Development and Socialization

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Development and Socialization
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To the Best of Your Knowledge, Where were You
Sleeping as a 2-Year old?

• Own Bedroom (or shared with siblings)
• Own Bed, in Parents Bedroom
• Parents Bed

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Infants Live in Different Cultures Too

• Sleeping arrangements vary across cultures.
• What are some arguments for why it would be good
  for infants to be provided with their own room?
• What are some arguments for why it would be good
  for infants to share the bed with their mothers?

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• Study by Shweder et al. (1995) asked Indian and
  American adults to decide how various
  combinations of family members could be arranged
  in the bedrooms of a house.
• In one version, they were told the house had 3
  bedrooms, and the family included a mother, a
  father, two daughters (aged 14 and 3), and three
  sons (aged 15, 11, and 8).

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Cultural Differences in Preferred Sleeping
Arrangements
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• Participants were asked to justify their
  decisions, and their justifications revealed some
  common underlying moral concerns.
• One moral concern emerged for both Indians and
  Americans Incest Avoidance.
• Other key Indian concerns were Protection of the
  Vulnerable, Female Chastity Anxiety, and
  Respect for Hierarchy.
• Other key American concerns were Sacred Couple,
  and Autonomy Ideal.

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Study by Keller (2007).

• Contrasted parenting interactions with
  3-month-old infants in five cultural contexts
  urban middle-class Germans, urban middle-class
  Greeks, urban lower-class Costa Ricans, rural
  Indian Gujarati, and rural Cameroonian Nso.

• Researchers made 20 unannounced visits with
  mothers and infants over a one week period and
  videotaped them for 15 minute intervals. Within
  these 15 minute intervals, detailed behaviors
  were coded for interspersed 10-second intervals.

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Percent of Time in Bodily Contact with Infant

• All mothers show much bodily contact.
• The Nso mothers were observed carrying the
  infants in every observed instance.
• Greeks and Germans showed the least amount of
  bodily contact.

Nso
German
Greek
Gujarati
Costa Rican
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Percent of Time in Face-to-Face Contact with
Infants

• All mothers made much face-to-face contact.
• Greeks and Germans made considerably more
  face-to-face contact than those from other
  cultures.

Nso
German
Greek
Gujarati
Costa Rican
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Warmth Shown in Response to Infants Positive
Signals (Z-scores)

• Compared with other mothers, Greek mothers showed
  the warmest response to infants positive
  signals, and Gujarati mothers showed the least
  warm response.

Nso
German
Greek
Gujarati
Costa Rican
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Warmth Shown in Response to Infants Negative
Signals (Z-scores)

• Compared with other mothers, Costa Rican mothers
  showed the warmest response to infants negative
  signals.

Nso
German
Greek
Gujarati
Costa Rican
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• Early experiences of infants differ dramatically
  around the world. Peoples minds develop in
  highly different circumstances.
• Although longitudinal research has yet to be
  conducted to directly link early infant
  experiences with adult preferences and behaviors,
  it is not unreasonable to expect that these early
  experiences are critical to shaping peoples
  development.
• How might some of these early experiences affect
  peoples development?

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Cultural Variation in Childrens Psychology

• Attachment Styles
• Western researchers proposed three kinds of
  attachment styles common among parents (esp.
  mothers) and children.
• Secure Attachments
• Infants have warm relationships with parents, and
  are comfortable and explorative in their
  presence. Although they get upset to see their
  parents leave, and are happy to see them upon
  their return, they become comfortable in their
  absence.

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• Avoidant Attachments
• Infants have a detached style around their
  parents, and are not particularly upset when
  their parents are not around.
• Anxious-Ambivalent Attachments
• Infants show frequent distress either in the
  presence or absence of parent. They oscillate
  between wanting the parent to be closer and
  pushing them away.

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Cultural Variation in Frequency of Attachment
Styles
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Some Aspects of Culture are Learned in a
Sensitive Window

• In particular, some aspects of language are
  learned in a sensitive window.
• A sensitive window indicates a biological
  preparation for the acquisition of the
  information.
• Humans have evolved such that they learn a
  language in a particular period of life (from
  very early, and the sensitivity declines markedly
  after puberty).

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Study of Phoneme Discrimination

• Study compared infants from English speaking and
  Hindi speaking parents (Werker Tees, 1984).
• Task was whether infants could discriminate
  between two Hindi phonemes that are
  indistinguishable to adult non-Hindi speakers.

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• Some aspects of language learning (phoneme
  perception) start to be acquired in a very early
  window.
• Some other aspects of language learning, in
  particular, accent, are learned poorly after
  puberty.
• Militaries have made use of this by asking
  suspicious people to pronounce shibboleths.

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Hong Kong Immigrants Acquiring Canadian Culture

• We looked at immigrants from Hong Kong to the
  lower mainland who had immigrated at varying ages
  (Cheung, Chudek, Heine, 2009).
• They completed an acculturation scale which
  assessed both their identification with Chinese
  and with Canadian culture.

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Age at Immigration Matters Most
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What might we learn about humans ability to
acquire culture by observing feral children?
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Developmental Transitions

• Terrible Twos

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Developmental Transitions

• Terrible Twos

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Developmental Transitions

• Terrible Twos
• Turbulent Adolescence

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Socialization Through Education

• One of the primary sources of socialization is
  the school.
• Aside from the specific content that people learn
  at school (e.g., learning about facts, and
  techniques), how does school shape the ways that
  people think?

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Schooling Affords Categorization

• Alexander Luria, a founder of the
  Russian-Historical School of cultural psychology,
  interviewed Russian peasants with no formal
  education.
• The participants were given a list of four
  objects and they were to identify the one that
  didnt belong.
• Often participants focused on concrete and
  practical aspects of how the objects could be
  used together, and did not create any categories.

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• Example question - Hammer, saw, log, hatchet.
  Which one doesnt belong?
• Theyre all alike. I think all of them have to
  be here. See, if youre going to saw, you need a
  saw, and if you have to split something you need
  a hatchet. So theyre all needed here.
• Which of these things could you call by one
  word?
• Hows that? If you call all three of them a
  hammer, that wont be right either.

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• But one fellow picked three things - the hammer,
  saw, and hatchet- and said they were alike.
• A saw, a hammer, and a hatchet all have to work
  together. But the log has to be here too!
• Why do you think he picked these three things
  and not the log?
• Probably hes got a lot of firewood, but if
  well be left without firewood, we wont be able
  to do anything.

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• Another subject. Hammer, saw, log, hatchet.
  Which one doesnt belong?
• Its the hammer that doesnt fit! You can
  always work with a saw, but a hammer doesnt
  always suit the job, theres only a little you
  can do with it.
• Yet one fellow threw out the log. He said the
  hammer, saw, and hatchet were all alike in some
  way, but the log is different.
• If were getting firewood for the stove, we
  could get rid of the hammer, but if its planks
  were fixing, we can do without the hatchet.

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• If you had to put these in some kind of order,
  could you take the log out of the group?
• No, if you get rid of the log, what good would
  the others be?
• Suppose I put a dog here instead of the log?
• If it was a mad dog, you could beat it with the
  hatchet and the hammer and it would die.

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• In 1912, H. H. Goddard assessed the IQ of
  incoming immigrants to the US. Most of the
  immigrants had no schooling.
• Results of his tests 83 of Jews, 80 of
  Hungarians, 79 of Italians, and 87 of Russians
  were classified as morons - (Goddards term for
  IQ scored below 70)

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• In sum, many cognitive skills and habits that we
  are often not aware of, emerge as the product
  from formal schooling.