Situated Cognition Perspective Research Articles

Refining Our Understanding of the Influence of Culture on Human Development: a Situated Cognition Approach

"In the present paper, we discuss the theoretical and methodological benefits of refining the current models which are focused on the influence of culture on human development based on theoretical models and empirical findings which stem from the situated cognition approach on culture. Firstly, to illustrate the current approach on culture and human development, we review the Ecocultural Model of Development, which focuses on the manner in which caregivers’ cultural models are associated with their parental beliefs (i.e., socialization goals and parental ethnotheories), their parental practices and ultimately with the child’s development. Secondly, we explore two models based on a situated cognition approach: the Cultural Task analysis model and the Culture as Situated Cognition approach. Based on the assumptions of these models and findings from our own lab, we discuss how we can theoretically refine current models which focus on the influence of culture on human development, and what methodological approaches these refinements can lead us to. In the paper we also outline several avenues for future research that stem from the reconceptualization of the influence of culture on human development, from a situated cognition perspective. Keywords: culture; human development; situated cognition; parental beliefs; cultural models"

A study on the influence mechanism of perceived situational factors on young tourists’ pro-environment behaviors: Taking perceived coolness as an example

The sustainable development of tourism destinations is intimately tied to tourists' pro-environmental behaviors. Limited studies have explored the influence of factors such as emotions, morals, and rationality on tourists' pro-environmental behaviors. Although progress has been made in identifying the factors that predict tourists' pro-environmental behaviors, the mechanisms through which perceived situational factors impact environmental behaviors remain insufficiently understood. Furthermore, considering the evolving characteristics of the global population and changes in consumer behavior preferences, particularly the increasing use of coolness as a marketing tool targeting young people, this study develops a stimulus‒organism‒response (S–O-R) framework to examine the impact of perceived coolness on young tourists' pro-environmental behaviors and further investigates the gender differences in this relationship from the perspective of situated cognition. The approach used is deductive. According to data collected from 564 young visitors who attended the Strawberry Music Festival, males' perception of coolness directly influence their pro-environmental behavior, while females’ perception of coolness are indirectly influenced by place identity and psychological ownership. This study provides a valuable theoretical perspective on the influence of perceived situational factors on pro-environmental behavior among young tourists and offers insights for managers regarding promoting destination development and designing products.

Priming congruence and COVID-19 vaccination intention: a mediation analysis.

This study took place at the height of the fifth wave of COVID-19 in France, coinciding with stigmatizing communication toward the unvaccinated. We hypothesized that adherence to this communication would facilitate or inhibit the effects of priming on vaccination intention, depending on whether the priming included a dimension of connection to others. In a convenience online French sample (N = 1800, M age = 26.30), vaccination intention was asked after love priming, no love/prejudice priming, materialism priming, or a control condition. Participants also reported their adherence to restrictive measures, i.e., media control, vaccination pass, and mandatory vaccination. Vaccination intention was higher in the no love/prejudice and materialism conditions than in the love and control conditions. Adherence to restrictive measures mediated the effect of prejudice or materialism priming on intention to get vaccinated. Implications of these results are discussed in light of the socially situated cognition perspective and the congruence of (a) a societal context of communication toward the vaccine and the unvaccinated, (b) the participant's degree of adherence to that communication, (c) the theme of priming, whether or not related to feeling connected to others. Implications of materialism priming are discussed, and the effect of commitment on intention to get vaccinated.

Culinary inheritance: a new paradigm of innovating knowledge teaching

PurposeThis study examines how professional technicians' teaching styles and students' learning readiness affect cooking skills performance in culinary inheritance.Design/methodology/approachThis study constructed a learning performance model from the situated cognition perspective using a sample of students at universities and vocational colleges on a professional technician course. A total of 4,000 questionnaires were mailed to students, of which 2,018 were returned.FindingsStudents regard technical professors as teaching experts and expect them to care for their learning, while professional technicians' knowledge sharing significantly increases students' learning performance. The findings provide insight into professional technicians' teaching styles for academics.Originality/valueThis study focuses on the situated cognition perspective and its correlation with students' learning performance and discusses professional technicians' knowledge sharing as an important influencing factor.

External validity of social psychological experiments is a concern, but these models are useful

We agree that external validity of social psychological experiments is a concern, we disagree these models are useless. Experiments, reconsidered from a situated cognition perspective and non-linearly combined with other methods (qualitative and simulations) allow grasping decision dynamics beyond bias outcomes. Dynamic (vs. discrete) insights regarding these processes are key to understand missing forces and bias in real-world social groups.

Çeviri eğitiminde bir ‘durumlu öğrenme’ örneği: bilimsel metinleri dijital bir bilim blogu için çevirmek

Translation as a cognitive process has been a topic of inquiry for a couple of decades in Translation Studies. There has been a shift from an information processing model of human mind to a situated cognition approach in defining mental processing in Cognitive Science recently. In the information processing model, human mind is likened to a machine or computer working individually and accumulating knowledge and skills in a pre-definable and programmed manner. On the other hand, the situated cognition approach takes the role of dynamic factors including social, physical, and emotional ones, into consideration, in other words the ‘situationally embeddedness’ of the human mind (Kiraly, 2005; Risku, 2002). When learning is evaluated from the perspective of situated cognition, it can be inferred that learning is a situated and context-dependent process, which leads to the importance of integrating various professional, real-life situations into education (Kiraly 2005; González-Davies & Enríquez-Raído 2016; Risku, 2002). This study aims to present the implementation process of a situated learning translation project in the Translation and Interpreting Department at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University and to contribute to the prevalence of situated learning tasks in translator education. The project has been conducted with 14 learners in two elective courses called ‘Special Topics in Translation III’ (5th semester course) and ‘Special Topics in Translation IV’ (6th semester course) in 2019-2020 Academic Year. The project included the task of translating scientific texts for a digital science blog. With this situated learning translation project, the learners had the opportunity to take part in a real-life translation task, which helped “to break the stranglehold of the ‘who’ll take the next sentence’ teaching technique in translator education” in Kiraly’s (2005) term.

Novelty as Opportunity and Risk: A Situated Cognition Analysis of Psychological Control and Novelty Seeking

Novel products present unknown opportunities as well as unknown risks. Past research suggested that low psychological control highlights risks and reduces the adoption of novel products. Consistent with a situated cognition perspective, we show that this depends on the specifics of low control. Across five studies, novelty seeking was lower after consumers thought about instances of low (vs. high) personal influence, but higher after consumers thought about instances of low (vs. high) predictability of the world. Thinking about a lack of personal influence increased the perceived importance of personal capability and in turn impaired the exploration of novel options, whereas thinking about an unpredictable world increased the perceived importance of preparedness for an unknown future and in turn the exploration of novel options. Throughout, perceiving low personal influence benefited familiar products, whereas seeing the world as unpredictable benefited novel products. This highlights that understanding consumers' responses to a lack of control requires joint consideration of the specifics of threat and task, consistent with situated cognition principles.

“Yes and., but wait., heck no!”: A socially situated cognitive approach towards understanding how startup entrepreneurs process critical feedback

ABSTRACT We examine sensebreaking, a meaning void, that entrepreneurs experience due to critical feedback from early stakeholders using the socially situated cognition perspective. We show that sensebreaking aids novel sensemaking via three mechanisms—redirecting, reframing, and questioning—through longitudinal analysis of weekly diary reports that we collected from 30 entrepreneurs for one year. We describe the cognitive changes due to novel sensemaking. We derive a process model that illustrates how sensebreaking-sensemaking iterations over time effect changes to the shared cognition between entrepreneurs and their stakeholders while driving opportunity development. We advance the opportunity coconstruction literature by adding microlevel understanding of stakeholder interactions and explicating their effects on entrepreneurial cognition.

Investigating the Links Between Cultural Values and Belief in Conspiracy Theories: The Key Roles of Collectivism and Masculinity

Research suggests that belief in conspiracy theories (CT) stems from basic psychological mechanisms and is linked to other belief systems (e.g., religious beliefs). While previous research has extensively examined individual and contextual variables associated with CT beliefs, it has not yet investigated the role of culture. In the current research, we tested, based on a situated cultural cognition perspective, the extent to which culture predicts CT beliefs. Using Hofstede's model of cultural values, three nation‐level analyses of data from 25, 19, and 18 countries using different measures of CT beliefs (Study 1, N = 5323; Study 2a, N = 12,255; Study 2b, N = 30,994) revealed positive associations between masculinity, collectivism, and CT beliefs. A cross‐sectional study among U.S. citizens (Study 3, N = 350), using individual‐level measures of Hofstede's values, replicated these findings. A meta‐analysis of correlations across studies corroborated the presence of positive links between CT beliefs, collectivism, r = .31, 95% CI = [.15; .47], and masculinity, r = .39, 95% CI = [.18; .59]. Our results suggest that in addition to individual differences and contextual variables, cultural factors also play an important role in shaping CT beliefs.

Motivating Corporate Entrepreneurial Effort: Champions, Followers, and How Innovation Climate Matter

Drawing on Self-Determination Theory and championing research, we hypothesize that intending to act as champion or follower of corporate entrepreneurial projects moderates the translation of autonomous and controlled motivations into corporate entrepreneurial intentions and subsequent effort. From a situated cognition perspective, we further hypothesize that pro-innovation organizational climate perceptions moderate the project champions and followers’ long-term corporate entrepreneurial efforts. We test these hypotheses using longitudinal surveys of 326 Finnish employees. We find that, while both autonomous and controlled motivations drive followers’ corporate entrepreneurial intentions, only controlled motivations drive champions’ corporate entrepreneurial intentions. Furthermore, we find that pro-innovation climate positively moderates the relationship between earlier intentions and later corporate entrepreneurial efforts only for champions, but not for followers.

A situated cognition model for clinical reasoning performance assessment: a narrative review.

Background Clinical reasoning performance assessment is challenging because it is a complex, multi-dimensional construct. In addition, clinical reasoning performance can be impacted by contextual factors, leading to significant variation in performance. This phenomenon called context specificity has been described by social cognitive theories. Situated cognition theory, one of the social cognitive theories, posits that cognition emerges from the complex interplay of human beings with each other and the environment. It has been used as a valuable conceptual framework to explore context specificity in clinical reasoning and its assessment. We developed a conceptual model of clinical reasoning performance assessment based on situated cognition theory. In this paper, we use situated cognition theory and the conceptual model to explore how this lens alters the interpretation of articles or provides additional insights into the interactions between the assessee, patient, rater, environment, assessment method, and task. Methods We culled 17 articles from a systematic literature search of clinical reasoning performance assessment that explicitly or implicitly demonstrated a situated cognition perspective to provide an "enriched" sample with which to explore how contextual factors impact clinical reasoning performance assessment. Results We found evidence for dyadic, triadic, and quadratic interactions between different contextual factors, some of which led to dramatic changes in the assessment of clinical reasoning performance, even when knowledge requirements were not significantly different. Conclusions The analysis of the selected articles highlighted the value of a situated cognition perspective in understanding variations in clinical reasoning performance assessment. Prospective studies that evaluate the impact of modifying various contextual factors, while holding others constant, can provide deeper insights into the mechanisms by which context impacts clinical reasoning performance assessment.

What's Mine Is a Hologram? How Shared Augmented Reality Augments Psychological Ownership

Augmented Reality (AR) holograms are 3D digital objects projected into a customer's physical environment through mobile technology. Applied as potential substitutes to physical products, AR holograms pose a unique challenge for conventional configurations of product ownership. Taking a socially situated cognition perspective, we demonstrate how customers' shared experience of AR holograms leads to distinct perspectives on psychological ownership. In Study 1, we demonstrate how customization of AR holograms lets customers feel psychological ownership of digital products. In Study 2, we highlight the mechanisms of social adaptation related to assimilation and differentiation that drive the relationship between customization and psychological ownership of AR holograms in social settings. In Study 3, we illustrate how these mechanisms are influenced by the affordances of AR technology when customers switch between personal or shared devices. We discuss implications for theory and marketing practice of this potentially novel class of digital consumer products.

Individuals’ power and their social network accuracy: A situated cognition perspective

Individuals differ in how accurately they perceive their social environment, but research and theory provide conflicting predictions on whether powerful people are more or less accurate than others. Drawing on social network theory and the situated cognition theory of power, we examine the relationship between individuals’ formal and informal power and their perceptual accuracy of social network relationships. We propose that individuals’ perceptual accuracy is related to: 1) their formal and informal power in the organization; 2) the type of relationship being perceived (positive/negative valence) and its relevance to task and goal completion; and 3) the dependence relationship with the target of perception (i.e., whether the perceiver is dependent on the perceived to get their work done). Predictions were tested using cognitive social structure data collected from a technical call center. Results showed that power was generally linked to increased perceptual accuracy, particularly for the types of relationships most relevant for task and goal completion. We further demonstrated that social network accuracy was related to employees’ outcomes, including subsequent transfer, promotion, and exit from the organization.

Tracking and simulating dynamics of implicit stereotypes: A situated social cognition perspective.

Adopting a situated social cognition perspective, we relied on different methodologies-1 computational and 3 empirical studies-to investigate social group-related specificities pertaining to implicit gender-domain stereotypes, as measured by a mouse-tracking adapted Implicit Association Test (IAT) and IAT(-like) tasks. We tested whether the emergence of implicit stereotypes was partially determined by associations congruent with the self, by visuospatial features of the task and subsequent competition at both sensorimotor and abstract levels. We tracked human and simulated artificial participants' hand movements among gender stereotypical (e.g., male engineers) and counterstereotypical (e.g., female engineers) social groups. In the computational study, data were simulated by a novel generative connectionist model integrating strengths from recent developments in embodied models of decision-making. Results support the self-congruency hypothesis and suggest the presence of competition at both levels. Discussion focuses on the generalizability of the self-congruency hypothesis and on the relevance of a situated perspective for implicit social cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record

Establishing the situated features associated with perceived stress

We propose that the domain general process of categorization contributes to the perception of stress. When a situation contains features associated with stressful experiences, it is categorized as stressful. From the perspective of situated cognition, the features used to categorize experiences as stressful are the features typically true of stressful situations. To test this hypothesis, we asked participants to evaluate the perceived stress of 572 imagined situations, and to also evaluate each situation for how much it possessed 19 features potentially associated with stressful situations and their processing (e.g., self-threat, familiarity, visual imagery, outcome certainty). Following variable reduction through factor analysis, a core set of 8 features associated with stressful situations—expectation violation, self-threat, coping efficacy, bodily experience, arousal, negative valence, positive valence, and perseveration—all loaded on a single Core Stress Features factor. In a multilevel model, this factor and an Imagery factor explained 88% of the variance in judgments of perceived stress, with significant random effects reflecting differences in how individual participants categorized stress. These results support the hypothesis that people categorize situations as stressful to the extent that typical features of stressful situations are present. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to establish a comprehensive set of features that predicts perceived stress.

Exemplary high school mathematics teachers’ reflections on teaching: A situated cognition perspective on content knowledge

This study explored mathematical knowledge needed for teaching by seeking perspectives of exemplary high school mathematics teachers. Participants were 11 teachers in one region of the United States who had been recognized for their excellent teaching through standardized programs. In individual interviews, participants reflected on their teaching with consideration of the mathematical knowledge used. Interview questions about abstract mathematical knowledge were developed from a cognitive perspective, but these did not capture teachers’ understandings. Instead, grounded analysis of teachers’ reflections and a situated cognition perspective illuminated teachers’ rich ways of knowing and using mathematics. This work illustrates how a change in research perspective can give insight into the affordances, rather than deficits, of teachers’ mathematical knowledge.

Situated navigational working memory: the role of positive mood.

The perspective of situated cognition assumes that cognition is not separated from the context. In the present study, the issue if visuospatial memory and navigational working memory are situated was explored by manipulating participants' mood (positive, negative and neutral) while performing two different tasks. College students were randomly assigned to the group of positive, negative or neutral music. Participants filled out the positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS) before and after carrying out the Corsi Test and the Walking Corsi Test. Both tasks were performed forward and backward. Music was played throughout the memory tasks. Firstly, comparing pre-mood induction PANAS scores to post-mood induction PANAS scores, results showed that only positive affects were manipulated: After mood induction, the Positive Music Group produced higher scores, whereas the Negative Music Group produced lower scores than before mood induction; the Neutral Music Group produced no effect. Secondly, the Positive Music Group produced higher scores than Negative and Neutral Music Groups both at the Corsi Test and at the Walking Corsi Test. These results show that situational contexts that induce a specific mood can affect visuospatial memory and navigational working memory, and open to the idea that positive emotions may play a crucial role in enhancing navigational strategies.

A Situated Understanding of Residents' Caretaking Attitudes Toward Shared Spaces in Three High-Rise Gated Developments in Shanghai

Abstract In a residential development that incorporates collective property rights, there are interior and exterior shared spaces collectively owned and used by multiple residents. These shared spaces defy a stark public‐private division. Applying the perspective of situated cognition in a case‐oriented qualitative analysis, this study investigated residents' caretaking attitudes about shared spaces in three high‐rise gated developments in Shanghai, China. Qualitative data was obtained from 61 long‐term residents pertaining to situational environments, situated persons, person‐environment transactions, and environmental perception and meanings. Results revealed that the entanglement of residents and environmental settings in these developments defined different types of holistic person-environment units, which further implied different caring attitudes. The investigation also demonstrated diagrammatic data coding and displays as effective case‐oriented analytical techniques to present and compare ecologic...

Act-In: An integrated view of memory mechanisms

The present article proposes a new memory model called Act-In (Activation-Integration). Act-In extends the multiple trace memory models by placing them within the situated cognition perspective. Act-In considers that the activation and integration mechanisms play a key role in memory processes. These mechanisms are involved in both the construction of memory traces and the emergence of knowledge. The model is based on four main assumptions: (1) Memory traces reflect all the components of past experiences and, in particular, their sensory properties, actions performed on the objects in the environment and the emotional states of individuals. Memory traces are therefore distributed across multiple neuronal systems which code the multiple components of the experiences. (2) Knowledge is emergent and is the product of the coupling of the present experience with past experiences. (3) The brain is a categorisation system which develops by accumulating experiences and which, by default, produces categorical knowledge. (4) The emergence of specific knowledge (memories or episodic knowledge) requires very simple mechanisms which occur during learning and/or during retrieval. These assumptions are defended and discussed in the light of the work reported in the literature.

A Critical Pedagogy Approach for Engaging Urban Youth in Mobile App Development in an After-School Program

To understand the digital divide as a matter of social justice, I identify access to computational fluency as a civil rights issue. “Access” refers to material as well as social resources, including meaningful learning opportunities that create the conditions for urban youth to engage in computational thinking. In this article, I explore how a critical pedagogical approach facilitates the engagement of urban youth in a mobile app development project within an after-school program. Drawing on field notes and video data over a semester-long project, I provide qualitative reflections on student engagement using the theoretical perspective of situated cognition. Findings reveal that the affordances of critical pedagogy for student engagement include the opportunity to situate computational activity within a sociopolitical context, as well as an allowance for multiple pathways into meaningful participation.