The Social Cognitive Process of Word Learning in Infants

Some researchers have tried to explain early word learning via garden-variety learning processes and others by invoking linguistically specific “constraints” that help children to narrow down the referential possibilities. The social-pragmatic approach to word learning argues that children do not need specifically linguistic constraints to learn words, but rather what they need are flexible and powerful social-cognitive skills that allow them to understand the communicative intentions of others in a wide variety of interactive situations. A series of seven word learning studies demonstrate something of the range of communicative situations in which children can learn new words. These situations include many non-ostensive contexts in which no one is intentionally teaching the child a new word and the intended referent is not perceptually present at the time of the new word’s introduction. Language acquisition in general, and word learning in particular, is best seen as a special case of cultural learning in which children attempt to discern adults’ intentions toward their intentions toward things in the world.

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Reference

Pragmatics & Cognition ◽

10.1075/pc.6.1-2.12tom ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 6 (1-2) ◽

pp. 229-243 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Michael Tomasello

Keyword(s):

Young Children ◽

Word Learning ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Learning Processes ◽

Cultural Learning ◽

The Social ◽

Symbolic Gestures ◽

Child Gesture

My approach to reference focuses on naturally occuring processes of communication, and in particular on children's earliest referential activities. I begin by describing three different kinds of child gesture — ritualizations, deictics, and symbolic gestures — and then proceed to examine young children's early word learning. The account focuses on the joint attentional situations in which young children learn their earliest gestures and linguistic symbols and on the social-cognitive and cultural learning processes involved in the different cases.

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The impact of past relationships on interpersonal behavior: Behavioral confirmation in the social–cognitive process of transference.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ◽

10.1037/0022-3514.79.4.546 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 79 (4) ◽

pp. 546-562 ◽

Cited By ~ 74

Author(s):

Michele S. Berk ◽

Susan M. Andersen

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Process ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Interpersonal Behavior ◽

Behavioral Confirmation ◽

The Social ◽

The Impact

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Drawing As a Space for Social-Cognitive Interaction

Education Sciences ◽

10.3390/educsci12010045 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 45

Author(s):

Vanessa De Andrade ◽

Sofia Freire ◽

Mónica Baptista ◽

Yael Shwartz

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Process ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

School Students ◽

Multimodal Analysis ◽

Fine Grain ◽

Shared Space ◽

The Social ◽

Cognitive Space ◽

Cognitive Interaction ◽

Collective Thinking

Drawing is recognized as a powerful tool to learn science. Although current research has enriched our understanding of the potential of learning through drawing, scarce attention has been given to the social-cognitive interactions that occur when students jointly create drawings to understand and explain phenomena in science. This article is based on the distributed and embodied cognition theories and it adopted the notion of we-space, defined as a complex social-cognitive space, dynamically established and managed during the ongoing interactions of the individuals, when they manipulate and exploit a shared space. The goal of the study was to explore the role that collaborative drawing plays in shaping the social-cognitive interaction among students. We examine this by a fine-grain multimodal analysis of a pair of middle school students, who jointly attempted to understand and explain a chemical phenomenon by creating drawings and thinking with them. Our findings suggest that collaborative drawing played a key role in (i) establishing a genuine shared-action space, a we-space, and that within this we-space it had two major functions: (ii) enabling collective thinking-in-action and (iii) simplifying communication. We argue that drawing, as a joint activity, has a potential for learning, not restricted to the cognitive process related to the activity of creating external visual representations on paper; instead, the benefits of drawing lie in action in space. Creating these representations is more than a process of externalization of thought: it is part of a process of collective thinking-in-action.

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Social Cognition in Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome

Zeitschrift für Neuropsychologie ◽

10.1024/1016-264x/a000272 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (4) ◽

pp. 243-249

Author(s):

Ronja Weiblen ◽

Melanie Jonas ◽

Sören Krach ◽

Ulrike M. Krämer

Keyword(s):

Tourette Syndrome ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Mirror Neuron System ◽

Mirror Neuron ◽

Theoretical Work ◽

Neural Processes ◽

The Social ◽

Decision Making System ◽

Social Decision Making ◽

Work Done

Abstract. Research on the neural mechanisms underlying Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) has mostly concentrated on abnormalities in basal ganglia circuits. Recent alternative accounts, however, focused more on social and affective aspects. Individuals with GTS show peculiarities in their social and affective domain, including echophenomena, coprolalia, and nonobscene socially inappropriate behavior. This article reviews the experimental and theoretical work done on the social symptoms of GTS. We discuss the role of different social cognitive and affective functions and associated brain networks, namely, the social-decision-making system, theory-of-mind functions, and the so-called “mirror-neuron” system. Although GTS affects social interactions in many ways, and although the syndrome includes aberrant social behavior, the underlying cognitive, affective, and neural processes remain to be investigated.

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Collective Human Agency in the Context of Organizational Participation

Zeitschrift für Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie A&O ◽

10.1026/0932-4089/a000234 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 61 (2) ◽

pp. 51-68 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Wolfgang Georg Weber ◽

Hans Jeppe Jeppesen

Keyword(s):

Collective Efficacy ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Work Motivation ◽

Human Agency ◽

Employee Participation ◽

Ecological Approach ◽

Cognitive Approach ◽

Organizational Decision Making ◽

Organizational Participation ◽

The Social

Abstract. Connecting the social cognitive approach of human agency by Bandura (1997) and activity theory by Leontiev (1978) , this paper proposes a new theoretical framework for analyzing and understanding employee participation in organizational decision-making. Focusing on the social cognitive concepts of self-reactiveness, self-reflectiveness, intentionality, and forethought, commonalities, complementarities, and differences between both theories are explained. Efficacy in agency is conceived as a cognitive foundation of work motivation, whereas the mediation of societal requirements and resources through practical activity is conceptualized as an ecological approach to motivation. Additionally, we discuss to which degree collective objectifications can be understood as material indicators of employees’ collective efficacy. By way of example, we explore whether an integrated application of concepts from both theories promotes a clearer understanding of mechanisms connected to the practice of employee participation.

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