The Introduction provides a brief review of the overall aims and conceptual and methodological approaches of the book, with a focus on the dynamic interactions between cognitive control and language. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the discussions and the integration of behavioral and neurophysiological outcomes throughout the chapters. A further goal is to point to the need for a connection between theoretical models and educational/clinical practices and to facilitate a discussion between researchers and educators/clinicians. The Introduction also includes a short summary of each chapter by presenting the main ideas and critical issues about the development of cognitive control in children with various language skills (e.g., children with language talent, children with bilingualism as their first language, children with developmental language disorder, emerging bilingual speakers).

Within a cyberpragmatic framework rooted in cognitive pragmatics (Yus 2011), context is basically information that is brought to bear in turning the schematic coded input (e.g., spoken, written, or typed words) into interpretations. Although it is undeniable that contextual information may stem from different sources, eventually what is at stake in contextualization is to mentally assess and select the appropriate quality and quantity of information that allows us to reach meaningful interpretations. Regarding the specificity of social media and internet communication overall, several challenges for pragmatic analysis arise, some of which will be addressed in this chapter. Specifically, what interests most in an analysis of context online are: (a) the role of the interfaces in favoring/limiting the contextualization of utterances; (b) the role of the physical-virtual interface in today’s internet-mediated communication; and specially (c) the differentiation of the user’s personal, interactive, and social contexts managed in everyday virtual communication.

This chapter looks at scholarly assessment of traditional issues in relation to Proverbs such as provenance, historical and cultural context and literary-critical history across the debates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries leading into the twenty-first. Beginning in the nineteenth century when the term “wisdom literature” was coined, changing ideas regarding compositional issues, original social context, and authorship and the effect of key Egyptian parallels on those debates are all discussed.

Coping is critical for adaptation across the lifespan. However, our knowledge of how it develops is limited by the fact that most coping theories concentrate on particular life stages. The purpose of this review is to examine similarities in theories across the lifespan to identify overlapping issues that could inform a lifespan theory of coping. Generally, individuals develop more positive and efficacious ways of coping as they age, with noted individual differences. Individuals may revert back to earlier strategies when facing new traumas or transitions. Coping is embedded within social contexts. In childhood, coping is scaffolded by parents, caregivers, and teachers, transitioning to peer influence in adolescence. In adulthood, dyadic coping within couples becomes central, although its influences on coping trajectories is largely unknown. A lifespan theory of coping should address plasticity, individual differences, social contextual, and increases in situational specificity and coping efficacy for better energy and resource management.

The acquisition of language is a human universal, achieved by all normal children raised in normal environments. However, normal environments vary widely, with consequences for children’s language development. This chapter introduces the subsequent chapters in this edited volume, providing historical background and presenting findings from two contemporary research projects. The historical background includes shifts in the field of language acquisition from linguistics to a bioecological model of development as the guiding theoretical framework, shifts from universals of language acquisition to individual differences as the outcome to be explained, and multiple methodological advances that have made possible much of the research presented in this book. The current empirical work presented in this chapter includes one project on language development in the bilingual context of immigrant families in the United States and another project on home and childcare influences on the language and preliteracy skill development of children in Denmark, in the context of near-universal childcare attendance.

Forming impressions of trustworthiness about social partners is critical to making adaptive decisions in novel social environments and maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships. However, such impressions can also be biased and lead to maladaptive or harmful trust decisions. In this chapter, we discuss the neurobiological underpinnings of how initial impressions of one’s trustworthiness and the reputation we assign them inform social decision making. We first focus on rapid initial impressions of perceived trustworthiness and how they can be biased by social and contextual information. Next, we review how trustworthiness reputations are learned through novel social interactions and are shaped by prior knowledge, particularly in the context of established interpersonal relationships. Here, we focus primarily on the role of corticostriatal neural systems. Finally, we present emerging avenues of research on how impressions of trustworthiness and acquired reputations guide real-world decision making and are impacted by adverse environments.

This chapter offers a-state-of-the-art review of the status and use of the Arabic language in North America. The chapter consists of six sections. The first section is an introduction to the Arabic language, its diglossic situation, and the geographic distribution of its speakers. The second section presents a brief history of Arab-speaking immigrants in North America as well as their demographic and sociolinguistic background. The third section focuses on the acquisition, development, and attrition/loss of colloquial Arabic by child and adult heritage speakers of Arabic. The fourth section explores the acquisition of Standard Arabic by heritage Arabic speakers in college-level Arabic-language classrooms. This section also considers some of the main differences between heritage speakers and second language learners of Arabic. The fifth section examines factors influencing Arabic language maintenance and loss among heritage speakers, including sociolinguistic, socio-contextual, and socio-affective factors (e.g., language input, language use, language attitudes, identity sentiments, family support, and the sociopolitical situation of Arab immigrants). The sixth and final section discusses the future of Arabic in the United States based on current trends and proposes directions for future research.

I review half-a-century of research in strategic and autobiographical memory, spanning Peter Ornstein’s scientific career (so far), highlighting Ornstein’s contributions to these literatures. I document advances in theory, understanding underlying processes, and application of memory development over the past 50 years, as well as the field’s substantial contribution to understanding cognitive development writ large, including issues of capacity, representation, intentionality, knowledge, and social context.

The introductory chapter explores the methodology of approaching imperial imagery, from definitions and categorisations to modes of analysis. Defining imperial imagery as imagery that relates to imperial power, the authors reject universal models that purport to encompass all aspects of the production and use of such images in favour of context-based approaches which focus on the ways in which they became embedded in local image systems. The authors single out social dynamics, a term borrowed from economics, sociology, and psychology indicating how large-scale phenomena are the sum of many individual interactions. Social dynamics gives a way to understand how and why imperial imagery was created and used in Roman society at all levels. Imperial imagery had roles to play beyond the emperor’s own sphere, and he was often neither its author nor its audience; instead, individuals used imperial images to communicate with their immediate neighbours, geographically and socially. Multiple users and viewers across the spatial and social spectrums of the empire (and beyond) brought their own experiences to imperial images, and to understand them, we must analyse them in their local contexts.

As in Chapter 4, the list of Proverbial virtues produced in Chapter 3 is again compared with Aristotle’s list of moral virtues in order to discover the underlying factors that explain both. Assessing in depth the similarities and differences between the virtue lists of Proverbs and Aristotle, this chapter focuses on their notions of courage, work, speech and friendship. I examine apparent and actual differences in these virtues and discuss the historical, social and doctrinal factors that underlie them. Why, for instance, do Aristotle and Proverbs show marked interest in honor? Or how might Proverbs’ focus on work and Aristotle’s omission of the subject be explained?

What can be done about the relative lack of doctrinal protections for privacy while in public? How can society – and the law – begin to recognize and appreciate that privacy while navigating public space is of critical importance, particularly for marginalized communities, and worthy of doctrinal protection? In this chapter, after first elaborating and deepening extant proffered justifications for a right to public privacy, I bolster these justifications by underscoring what is, perhaps, a more direct constitutional/doctrinal value served by a right to public privacy. In addition to facilitating future speech and attempts to freely associate (as rightly emphasized by many defenders of public privacy), attempts to preserve a degree of privacy or anonymity in public (often undertaken by members of marginalized groups) are frequently a form of performative and expressive opposition to an ever expanding surveillance society and, as explained in Chapter 3, may be protected as symbolic, expressive conduct under the First Amendment.

The list of Proverbial virtues produced in Chapter 3 is compared with Aristotle’s list of moral virtues in order to discover the underlying factors that explain both. Assessing in depth the similarities and differences between the virtue lists of Proverbs and Aristotle, this chapter focuses on their notions of honor, shame, humility and pride. I examine apparent and actual differences in these virtues and discuss the historical, social and doctrinal factors that underlie them. Why, for instance, do Aristotle and Proverbs show marked interest in honor? Or how might Proverbs’ focus on work and Aristotle’s omission of the subject be explained?

Scholarship on intercultural communication has emerged out of interdisciplinary research in anthropology, communication studies, education, linguistics, and more recently, applied linguistics. In order to establish a shared understanding of intercultural communication, this chapter clarifies how key concepts such as culture and communication are operationalized in this book. The chapter also presents culture as layered, and of communication as dynamically co-constructed by participants and the social context in which their interaction takes place. Additionally, this chapter introduces prominent models of intercultural communication from a social-scientific perspective, which can offer fruitful points of analysis in second/foreign language pedagogy.