Imagining mobility: the prospective cognition question in migration research

Most migration research is focused on migrant experiences after mobility and settlement. We argue that empirical researchers would benefit from studying how cognitive migration, the narrative imagining of oneself inhabiting a foreign destination prior to the actual physical move, influences migration behaviour. This article notes a gap in our current understanding of the process by which individuals decide to cross international borders and offers an agenda for remedying this. The interdisciplinarity of migration research has not fully extended to social psychology or cognitive social sciences, where a dynamic research agenda has examined human decision-making processes, including prospection and the connections between culture and cognition. The study of socio-cognitive processes in migration decision-making has been largely overlooked because of the after-the-fact nature of data collection and analysis rather than an aversion to these approaches per se. We highlight a number of strategic findings from this diverse field, provide examples of migration scholarship that has benefited from these insights, and raise questions about the sides of migration process that have received insufficient attention. A more nuanced understanding of prospective thinking—imagining potential futures—can shed light on the classic puzzle of why some people move while others in comparable situations do not.     

When difference creates dissonance: understanding the ‘engine’ of intercultural learning in study abroad

Why do some study abroad students improve their intercultural skills, while others revert to less sophisticated ways of making sense of cultural difference? Both intercultural competence theory and transformative learning theory attempt to explain why student intercultural learning occurs, but they only provide partial answers. Building on our previous study assessing intercultural competence in a 2015 field school in India, this article applies the concept of cognitive dissonance to explain the process behind intercultural learning. In the context of study abroad, students experience cognitive dissonance when they encounter cultural differences or similarities that confound previously held expectations about culture. Adapting Maertz, Hassan, and Magnusson’s cognitive dissonance resolution framework, we employ qualitative analysis of students’ written reflections to show how the resolution of cognitive dissonance could act as the ‘engine’ of intercultural learning.     

Racial/ethnic and socio‐economic biases in child maltreatment severity assessment in Spanish child protection services caseworkers

Evidence from several countries has shown the over‐representation of racial/ethnic minority groups in child protection services (CPS). The objective of the present study was to explore whether racial/ethnic and socio‐economic biases influence Spanish CPS caseworkers' judgements of the severity of child maltreatment. Moreover, the study attempted to explore the influence on these judgements of the use of structured instruments and professional experience. Two case vignettes of child maltreatment were presented to 405 CPS caseworkers and 169 students of social work and psychology. Family ethnic origin and income were manipulated in the vignettes. The findings showed no statistical evidence of biases related to family ethnic origin or socio‐economic status (SES) in Spanish CPS caseworkers' judgements of maltreatment severity. Biases related to family SES were found for students for the vignettes of physical abuse. CPS caseworkers and students who did not use a structured instrument to assess maltreatment severity tended to underestimate the severity for the vignettes of parental incapacity to control child/adolescent behaviour and to overestimate it for the vignettes of physical abuse. CPS caseworkers who used a structured instrument showed higher percentages of accuracy and inter‐rater agreement, supporting the relevance of structured tools in reducing potential caseworkers' biases.     

Sociolinguistic interaction and identity construction: The view from game‐theoretic pragmatics

Understanding the dynamics that characterize interaction between conversational participants is a fundamental goal of most theories of socially conditioned language use and identity construction through language. In this paper, I outline a class of formal tools that, I suggest, can be helpful in making progress towards this goal. More precisely, this paper explores how Bayesian signalling game models can be used to formalize key aspects of current sociolinguistic theories, and, in doing so, contribute to our knowledge of how speakers use their linguistic resources to communicate information and carve out their place in the social world. The Bayesian framework has become increasingly popular for the analysis of pragmatic phenomena of many different types, and, more generally, these models have become a dominant paradigm for the explanation of non‐linguistic cognitive processes. As such, I argue that this approach has the potential to yield a formalized theory of personal and social identity construction and to situate the study of sociolinguistic interaction within a broader theory of rationalistic cognition.     

Birth preference in women undergoing treatment for childbirth fear: A randomised controlled trial

Background

Childbirth fear is the most common underlying reason for requesting a caesarean section without medical reason. The aim of this randomised controlled study was to investigate birth preferences in women undergoing treatment for childbirth fear, and to investigate birth experience and satisfaction with the allocated treatment.

Accounting for the Performance of Environmentally Significant Behavior: The Symbolic Significance of Recycling

The scientific community has pronounced climate change unequivocal and its consequences disastrous. Yet Americans' behavioral response to the global social problem of environmental degradation has been largely confined to the individual act of recycling. This article examines why Americans are not doing more to address climate change and other environmental issues. Taking a cognitive sociological perspective, I describe how Americans think about environmental issues and pro‐environmental behavior. I draw on Swidler's concept of a “cultural tool kit,” to examine the cultural narratives Americans use to account for the small amount of pro‐environmental behavior they perform. The act of recycling functions as a synecdoche for pro‐environmental behavior in general, allowing individuals to over‐claim the significance of a modest amount of pro‐environmental behavior. I argue that Americans' failure to engage with environmental issues at a collective level is rooted in the individualized culture of American environmentalism.     

Embedded counselling in advisory work with clients in debt

This article addresses the potential for embedded counselling in social work with clients in debt. It is based on experiences from Sweden where budget and debt advisors employed by the municipalities give assistance to clients in financial difficulties. A distinction is made between advice and guidance on the one hand and counselling on the other. As the financial problems often have been long lasting, it is not enough with one-time advice that the client hopefully then follows. The purpose of the article, thus, is to explore the possibilities of incorporating counselling in the role of the advisor.     

略论20世纪法国人类学思想的嬗变

肇始于迪尔凯姆学派的法国人类学在20世纪取得了辉煌的成就.其思想发展进程可概述如下:首先,马塞尔·莫斯和赫兹提出了"二元分类"思想;其后,列维-斯特劳斯在广泛吸收、综合社会学、人类学和语言学等学科思想的基础上,以"二元对立"的认知结构为核心,建构了结构主义人类学.所有这些成果,对皮埃尔·布迪厄在20世纪60年代的人类学研究产生了重要影响.     

Left Behind by Parents in China: Internal Migration and Adolescents’ Well-Being

This study investigates how growing up as a left-behind child due to parents’ labor migration in China is associated with adolescents’ cognitive and socioemotional development, based on data from the China Family Panel Studies. We find that adolescents do worst when both parents are absent in all developmental indicators we examined: short-term and long-term word recall tests, numeracy test, self-concept, and self-expectation of educational attainment. However, the differences between left-behind children and those in rural two-parent families are not statistically significant. Left-behind adolescents do have significantly lower well-being than those in urban two-parent families. These differences can largely be accounted for by father's education, family spending on the adolescent's education, quality of parenting, and the social support available to an adolescent. The gap in Chinese adolescents' development is, thus, not so much related directly to how many parents one grows up with as it is to whether one grows up in a rural or urban environment.     

基于功率约束及节点频谱选择的认知协同路由

为了提升认知无线网络的数据传输效率,优化节点能量负载,提出一种协同路由算法。基于覆盖与底层技术的协作设计一种协同网络架构,该架构针对网络频带表现多样化提供了一种新的频谱选择策略,提升频谱资源效用。结合协同网络频谱选择时的干扰特性,根据频谱、干扰和功率约束关系,提出最大化链路容量的频谱及节点功率分配方法。在协同路由设计上引入了频谱效用参数,参数的度量标准涉及节点剩余能量和链路容量,以优化路由节点能量负载和传输效率为目的。仿真对比结果表明,算法有效地利用信道接入机会进行数据转发,提高了传输效率,相比基于竞争进化算法的多播路由方法,数据包传递成功率提升了1．4％,平均网络吞吐量高出8．4％,平均节点剩余能量高出3．2％,在均衡节点负载上性能良好。