Periods of relatively stable, rule‐like behavior alternated with short transition periods characterize cognitive development on reasoning tasks like the balance scale task. Each transition gives rise to an improvement in behavior, until a phase is reached in which performance is flawless or improvement is not worthwhile given the necessary extra effort. Several computational models have been developed to capture the developmental phenomena associated with the balance scale task. These models, which originate from different computational traditions, explain the main phenomena (...) of development. Recently, empirical phenomena have been reported that these models cannot easily accommodate. We propose a computational model that is implemented in ACT‐R and that is based on the evaluation of success of applied knowledge, combined with a mechanism to construct newknowledge by searching for differences between the left‐ and right‐hand sides of presented balance scale problems. This model accounts for the main empirical phenomena as well as for the recently reported empirical phenomena such as learning without feedback. (shrink)

Is 50 considered “old”? When do we stop being considered “young”? If individuals could choose to be any age, what would it be? In a sample of 502,548 internet respondents ranging in age from 10 to 89, we examined age differences in aging perceptions (e.g., how old do you feel?) and estimates of the timing of developmental transitions (e.g., when does someone become an older adult?). We found that older adults reported older perceptions of aging (e.g., choosing to (...) be older, feeling older, being perceived as older), but that these perceptions were increasingly younger than their current age. The age to which individuals hope to live dramatically increased after age 40. We also found that older adults placed the age at which developmental transitions occurred later in the life course. This latter effect was stronger for transitions involving middle-age and older adulthood compared to transitions involving young adulthood. The current study constitutes the largest study to date of age differences in age perceptions and developmental timing estimates and yielded novel insights into how the aging process may affect judgments about the self and others. (shrink)

The neural basis of developmental changes in transitive reasoning in parietal regions was examined, using voxel-based morphometry. Young adolescents and adults performed a transitive reasoning task, subsequent to undergoing anatomical magnetic resonance imaging brain scans. Behaviorally, adults reasoned more accurately than did the young adolescents. Neural results showed less grey matter density in superior parietal cortex in the adults than in the young adolescents, possibly due to a developmental period of synaptic pruning; improved performance in the reasoning task (...) was negatively correlated with grey matter density in superior parietal cortex in the adolescents, but not in the adult group; and the latter results were driven by the more difficult trials, requiring greater spatial manipulation. Taken together, the results support the idea that during development, regions in superior parietal cortex are fine-tuned, to support more robust spatial manipulation, resulting in gre... (shrink)

This paper investigates whether an abstract linguistic construction shows the kind of prototype effects characteristic of non-linguistic categories, in both adults and young children. Adapting the prototype-plus-distortion methodology of Franks and Bransford (1971), we found that whereas adults were lured toward false-positive recognition of sentences with prototypical transitive semantics, young children showed no such effect. We examined two main implications of the results. First, it adds a novel data point to a growing body of research in cognitive linguistics and construction (...) grammar that shows abstract linguistic categories can behave in similar ways to non-linguistic categories, for example, by showing graded membership of a category. Thus, the findings lend psychological validity to the existing cross-linguistic evidence for prototypical transitive semantics. Second, we discuss a possible explanation for the fact that prototypical sentences were processed differently in adults and children, namely, that children’s transitive semantic network is not as interconnected or cognitively coherent as adults’. (shrink)

This is the story of a textbook that students of developmental biology have used for 45 years. “An Introduction to Embryology” was released soon after a role for genes in the control of development became finally recognized but not yet well documented. Thus this book manifested the transition from embryology to developmental biology. The story of its author, Boris Balinsky, who against all odds survived to write this book, is remarkable on its own. He started his scientific career (...) in the USSR, but due to 20th century social and political upheavals, ended it in South Africa. This article will shed light on the life of Boris Balinsky, a scientist and writer and will explore the origins of his book. BioEssays 27:970–977, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Most theories of learning would predict a gradual acquisition and refinement of skills as learning progresses, and while some highlight exponential growth, this fails to explain why natural cognitive development typically progresses in stages. Models that do span multiple developmental stages typically have parameters to “switch” between stages. We argue that by taking an embodied view, the interaction between learning mechanisms, the resulting behavior of the agent, and the opportunities for learning that the environment provides can account for the (...) stage-wise development of cognitive abilities. We summarize work relevant to this hypothesis and suggest two simple mechanisms that account for some developmental transitions: neural readiness focuses on changes in the neural substrate resulting from ongoing learning, and perceptual readiness focuses on the perceptual requirements for learning new tasks. Previous work has demonstrated these mechanisms in replications of a wide variety of infant language experiments, spanning multiple developmental stages. Here we piece this work together as a single model of ongoing learning with no parameter changes at all. The model, an instance of the Epigenetic Robotics Architecture embodied on the iCub humanoid robot, exhibits ongoing multi-stage development while learning pre-linguistic and then basic language skills. (shrink)

Background:Moving into the last phase of life comprises a developmental transition with specific needs and risks. Facilitating transitions is an important component of the work of nurses. When curative interventions are no longer helpful, nurses enact key roles in caring for patients and families.Aim:The aim of this study was to examine the experiences of registered nurses in acute care settings as they worked with patients and families to facilitate transition to comfort-focused care.Research design:Sampling, data collection, and data analysis (...) were guided by constructivist grounded theory, chosen because of its strength in identifying and explicating social processes.Participants and context:A purposeful sample of 26 registered nurses working in acute care hospitals in one community in the northeastern United States participated in this study through semi-structured interviews.Ethical considerations:The study received approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects. Participants provided informed consent.Findings:Nurses facilitated transition to comfort-focused care by enacting their moral commitments to patients and families. They focused on building relationships, honoring patient self-determination, and maintaining respect for personhood. In this context, they discerned a need for transition, opened a discussion, and used diverse strategies to facilitate achieving consensus on the part of patients, family members, and care providers. Regardless of how the process unfolded, nurses offered support throughout.Discussion:Achievement of consensus by all stakeholders is critical in the transition to comfort-focused care. This study deepens our understanding of how nurses as moral agents utilize specific strategies to assist progress toward consensus. It also offers an example of recognizing the moral agency of nurses through listening to their voices.Conclusion:Increased understanding of effective nursing strategies for facilitating transition to comfort-focused care is essential for developing needed evidence for excellent care and strengthening end-of-life nursing education. (shrink)

Applying Snyder and Feldman's 1984 consolidation‐transition model to moral judgement development has enabled further understanding of how moral judgement translates to moral functioning. In this study, 178 college students were identified as being in consolidated versus transitional phases of moral judgement development using Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT). Participant moral functioning was inferred through an honest decision‐making index along with Attitudes Towards Human Rights Inventory (ATHRI) and Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI) scores. Multivariate Analyses of Variance revealed that the consolidated group (...) was significantly more honest than the transitional group. No differences attributable to moral judgement phase were seen for ATHRI and VFI scores. Findings support the claim that consolidated phases improve the explanatory power of moral judgement for certain moral functional outcomes—particularly those involving ambiguity and minimal time for decision‐making. (shrink)

Microdevelopment is the process of change in abilities, knowledge and understanding during short time-spans. This book presents a new process-orientated view of development and learning based on recent innovations in psychology research. Instead of characterising abilities at different ages, researchers investigate processes of development and learning that evolve through time and explain what enables progress in them. Four themes are highlighted: variability, mechanisms that create transitions to higher levels of knowledge, interrelations between changes in the short-term scale of microdevelopment (...) and the crucial effect of context. Learning and development are analysed in and out of school, in the individual's activities and through social interaction, in relation to simple and complex problems and in everyday behaviour and novel tasks. With contributions from the foremost researchers in the field Microdevelopment will be essential reading for all interested in cognitive and developmental science. (shrink)

It was not long ago when the consciousness was not considered a problem for science. However, this has now changed and the problem of consciousness is considered the greatest challenge to science. In the last decade, a great number of books and articles have been published in the field, but very few have focused on the how consciousness evolves and develops, and what characterizes the transitions between different conscious states, in animals and humans. This book addresses these questions. Renowned (...) researchers from different fields of science (including neurobiology, evolutionary biology, ethology, cognitive science, computational neuroscience and philosophy) contribute with their results and theories in this book, making it a unique collection of the state-of-the-art of this young field of consciousness studies. - First book on the topic - Focus on different levels of consciousness, including: Evolutionary, developmental, and functional - Highly interdisciplinary. (shrink)

Targeted transitions in chromatin states at thousands of genes are essential drivers of eukaryotic development. Therefore, understanding the in vivo dynamics of epigenetic regulators is crucial for deciphering the mechanisms underpinning cell fate decisions. This review illustrates how, in addition to its cell memory function, the Polycomb group of transcriptional regulators orchestrates temporal, cell and tissue‐specific expression of master genes during development. These highly sophisticated developmental transitions are dependent on the context‐ and tissue‐specific assembly of the different (...) types of Polycomb Group (PcG) complexes, which regulates their targeting and/or activities on chromatin. Here, an overview is provided of how PcG complexes function at multiple scales to regulate transcription, local chromatin environment, and higher order structures that support normal differentiation and are perturbed in tumorigenesis. (shrink)

While the genesis of self-awareness at approximately 18 months old is a dramatic landmark in human development, there is at this stage no explicit awareness on the toddler's part of his/her truly standing apart from others. Only much later does a distinct sense of self shift into focus, and here Sartre provides us with a compelling theory of a first reflective experience of self-awareness. He explains this phenomenon by emphasizing a violent shift in ontological status, one in which the pre-adolescent (...) child is precipitated from functional unity with a primary caregiver to an individuated state involving self-awareness as privative, i.e. where the child becomes aware of existing only in the form of not-being-the-adult. For Sartre this new experience of self is not therefore positive but rather formal or empty; there has in fact been a psychic transition, from being to nothingness. In addition, Sartre also states that all children first explicitly experience themselves in this fashion. These claims find support in the work of developmental psychologist Margaret Mahler. In fact, in spite of the vast developmental discrepancies between toddler and pre-adolescent child, given the appropriate environmental triggers privative subjectivity will be shown to involve a regression to the much earlier rapprochement stage of development described by Mahler. (shrink)

Developmental aspects of the frame/content perspective are explored in relation to (1) transitions in early language acquisition, (2) possible differential neurological control for babbling and early and later speech, and (3) development of word production templates in precocious early speakers. Proportionally high frequency of bilabial stops in early stable words versus babble offers advantages for afferent monitoring and supporting “frame dominance.”.

Among other virtues, Mental Files Theory provides a straightforward explanation of de jure coreference, i.e. identity of referent guaranteed by meaning alone: de jure coreference holds between terms when these are associated with the same mental file from which they inherit their reference. In this paper, I discuss an objection that Angel Pinillos raises against Mental Files Theory and other similar theories: the theory predicts that de jure coreference should be transitive, just like identity. Yet there are cases, involving ‘slash-terms’, (...) in which transitivity fails, or so it seems. In his book Mental Files, Recanati replies that the mental files theorist can accommodate Pinillos’ exceptions by offering a refined model of merging files, the ‘partial merging’ model. While agreeing with Recanati on the need for such a model, I contend that, pace Recanati and Pinillos, de jure coreference is transitive even in the presence of slash-terms. I will first show that paradoxical consequences ensue if slash-terms are said to de jure corefer with several basic terms at once. Then, building on two different accounts Recanati gives of referential confusion, I will show that on both views, de jure coreference cannot hold because of the behaviour of confused slash-terms. I will conclude that, in Mental Files Theory, a slash-term can, at most, de jure corefer with only one basic term per context. (shrink)

One prominent image of the Christian life in Scripture is that of a journey homeward. Consistent with Scripture and the developmental sciences, Christian spiritual authorities through history have developed various journey paradigms with associated phases or stages and transitions. Constructive paradigms are not linear and rigid in form, but might be represented as upward trending spiral movements that permit digressions, reversions, stopping places and advances on the way. Such paradigms and stages serve valuable heuristic functions in assisting pilgrims (...) to assess where they are on the journey and how to progress in maturity as well as insights for guiding others on their journeys of faith. (shrink)

Inductive reasoning is fundamental to human cognition, yet it remains unclear how we develop this ability and what might influence our inductive choices. We created novel categories in which crucial factors such as domain and category structure were manipulated orthogonally. We trained 403 4–9-year-old children to categorise well-matched natural kind and artefact stimuli with either featural or relational category structure, followed by induction tasks. This wide age range allowed for the first full exploration of the developmental trajectory of inductive (...) reasoning in both domains. We found a gradual transition from perceptual to categorical induction with age. This pattern was stable across domains, but interestingly, children showed a category bias one year later for relational categories. We hypothesise that the ability to use category information in inductive reasoning develops gradually, but is delayed when children need to process and apply more complex category structures. (shrink)

In this special issue of Human Nature we explore the possible adaptive links between teaching and learning during childhood, and we aim to expand the dialogue on the ways in which the social sciences, and in particular current anthropological research, may better inform our shifting understanding of how these processes vary in different social and ecological environments. Despite the cross-disciplinary trend toward incorporating more behavioral and cognitive data outside of postindustrial state societies, much of the published cross-cultural data is presented (...) as stand-alone population-level studies, making it challenging to extrapolate trends or incorporate both ecological and developmental perspectives. Here, contributors explore how human life history, ecological experience, cumulative culture, and ethnolinguistics impact social learning and child development in foraging and transitioning societies around the world. Using historical ethnographic data and qualitative and quantitative data from studies with contemporary populations, authors interrogate the array of factors that likely interact with cognitive development and learning. They provide contributions that explore the unique environmental, social, and cultural conditions that characterize such populations, offering key insights into processes of social learning, adaptive learning responses, and culture change. This series of articles demonstrates that children are taught culturally and environmentally salient skills in myriad ways, ranging from institutionalized instruction to brief, nuanced, and indirect instruction. Our hope is that this collection stimulates more research on the evolutionary and developmental implications associated with teaching and learning among humans. (shrink)

This rejoinder acknowledges the empirical gaps and theoretical/theological disharmony highlighted in the three selected commentaries on Place Spirituality, but we defend our central argument about the developmental pathways of PS. First, we provide an overview of recent studies on PS, highlighting what has been done so far in the field. Second, we draw from the commentaries to advance the understanding of PS in relation to three world religions: Islam, Christianity and Hinduism. Third, we evaluate the normative aspects of PS (...) as a transactional versus transitional phenomenon. Finally, we defend the two contested developmental pathways to PS, involving the compensation and correspondence working models of attachment, while complementing these models using the motivational systems framework. We maintain that these models are relevant for understanding the relationship between religious attachment and place attachment among religious and non-religious people. Recommendations for further studies are made in relation to the broader implications of PS. (shrink)

This article analyzes the current political transition in México from the vantage point of civil society. It departs from a definition of the Mexican authoritarian regime, now the oldest in the world, as a model of fusion between the state, the market and society. The crisis of the developmental model and the regime’s increasing inability to incorporate the new social actors created by industrialization and urbanization opened up a long period of political crisis whose main content was a process (...) of societal differentiation. The failure of President Salinas’ project of neo‐liberal reconstruction of the authoritarian regime deepened the crisis and led to the formation and consolidation of strong national political parties, the beginning of a still unequal, but effective electoral competition and especially to the emergence of several civic groups that are struggling for a democratization that goes beyond electoral politics. The collective identity as civil society of these civic groups has been instrumental for the critique of the regime’s gradualist strategy of “permenent electoral reform”. (shrink)

Mayr’s proximate–ultimate distinction has received renewed interest in recent years. Here we discuss its role in arguments about the relevance of developmental to evolutionary biology. We show that two recent critiques of the proximate–ultimate distinction fail to explain why developmental processes in particular should be of interest to evolutionary biologists. We trace these failures to a common problem: both critiques take the proximate–ultimate distinction to neglect specific causal interactions in nature. We argue that this is implausible, and that (...) the distinction should instead be understood in the context of explanatory abstractions in complete causal models of evolutionary change. Once the debate is reframed in this way, the proximate–ultimate distinction’s role in arguments against the theoretical significance of evo-devo is seen to rely on a generally implicit premise: that the variation produced by development is abundant, small and undirected. We show that a “lean version” of the proximate–ultimate distinction can be maintained even when this isotropy assumption does not hold. Finally, we connect these considerations to biological practice. We show that the investigation of developmental constraints in evolutionary transitions has long relied on a methodology which foregrounds the explanatory role of developmental processes. It is, however, entirely compatible with the lean version of the proximate–ultimate distinction. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Chunghyoung Lee argues that, because zygotes are developmentally plastic, they cannot be numerically identical to the singletons into which they develop, thereby undermining conceptionism. In this short paper, I respond to Lee. I argue, first, that, on the most popular theories of personal identity, zygotic plasticity does not undermine conceptionism, and, second, that, even overlooking this first issue, Lee’s plasticity argument is problematic. My goal in all of this is not to take a stand in the (...) abortion debate, which I remain silent on here, but, rather, to push for the conclusion that transitivity fails when we are talking about numerical identity of non-abstract objects. (shrink)

Halford et al. seek to provide a framework that unifies distinct developmental phenomena. However, in pursuit of this goal, they sidestep crucial aspects of some well-known developmental benchmarks (most notably Transitive Inference and Object Concept), and they do not acknowledge “repeated” or “direct” experience as possibly being more fundamental than relational complexity, instead, ascribe all experience a secondary role.

New employees face a variety of life and career transitions in early adulthood. This paper explores these transitions that shape personal and career identity. A supervisor can play a central role in facilitating employee development during these times but may be unwilling or ill-prepared to do so. At other times he/she may provide assistance that is unwanted and inappropriate to the employee's developmental needs. The paper develops a framework for examining the supervisor's ethical responsibility to facilitate employee (...) development and provides guidelines for managing these transitions. (shrink)

In February 2012, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released an interim report that detailed its findings based on extensive testimony by former students of the nation's residential school system, a system designed to forcibly assimilate aboriginal peoples. The report concludes that the state must play an active role in the restoration of indigenous culture and knowledge. It is against this background that Christopher Martin analyzes the idea of aboriginal educational rights. The concern here is not so much with aboriginal persons' (...) right to a fair share of educational provision, but with the aboriginal person's right to reassert authority over his or her developmental interests, including an interest in culture and identity. The specific role of educational rights in such debates remains an important one, especially since such discussions impinge on difficult issues of state sovereignty and cultural rights. In this essay Martin examines various justifications of aboriginal educational rights and develops a Habermasian justification that remains consistent with individual rights. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introducing persons and the psychology of personhood Jack Martin and Mark H. Bickhard; Part I. Philosophical, Conceptual Perspectives: 2. The person concept and the ontology of persons Michael A. Tissaw; 3. Achieving personhood: the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology Charles Guignon; Part II. Historical Perspectives: 4. Historical psychology of persons: categories and practice Kurt Danziger; 5. Persons and historical ontology Jeff Sugarman; 6. Critical personalism: on its tenets, its historical obscurity, and its future prospects James T. (...) Lamiell; Part III. Social-Developmental Perspectives: 7. Conceiving of self and others as persons: evolution and development John Barresi, Chris Moore and Raymond Martin; 8. Position exchange theory and personhood: moving between positions and perspectives within physical, sociocultural and psychological space and time Jack Martin and Alex Gillespie; 9. The emergent ontology of persons Mark H. Bickhard; 10. Theorising personhood for the world in transition and change: reflections from a transformative activist stance on human development Anna Stetsenko; Part IV. Narrative Perspectives: 11. Identity and narrative as root metaphors of personhood Amia Lieblich and Ruthellen Josselson; 12. Storied persons: the double triad of narrative identity Mark Freeman. (shrink)

Advances in fashion pattern construction technologies continually introduce novel approaches that address the limitations of existing practices. To keep pace, these emerging technologies must be widely disseminated to update practitioners’ skills and advance current practices. The literature identifies two primary dissemination methods: the traditional instructor-led method and the learning management systems-based open educational resources (LMS-based OER) method. The former, heavily reliant on apprenticeships for technical skill development, is inefficient, ineffective, and unsustainable. In contrast, the OER-based approach offers a more efficient, (...) effective, and sustainable alternative, positioning it as the superior method for disseminating emerging technologies in this field. However, the effective establishment and implementation of effective OERs require an OER-oriented instructional design model (IDM) tailored to the specific learning needs and large-scale adoption theories pertinent to pattern construction. Currently, such a model is absent, hindering the field’s transition to a theory-based dissemination approach customised to its unique practices and impeding the efficient, widespread adoption of novel pattern construction technologies. Using a developmental approach, this study addresses this gap by introducing a novel OER-oriented IDM termed OER-PattEdu. This study contributes to both theoretical and methodological literature and holds practical implications for transforming lifelong learning and professional development in the field into a more efficient and sustainable paradigm. (shrink)

In contrast with the two dominant views in Theory of Mind development, the Perceptual Access Reasoning hypothesis of Fabricius and colleagues is that children don’t understand the mental state of belief until around 6 years of age. Evidence for this includes data that many children ages 4 and 5, who pass the standard 2-location false belief task, nonetheless fail the true belief task, and often fail a 3-location false belief task by choosing the irrelevant option. These findings can be explained (...) by the PAR hypothesis but pose challenges for the two dominant views. I argue against an alternate hypothesis which is proposed by Anika Fiebich in a recent paper. According to Fiebich, PAR is not a distinct transitional stage in children’s theory of mind development, but is a fast and frugal System 1 heuristic which fades once children become fluent in social reasoning. However, I point out a number of problems with Fiebich’s proposal and argue for the superiority of the PAR hypothesis. I also present five reasons to be skeptical about the findings of Perner and Horn which purportedly show that 4- and 5-year-olds can pass the 3-location false belief task when suitably modified. This is a further difficulty for Fiebich’s proposal, since she relies on these findings in her fluency theory. Finally, I sketch a dual systems theory of mind account based upon the PAR hypothesis which is different from Fiebich’s. (shrink)

This qualitative study examined hospital nurses’ methods in handling meal and nutrition care during inpatient time, with an underlying focus on undernourished older adult. Observations and interviews were used to document nurses’ methods through the span of a transition (defined by an entry, passage, and exit). The study finds inconsistencies in care methods due to institutional processes restricting both mealtime care and nutritional logging of information throughout hospitalization. It is concluded that the consequences of these inconsistencies must be recognized and (...) that new approaches to meals and nutritional care should be introduced in order to provide greater flexibility. Based on the assumption that mobilizing patient resources is pivotal for meal and nutritional care, it is argued that it may be important to mobilize patient resources during mealtime and in nutritional logging of information in order to increase the visibility of meal and nutritional care in patient transitions within the institution and across settings. Both nurses’ methods and institutions developmental initiatives regarding meal and nutritional care need to accommodate the differences between what in this paper is defined as social‐bodily care and text‐based care. This could be met through care methods that take place with, more than for the patient. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on the importance of attention skills in the development of universal associative learning, and it explains why the centrality of attention in UAL presents a considerable difficulty for the UAL approach. Attentional abilities are not just developmentally related to UAL but are in fact explanatory of UAL. The main problem is that all the types of attention involved in UAL can be dissociated from consciousness. This means that while attention skills for UAL might be necessary for consciousness, (...) they are not sufficient because they can all occur unconsciously. Thus, the possibility that UAL capacities might not be sufficient for consciousness cannot be eliminated, thereby challenging the key claim of the UAL approach. (shrink)

Several molecular mechanisms contribute directly and mechanically to the loss of epithelial phenotype. During epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT), adherens junctions and desmosomes are at least partially dissociated. At the same time, a massive cytoskeleton reorganization takes place, involving the rho family and the remodeling of the actin microfilament mesh. Numerous pathways have been described in vitro that control phenotype transition in specific cell models. In vivo developmental studies suggest that transcriptional control, activated by a specific pathway involving Ras, Src and (...) potentially the Wnt pathway, is an essential step. Recent functional and localization experiments indicate that the slug/snail family of transcription factors functions overall as an epithelial phenotype repressor and could represent a key EMT contributor. BioEssays 23:912–923, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Emerging Adults' Religiousness and Spirituality seeks to understand how the developmental process of meaning-making encompasses American emerging adults' religiousness and spirituality. This volume does not focus on disentangling religion and spirituality conceptually, but rather emphasizes their centrality in the psychology of human development. It highlights the range of experiences and perspectives of emerging adults in the U.S. grounded in social context, social position, and religious or spiritual identification. Chapters are written by an interdisciplinary group of authors and explore topics (...) such as the benefits and detriments of religiousness and spirituality to emerging adults; contexts and socializing agents such as parents and peers, the media, religious communities, and universities; and variations of religiousness and spirituality concerning gender, sexuality, culture, and social position. (shrink)

The current study mainly explored the influence of fluid intelligence and emotional intelligence on affective decision-making from a developmental perspective, specifically, during the transition from childhood into early adolescence. Meanwhile, their age-related differences in affective decision-making were explored. A total of 198 participants aged 8–12 completed the Iowa Gambling Task, the Cattell’s Culture Fair Intelligence Test and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Child Form. Based on the net scores of IGT, the development of affective decision-making ability did not increase monotonically (...) with age, and there was a developmental trend of an impaired IGT performance in early adolescence, especially in the early learning phase of the IGT. More importantly, IQ and EI played different roles for children and early adolescents: IQ and EI jointly predicted the IGT performance for 8–10 years old children, whereas only EI contributed to the IGT performance of 11–12 years old early adolescents. The present study extends the evidence how cognitive processing and emotional processing interact in affective decision-making from the developmental perspective. Furthermore, it provides insights of future research and intervention with early adolescents’ poor affective decision-making. (shrink)

It is useful to envision two fundamentally different ways by which the timing of plant development is regulated: developmental stage‐transition mechanisms and time‐to‐flowering mechanisms. The existence of both mechanisms is indicated by the behavior of various mutants. Shoot stage transitions are defined by dominant mutants representing at least four different genes; each mutant retards transitions from juvenile shoot stages to more adult shoot stages. In addition, dominant leaf stage‐transition mutants in at least seven different genes have similar (...) phenotypes, but the leaf rather than the shoot is the. focus (and at least two of these genes encode domain proteins.) One mutant, Hairy sheath frayed 1‐0 (Hsf1‐O) simultaneously affects shoot and leaf; this mutant's behavior initiated our interest in plant heterochronism(1). The second type of timekeeping involves time‐to‐flowering. As with most plant but not animals species, cultivars of the maize species vary greatly for the time‐to‐flowering quantitative trait: between 6 and 14 weeks is common. It is via the 'slipping time frames' interaction that takes place between stage‐transition mutants and time‐to‐flowering genetic back‐grounds that unexpected and radical phenotypes occur. We see a reservoir of previously unsuspected morphological possibilities among the few heterochronic genotypes we have constructed, possibilities that may mimic the sort of variation needed to fuel macroevolution without having to posit (as done by Goldschmidt(2)) any special macromutational mechanisms. (shrink)

Learning to drive is a significant event for the transition to adulthood and delay or avoidance may have social, practical, and psychological implications. For those with Developmental Coordination Disorder, driving presents a considerable challenge, and the literature shows that there are differences in driving ability between individuals with and without DCD. The aim of the current research is to further our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the driving experiences of individuals with DCD. Nineteen participants with DCD and 36 controls (...) aged 18–57 years took part in this study. Participants completed standardized tests, questionnaires and a driving simulation task designed to measure speed, road positioning, and rate of change of steering in three conditions with increasing perceptual complexity. Results indicate that behaviors for all participants changed as the perceptual demands of the task increased. However, drivers with DCD were more affected than all other groups, driving more slowly, and driving further to the right. These findings illustrate how the impact of both internal and external constraints negatively affect the success of the driving task for individuals with DCD compared to their TD peers. (shrink)

The theory of concepts advanced in the dissertation aims at accounting for a) how a concept makes successful practice possible, and b) how a scientific concept can be subject to rational change in the course of history. Traditional accounts in the philosophy of science have usually studied concepts in terms only of their reference; their concern is to establish a stability of reference in order to address the incommensurability problem. My discussion, in contrast, suggests that each scientific concept consists of (...) three components of content: 1) reference, 2) inferential role, and 3) the epistemic goal pursued with the concept's use. I argue that in the course of history a concept can change in any of these three components, and that change in one component—including change of reference—can be accounted for as being rational relative to other components, in particular a concept's epistemic goal.This semantic framework is applied to two cases from the history of biology: the homology concept as used in 19th and 20th century biology, and the gene concept as used in different parts of the 20th century. The homology case study argues that the advent of Darwinian evolutionary theory, despite introducing a new definition of homology, did not bring about a new homology concept (distinct from the pre-Darwinian concept) in the 19th century. Nowadays, however, distinct homology concepts are used in systematics/evolutionary biology, in evolutionary developmental biology, and in molecular biology. The emergence of these different homology concepts is explained as occurring in a rational fashion. The gene case study argues that conceptual progress occurred with the transition from the classical to the molecular gene concept, despite a change in reference. In the last two decades, change occurred internal to the molecular gene concept, so that nowadays this concept's usage and reference varies from context to context. I argue that this situation emerged rationally and that the current variation in usage and reference is conducive to biological practice.The dissertation uses ideas and methodological tools from the philosophy of mind and language, the philosophy of science, the history of science, and the psychology of concepts. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century calls to modernize natural history motivated a range of responses. It was unclear how research in natural history museums would participate in the significant technological and conceptual changes that were occurring in the life sciences. By the 1960s, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the few university-based natural history museums that were able to maintain their specimen collections and support active research. The MVZ therefore provides a window to the (...) modernization of natural history. This paper concentrates on the directorial transitions that occurred at the MVZ between 1965 and 1971. During this period, the MVZ had four directors: Alden H. Miller (Director 1940–1965), an ornithologist; Aldo Starker Leopold (Acting Director 1965–1966), a conservationist and wildlife biologist; Oliver P. Pearson (Director 1966–1971), a physiologist and mammalogist; and David B. Wake (Director 1971–1998), a morphologist, developmental biologist, and herpetologist. The paper explores how a diversity of overlapping modernization strategies, including hiring new faculty, building infrastructure to study live animals, establishing new kinds of collections, and building modern laboratories combined to maintain collections at the MVZ’s core. The paper examines the tensions between the different modernization strategies to inform an analysis of how and why some changes were institutionalized while others were short-lived. By exploring the modernization of collections-based research, this paper emphasizes the importance of collections in the transformation of the life sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Personal Narratives: Parenting Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders Through the Transition to AdulthoodCatherine Cornell, Julie Herren, Susan Osborne, and Kelly WeissTransition years: From Learning, Living and Loving to Maintenance and MediocrityCatherine CornellWhat does every parent of an autistic child worry about the most? For those of us with severely affected children, the answer to that question is: “Who will care for my child and keep her safe when I (...) am gone?”I drove my daughter back to her “group home” for a scheduled drop off on Saturday. There was only one car in the driveway and the house van was gone. Lily was not happy about returning “home.” Agitated, she opened the door to the car, almost before it was stopped, ran to the back of the house, and up the fire escape stairs to the door of her third floor bathroom, as if she was avoiding going through the main living rooms of the house. I called up to her that there was no one at home and she came back down and pushed through the unlocked door. Racing ahead of me, she was already shed of her clothes and in the shower: her self–calming method that she used whenever returning to the house. Thirty minutes later, after three attempts to leave the shower and throwing up in the shower, she dressed and ran back out to our car. I played her favorite music, attempting to calm her anxiety. This transition, from home to “group home,” was increasingly difficult due to recent changes in staff and housemates. Having no one there to greet her was ratcheting up the anxiety level for both of us.When the on–call manager came, Lily was so distraught that I asked for her medications and took her back home with me. Two days later she was calm enough and I was reassured enough to return her to the house. Somehow the house manager made the incident my fault. Perhaps I did react strongly, but on reflection, what triggered the strong reaction in me was the insecurity I felt at finding no one home. It seemed like a breach of trust. Like we were left, abandoned, our plans shattered and at the mercy of fate. Strong emotions for a little mix–up in communications (if that is what it was) but, nevertheless, there it is—how I felt and more to the point how my daughter felt.I relate this story because it illustrates what has changed the most about our lives since Lily left her school and entered the world of adult services: missing is the feeling of trust and security that responsible caring people would keep Lily safe when my husband and I cannot.My 25–year–old daughter Lily has severe autism. She was the most beautiful and easy baby imaginable and appeared to develop normally until she began to lose speech and have night terrors at 15 months of age. She was diagnosed initially with atypical autism, then pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified, and finally with autism at age four.From age four to twenty–two, she attended a specialized school for autism where she received age level academics, therapies for speech, and training in self–care and independent living. She did not do well in academics nor did she regain her lost speech. She did learn to care for herself with assistance and, as important, she gained social and behavioral skills and learned to live with others in a social way. She [End Page E1] also learned recreational and vocational skills that would be transferrable to the community, such as bicycle riding, rollerblading, swimming and jogging. The philosophy of her school was to build self–esteem and confidence by teaching music, art and physical skills—in small steps, ensuring success, and then building on those skills.In her last year at school, Lily was a happy and well–adjusted member of her small group of five young women living in a town house with support from trained school staff. She participated in job programs, earning money by recycling and working for Meals–On–Wheels. She went out into the community with her group... (shrink)

Moving on to a higher level of schooling represents a crucial developmental challenge for children: studies have shown that transitioning to a new school context can increase the perceived importance of peer acceptance, popularity, and adaptation to the new social environment. The aim of this study was to investigate simultaneously the influence of interpersonal variables and personal variables on role-taking in bullying episodes from a longitudinal perspective. These variables were assessed on 41 children in their last year of kindergarten (...) and in their 1st year of primary school. The main longitudinal results showed that prosocial behaviors are more stable than hostile, victim, and outsider behaviors. Moreover, social preference—together with affective empathy—at t1 had a clear negative predictive effect on hostile roles at t2, while social preference had a positive effect on prosocial roles at t2. Social impact at t1 negatively predicted being a victim at t2. On the other hand, social preference at t2 was negatively predicted only by the victim role at t1. Social impact at t1 had a significant and negative effect on being victimized at t2 while was negatively predicted at t2 by the outsider at t1. Our study—even if exploratory—seems to highlight the existence of a specific, differentiate effect of two distinct social status indices on the participant role-taking in bullying episodes in the transitional period from kindergarten to primary school. (shrink)

Some of the most intriguing issues in the study of cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development arise in the debate over nature versus nurture; a debate difficult to resolve because it is difficult to separate the respective contributions of genes and environment to development. The most powerful approach to this separation is through longitudinal adoption studies. The Colorado Adoption Project is the only longitudinal adoption study in existence examining development continuously from birth to adolescence, which makes it a unique, powerful, (...) and tremendously valuable resource. CAP is an ongoing assessment of 245 adopted children and 245 biological control children assessed from birth to early adolescence. This book is the fourth in a series describing CAP results. This latest volume, edited by four eminent researchers in developmental psychology, builds on the large body of research already generated by investigating the role of genes and environments on early adolescent development. Because it is the only volume on the most comprehensive investigation of the effect of genes and environments on early adolescent development, this work will be invaluable to researchers in developmental, cognitive, and social psychology. (shrink)

Variations in life history define key comparative and evolutionary biological questions, important for understanding the mechanisms of mammalian evolutionary divergence, developmental adaptability and plasticity. In this regard, the differences among predominantly altricial and precocial species represent a particularly significant, if still poorly understood and contested case. Here, it will be shown how the classical analysis of such ontogenetic variations, going back to the semantic biology of A. Portmann, can be expanded and synthesized with comparative physiological approaches, based on the (...) negentropic theory of ontogeny by I. A. Arshavsky and his school. In this little received but pioneering tradition, extensive comparative and experimental investigations were carried out on the role of musculoskeletal systems and stressors in driving life history variations, particularly in the altricial-precocial spectrum. As shown by Arshavsky and co-workers, by focusing on general allometric regularities, the approximations based on the classical energy rules of surface and mass offer valuable benchmarks, but also predictions that are frequently violated by the variability of physiological and metabolic scaling relationships among altricials and precocials, and thus, a complex and historical approach is needed to describe their local physiological mechanisms and systemic regularities. This paper shows how Arshavsky’s findings and framework can play an integrative role in this context, potentially helping to bridge the mainly descriptive approach of semantic morphology, as developed by Portmann’s school, with the more functional explanations predominating current ecology and life history theory. These problems can be important for biosemiotics by highlighting the contingent, activity-dependent, and surplus anabolic stress mechanisms underlying diversification in eutherian developmental systems and possibly, the epigenetic evolution of pace-of-life syndromes. (shrink)

Southeast Asian landscapes have been shifting from natural landscapes to the modified landscapes at a rate faster than ever. Ecological integrity is under tremendous pressure due to the anthropogenic developmental activities. Little attention, however, has been paid to identify the major underlying causes of this rapid landscape transformation. This article discusses these issues from the point of view of a landscape ecologist. Landsat TM 30 m satellite images of 1988, 1996, and Landsat ETM+ 30 m image of 2005 were (...) classified using ERDAS Imagine 9.2. Vector-based Landscape Analysis Tools Extension software was used in analyzing landscape patterns. Landscape size and shape metrics have revealed that the main transformation occurred in the first period (between the years 1988 and 1996) which was due to the rapid extension of the commercial agriculture. However, in the second period (between the year 1996 and 2005), the main driver of rapid landscape transformation occurred due to the expansion of urban areas, transportation networks, housing, and township. The pace of developmental activities breaks all previous records at a faster rate in the second period as compared with the first. These findings will provide necessary information about the driving forces which have a potential use for sustainable management decision processes. Additionally, results and data on landscape patterns may help scientists, academics, and researchers in further study. They can also be of potential use for the sustainable management of natural resources, urban planning, and livable green cities. (shrink)

Intensionality (or opacity) is a core property of mental representations and sometimes understanding opacity is claimed to be a part of children's theory of mind (evidenced with the false belief task). Children, however, pass the false belief task and the intensionality tasks at different ages (typically 4 vs. 5;1-6;11 years). According to two dominant interpretations, the two tests either require different conceptual resources or vary only in their executive or linguistic load. In two experiments, involving 120 children aged 3-6 (Experiment (...) 1) and 75 children aged 4-6 (Experiment 2), we tested two variants of the executive load hypothesis: The differential linguistic complexity of the two tests, and the dual-name problem of the intensionality task. The former was addressed by standardizing and minimizing the linguistic demands of both tasks (contrasted with the typical narrative intensionality task), and the latter by introducing the dual-name problem into the false belief task as well, so that it was present in both tasks. We found that (1) two structurally different intensionality tasks shared more variance with each other than with the structurally similar false belief task, and that (2) introducing a dual label problem into the false belief task did not reduce the developmental gap. Our results speak against interpreting the difference between the time children pass the two tests entirely in terms of performative issues, and support the conceptual enrichment hypothesis. We discuss the theoretical relevance of these results, suggesting that they are best explained by fine-grained increments within the concept of belief, rather than a radical conceptual change. We conclude that understanding opacity of minds – which emerges between age 5 and 6 – is an important step towards a more advanced form of ToM. (shrink)

We propose a framework for analyzing the development, operation and failure to survive of all things, living, non-living or organized groupings. This framework is a sequence of developments that improve survival capability. Framework processes range from origination of any entity/system, to the development of increased survival capability and development of life-forms and organizations that use intelligence. This work deals with a series of developmental changes that arise from the uncovering of emergent properties. The framework is intended to be general, (...) but we see a potential to apply it to scientific topics such as the exploration of the origin of life or the search for life beyond Earth, and to understand some biological issues in evolution and symbiosis, and also to apply to social systems that do not seem to be operating well, to determine their problems and correct them. (shrink)

Theoretical accounts of development exhibit several internal tensions and face multiple challenges. They span from the problem of the identification of the temporal boundaries of development (beginning and end) to the characterization of the distinctive type of change involved compared to other biological processes. They include questions such as the role to ascribe to the environment or what types of biological systems can undergo development and whether they should include colonies or even ecosystems. In this chapter we discuss these conceptual (...) issues, and we argue that adopting an organizational approach may help solve or clarify them. -/- While development is usually identified with the achievement of an adult form with the capability to reproduce and therefore maintain a lineage, adopting the organizational approach may provide a different strategy, which focuses also on the maintenance of the current organization of the organism. By doing so an organizational approach favors a switch in perspective which consists in analyzing how organisms maintain their viability at each moment of development rather than considering them as going through intermediate stages of a process directed toward a specific goal state. This developmental dimension of biological organization has yet to be given a general and detailed analysis within the organizational theoretical perspective, apart from some preliminary attempts. How a biological organization is maintained through a series of radical organizational changes and what these changes are issues that still require clarification. In this chapter we offer the beginnings of such an analysis of developmental transitions, understood as changes in functionality brought forth by regulatory mechanisms in the context of the continued maintenance of organizational viability at every step. (shrink)