.     

Recruiters’ Inferences of Applicant Personality Based on Resume Screening: Do Paper People have a Personality?

Research shows recruiters infer dispositional characteristics from job applicants’ resumes and use these inferences in evaluating applicants’ employability. However, the reliability and validity of these inferences have not been empirically tested. Using data collected from 244 recruiters, we found low levels of estimated interrater reliability when they reviewed entry-level applicants’ resumes and made inferences regarding applicants’ personality traits. Moreover, when recruiters’ inferences of applicant personality were correlated with applicants’ actual Big Five personality scores, results indicated that recruiters’ inferences lacked validity, with the possible exceptions of extraversion and openness to experience. Finally, despite being largely unreliable and invalid, recruiters’ inferences of applicants’ extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness predicted the recruiters’ subsequent employability assessments of the applicants.     

无意识元认知调控下的策略转换

通过两位数乘法算式答案判别任务研究无意识元认知调控下策略转换的的认知加工特征。整个算式答案判别任务分为两种策略使用情境：一种为只可以使用尾数策略的任务情境;另一种为既可以使用尾数策略,又可以使用奇偶策略的任务情境。实验结果表明：1）无意识元认知具有高选择性、高效性和高潜力,能在策略使用情境转变之后,快速察觉并选择使用更为简单、高效的奇偶策略;2）尾数策略使用的强大思维定势阻止奇偶策略的意识化,致使绝大多数被试未能发现任务情境的变化而在内隐状态下使用了奇偶策略;3）策略在内隐或外显状态下使用具有同等效力,策略内隐使用具有高效性和高潜力。