With an increase in the number of international students in China, there has been a simultaneous increase in their emotional problems, such as depression, as well as the importance of their emotional well-being. This study aimed to investigate the influence of social support on depression and the mediation and moderation mechanisms of this relationship in international students. In total, 349 international students in China responded to a questionnaire survey comprising the Social Support Rating Scale, Self-rating Depression Scale, Adult Attachment Scale, (...) and Self-Esteem Scale. The results showed that: attachment closeness had a significant direct predictive effect on depression; attachment closeness played a mediating role in the relationship between social support and depression; and the direct effect of social support on depression and the mediating effect of attachment and closeness are regulated by self-esteem. Therefore, interventions aimed at improving the social support, attachment closeness, and self-esteem of international students in China can be effective in reducing their depressive symptoms. (shrink)

Abstract:A number of philosophers of language have proposed that people do not have conceptual access to‘bare particulars’, or attribute‐free individuals (e.g. Wiggins, 1980). Individuals can only be picked out under some sortal, a concept which provides principles of individuation and identity. Many advocates of this view have argued thatobjectis not a genuine sortal concept. I will argue in this paper that a narrow sense of‘object’, namely the concept of any bounded, coherent, three‐dimensional physical object that moves as a whole (Spelke, (...) 1990) is a sortal for both infants and adults. Furthermore,objectmay be the infant's first sortal and more specific sortals such ascupanddogmay be acquired later in the first year of life. I will discuss the implications for infant categorization studies, trying to draw a conceptual distinction between a perceptual category and a sortal, and I will speculate on how a child may construct sortal concepts such ascupanddog. (shrink)

Much research on cognitive development focuses either on early-emerging domain-specific knowledge or domain-general learning mechanisms. However, little research examines how these sources of knowledge interact. Previous research suggests that young infants can make inferences from samples to populations (Xu & Garcia, 2008) and 11- to 12.5-month-old infants can integrate psychological and physical knowledge in probabilistic reasoning (Teglas, Girotto, Gonzalez, & Bonatti, 2007; Xu & Denison, 2009). Here, we ask whether infants can integrate a physical constraint of immobility into a statistical (...) inference mechanism. Results from three experiments suggest that, first, infants were able to use domain-specific knowledge to override statistical information, reasoning that sometimes a physical constraint is more informative than probabilistic information. Second, we provide the first evidence that infants are capable of applying domain-specific knowledge in probabilistic reasoning by using a physical constraint to exclude one set of objects while computing probabilities over the remaining sets. (shrink)

The capacity to search for information effectively by asking informative questions is crucial for self-directed learning and develops throughout the preschool years and beyond. We tested the hypothesis that explaining observations in a given domain prepares children to ask more informative questions in that domain, and that it does so by promoting the identification of features that apply to multiple objects, thus supporting more effective questions. Across two experiments, 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 168) were prompted to explain observed (...) evidence or to complete a control task prior to a 20-questions game. We found that prior prompts to explain led to a decrease in the number of questions needed to complete the game, but only for older children (ages 6-7). Moreover, we found that effects of explanation manifested as a shift away from questions that targeted single objects. These findings shed light on the development of question asking in childhood and on the role of explanation in learning. (shrink)

This work proposes a hybrid heuristic algorithm to solve the bus rapid transit intelligent scheduling problem, which is a combination of the genetic algorithm, simulated annealing algorithm, and fitness scaling method. The simulated annealing algorithm can increase the local search ability of the genetic algorithm, so as to accelerate its convergence speed. Fitness scaling can reduce the differences between individuals in the early stage of the algorithm, to prevent the genetic algorithm from falling into a local optimum through increasing the (...) diversity of the population. It can also increase the selection probability of outstanding individuals, and speed up the convergence at the late stage of the algorithm, by increasing the differences between individuals. Using real operational data of BRT Line 1 in a city of Zhejiang province, the new scheduling scheme can be obtained through algorithm simulation. The passengers’ total waiting time in a single way will be reduced by 40 h on average under the same operating cost compared with the original schedule scheme in a day. (shrink)

Six-month-old infants discriminate between large sets of objects on the basis of numerosity when other extraneous variables are controlled, provided that the sets to be discriminated differ by a large ratio (8 vs. 16 but not 8 vs. 12). The capacities to represent approximate numerosity found in adult animals and humans evidently develop in human infants prior to language and symbolic counting.

Surprise—operationalized as looking time—has a long history in developmental research, providing a window into the perception and cognition of infants. Recently, however, a number of developmental researchers have considered infants’ and children's surprise in its own right. This article reviews empirical evidence and computational models of complex statistical inferences underlying surprise, and discusses how these findings relate to the role that surprise appears to play as a catalyst for learning.

A number of philosophers of language have proposed that people do not have conceptual access to‘bare particulars’, or attribute‐free individuals (e.g. Wiggins, 1980). Individuals can only be picked out under some sortal, a concept which provides principles of individuation and identity. Many advocates of this view have argued that object is not a genuine sortal concept. I will argue in this paper that a narrow sense of‘object’, namely the concept of any bounded, coherent, three‐dimensional physical object that moves as a (...) whole (Spelke, 1990) is a sortal for both infants and adults. Furthermore, object may be the infant's first sortal and more specific sortals such as cup and dog may be acquired later in the first year of life. I will discuss the implications for infant categorization studies, trying to draw a conceptual distinction between a perceptual category and a sortal, and I will speculate on how a child may construct sortal concepts such as cup and dog. (shrink)

Rational constructivism is one of the leading theories in developmental psychology. But it is not a purely psychological theory: rational constructivism also makes a number of substantial epistemological claims about both the nature of human rationality and several normative principles that fall squarely into the ambit of epistemology. The aim of this paper is to clarify and defend both theses and several other epistemological claims, as they represent the essential epistemological dimensions of rational constructivism.

In this paper, finite-time tracking problem of nonholonomic mobile robots for a moving target is considered. First of all, polar coordinates are used to characterize the distance and azimuth between the moving target and the robot. Then, based on the distance and azimuth transported from the sensor installed on the robot, a finite-time tracking control law is designed for the nonholonomic mobile robot by the switching control method. Rigorous proof shows that the tracking error converges to zero in a finite (...) time. Numerical simulation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed control method. (shrink)

In the current study, late Chinese–English bilinguals performed a facial expression identification task with emotion words in the task-irrelevant dimension, in either their first language or second language. The investigation examined the automatic access of the emotional content in words appearing in more than one language. Significant congruency effects were present for both L1 and L2 emotion word processing. Furthermore, the magnitude of emotional face-word Stroop effect in the L1 task was greater as compared to the L2 task, indicating that (...) in L1 participants could access the emotional information in words in a more reliable manner. In summary, these findings provide more support for the automatic access of emotional information in words in the bilinguals’ two languages as well as attenuated emotionality of L2 processing. (shrink)

In recent years, precise high flow oxygen therapy as a new type of oxygen therapy machine has gradually attracted people’s attention and has been widely used in hospital emergency and clinical treatment of respiratory diseases; especially in recent years, severe coronavirus disease has played an important role in the treatment of patients. This paper presents a new type of precise high flow oxygen therapy machine with electromagnetic pneumatic flow valve as the core control element. A sliding mode control strategy based (...) on the system is proposed to realize the accurate control of oxygen concentration and output flow of oxygen therapy mixture. The physical equipment of the precision high flow system is established, and its working performance is verified through the test platform. The optimization design goal of the precision high flow equipment is achieved. (shrink)

I make two points in this commentary on Carey (2009). First, it may be too soon to conclude that core cognition is innate. Recent advances in computational cognitive science and developmental psychology suggest possible mechanisms for developing inductive biases. Second, there is another possible answer to Fodor's challenge – if concepts are merely mental tokens, then cognitive scientists should spend their time on developing a theory of belief fixation instead.

We argue that creative ideas are potentially valuable improbable constructions. We arrive at this formulation of creativity after considering several problems that arise for the theories that suggest that creativity is novelty, originality, or usefulness. Our theory avoids these problems. But since we also derive our theory of creativity from the scientific commitments of a more general theory of cognitive development, a theory called rational constructivism, our theory is unique insofar as it explains creativity in both adults and children through (...) reference to a set of computational mechanisms that have been posited on the basis of independently plausible experimental research. (shrink)

Explanations of how the brain makes successful predictions should refer to abstracta. But, the mind/brain system is for more than prediction alone. Creativity also plays an important role in supply the mind/brain system with abstracta that serve a number of valuable ends over and above prediction.

Object individuation provides a test case for the claim that infants already have a prelinguistic language-of-thought (LOT). By 12 months, infants represent several sortal-kinds: Object, agent, animate, and perhaps artifact. Infants have also encountered many words for object kinds, animals, people, and artifacts, therefore it remains a viable hypothesis that language learning may play a causal role in the acquisition of sortal-kinds, contra Quilty-Dunn et al.

We applaud Millikan's psychologically plausible version of the causal theory of reference. Her proposal offers a significant clarification of the much-debated relation between concepts and beliefs, and suggests positive directions for future empirical studies of conceptual development. However, Millikan's revision of the causal theory may leave us with no generally satisfying account of concept individuation in the mind.