The parent?infant dyad and the construction of the subjective self

Developmental psychology and psychopathology has in the past been more concerned with the quality of self-representation than with the development of the subjective agency which underpins our experience of feeling, thought and action, a key function of mentalisation. This review begins by contrasting a Cartesian view of pre-wired introspective subjectivity with a constructionist model based on the assumption of an innate contingency detector which orients the infant towards aspects of the social world that react congruently and in a specifically cued informative manner that expresses and facilitates the assimilation of cultural knowledge. Research on the neural mechanisms associated with mentalisation and social influences on its development are reviewed. It is suggested that the infant focuses on the attachment figure as a source of reliable information about the world. The construction of the sense of a subjective self is then an aspect of acquiring knowledge about the world through the caregiver's pedagogical communicative displays which in this context focuses on the child's thoughts and feelings. We argue that a number of possible mechanisms, including complementary activation of attachment and mentalisation, the disruptive effect of maltreatment on parent-child communication, the biobehavioural overlap of cues for learning and cues for attachment, may have a role in ensuring that the quality of relationship with the caregiver influences the development of the child's experience of thoughts and feelings

Structure, chirality, and field testing of a male-produced aggregation pheromone of Asian palm weevilRhynchophorus bilineatus (Montr.) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)

4-Methyl-5-nonanol is a male-produced aggregation pheromone of the Asian palm weevil,Rhynchophorus bilineatus (Montr.). The pheromone was identified by coupled gas chromatographic-electroantennographic detection (GC-EAD) and coupled GC-mass spectrometric (MS) analyses of male-and female-produced volatiles. Analyses by GC-EAD and GC-MS of weevil-produced and stereoselectively synthesized isomers of 4-methyl-5-nonanol on a Cyclodex B column, which separated isomers with baseline resolution, revealed that only (4S,5S)-4-methyl-5-nonanol is EAD active and produced by the males. In field experiments in Papua New Guinea, (4S,5S)-4-methyl-5-nonanol and a racemic mixture of disatereoisomers of it enhanced attraction of male and female weevils to sugarcane-baited traps. (4S,5S)-4-Methyl-5-nonanol is also an aggregation pheromone of two other Asian palm weevils.R. ferrugineus (Oliv.) andR. vulneratus (Panz.). The stereoisomeric mixture of 4-methyl-5-nonanol is currently used to manage populations ofR. bilineatus in Papua New GuineaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigaciones en Productos Naturales (CIPRONA

How Virtual Machinery Can Bridge The “Explanatory Gap” In Natural and Artificial Systems.

These slides are available in my ‘talks ’ directory