Yawning can be regarded as a prototype of stereotypical behaviors that has been recycled through evolution for different purposes. These purposes are combined with the increasing complexity of the central nervous system during evolution, and correlated with the richness of social interactions. In this chapter, past and current hypotheses concerning the generation and usefulness of yawning are d...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by pervasive deficits in social interaction, impairment in verbal and non-verbal communication, and stereotypical patterns of interests and activities. ASD can be extremely costly to society at large and the individuals and families involved, constituting one of the most perplexing challenges in child development and ...

This paper uses an example from biology, the homology concept, to argue that current versions of the causal theory of reference give an incomplete account of reference determination. It is suggested that in addition to samples and stereotypical properties, the scientific use of concepts and the epistemic interests pursued with concepts are important factors in determining the reference of natur...

This content analysis study, employing a multimodal perspective and critical visual analysis, set out to analyze gender representations in Top Notch series, one of the highly used ELT textbooks in Iran. For this purpose, six images were selected from these series and analyzed in terms of ‘representational’, ‘interactive’ and ‘compositional’ modes of meanings. The result indicated that there are...

DO STORYBOOKS REALLY BREAK CHILDREN’S GENDER STEREOTYPES? Gender stereotypes—the features and characteristics assigned to men and women in a particular society—are prevalent in children as young as the preschool years (Martin and Ruble, 2004). For example, preschoolers can categorize toys as appropriate for either girls (e.g., dishset) or boys (e.g., toolset), and play with them according to ge...

Many concepts have stereotypes. This leaves open the question of whether concepts are stereotypes. It has been argued elsewhere that theories that identify concepts with their stereotypes or with stereotypical properties of their instances (e.g., Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (Ed.), Cognition and Categorization. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associa...