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We investigate the impact of entrepreneurs' cross-cultural experience on new venture performance. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we examine how two socio-cognitive traits, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and alertness to opportunities moderate the relationship between cross-cultural experience and new venture performance. We adopt a multi-method approach. In Study 1, we implement an experiment on a sample of 177 participants enrolled in an innovation and entrepreneurship program. In Study 2, we conduct a field survey of 65 entrepreneurs with varying cross-cultural experience. Our findings suggest that cross-cultural experience has a positive effect on new venture performance, and that entrepreneurial self-efficacy and alertness to opportunities bolster this relationship. Our research contributes to entrepreneurship research in a cross-cultural context and to the growing literature regarding individual cognitions in entrepreneurship.

This article proposes a theoretical model and measurement scale for leading a learning project team. While leadership is largely recognized as one of the most important mechanisms for transferring learning from individuals to projects, there lacks a succinct measurement scale for project members to report on project leaders’ behaviors that promote collective learning in projects. Drawing from rich theories on multilevel learning, socio-cognitive conflicts, and leading diversity, we develop a measurement scale that captures project members’ experiences of how their leaders (a) support the identification and communication of project members’ individual mental models, (b) support the resolution of differences in mental models among project team members, and (c) create opportunities and time for team members to interact with others outside the project team. Collectively, these three dimensions form a new scale for leading a learning project team. We cautiously conclude sound psychometric measurement properties from an initial sample of 94 valid responses to a questionnaire distributed to project members through international professional project management networks. This study highlights the multi-level nature of leading a learning project team and provides tentative empirical support for the reflective three-dimensional scale predicting learning in project teams better than transformational leadership.

Drawing from a critical and socio-cognitive approach to discourse analysis, this paper analyses the discursive creativity deployed by feminists in the production of slogans for the last 8M (InternationalWomen's Day) rallies from 2018 to 2020 in Spain. Findings show how the creative discourse strategies identified in the 8M banners, recontextualization and multimodal metaphor in the main, triggered by new feminist movements (Feminism 4.0, Feminism of the 99%), as well as by salient socio-cultural events taking place within the community, are construing a new discourse of optimism, festivity and empowerment, that is helping to transform gender relations in Spanish society, This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness Research Project FFI2016/77540P

The research presented in this paper is qualitative in nature and focuses on a number of conversational interchanges that took place either between native and non-native speakers of English or interlocutors who came from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and who were using English as a lingua franca. The aim of the paper is to explore and account for the reasons underlying the ‘misfiring’ and communication problems that characterized these conversations. In my analysis I have relied on the socio-cognitive approach of utterance interpretation that fully acknowledges the role of private and actual contexts in governing the speakers' linguistic choices, as well as on the dynamic model of meaning as proposed by Kecskes (2008, 2009, 2010, 2014), that argues for the dynamic construal of meaning as complex and elaborate work shared in by the speaker and the hearer. Adhering to Kecskes' (2008) view that context, especially the private context, plays both a selective and constituting role in co-constructing the common ground by the participants in conversation, I propose that failure to establish the common ground ('skidding on the common ground') in intercultural conversations can be traced to partial differences or similarities between the private contexts of the interlocutors.

Through intercultural contact, immigrants can change the stereotypes they had previously held about the majority ethnic group in their host cultures. Other undocumented processes of socio-cognitive adaptation following migration are also possible; immigrants’ preexisting stereotypes about social groups (e.g., politicians, older people), for example, may change because of host-cultural learning. This article examines the stereotype accommodation hypothesis, which states that differences in cultural stereotypes between immigrants’ host and origin cultures are a source of inconsistent stereotype-relevant information that immigrants may or may not incorporate into their preexisting beliefs. Support for this hypothesis is found in two studies of locals in Romania, Germany, and France (N = 532), and Romanian immigrants in Germany and in France (N = 225). Length of stay in the host culture and acculturation orientation predict the stereotype accommodation regarding politicians, the only social group for which stereotypes substantially differ between origin and host cultures. The results represent the first step in a research agenda for studying migrants’ socio-cognitive adaptation beyond the question of inter-ethnic stereotype change. The article thus discusses future avenues for the study of behavior and discrimination from the perspective of immigrants as agentic individuals.

This study identified the psychological and cognitive factors that predispose people to believe in neuromyths (e.g., the belief that we only use 10% of our brain) and in cognitive enhancement (e.g., the belief that brain stimulation devices can enhance cognition). A new scale to measure belief in neuromyths and cognitive enhancement was developed and validated. Belief in neuromyths was related to a more intuitive (compared to an analytical) thinking style, a stronger need for cognitive closure, a simpler view of epistemic cognition, endorsement of a fixed mindset, and it was inversely related to scientific literacy. Belief in cognitive enhancement was specifically related to the endorsement of a growth mindset. No clear effect of the presence or absence of brain pictures on credibility ratings for neuroscientific explanations and intuitive thinking was found. These findings suggest that belief in neuromyths and cognitive enhancement is a multifaceted phenomenon and that interventions to foster public understanding of neuroscience could be aimed at affecting thinking styles.

This study investigates pedestrian street-crossing decision-making to better appreciate both the complexity and the dynamics of this activity by analyzing the cognitive, emotional and social processes involved in such situations. We consider street-crossing decision-making in the context of situational awareness (Endsley’s model) by exploring other variables that may influence the decision-making: time pressure, emotions and social influence. Twenty participants were included in the study. They were instructed to negotiate two 1 km-routes in a large city using a paper map. After each route, they were invited to participate in an elicitation interview. A time pressure context was added for half of the participants. The originality of the method was based on the mixed approach of observable variables (video recordings from the viewpoint of the pedestrian and of an external observer) and the subjective experience of the street crossing by the pedestrian (e.g., perception, thoughts, feelings, anticipation) according to the situation’s dynamics. In total, the data included 67 elicited and recorded street crossings. The data indicated that approximately one-third of the street-crossing decisions were risky. In our observations, street-crossing decision-making was modulated by street-crossing habits, the environment configuration, the social influence, the learning of the road situation and the vehicle behavior. This study accounts for the complexity of street-crossing, the related risk and its links with feelings.

Monitoring and inferring socio-cognitive behaviors through crowd analysis can help us to understand many processes. Be it people in crowded environments, road traffic or even a flock of fish, situational awareness becomes critical for creating adequate disaster response, providing incident management, exercising control, etc. Recent researches have indicated that crowd modeling is conventionally based on density analysis. However, socio-cognitive behavior studies have demonstrated that crowds often display a wide variety of behaviors that arise spontaneously from the collective motions of unconnected individuals. Therefore, behavior analysis employing physics-based approaches only, thereby neglecting the socio-psychological aspects, may present diverse challenges to accurate inference. This means that by identifying and modeling some of the interacting agents that underpin the evolution of such behaviors, we can deliver contexts that can help in the autonomous analysis of social and antisocial behaviors in crowded environments. This paper discusses these issues from the machine vision perspective. In particular, socio-cognitive models of crowds are linked to low-level mechanisms of crowd modeling and feature extraction. A survey of recent works on crowd behavior analysis is conducted under a proposed behavioral categorization based on the level of the performed analysis and identified behaviors. Finally, discussions and recommendations are provided toward the advancement in the field.

Trucks involvement in fatal road crashes are considerably high and, literature evidenced that the risky driving behavior of truck drivers is the main cause. Therefore, the study investigates the impacts of socio-cognitive factors (attitude towards risky driving, locus of control and social norms related to driving) and work safety climate in forming the risky driving behavior of truck drivers in Pakistan. Data from 396 truck drivers are collected through a self-administered questionnaire. The results show that driver attitude and prevailing social norms both have a positive significant effect on risky driving behavior, while the work safety climate has a negative impact on risky driving behavior. The study distinctly defines the role of “work safety climate” in the context of the culture prevailing among truck drivers in Pakistan, and looks additionally at the moderating effects on socio-cognitive factors and risky driving behavior. Open communication and counseling by supervisors, their role modeling and placing of limits on risky driving behavior in fact have negative effects on the self-reported risky driving behavior of truck drivers. The study reveals that five of the nine factors have significant moderating effects on risky driving behaviors. The results also imply that improvements in the “work safety climate” of the trucking industry would help to control the socio-cognitive factors and risky driving behaviors, and may improve the road safety conditions in Pakistan.

Training to inhibit imitative tendencies has been shown to reduce self-other interferences in both automatic imitation and perspective taking, suggesting that an enhancement of self-other distinction is transferrable from the motor to the cognitive domain. This study examined whether socio-cognitive training specifically enhances self-other distinction, or rather modulates self-salience, that is, the relative attentional priority of information pertaining to the self-perspective over information pertaining to the other person's perspective. Across two experiments, participants trained on one day to either imitate, inhibit imitation, inhibit control stimuli, or they were imitated. On the following day they completed a visuo-tactile affective perspective-taking paradigm measuring both self-other distinction and emotional self-salience, and a shape matching paradigm measuring perceptual self-salience. Results indicate no significant or consistent impact of training on self-other distinction performance, but reveal an increased emotional and perceptual self-salience following training to inhibit imitative tendencies. Together, these findings raise the question whether socio-cognitive training improves performance via enhanced self-other distinction, and invite to consider self-salience as a complementary angle to explain the past, present, and future findings on self-other distinction.

We examine how country-level institutional context moderates the relationship between three socio-cognitive traits—entrepreneurial self-efficacy, alertness to new business opportunities, and fear of failure—and opportunity entrepreneurship. To do this, we blend social cognitive theory (SCT) with institutional theory to develop a multi-level model of entrepreneurial entry. We merge data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) surveys and the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index for 45 countries from 2002 to 2012. Our results, which are based on a multi-level fixed-effects model, suggest that entrepreneurs' self-efficacy and alertness to new opportunities promote opportunity entrepreneurship while fear of failure discourages it. However, the strength of these relationships depends on the institutional context, with entrepreneurial self-efficacy and alertness substantially more likely to lead to new opportunity-driven ventures in countries with higher levels of economic freedom. These results provide suggestive evidence that economic freedom not only channels individual effort to productive entrepreneurial activities, but also affects the extent to which individuals' socio-cognitive resources are likely to mobilized and lead to high-growth entrepreneurship.

Discovering the governing equations for a measured system is the gold standard for modeling, predicting, and understanding complex dynamic systems. Very complex systems, such as human minds, pose stark challenges to this mode of explanation, especially in ecological tasks. Finding such “equations of mind” is sometimes difficult, if impossible. We introduce recent directions in data science to infer differential equations directly from data. To illustrate this approach, the simple but elegant example of sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy; Brunton, Proctor, & Kutz, 2016) is used. We showcase this method on known systems: the logistic map, the Lorenz system, and a bistable attractor model of human choice behavior. We describe some of SINDy’s limitations, and offer future directions for this data science approach to cognitive dynamics, including how such methods may be used to explore social dynamics.

Although domestic cats are among the most common companion animals, we still know very little about the details of the cat-human relationship. With a questionnaire, we asked 157 Hungarian cat owners about their pet’s behavior, cognitive abilities and social interactions. We analyzed the responses with PCA resulting in 11 traits. The effect of cats’ and owners’ demographic variables on the main components was further analyzed with GLM. The results showed strong similarity to the surveys performed with companion dogs, but we also found features that were mainly cat-specific. We found that women considered their cats to be more communicative and empathetic, than men did (p = 0.000). The higher education owners also considered their cat as being more communicative and empathetic (p = 0.000). We also found that owners use pointing signals more often if the cat is their only pet (p = 0.000), and otherwise they do not give verbal commands often to the cat (P = 0.001). Young owners imitated cat vocalization more often (p = 0.006); while emotional matching of the cat was more commonly reported by elderly owners (p = 0.001). The more an owner initiated playing with his/her cat, the imitation of cat vocalizations was also more common in his/her case (p = 0.001). Owners think that their cat shows stronger emotional matching if otherwise they experience human-like communicative capacity from the cat (p = 0.000). Owners use more pointing signals in the case of those cats that show attention-eliciting signals in more than one modality (p = 0.000). Owners who react to the meows of unfamiliar cats, initiated interactions more often with their own cats (p = 0.000). Owners also think that cats vocalize in every possible context, and this result was not affected significantly by any of the independent factors. Our results show that owners considered their cat as a family member, and they attributed well developed socio-cognitive skills to them. Because cats have an important role as a companion animal, it would be worthy to study cat behavior with similar thoroughness as with dogs. Our questionnaire may provide a good starting point for the empirical research of cat-human communication. The deeper understanding of cats’ socio-cognitive abilities may also help to improve cat welfare.

The aim of this study is to explore how students experience and describe socio-cognitive and socio-emotional challenges in collaborative learning. The participants (N = 20) were teacher education students whose collaborative learning was supported with a designed regulation macro script during a six-week mathematics course. The purpose of the script was to provide structured phases during the collaborative learning tasks for the group members to plan, monitor, and evaluate their workings. The video data of groups' face-to-face work was collected and analysed by focusing on the different types of challenges the groups experienced and the types of challenges they described during the scripted interaction. The results indicate that the groups experienced more socio-cognitive challenges than socio-emotional challenges. The script provided them a moment to verbalize their emotional experiences, name the emotions (i.e. frustration), and attribute the challenges and emotions more precisely than during their mathematical task. The intertwining characteristics of socio-cognitive and socio-emotional challenges were observable. Collaborative learning can be challenging for groups, and thus, the knowledge of and the ability to implement practices for becoming aware of challenges can provide a direction for students to progress towards more productive collaboration.

This study explores the sense of place in the small coastal Algerian town of Tipaza. The town is famous for its world archaeological sites, but its inhabitants and the local community in general seem to appreciate more its exceptional landscape than the universal archaeological values conferred to it by UNESCO. The particular townscape clearly delimited by the Mediterranean Sea and the Chenoua Mountain seems to have strongly influenced people’s mental images and attachments to their town. Based on the concepts of environmental representation and place attachment, local-community’s sense of place is investigated at three territorial scales: the town centre, the town as a whole and the region. Since the sense of place is defined as a multidimensional attitude including cognitive, conative and affective aspects, the proposed paper examines the socio-cognitive dimension through the structural approach of social representations where shared socio-cognitive meanings are assumed to constitute the central core of environmental representations. On the other hand, the conative component has been investigated through the analysis of expected activities in favourite places. Moreover, place attachment, an affective bond between people and environmental setting, is explored through two sub-concepts: place identity which refers to the cognitive level and place dependence which refers to the conative level. By exploring shared local community’s meanings and their impact on place preferences and appropriation, the research aims at showing the value of townscapes and particularly coastal ones in urban development projects. Natural features such as the sea are powerful landmarks and have strong impact on people’s perceptions of environmental settings.

A detailed understanding of how livestock animals perceive and communicate with stockpersons is crucial to improving their welfare by means of positive human–animal interactions. However, research regarding the cognitive underpinnings of these interactions in ungulate livestock is still limited. In this review article, I summarize recent advances in research on the cognitive capacities of domestic goats (Capra hircus), with a special focus on human–animal interaction. Recent work has shown that goats respond to subtle behavioural changes by humans, but also highlighted some of their limitations in comprehending information directed towards them. Based on these findings, I outline how applied research can benefit from these findings and discuss how human behavioural changes can affect appetitive and aversive behaviour of livestock. Because goats’ socio-cognitive capacities affect their ability to adapt to human handling, a better understanding of their cognitive capacities will improve their welfare in the long term.

Cognitive engineering is an applied field with roots in both cognitive science and engineering that has been used to support design of information displays, decision support, human-automation interaction, and training in numerous high risk domains ranging from nuclear power plant control to transportation and defense systems. Cognitive engineering provides a set of structured, analytic methods for data collection and analysis that intersect with and complement methods of Cognitive Informatics. These methods support discovery of aspects of the work that make performance challenging, as well as the knowledge, skills, and strategies that experts use to meet those challenges. Importantly, cognitive engineering methods provide novel representations that highlight the inherent complexities of the work domain and traceable links between the results of cognitive analyses and actionable design requirements. This article provides an overview of relevant cognitive engineering methods, and illustrates how they have been applied to the design of health information technology (HIT) systems. Additionally, although cognitive engineering methods have been applied in the design of user-centered informatics systems, methods drawn from informatics are not typically incorporated into a cognitive engineering analysis. This article presents a discussion regarding ways in which data-rich methods can inform cognitive engineering.

Culture plays a very important role in our upbringing. The mindset, psyche and the cognitive development of a child depends upon both nature and nurture. This development becomes essential when people enter in their adolescence because this period is termed as a crucial period of one’s life. Adolescents not only are influenced by their family but also they are much influenced by their society and their culture. They start considering themselves as a part of their culture and they think that it is their responsibility to carry on their culture along with them. In this age of technology, many adolescents are academically very strong because of constant focus on career formation as expected by parents and family but in this whole process they lack behind in social mannerism. This socio cognitive development is as much as essential as cognitive and emotional development. This socio cognitive development is being boost up by their surroundings. They learn by their family. What they see in their family, they behave in the same manner. Therefore, it can be said that our culture has an un-doubtable effect on child’s socio cognitive development. The present paper gives a detailed account of socio cognitive development, its importance in our life and the research carried out on this front. This paper also suggests the necessary areas to be explored the concerned area.

Mobile touch screen devices (MTSDs; i.e., smartphones and tablets) are now being used at an early and neuroplastic age by an ever-growing number of children, with this use likely affecting cognitive development. In a cross-sectional study, we investigated whether frequent MTSD user preschoolers exhibit different attentional and socio-cognitive skills compared to non-users. In a second, experimental study, we tested whether exposure to digital and non-digital games is associated with differences in attentional performance, and whether game pace moderates observed effects. Findings of both studies indicate pre-existing and experimentally-induced MTSD use was associated with global precedence in selective attention tasks, but an atypical, local precedence in a divided attention task. Further, playing with a fast digital game eliminated the advantage of selective attention over divided attention observed in the non-digital and slow digital game conditions. MTSD use was not associated with emotion recognition but was associated with worse theory of mind. We argue that the observed correlates and effects of MTSD use, and specifically of games, can be explained by a combination of MTSD characteristics (e.g., screens are rich in local and multiple modes of information, relatively limited social experience) and game characteristics (e.g., fast speed). Our results may be informative for the design and optimization of game structure and function, and may even call for influencing parameters of MTSD use that could affect mental functioning in this sensitive age.

Macrocyclic lactone resistance in Psoroptes ovis mites, causing psoroptic mange, is emerging in beef cattle. Therefore, diagnostic tools that can indicate macrocyclic lactone resistance should be implemented at farms in order to control these parasitic infections and slow down emerging resistance. Unfortunately, the adoption of such tools remains relatively poor. This study explores which beliefs, and behavioural biases that misconstrue these beliefs, underlie farmers' adoption intention. Five semi-structured focus groups were conducted with Belgian Blue cattle farmers (n = 38). Inductive analysis revealed that farmers' positive attitudes towards acaricides use and risk perception towards acaricide resistance made them rather reluctant to implement diagnostic tools. In addition, farmers' susceptibility to acaricide resistance occurring on their farm was weakened by the optimism and availability bias. Deductive analysis revealed that economic reasons, usefulness of the diagnostic tool and contribution to animal wellbeing motivated farmers to adopt such tools (i.e., behavioural beliefs). However, the loss aversion and time discounting bias weakened farmers' beliefs related to economic reasons. The veterinarian was seen as the responsible actor for implementing diagnostic tools, while colleague-farmers' opinion related to the diagnostic tool was also valued (i.e., normative beliefs). The latter belief was strengthened by the bandwagon-effect bias. Farmers' beliefs about economic costs related to the diagnostic tool tended to hinder adoption intention, while the veterinarian's assistance motivated farmers to implement such tools (i.e., control beliefs). The loss aversion bias also strengthened farmers' control beliefs related to the diagnostic tools' perceived costs. As such, this article provides more insights into the (ir)rational factors shaping farmers' intention to adopt diagnostic tools. These insights might help animal health organisations to design communication strategies to stimulate the adoption of diagnostic tools on beef cattle farms.

In this study, the modal shift potential of introducing a free alternative (free public transportation) and of changing the relative prices of transportation is examined. The influence of a cognitive analysis on the zero-price effect is also analyzed. The data used for the analysis stem from a stated preference survey with a sample of approximately 670 respondents that was conducted in Flanders, Belgium. The data are analyzed using a mixed logit model. The modeling results yield findings that confirm the existence of a zero-price effect in transport, which is in line with the literature. This zero-price effect is increased by the forced cognitive analysis for shopping trips, although not for work/school or recreational trips. The results also demonstrate the importance of the current mode choice in hypothetical mode choices and the importance of car availability. The influence of changing relative prices on the modal shift is found to be insignificant. This might be partially because the price differences were too small to matter. Hence, an increase in public transport use can be facilitated by the introduction of free public transport, particularly when individuals evaluate the different alternatives in a more cognitive manner. These findings should be useful to policy makers evaluating free public transport and considering how best to target and promote relevant policy.

Industries with emerging market categories offer greater opportunities for firms to innovate. However, such opportunities are not a matter of “the more, the better.” An increasing number of emerging market categories poses a dilemma. While more emerging market categories arguably bring about increasing growth opportunities, they can also generate greater ambiguity for incumbent firms, which may hinder their innovation efforts. This study attempts to address this dilemma by proposing that the number of emerging market categories in an industry will have an inverted U-shaped relationship with incumbent firms’ innovation efforts. We further argue that this curvilinear relationship will be influenced by the socio-cognitive context of a firm's focal industry, in the sense that the degree of collective identity incoherence at the industry level will intensify the proposed inverted U-shaped relationship, whereas the prevalence of trade associations in the industry will depress this relationship. We test our hypotheses by examining research and development (R&D) investments of a sample of U.S. high-technology manufacturing firms and find support for our main prediction and the hypothesized effect of collective identity incoherence. We also find a surprising but intriguing moderating effect of trade associations.

a b s t r a c t Recent evidence suggests that testosterone is negatively correlated with empathic processes in both men and women. Also, administration of testosterone to young women impairs socio-cognitive per- formance as assessed using the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task", especially among those exposed to elevated testosterone concentrations prenatally. However, the extent to which testosterone plays a similar causal role in socio-cognitive abilities in men is currently unknown. Here, using a crossover, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design, we investigated the extent to which a single administration of testosterone to healthy young men (N = 30) would impair socio-cognitive abilities assessed using the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task" (RMET). Also, we investigated whether indi- vidual differences in 2D:4D ratio and psychopathic traits would moderate the effect of testosterone on task performance. Results indicated that testosterone administration on its own did not impair RMET performance. However, variability in both 2D:4D ratio and psychopathic traits moderated the effect of testosterone on task performance. Specifically, testosterone impaired RMET performance among indi- viduals with relatively low (i.e., masculinized) 2D:4D ratio and among individuals scoring relatively low on the interpersonal/affective facet (i.e., Factor 1) of psychopathy. Our findings highlight the importance of considering theoretically- and empirically-based individual difference factors when attempting to characterize the neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying socio-cognitive processes.

This paper highlights the hitherto unrecognised role of ‘alternative’ places in protecting different forms of sustainability innovation. The paper uses the concept of an alternative milieu to illustrate how a geographically localised concentration of countercultural practices, institutions and networks can create socio-cognitive ‘niche’ protection for sustainability experiments. An alternative milieu creates protection for the emergence of novelties by (i) creating ontological and epistemological multiplicity; (ii) sustaining productive spatial imaginaries; and (iii) supporting ontological security. These different dimensions of protection are explored with reference to an in-depth, empirical case study of Totnes in the United Kingdom. The paper concludes with some reflections on the theoretical implications of this research for the theorising of niche protection and for the geographies of innovation more generally, along with some recommendations for future areas of enquiry.

The investigation of how exactly salespeople create value at the individual level of interaction is still incomplete. While there have been lively debates on value,creation and co-creation processes at the organizational level in the business marketing literature, researchers have paid much less attention to the fact that such processes almost always start at the interpersonal level of buyer-seller interactions. Through utilizing a symbolic interactionist perspective and the ethnographic research method of shadowing, the present study moves research insights into value creation in sales forward by depicting the detailed activities and tactics that influence customers' value perceptions during the sales encounter. We complement the sales influence literature with three additional tactics: disrupt, reassure and dedicate. We also expand the framework of value creation in sales interactions by identifying three value strategies that change, strengthen or expand customer value perceptions through different socio-cognitive mechanisms. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.

Adopting validity frameworks guarantees more valid and reliable tests with more systematic decisions. It is insufficient considering just the test design and test setters; there is a need to consider the cognitive process that second language learners undergo to comprehend a test task. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to highlight using Weir's socio-cognitive framework (2005) for validating the ESP reading test. Data collection and analysis were conducted according to the validity components, and all findings were systematically reported. Data gathered sheds light on the test's problematic areas such as test format, content and other administrative and security issues.

Since political discourse portrays politicians’ knowledge state and their ideological assumptions, a critical analysis of Clinton’s speeches may unveil her perceptual and conceptual worlds. More specifically, critical discourse analysis may uncover her mental representations about the Tunisian Revolution and the US attitude towards such an important political event in North Africa and the Middle East. Studying factive presupposition and epistemic modality seems to be an effective pragmatic tool to reveal what is presented as factual and ideological knowledge in political discourse. The research instrument used to work out the frequency distribution of these lexical features is the latest version of ‘AntConc’ software. To uncover the epistemic state of Hillary Clinton, van Dijk’s (1995b) socio-cognitive approach, mainly discourse-cognition-society paradigm, is applied to analyze her speeches between January 2011 and December 2012. At the discourse level, research findings reveal that factive presupposition, epistemic modality and evidential verbs unveil the speaker’s strong personal commitment to the truth value of her propositions. At the cognitive level, results show that the speaker’s personal and social values, attitudes, ideologies and knowledge unmask her mental mapping of Tunisia, democracy and human rights. It also uncovers the cognitive mechanisms that govern discourse production and understanding via ICMs, cognitive frames, mental models and context models. At the social level, research demonstrates that Clinton's perceptual and conceptual worlds are based on a dichotomy that involves ‘WE’, or democracies Vs. ‘THEY’ or the enemies of democracy, hence a dual vision of the world or polarization. This research bridges the lack of research combining epistemic presupposition, epistemic modality and evidentiality within a socio-cognitive framework

The main aim of this study was to explain the domain-specificity of early prosocial behavior in different domains (i.e., helping, comforting, and cooperation) by simultaneously assessing specific socio-cognitive factors (i.e., self-other-differentiation and joint attentional skills) that were hypothesized to be differentially related to the three domains of prosocial behavior. Based on a longitudinal study design, observational and parental report data were collected when toddlers (N = 42) from German urban middle-class families were 15 and 18 months of age. At 15 months, regression analyses indicated differential relationships between socio-cognitive development and prosocial behavior (i.e., joint attentional skills were positively related with helping and, as hypothesized, both joint attentional skills and self-other differentiation were positively related with cooperation). Furthermore, self-other differentiation at 15 months predicted increases in coordination between 15 and 18 months. Finally, between 15 and 18 months, parental reports of socio-cognitive measures increased significantly while behavioral measures of both socio-cognitive concepts and prosocial behavior were stable across time. In sum, these results support the theoretical assumption of domain-specific socio-cognitive influences that constitute differential development of prosocial behavior. Implications of the results for theory and future studies are discussed from different perspectives with a focus on an interference interpretation calling for the integration of socialization approaches to the study of prosocial development.

Recent neuroimaging studies have found a broad network of brain regions involved in deception, including the prefrontal cortex, insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Although deception can be conceptualized as the attempt to deliberately cause another person to accept a false belief, research to date has mainly focused on executive control processes when participants are instructed to lie under certain conditions. Recently, more ecologically valid and interactive experimental paradigms have been used in which subjects were also requested to take the perspective of another person, read his or her intentions, and make a self-determined decision to deceive that person and break a moral rule. To investigate the influence of these socio-cognitive processes on the neural network of deception, we performed a quantitative meta-analysis combining the data from 416 participants across 22 fMRI and two PET studies. Based on the description of the experimental paradigm, studies were divided in social interactive and non-interactive deception studies. Increased activation in the dorsal ACC, the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ)/angular gyrus, and the bilateral temporal pole (TP) was found to be greater in social interactive than in non-interactive deception. These results demonstrate the important role of perspective taking, theory of mind, and moral reasoning processes in deception as well as conflict processing. In addition to the role of executive control processes determined by previous meta-analyses, our findings show the importance of these socio-cognitive processes in deception and give new insight into the function and interpretation of the brain regions involved.

Writing is like a mirror that reflects the social and personal realities. Any culture and society has some specific ways and strategies for text and talk organization and communication, e.g. generic conventions, moves, metadiscourse markers, etc. are some of such strategies for better text organization and communication. Metadiscourse categories are specific rhetorical devices that help the participants to effectively communicate with each other ( Hyland, 2005 ). Employing these interactional devices is different in various languages and societies, in other words metadiscourse strategies are context dependent. In order to find differences between the use of interactional metadiscourse strategies, in two different societies and contexts, we analyzed and critically interpreted their usage in the discussion sections of 40 research articles written by Iranian and English scholars in English. This critical analysis was based on the socio-cognitive approach of van Dijk. This analysis showed similarities and differences in the rhetorical behaviour of these authors in their use of interactional metadiscoursive strategies. There was a considerable tendency to the use of ‘hedging’ by both groups of writers. The main difference was in the use of self-mentions and engagement markers. The frequency rate of such strategies was very low amongst Iranian writers. The social constructions and cognition of participants may have undeniable effects on the use of interactional strategies. The findings of such studies can have useful implications for ESL, EFL, and ESP courses in general; and for developing academic literacy in particular.

This article reports on an investigation of the lemma emigra* in three mainstream Spanish newspapers from 2011 and 2015. The analysis brings together corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Linguistics to explore the semantic configuration of the lemma and the relationship between lexical meanings and social ideologies. Results show that in contemporary Spain, emigra* cannot simply be defined in terms of an outward population displacement, but has additional attributes derived from a shared socio-cognitive understanding of the lemma. Thus, the semantic prototype of emigra* presents emigrants as victims forced to leave their homeland because of economic reasons. Present-day Spanish emigrants, however, show additional semantic attributes that place them as peripheral members of the lexical category. Results also show that such cognitive configuration of the lemma is closely linked to different social perspectives on Spanish emigration, and provides evidence of the role media discourse has in the creation of shared socio-cognitive meanings.

This paper should set the frame for the management focus by introducing the cognitive perspective in management research. The cognitive view has become a considerable perspective in describing and explaining strategic processes and significant advances have been provided especially in the last decade. However, the primary concern of cognitive-oriented strategy process research is still on strategic decision-making and therefore lags behind encompassing conceptional developments in process research. By drawing on the “genesis” approach of Kirsch, this paper develops a framework for explaining the formation of shared strategic orientations from a socio-cognitive perspective, which should broaden the “dominant research design”.

Ability to write focused expository essays in English is the key to academic success for students in an English-medium education system, but such writing can be a challenge for students for whom English is a Second Language. Focusing writing lessons on improving topic content and grammatical accuracy does not always achieve the expected results. Proceeding from the theoretical view of writing as simultaneously social activity and thinking process, this study sought to determine if explicit teaching of the expository essay genre practices and the thinking processes underlying these practices would improve the quality of students’ essays. Instruction featured deconstruction of sample texts and exercises to practise specific thinking strategies and grammar for realising the desired genre practices. Significant improvements were found in students’ stance support moves and functionality of topics in post-instruction essays. The discussion section argues that these findings point to the effectiveness of a social-cognitive approach to teaching writing.

The advanced processing methods based on artificial neuronal networks, especially the one used in the psychology of cognitive systems , or other methods of analysis in real time with several variables, lead to the more and more obvious affirmation of the role of great importance that engineering plays in the psychological research. This way, the psychological engineering can be considered a multi-disciplinary field, which integrates engineering professional activities and basic psychological knowledge with a systemic approach of the human being, when evaluation, development or therapeutic interest procedures are being applied on the human being, by combining the advanced technology to the latest theories and models applicable to complex systems and implication of the cognitive sciences, information technology, cybernetics, theory of language, logics, artificial intelligence, neurosciences in a spectacular interdisciplinary approach. Such an approach represented the basis of the implementation of a new technology able to elevate the psychological profile, this proving to be during the years a very skilful instrument of research in psychology.

The study examined the efficacy of an intervention designed to promote parents’ and preschoolers’ references to storybooks’ plot and socio-cognitive themes during shared reading within a sample of 58 families from low-SES background. All parents were given four books, one new book weekly, and were instructed to read each book four times per week to their children. Parents in the control group were given no further guidance, whereas parents in the intervention group were guided in reading the books interactively with their children using Bruner's (1986) structure of the complete storybook reading experience. These parents were taught a four-reading model that guided them to first focus on the book's plot aspects (vocabulary, sequence of events, story structure) and then move on to its socio-cognitive aspects (mental terms, mental causality, references to the child's life). After the intervention, parents and children in the intervention group referred more than their control counterparts to both the book's plot and its socio-cognitive themes. The advantages of the intervention were maintained beyond effects of parental education and of children's gender, vocabulary, and social cognition level. The study revealed the importance of direct guidance of parents and the potential of shared reading contexts for eliciting rich conversations between parents and children. Discussion emphasized the importance of encouraging parents to refer to both the book's plot and its socio-cognitive themes.

In the paper a modification of a Socio-cognitive Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm, recently proposed by the authors, is presented. This modification consists in devising a mechanism for dynamic adaptation of the population structure of the swarm. Besides the design and rationale for the approach, referring to the state-of-the-art PSO original algorithm and several of its modifications, experimental results tackling popular benchmark functions are presented and discussed in detail., SCOPUS: cp.p, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Open source software (OSS) is an important trend in the information technology adoption landscape. It has received considerable attention in the scientific literature, but mostly in the professional press. In fact, there is much debate over its actual commercial and organizational value. Since the public discourse accompanying an IT may influence adoption decisions, it is important to consider IT specialists' perceptions of the discourse on OSS. In this study, we investigated the relationship between IT specialists' profiles, IT specialists' reception of the public discourse on OSS, and their organizations' receptivity to OSS. Drawing on the socio-cognitive perspective of IT innovation adoption and the organizing vision theory, a survey of 271 IT specialists was conducted to examine these issues. Our results indicate that a majority of IT specialists in our sample are rather neutral about the OSS concept conveyed in the public discourse. However, our sample also comprises respondents with more extreme perceptions who can be classified as either supporters or detractors. Our results indicate that detractors have more years of experience but have been less exposed to OSS than supporters, and that IT specialists' perceptions of the OSS concept are positively associated with their organizations' openness to OSS adoption and, to a lesser extent, with the existence of an organizational policy that favors OSS adoption. Altogether, our findings provide strong support for the organizing vision theory and the idea that the popularity of an IT innovation concept favors the adoption of the material IT innovation in organizations. By providing a preliminary test of a nomological network of IT specialists' perceptions of the OSS concept, our study offers insights as to why organizations may or may not take OSS into account in their software procurement decisions.

The understanding of false belief is one of the most important milestones in the development of social cognition in children. Many studies have been conducted on this kind of cognition in children with a typical development. Despite being a key point for improving their welfare and quality of life, there are few studies in children with Down's syndrome. The aim of the present work is to carry out an in-depth study of social cognition in children with Down's syndrome. For this purpose, we used 6 tasks, with 3 levels of difficulty, in a group of 9 children aged between 4 and 14 years. Six of these children had a genetic diagnosis of Down's syndrome. The results of our research corroborate previous studies suggesting difficulties in the development of social cognition in children with Down's syndrome, and more specifically in tasks involving false beliefs.

This study represents a web-based qualitative inquiry in the synchronous computer mediated communication (SCMC) via Web 2.0. It explores L2 learners’ socio-cognitive development through dynamic assessment (DA), which follows Vygotsky's preference for cooperative dialogue in the zone of proximal development. Microgenesis as a general analytical framework is used to investigate the changes in learners’ progression from other to self-regulation. The results of the study indicate that we can gain better insights into the participants’ level of regulation and their potential for future socio-cognitive development in SCMC based DA in Web 2.0.

The objective of this study is to examine the effect of road pricing on people’s tendency to adapt their current travel behavior. To this end, the relationship between changes in activity-travel behavior on the one hand and public acceptability and its most important determinants on the other are investigated by means of a stated adaptation experiment. Using a two-stage hierarchical model, it was found that behavioral changes themselves are not dependent on the perceived acceptability of road pricing itself, and that only a small amount of the variability in the behavioral changes were explained by socio-cognitive factors. The lesson for policy makers is that road pricing charges must surpass a minimum threshold in order to entice changes in activity-travel behavior and that the benefits of road pricing should be clearly communicated, taking into account the needs and abilities of different types of travelers. Secondly, earlier findings concerning the acceptability of push measures were validated, supporting transferability of results. In line with other studies, effectiveness, fairness and personal norm all had a significant direct impact on perceived acceptability. Finally, the relevance of using latent factors rather than aggregate indicators was underlined.

Complex cognition addresses research on (a) high-level cognitive processes - mainly problem solving, reasoning, and decision making - and their interaction with more basic processes such as perception, learning, motivation and emotion and (b) cognitive processes which take place in a complex, typically dynamic, environment. Our focus is on AI systems and cognitive models dealing with complexity and on psychological findings which can inspire or challenge cognitive systems research. In this overview we first motivate why we have to go beyond models for rather simple cognitive processes and reductionist experiments. Afterwards, we give a characterization of complexity from our perspective. We introduce the triad of cognitive science methods - analytical, empirical, and engineering methods - which in our opinion have all to be utilized to tackle complex cognition. Afterwards we highlight three aspects of complex cognition - complex problem solving, dynamic decision making, and learning of concepts, skills and strategies. We conclude with some reflections about and challenges for future research.

This paper explores the ways three different theoretical perspectives of the social aspects of self-regulated learning [Hadwin, A. F. (2000). Building a case for self-regulating as a socially constructed phenomenon. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada; Hadwin, A. F., & Oshige, M. (2006). Self-regulation, co-regulation, and socially-shared regulation: Examining many faces of social in models of SRL. In A. F. Hadwin, & S. Jarvela (Chairs), Socially constructed self-regulated learning: Where social and self meet in strategic regulation of learning. Symposium conducted at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA] have been operationalized in a computer supported learning environment called gStudy. In addition to contrasting social aspects of SRL and drawing connections with specific collaborative tools and structures, this paper explores the potential of gStudy to advance theory, research, and practice. Specifically it discusses how the utilization of differing collaborative models provides new avenues for systematically researching social aspects of SRL and their roles in collaboration.

Despite a worldwide growth in the number of boycott campaigns, the results of studies are inconclusive as the motives behind individual participation are still largely ignored. Drawing on a socio-cognitive theory, the theory of planned behavior, this research investigates whether the direct variables of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control, help predict consumers’ boycott intention. Conducted in Lebanon, this work employs a survey design administered to a randomized systematic sample of 500 Muslim and Christian consumers. The sample is split into two sub-samples reflecting the main religious groups in the Middle-East. Results show that although the Muslim participants appear more prone to participate in the boycott, still attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control are all significant predictors of intentions in both communities with the attitudinal component carrying the most weight. This application of a social psychology theory to the consumers’ passive resistance to purchasing yielded significant contributions at the theoretical, empirical, and managerial levels.

One of the fundamental human cognitive processes is problem solving. As a higher-layer cognitive process, problem solving interacts with many other cognitive processes such as abstraction, searching, learning, decision making, inference, analysis, and synthesis on the basis of internal knowledge representation by the object-attribute-relation (OAR) model. Problem solving is a cognitive process of the brain that searches a solution for a given problem or finds a path to reach a given goal. When a problem object is identified, problem solving can be perceived as a search process in the memory space for finding a relationship between a set of solution goals and a set of alternative paths. This paper presents both a cognitive model and a mathematical model of the problem solving process. The cognitive structures of the brain and the mechanisms of internal knowledge representation behind the cognitive process of problem solving are explained. The cognitive process is formally described using real-time process algebra (RTPA) and concept algebra. This work is a part of the cognitive computing project that designed to reveal and simulate the fundamental mechanisms and processes of the brain according to Wang's layered reference model of the brain (LRMB), which is expected to lead to the development of future generation methodologies for cognitive computing and novel cognitive computers that are capable of think, learn, and perceive.

The article analyzes user-IR system interaction from the broad, socio-cognitive perspective of lessons we can learn about human brain evolution when we compare the Neanderthal brain to the human brain before and after a small human brain mutation is hypothesized to have occurred 35,000-75,000 years ago. The enhanced working memory mutation enabled modern humans (i) to decode unfamiliar environmental stimuli with greater focusing power on adaptive solutions to environmental changes and problems, and (ii) to encode environmental stimuli in more efficient, generative knowledge structures. A sociological theory of these evolving, more efficient encoding knowledge structures is given. These new knowledge structures instilled in humans not only the ability to adapt to and survive novelty and/or changing conditions in the environment, but they also instilled an imperative to do so. Present day IR systems ignore the encoding imperative in their design framework. To correct for this lacuna, we propose the evolutionary-based socio-cognitive framework model for designing interactive IR systems. A case study is given to illustrate the functioning of the model.

Dimirovski, Georgi M. (Dogus Author) -- Conference full title: 17th World Congress, International Federation of Automatic Control, IFAC; Seoul; South Korea; 6 July 2008 through 11 July 2008. Modern advanced information technologies resulting from automation of control and decision processes along with ubiquitous communications have a multitude of impacts on development of national economies within the global economy. Thus all kinds of social systems, being essentially human centred systems, is a cross-, inter- and multi-disciplinary challenge to systems and control researchers. Social systems in modern civilization are reviewed from the systems science viewpoint and on the grounds of recent developments in control science and technology and with regard to globalization paradigm. The innovative systems approaches employing results from hybrid systems theory and dynamical networks are needed to address the now-old challenges of combined knowledge and technology transfer world wide for sustainable development that may remedy climate change and some of the negative socio economic aspects of globalization.

While the growth of family firms is widely recognized as important to the prosperity of free-market economies (Family Enterprise USA, 2011), a growing body of stakeholder research finds that family business ethics is important to advancing a society’s moral progress. Yet, due to limits in cognition, family businesses cannot attend to moral issues that account for the interests of all societal stakeholders. Specifically, Jones (1991) and others (Butterfield et al., 2000; Mitchell et al., 2011) argue that the salient attributes surrounding a moral issue influence a decision maker’s attention to a moral issue. Stakeholder salience research has subsequently argued that moral issues can arise from the conflicting goals and interest of different stakeholders in which family businesses prioritizes on only those stakeholders that count (Mitchell et al., 2011). This study propose an issue contingent model of moral awareness where a family business’ moral awareness is not contingent on the salient attributes surrounding a moral issue but is contingent on a moral agent’s heuristic response to resolving complex and novel source of family conflict. Unlike previous issue contingent models of moral awareness, this model introduces a salience that is directly rooted in the cognitive processes of the moral agent rather than to the salience attributes that surround a moral issue.