Williams College

About: Williams College is a education organization based out in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Politics. The organization has 2257 authors who have published 5015 publications receiving 213160 citations. The organization is also known as: Williams.

Plasticity for Affective Neurocircuitry How the Environment Affects Gene Expression

Abstract: We (Fox et al., 2005) recently described a gene-by-environment interaction involving child temperament and maternal social support, finding heightened behavioral inhibition in children homozygous or heterozygous for the serotonin transporter (5HTTLPR) gene short allele whose mothers reported low social support. Here, we propose a model, Plasticity for Affective Neurocircuitry, that describes the manner in which genetic disposition and environmental circumstances may interact. Children with a persistently fearful temperament (and the 5HTTLPR short allele) are more likely to experience caregiving environments in which threat is highlighted. This in turn will exacerbate an attention bias that alters critical affective neurocircuitry to threat and enhances and maintains anxious behavior in the child.

Interpersonal dysfunction in personality disorders: A meta-analytic review.

Abstract: Personality disorders are defined in the current psychiatric diagnostic system as pervasive, inflexible, and stable patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving, and interacting with others. Questions regarding the validity and reliability of the current personality disorder diagnoses prompted a reconceptualization of personality pathology in the most recent edition of the psychiatric diagnostic manual, in an appendix of emerging models for future study. To evaluate the construct and discriminant validity of the current personality disorder diagnoses, we conducted a quantitative synthesis of the existing empirical research on associations between personality disorders and interpersonal functioning, defined using the interpersonal circumplex model (comprising orthogonal dimensions of agency and communion), as well as functioning in specific relationship domains (parent-child, family, peer, romantic). A comprehensive literature search yielded 127 published and unpublished studies, comprising 2,579 effect sizes. Average effect sizes from 120 separate meta-analyses, corrected for sampling error and measurement unreliability, and aggregated using a random-effects model, indicated that each personality disorder showed a distinct profile of interpersonal style consistent with its characteristic pattern of symptomatic dysfunction; specific relationship domains affected and strength of associations varied for each personality disorder. Overall, results support the construct and discriminant validity of the personality disorders in the current diagnostic manual, as well as the proposed conceptualization that disturbances in self and interpersonal functioning constitute the core of personality pathology. Importantly, however, contradicting both the current and proposed conceptualizations, there was not evidence for pervasive dysfunction across interpersonal situations and relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record

Limited Holism and Real-Vector-Space Quantum Theory

Abstract: Quantum theory has the property of “local tomography”: the state of any composite system can be reconstructed from the statistics of measurements on the individual components. In this respect the holism of quantum theory is limited. We consider in this paper a class of theories more holistic than quantum theory in that they are constrained only by “bilocal tomography”: the state of any composite system is determined by the statistics of measurements on pairs of components. Under a few auxiliary assumptions, we derive certain general features of such theories. In particular, we show how the number of state parameters can depend on the number of perfectly distinguishable states. We also show that real-vector-space quantum theory, while not locally tomographic, is bilocally tomographic.

Neoextinctions of Marine Invertebrates

Abstract: Historical or recent extinctions (here called neoextinctions) are rarely reported among marine and estuarine invertebrates. Four case histories of neoextinctions, using gastropod mollusks (snails) as examples, are reviewed: the periwinkle Littoraria flammea (last collected < 1840 in China), the rocky shore limpet “Colliselld” edmitchelli (1861/3 in southern California), the eelgrass limpet Lottia alveus (1929 in Maine), and the marsh horn snail Cerithidea fuscata (1935, southern California) are all probably extinct. The central element in the demise of all four species may have been a vulnerable, extinguishable habitat. Three considerations suggest that neoextinctions among marine invertebrates have been generally overlooked: 1), hundreds of taxa have not been reported since the 18th and 19th centuries (these are treated by systematists as either unrecognizable, rare, or synonyms of known species); 2), species may have become extinct prior to their description; and 3), there has been a precipitous decline in systematics, biogeography, and natural history at the end of the 20th century—leaving too few workers to tell the story of neoextinction in the ocean. Searches in the literature and museums for overlooked neoextinctions would fruitfully focus on species reported from highly impacted, urbanized coastal habitats—saltmarshes, estuaries, lagoons, seagrass communities, and supralittoral (maritime) zones—habitats now largely obliterated on most coastal margins of the world.