When children ask questions, learning may occur, a connection that has led some researchers to posit that children’s questions are a mechanism of cognitive development. There is an implicit assumption of universality in this view. Yet much of the research on this topic has been conducted in cultural settings where children’s questions are encouraged and supported. In this chapter, we discuss children’s questions as a form of social and cultural behavior. We draw on theories of language socialization to emphasize how, over development, children learn to use language in ways that are appropriate in the sociocultural setting in which they live. We describe evidence from a sample of 96 three- and five-year–old children living in four traditional communities, Garifuna (Belize), Logoli (Kenya), Newars (Nepal), and Samoans (American Samoa), that suggests there may be substantial differences across developmental contexts in children’s question-asking behavior, especially questions that seek explanation. We do not take issue with the idea that children have great curiosity about the world, a characteristic that leads them to seek out opportunities for learning. Rather, we are concerned with the form this curiosity takes and its relation to the social and cultural context of development.

This introduction deals with the historiography on women’s participation in crime in various regions in Europe in the early modern and modern period. It introduces the chapters in this volume and places them in the framework of three topics around which the debates about crime and gender have centered over the past decades: violence, prosecution and punishment, and representation. It furthermore pays specific attention to the importance of socio-economic and cultural contexts, arguing that contextualisation of women’s crime is an essential instrument for explaining why women committed crime, why their registered criminal patterns changed and how their crimes were represented by contemporaries

Borges declared that a writer’s political views were circumstantial and should not interfere with his or her literary creation and reputation. However, the cases of Argentina and Cuba from the mid-1940s on illustrate the influence of context on the reception of his work. The chapter focuses on three periods: the mid-1940s, the mid-1950s, and the first decade of the Cuban Revolution of 1959. In Argentina, the failure of the jury to award Borges the National Literary Award in 1942 was politically motivated. In Cuba, the first critical text on Borges appeared in 1944 and was influenced by the attitude to culture of the Origenes group, led by J Lezama Lima. In the following decade, and after the overthrowing of Perón, Borges’s work was criticized for being out of touch with Argentine realities, whereas in Cuba, a new literary magazine, Ciclón, expressed support for his work. After the Cuban Revolution, Borges’s name continued to be mentioned; however, after 1968, he would be censored in the island for two decades. The chapter concludes that writers and c ritics tend to read other writers in relation with their own cultural credos or projects.

The Bible is one of the most cited and reworked texts in Borges’s output. The chapter analyses the context in which Borges did his reading of the Bible and its resulting implications. His approach to the Bible was in opposition to that of Catholic integralism: a conception of Catholicism characterized by intransigence and intolerance, which held sway in Argentina in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Borges attributed importance to the Scriptures and defined hiimself as an interested yet sceptical individual. He made almost exclusive use of the Protestant Bible, his personal favourite being the King James Bible, published in 1611. In his later years, Borges declared his preference for Reformed Christianity, and he cited his paternal grandmother. Fanny Haslam, as an example of Protestant bibliocentrism.

This chapter addresses multicultural perspectives of intelligence in the United States. Topics include fairness in testing; environment, social location, and cultural context; measures of intelligence; and outcome implications in testing ethnocultural populations. Definitions of intelligence from a cultural perspective are highlighted. Contextual factors include: poverty, home environment, education, fluency in English, and acculturation. Testing constructs such as fairness in testing, test bias, cultural loading, and various forms of testing equivalence are discussed. Alternative assessment practices focus on nonverbal intelligence tests; dynamic assessment procedures; performance-based, authentic, and curriculum-based assessment; response to intervention, think aloud protocols, cross-battery assessment; and a multidimensional bilingual assessment model. Usage of mainstream intelligence tests is discussed in relation to Black, Asian, American Indian/Native American, and Hispanic and Latino/a communities. The numerous challenges, controversies, and complexities of interpreting test scores in cultural contexts are discussed as intelligence tests are transported, renormed, and restandardized globally.

One of the crucial questions in bilingual research is whether all languages known to a bilingual speaker are coactivated during language processing. Psycholinguists have frequently addressed this issue by comparing processing patterns of words shared across languages with the processing of language-specific items. The present chapter offers a brief review of studies investigating the processing of cognates (i.e., words that share form and meaning across languages) and noncognates, followed by a discussion of factors affecting cognate processing in bilingual research. The influence of these factors is discussed with respect to the type of cognates involved in the materials, task demands, and, finally, in terms of participants’ individual differences.

− ESG–Agency scholars have embraced the notion that agent influence is complex, contingent, and context dependent, with the success of environmental governance depending considerably on propitious environmental and social conditions. − Scholars have shifted from an earlier focus on how agents influence behaviours and environmental quality in earth system governance to how they influence governance processes, with increasing focus on democracy, participation, legitimacy, transparency, and accountability. − ESG–Agency scholars employ increasingly diverse methods to integrate insights from case studies, interviews, surveys, statistical analyses, and other approaches leading to deeper and more nuanced understanding of agency in earth system governance. − Adopting more interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to evaluating agency can foster future understandings of and contributions to earth system governance.

This chapter introduces the book and is organized around the six most basic yet critical questions that cut across all research: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. In the first section (“who”), we discuss the types of people who perform relationship maintenance as well as differences among people. The “what” section identifies the central definitional issues that continue to plague the field. The third section (“when”) highlights the conditions under which people perform maintenance as well as the relationship challenges that prompt it. The “where” section identifies the small body of literature on geographic differences in relationship maintenance. The “why” section covers the principal theories that explain engagement in relationship maintenance activities. The final section comments on “how” maintenance activities sustain or enhance relationships. That is, it outlines the correlates, mediators, and moderators that explain the mechanisms by which maintenance operates. We conclude our chapter with a brief overview of the organization of the book.

Relationships are embedded in broader social networks, including the family and friends of both partners. Covering contributions from several disciplines, this chapter discusses the role of social networks in the maintenance of intimate relationships. We first describe findings from the communication field showing how people use their social networks (such as through doing activities with mutual friends) as one of several strategies to maintain their relationships. Then, we discuss social psychological literature regarding how social networks affect both dyad members’ motivation to engage in various maintenance mechanisms that follow from their decision to commit. Furthermore, the social network can be instrumental in influencing pair members’ ability to maintain their relationship, including by giving advice to help repair relationships, which is also discussed in this chapter. We then turn to more macro-level issues regarding the compositional or structural dimensions of social networks and the ways in which they play a role in the maintenance of couples’ relationships. Variation in the processes of network influence on the maintenance of relationships is also considered, including how networks differentially influence relationship maintenance across the life course and through technology (e.g., social media).

This chapter details and evaluates existing research on the extent to which three related cognitive processes are associated with the successful maintenance of relationships and relationship satisfaction: benevolent attributions, forgiveness, and gratitude. As detailed throughout the chapter, it appears that the extent to which each process is associated with the successful maintenance of relationship satisfaction depends critically on the context in which it operates, including aspects of the people involved in the relationship, aspects of the relationship itself, and aspects of the environment in which the relationship is embedded. Although each process is associated with the successful maintenance of relationship satisfaction in some contexts, each process is also associated with various personal and interpersonal costs to the extent that it operates in other contexts. Accordingly, we argue that maximizing the benefits of any cognitive relationship maintenance strategy requires a nuanced approach to its investigation.

In 1995, David C. Steinmetz, one of the two deans of Calvin studies in America along with Robert M. Kingdon, published a slim volume entitled Calvin in Context. For Calvin studies, that volume became part of the necessary tools of the trade. Steinmetz brilliantly set forth the argument for the history of exegesis method for which he became famous. In so doing, he argued that attempting to understand Calvin apart from those who went before him, his theological and exegetical context, caused a variety of errors.1

The policies recommended by behavioral paternalists rest on certain posited empirical facts or regularities about human behavior. Some of these supposed facts have not been established with much confidence. Specifically, psychological findings are highly context-specific, and thus lack the generality required for policymaking; generalizing quantitative results from the laboratory to the real world is unreliable; most existing research does not account adequately for incentives and learning; most existing research does not consider small-group debiasing; and most existing research does not adequately assess self-regulation and self-debiasing. Establishing reliable answers to these questions is a prerequisite for crafting and calibrating paternalistic policies with a reasonable expectation of improving welfare.

The chapter examines the semantics–pragmatics division from the perspective of ELF communication and points out a clear dominance of semantics. The linguistic code works like common ground for ELF users and utterance production is governed by semantic analyzability. The standard pragmatic model seems to be working better in intercultural interactions than in L1 interaction based on which it was originally developed. In ELF production, speakers compose their utterances relying on the literal meaning of words rather than using figurative and formulaic language. The pragmatisized semantics that ELF interlocutors use in interactions is the result of blending their dictionary knowledge of the linguistic code (semantics) with their basic interpersonal communicative skills and sometimes unusual, not target language-based pragmatic strategies that suit them very well in their attempt to achieve their communicative goals.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the main ideas and principles of relevance theory. The cognitive and communicative principles of relevance are introduced, along with the notion of procedural meaning. The roles that these principles and concepts play in utterance interpretation are discussed. Attention then turns to reference with an overview of Wilson’s (1992) relevance-based account. The importance of the role of accessibility of context and referents in understanding the process of reference resolution is highlighted. Focus then turns to the cognitive process of referring itself. The act of resolving reference is presented as the process of mapping argument slots in the logical form of an utterance onto conceptual files. Referring expressions are a means by which a speaker can guide a hearer in this process. That is, they are procedural in nature. As with other interpretive processes, reference resolution is driven by the presumption of optimal relevance. The processes of mapping an argument slot onto a conceptual file and enriching that conceptual file are driven from the bottom-up by the semantics of the verb and constrained from the top-down by considerations of relevance.