Expert Pianists’ Practice Perspectives: A Production and Listening Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate how professional pianists practice music for a concert, and whether their individual cognitive orientations in such practice processes can be identified accurately from the resulting performances. In Study I, four pianists, previously found to be skilled music memorizers, practiced and performed a short piece by André Jolivet over the course of two weeks, during which their practice strategies were studied using semi-structured interviews, and analyses of practice diaries, practice activities, and eye-movement data. The results indicate that the pianists used similar basic strategies but had different cognitive orientations, here called “practice perspectives,” consistent with each individual, in that they focused on different kinds of information while practicing. These practice perspectives may be related to skills and habits in using imagery and music analysis, as well as to professional and educational background. In Study II, 34 piano teachers listened to recordings of the concert performances and evaluated them against 12 statements representing the four practice perspectives identified in Study I. The results did not support the prediction that practice perspectives would be correctly detected by listeners. Nonetheless, practice perspectives can be used to highlight potentially vast differences between the ways in which individual professional classical musicians conceptualize music and make it meaningful to themselves and others. They could be used in the context of music education to increase musicians’ knowledge of different practice strategies and the ability to develop their own preferred working methods.

Philosophy in Belarus: Historical Specificity – Modern Trends – National Context

The article considers the formation and development of philosophy in Belarus in the context of historical conditions and modern opportunities. Discussing the national context of the philosophical process, the author reveals the four aspects of the phenomenon of “national philosophy.” Firstly, there are national institutional and disciplinary structures, which are responsible for an organized scientific, methodological, research and educational activity, which at the level of the nation-state is formalized by certain institutions, system of professional education, norms of professional ethos, standards of behavior within the community and in the wider social environment. Secondly, in the light of philosophical culture, national philosophy is interpreted as a set of value and cognitive orientations passed down from generation to generation. Thirdly, national philosophy can be viewed in the aspect of the tradition of studying the philosophical thought of the nation in the context of its historical development. Fourthly, national philosophy appears in the aspect of the philosophical foundations of the national idea and national-cultural identity. The author examines the main stages of the development of the Belarusian philosophical culture, it is shown that the features of this culture were formed under the condition of a complex combination of the worldview and values of Latin civilization, Christianity, modern European science, rationalism of social projects of the Enlightenment, ideological and worldview attitudes of Western Russian culture, formalized Soviet philosophical disciplines. The article reviews the circle of theoretical, ideological, and practical problems that the modern philosophical process in Belarus faces, the author emphasizes the unfading value of philosophical knowledge as a source of heuristic means for finding effective local answers to global problems of cultural and civilizational development. The author argues that there are two conditions that make national philosophy possible: this is, first of all, a connection with the history of thought in the area of national genesis and also the expression of thought in a national language.

Subjectivity in incentive schemes, cognitive orientations and counterproductive knowledge behavior: an experimental study

Purpose This study aims to examine the causal relationship of subjective incentive schemes on counterproductive knowledge behavior. Besides, this study also identifies the moderating role of cognitive orientation on the relationship between those two variables. Design/methodology/approach This study used a 2 × 2 between-subjects laboratory experiment with accounting undergraduate students as the subjects. Findings Subjective-based incentive schemes reduce the tendency for counterproductive knowledge behavior. Also, the collectivist cognitive orientation negatively influences the behavior. However, cognitive orientation does not act as a moderator in the causal relationship of incentive schemes and counterproductive knowledge behavior. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first that investigates and finds the effect of inclusion of subjectivity in incentive schemes and the level of individual’s collectivism on the reluctance to share knowledge in the workplace. This study has also strived to reduce an overlapping between the concept of knowledge sharing and counterproductive knowledge behavior by applying the right basic concept during the experiment.

Social Cognitive Orientations, Social Support, and Physical Activity among at-Risk Urban Children: Insights from a Structural Equation Model

This study investigates the effects of cognitive orientations associated with social cognitive theory (SCT) and exercise enjoyment on physical activity (PA) of urban at-risk children, accounting for mediating effects associated with various sources of social support. We use 2016–2017 survey data from 725 school-age children in an urban school district in Akron, Ohio in the United States (US) to inform a structural equation model, which assesses direct and indirect effects of self-efficacy, behavioral intention, and exercise enjoyment on children’s PA, using mediating variables that measure social support that children report receiving from parents, Physical Education (PE) teachers, and peers. We find that self-efficacy and exercise enjoyment have notable direct and indirect effects on the children’s PA. We also find that the support children receive from PE teachers and peers appears to have greater effects on PA than does the children’s reported social support from parents. These findings suggest that children’s social cognitive orientations may influence both sources of perceived social support and the extent to which children engage in PA. While these findings have potential implications for intervention strategies to increase PA among at-risk children, further research is appropriate to improve our understanding of the determinants of PA among at-risk urban children.

Cognitive Basis of Making Creative Decisions in Translation Activities

The purpose of the paper is to model the cognitive mechanism of generating creative elements in translation activities that are increasingly relevant in the context of modern requirements for the translator's work. The authors systematize, refine and supplement the available theoretical knowledge about translation creativity. The authors describe the available results of searching for creativity in target texts. The paper provides a cognitive mechanism scheme that launches creative ideas in translation activities. It works by constructing a cognitive focus – a sort of conscious reasonable integration of cognitive orientations, translation strategies and mental operations, actualizing weak associative links between mental representations available in the information field of the translation subject, in most cases leads to making creative translation decisions that require high efforts. The results of the study showed that translation creativity goes beyond the limits of linguistic creativity, and is realized both with the help of linguistic (ready-made speech word forms or new word-formations), and paralinguistic (color gamut, etc.). The examples considered in the article show that modulation and "thinking transcription" are the most productive mental operations of generating creative translation decisions. Strategies for domestication and transcreation also contribute most to the development of translation creativity.

Studying the youth interests through the thematic repertoire of student communication: a case study of Vkontakte social network

The article substantiates the relevance of a sociological approach to the study of young students' interests in social networks. The authors analyze the results of a study involving young students who use the thematic communication repertoire in the Vkontakte network’s social groups. The study applies IT methods for processing and analyzing biographical data, analysis and statistics methods, and machine learning. The sample consists of 171,972 unique participants who joined the network’s social groups. The authors draw up a rating of groups on various topics based on the number of group participants, present the results of the analysis of student thematic repertoire and reveal the interests of the group participants. The article describes general and specific directions of student interests in different universities, explores the features of interactions between the participants in popular groups, and defines gender differences and various cognitive orientations depending on the place of studies. The authors provide insight into the nature of the cognitive orientation of student interests and the possibilities to influence the interests through certain content, and the weak student activity in the “corporate” social groups of the universities.

Five Questions About Emotion

Emotions are important to personality and social psychology and their relationship. This chapter poses five questions about emotion, contrasting traditional views with recent and emerging perspectives from social–personality psychology. It reaches five conclusions about the nature and origin of emotion and its role in perception, behavior, and cognition: (1) The components of emotion are not sufficiently correlated to implicate underlying affective programs. (2) An iterative reprocessing view of emotion elicitation can accommodate both subcortical, unconscious affect and cognitively rich, conscious emotion. (3) Emotional influences on perception implicate the role of emotion as information about resources. (4) Rather than triggering behavior directly, emotional experience appears to serve a self-teaching function. (5) Positive and negative emotions affect thinking styles by promoting or inhibiting the cognitive orientations that are dominant in particular situations. The chapter is thus both historical and modern, emphasizing new developments and their implications for social–personality psychology.

Affect and cognition, part 2: affect types and mindset types

Purpose A typology of basic affective and cognitive orientations is developed within a generic cultural socio-cognitive trait theory of a “plural affect agency” (the emotional organisation). Design/methodology/approach Affective personality is defined in terms of a set of affect traits. These are defined in terms of epistemically independent bipolar affect types, which in turn coalesce into a set of mindset types that can be related to the classical four temperaments. Findings Different affect types are supposed to differently regulate the three stages of emotion management. Affect types and cognitive types provide mutual contexts, and foster reciprocal affect and cognitive orientations. Research limitations/implications The theory provides guidance for analysis of cultural differentiation within social systems (societies/organisations), with reference to identification, elaboration and execution of “emotion knowledge” and “cognitive knowledge”. Practical implications Understanding interdependencies between cognition and emotion regulation is a prerequisite of managerial intelligence and strategic cultural intelligence, which is in demand for interaction and integration processes across social systems. Originality/value From the framework model linking emotion expression and emotion regulation with cognition analysis, a typology arises allowing ex-ante expectation of typical patterns of behaviour.

Beyond (anti)utilitarianism: khat and alternatives to growth in northern Madagascar

Madagascar has one of the lowest GDPs in the world. Colonization brought the country into the global economy, but left it at its margins—vulnerable to the hardships of structural adjustment and limitations of state infrastructure. This analysis reveals economic decision-making that defies the utilitarian logic of homo economicus and inspires creative thinking about alternatives to growth as a dominant paradigm. In northern Madagascar, the economy of the stimulant khat is part of one socionatural world characterized by low levels of production and consumption. Madagascar provides a case study for suggesting that "making a living" invokes an intricate web of material desires, cultural meaning, and social connections that do not necessarily revolve around a capitalist growth motive. This article proposes that a path to sustainability is not only in changing social imaginaries but also in valorizing and leveraging cognitive orientations and practices that exist but that may fall below the radar of traditional economic analysis. Keywords: Madagascar, khat, utilitarian, degrowth, economy, urban