The idea that intercultural understanding should be based on in-depth knowledge about the other continues to capture the imagination of policy makers, practitioners, and researchers. According to this line of thinking, intercultural understanding is about creating a secure way of reducing cultural complexity, aiming to overcome what is perceived…

People express part of their identity through their style, gestures, speech patterns, and language use. Other people read these displays as presentations of ourself, an insight into who we are. It is important, therefore, for students to recognize their own performance of identity and be able to express that identity in a clear way. By focusing on…

The purpose of this study was to examine the metaphors which were used to describe the concept "football coach" by some stakeholders in football, such as players, club officials and referees. Each individual (N = 389) within the study group was asked to reveal the single metaphor s/he has in mind in respect of the concept of football…

Background: We describe the development of sustainability via active garden education (SAGE), an early care and education (ECE) garden-based curriculum developed from a 5-year community partnership to link national health policy guidelines with ECE accreditation standards. Methods: National health guidelines and ECE accreditation standards were…

We (Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010) reviewed a growing body of research demonstrating metaphors' far-reaching influence on social information processing. In their commentary, IJzerman and Koole (2011) claimed that we devoted insufficient attention to the origin of metaphors, and they reviewed research showing that bodily, social, and cultural…

Background: Language has been shown to play a critical role in social cognitive reasoning in preschool and school-aged children, but little research has been conducted with adolescents. During adolescence, the ability to understand figurative language becomes increasingly important for social relationships and may affect social adjustment. This…

Social cognition is the scientific study of the cognitive events underlying social thought and attitudes. Currently, the field's prevailing theoretical perspectives are the traditional schema view and embodied cognition theories. Despite important differences, these perspectives share the seemingly uncontroversial notion that people interpret and…

Incongruity between a positive statement and a negative context is a cue to verbal irony. Two studies examined whether school-age children and adults recognized that listeners require knowledge of context to detect irony. Specifically, the studies investigated whether participants could inhibit their own context knowledge to appropriately gauge…

To bridge the social-reasoning focus of developmental research on irony understanding and the pragmatic focus of research with adult populations, this cross-sectional study examines 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds' (n = 72) developing understanding of both social-cognitive and social-communicative aspects of discourse irony, when compared with adults (n =…

This study describes the development of social reasoning in school-age children. An irony task is used to assess 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds' (N = 72) and adults' (N = 24) recursive understanding of others' minds. Guttman scale analysis demonstrates that in order to understand a speaker's communicative intention, a child needs to recognize the…

In this article an alternative interpretation of the functions of decision-making and the inherent activities at teachers' meetings at schools are presented. The metaphor of "play" is introduced in order to make the teachers' actions during decision-making comprehensible, not only for outsiders, but more importantly for "involved insiders", such…

While individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are typically impaired in interpreting the communicative intent of others, little is known about the neural bases of higher-level pragmatic impairments. Here, we used functional MRI (fMRI) to examine the neural circuitry underlying deficits in understanding irony in high-functioning children…

The overall intention of this project was to enhance awareness, for those involved with persons on the autism spectrum, of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) strategies for treating persons with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The project involved a literature review on autism and the use of CBT strategies for people with autism spectrum disorders…

Merit is a popular social and cultural leitmotif in neoliberal society. It promises justice, equity, and social mobility for all by promoting the ethos that with the right skills, hard work and creativity, anyone can 'climb' the market-based social ladder. The aim of the study is to determine how academics conceptualize and perceive the concept of…