De‐Centering and Re‐Centering: Rethinking Concepts and Methods in the Sociological Study of Religion

Four conceptual and methodological edges or areas of study are outlined. They are located near what have been the boundaries between the sociology of religion and other subfields, where we believe a potential exists to encourage a wide range of scholars to revisit some central concepts. Paying attention to these edges—as a means to de‐center to re‐center our debates in new ways—not only broadens and deepens our knowledge of the “religious,” it encourages us to reexamine long‐standing conceptual tools, unquestioned assumptions, and accepted methods in the sociology of religion. We illustrate these edges through a review of recent literature and examples drawn from our current empirical projects.     

Engaging Diversity in Teaching Religion and Theology: An Intercultural,De‐colonial Epistemic Perspective

This essay explores new ways of engaging diversity in the production of knowledge in the classroom using coloniality as an analytical lens. After briefly engaging some of the recent literature on coloniality, focusing on the epistemic dimension, the author uses the example of teaching a course on religion, culture, and theology, where he employs this analysis, to develop a new pedagogical approach as a step towards an intercultural, de‐colonial theological education.     

Children’s coding of human action: cognitive factors influencing imitaation in 3‐year‐old

We used imitation as a tool for investigating how young children code action. The study was designed to examine the errors children make in re‐enacting manual gestures they see. Thirty‐two 3‐year‐old children served as subjects. Each child was shown 24 gestures, generated by systematically crossing four factors: visual monitoring, spatial endpoint, movement path, and number of hands. The results showed no difference as a function of whether the children could visually monitor their own responses. Interestingly, children made significantly more errors when the adult's action terminated on a body part than they did when the same movement terminated near the body part. There were also significantly more errors when the demonstrated act involved crossing midline than when it did not, and more errors when it involved one hand rather than two hands. Our hypothesis is that human acts are coded in terms of goals. The goals are hierarchically organized, and because young children have difficulty simultaneously integrating multiple goals into one act they often re‐enact the goals that are ranked higher, which leads to the errors observed. We argue that imitation is an active reconstruction of perceived events and taps cognitive processing. We suggest that the goal‐based imitation in 3‐year‐olds is a natural developmental outgrowth of the perceptual–motor mapping and goal‐directed coding of human acts found in infancy.     

A non‐human primate’s understanding of solidity: dissociations between seeing and acting

Studies often reveal a dissociation between what infants know as revealed by action and what they know as revealed by perception. We explored whether non‐human primates exhibit a similar dissociation, focusing on what rhesus macaques know about solidity. In a series of search experiments, Hauser (2001) found that rhesus do not possess a complete understanding of solidity, searching below a solid shelf for an invisibly displaced object. In the present experiments, we explored how rhesus would perform in expectancy violation versions of the same tasks. Subjects looked longer when an apple appeared to fall through a solid shelf and when it appeared to roll through a solid barrier. These results suggest that macaques have some understanding of solidity when tested using looking paradigms even though they do not appear to use this knowledge when searching for food. We speculate that this dissociation is similar to that demonstrated in human development.     

Employability and Employees’ Well‐Being: Mediation by Job Insecurity1

The current study's aims are twofold: first, we investigate the relationship between employability and both work‐related (engagement) and general (life satisfaction) well‐being. Second, we study how employability may be relevant in times of high job insecurity. Specifically, we hypothesise (1) a positive relationship between employability and employees’ well‐being, (2) a negative relationship between employability and job insecurity, and (3) a negative relationship between job insecurity and employees’ well‐being, so that (4) job insecurity mediates the relationship between employability and employees’ well‐being. Results based on a sample of 559 respondents from divisions of seven Belgian organisations support our hypotheses. We conclude that employability may be a means to secure one's labour market position, rather than a means to cope with job insecurity. Les objectifs de cette étude sont doubles: nous étudions d’abord la relation entre l’employabilité et à la fois le bien‐être relatif au travail (implication) et le bien‐être global (la satisfaction provenant de l’existence). Ensuite, nous nous interrogeons sur la pertinence de l’employabilité en période de grande insécurité professionnelle. Plus précisément, nous posons les hypothèses 1) d’une relation positive entre l’employabilité et le bien‐être des employés, 2) d’une relation négative entre l’employabilité et l’insécurité professionnelle et 3) d’une relation négative entre l’insécurité professionnelle et le bien‐être des salariés, si bien que 4) l’insécurité professionnelle régule la relation entre l’employabilité et le bien‐être des salariés. Les résultats issus d’un échantillon de 559 répondants provenant de départements de sept organisations belges confortent nos hypothèses. On conclut que l’employabilité peut être une façon de sécuriser sa situation sur le marché du travail plutôt qu’un moyen pour affronter l’insécurité professionnelle.     

Preschool children’s interpretation of object‐initial sentences: Neural correlates of their behavioral performance

The acquisition of the function of case‐marking is a key step in the development of sentence processing for German‐speaking children since case‐marking reveals the relations between sentential arguments. In this study, we investigated the development of the processing of case‐marking and argument structures in children at 3, 4;6 and 6 years of age, as well as its processing in adults. Using EEG, we measured event‐related potentials (ERPs) in response to object‐initial compared to subject‐initial German sentences including transitive verbs and case‐marked noun phrases referring to animate arguments. We also tested children’s behavioral competence in a sentence‐picture matching task. Word order and case‐marking were manipulated in German main clauses. Adults’ behavioral performance was close to perfect and their ERPs revealed a negativity for the processing of the topicalized accusative marked noun phrase (NP1) and no effect for the second NP (NP2) in the object‐initial structure. Children’s behavioral data showed a significant above‐chance outcome in the subject‐initial condition for all age groups, but not for the object‐initial condition. In contrast to adults, the ERPs of 3‐year‐olds showed a positivity at NP1, indicating difficulties in processing the non‐canonical object‐initial structures. Children at the age of 4;6 did not differ in the processing patterns of object‐initial vs. subject‐initial sentences at NP1 but showed a slight positivity at NP2. This positivity at NP2, which implies syntactic integration difficulties, is more pronounced in 6‐year‐olds but is absent in adults. At NP1, however, 6‐year‐olds show the same negativity as adults. In sum, the behavioral and electrophysiological findings demonstrate that children in each age group use different strategies, which are indicative of their developmental stage. While 3‐year‐olds merely detect differences in the two sentence structures without being able to use this information for sentence comprehension, 4;6‐year‐olds proceed to use mainly a word‐order strategy, processing NP1 in both conditions in the same manner, which leads to processing difficulties upon detecting case‐marking cues at NP2. At the age of 6, children are able to use case‐marking cues for comprehension but still show enhanced effort for correct thematic‐role assignment.