Chapter 5 Flashcards
Development and Socialization
What can be evidence of how socialization has a powerful affect on humans?
The fact that people from different cultures are born with similar potential (blank slate), yet end up having such different life experience
What is a sensitive period?
A period of time during development when it is relatively easy to acquire a set of skills
What are sensitive periods evidence of?
The universal human brain is preprogrammed to learn cultural meanings
When it comes to language acquisition, what happens to infants within their first year?
They begin to lose the ability to distinguish phenomes that aren’t used in their home language
What do MRIs show when bilinguals who learned a second language later in life show vs. bilinguals who learned their second language early in life?
Later-life bilinguals showed activation in one part of the brain for one language and a different part of the brain for the second language.
Early-life bilinguals show activation in both locations in the brain no matter what language they were hearing
What do MRI studies of later-life vs. early-life bilinguals suggest?
The language center of the brain is more flexible at attuning itself to various kinds of linguistic input during the sensitive period and it is no longer plastic after the sensitive period ends
What is the age that the sensitive period for cultural acquisition ends (proposed by Heine)
15
What did Heine’s study of Hong Kong immigrants to Vancouver show in terms of acculturation and sensitive periods?
No Ps identified less with their Chinese culture. However, Ps 15 and younger identified more with Canadian culture and those who have lived in Canada longer (20yrs) identified more with Canadian culture than those who have lived in Canada a relatively short time (5yrs)
How do cross-cultural psychological differences change with age?
Young children are generally universally more similar and the cultural differences become more pronounced with age
How do Chinese children and Canadian children compare when thinking about future trends?
They think similarly at age 7, divergence at age 9, slightly more pronounced difference at age 11. Chinese children were more likely to expect a trend reversal than Canadian children
How do Western/European mothers compare to other cultures with infant personal space and interactions
European mothers spend less time in bodily contact with their babies but more time in face-to-face contact.
Western mothers were more responsive to infants’ vocalizations, more likely to mirror facial expressions, more interactive with their infants.
How do Western babies compare no non-Western babies in self-recognition (mirror) tests? Why?
Western babies can identify themselves at an earlier age (19mo) than Cameroonian babies. This is possibly because of Western mothers mimicking facial expressions.
Infants in some regions of Africa, the Caribbean, and India receive daily massages and exercises. How does this impact their development?
They tend to sit and walk earlier than those who do not get massages or an exercise regime
What is co-sleeping?
Children sleeping in the same beds as their parents
How common is co-sleeping globally?
Over two-thirds of societies practice co-sleeping. The others usually keep the baby in the same room.
American parents were the only ones to put babies in a separate room from them.
What were the four principles that Indian Ps were guided by in the sleeping arrangement study?
Incest avoidance; protection of the vulnerable; female chastity anxiety; respect for hierarchy
What is incest avoidance? (sleeping arrangement study)
Postpubescent family members of the opposite sex should not sleep in the same room; must avoid all situations where there may be sexual temptations or suspicions about sexual conduct
What is protection of the vulnerable? (sleeping arrangement study)
Young children who are needy and vulnerable should not be left alone at night
What is female chastity anxiety? (sleeping arrangement study)
Unmarried adolescent women are vulnerable to shameful sexual activity, they should always be chaperoned; to ensure that young women will be chaste at marriage
What is respect for hierarchy? (sleeping arrangement study)
Adolescent boys achieve social status by not having to sleep with parents or young children; social superiority is expressed through deference and distance which is incompatible with the intimacy, familiarity, and exposure of co-sleeping
What were the three principles that American Ps were guided by in the sleeping arrangement study?
Incest avoidance, the sacred couple, the autonomy ideal
What is the “sacred couple?” (sleeping arrangement study)
Married couples should have their own space for emotional intimacy and sexual privacy; for the sake of interpersonal commitment, couples should sleep together and alone (not observed by many cultures outside of Westerners)
What is the autonomy ideal?
Children are needy and fragile and should be encouraged to be alone at night so they can learn to be self-reliant, independent, and to take care of themselves
What is Attachment Theory?
A proposal that infants and parents are biologically prepared to establish close attachments with each other
How does an infant with secure attachment preform in the Strange Situation?
Occasionally seeks the mother when she is around and seeks her presence more after being left alone; the infant is confident and explores a new environment with the mother present
How does an infant with avoidant attachment preform in the Strange Situation?
Show little distress in their mother’s absence and avoids her upon her return
How does an infant with anxious-ambivalent attachment preform in the Strange Situation?
Shows frequent distress when their mother is present or absent; sometimes wants to be near their mother but often pushes her away
What is the most common attachment style and seen as the “ideal” amongst Americans?
Secure attachment
What are some limitations to attachment theory?
- The Strange Situation may not have meaning everywhere because of differences in the behaviors of mothers and children.
- Because other attachment styles are seen with some regularity, they may by functional and, therefore, secure attachment isn’t necessarily the ideal.
- The ideal (and most common) attachment style cross-culturally isn’t always secure attachment
- The three attachment styles aren’t universal
What is the most common attachment style and the “ideal” amongst northern Germans?
Avoidant attachment
What attachment style is not seen in Japanese children or Dogon children?
Avoidant attachment
How does being raised by a group as opposed to a single caregiver (mother) affect a child’s development?
A child who is raised by multiple people (multiple caregivers) show less stranger anxiety.
What is authoritarian parenting?
High demands on children, strict rules, little open dialogue; low levels of warmth and responsiveness; parent-centered
What is authoritative parenting?
Child-centered; high expectations of children’s maturity, encourage independence within limits, trying to understand and teaching how to regulate feelings; high levels of warmth, responsiveness and democratic reasoning
What is permissive parenting?
High levels of warmth and responsiveness, few limits or controls; parents very involved, lots of open dialogue
What is neglectful parenting?
Cold, unresponsive and indifferent parents.
What parenting style leads to the most desirable outcomes in Western populations?
Authoritative parenting
What are some limitations to Baumrind’s categorization of parenting styles?
- It doesn’t accurately reflect parenting styles from different cultures
- To closely tied to Western understanding of development
- Some cultures show different styles of parenting in different stages of a child’s development
- Warmth and responsiveness is communicated differently across cultures (implicit vs. explicit)
- Doesn’t discuss the role of training in many non-Western parenting styles
- Parenting styles that are dominant in a culture have better outcomes, no matter what that style is
What is the role of training in Chinese parenting styles?
Core part of Chinese parenting; making sure children adhere to socially desired behaviors; includes being a role model, devotion, and sacrifice as a parent
What is noun bias?
Children’s tendency to learn nouns first, and more relative to verbs and other relational verbs; Children’s tendency to think more about nouns than other forms of words
Why does noun bias occur according to researchers?
Nouns are more noticeable, more concrete, easier to isolate from the environment
Is noun bias seen universally? Give an example
No. Chinese toddlers use more verbs than nouns
Why may noun bias not be universal?
The English language makes nouns more salient than East Asian languages; English tends to put nouns at the ends of sentences whereas East Asian languages tend to put verbs at the ends of sentences; Korean allows for nouns to be dropped from some sentences altogether; Westerners seeing the world analytically and objects as discrete, East Asians seeing world holistically
Are the “terrible twos” seen universally?
No. Not in cultures that don’t emphasize individualism and independence at that age; not in interdependent cultures (defiance seen as immature)
What defines the “terrible twos” in Western culture?
Increase in resistant, oppositional behavior; children asserting autonomy and individuality; seen as the foundation for future mature relationships
How is adolescence viewed in Western culture?
Period of “storm and stress;” acts of rebellion against authority; emotional stress; increased risk taking; an especially violent stage of life
Is adolescent rebellion universal?
No. Majority of cultures don’t expect teens to be disobedient, even less so violent
What two factors have been shown to increase the difficulties of adolescence?
Individualism and modernity.
How does individualism relate to difficult adolescence?
Teens view parental control as a constraint they must resist; more conflict between adolescents and parents in individualist societies; delay in taking on adult roles (“failure to launch”)
How does modernity relate to difficult adolescence?
There are so many opportunities and adult roles for teens to learn in modern society while being kept from adults, it can be overwhelming
What is the period after adolescence known as?
Emerging adulthood
In the study comparing educated people to less educated people, how did the two groups differ in categorizing objects?
Educated Ps used analytic reasoning and knowledge of taxonomic categorization to group together like objects (e.g. tools), whereas less educated Ps could not and thought about how the objects could be used together
What are some explanations for the disparity between American and East Asian school math test results?
- East Asian children spend more days in school, more time in school for math, more math homework
- Asian parents view education as more central to children’s lives, more involved in their kid’s learning
- East Asian mothers have higher expectations for their children’s education performance, American mothers expectations decreased with age
- There are more unique number words in English for kids to learn
Exposure to a language at a young age affects the ability to discriminate between different sounds because…
infants as young as 12 months differ in their perception of some phonemes compared to those raised to speak a different language
A noun bias refers to what?
The first words children learn are usually nouns rather than other kinds of words
Which of the following statements about adolescence is not true?
a. Adolescence is a life stage that is not universally recognized in all cultures.
b. Societies with more traditional roles tend to have less adolescent rebellion.
c. Adolescence is viewed as a violent period of life in only a minority of preindustrial
societies.
d. Individualistic cultures tend to have more adolescent rebellion than collectivistic cultures.
e. All of the above are true.
a
Lee Hom and Eason, age 25, are Hong Kong natives who have recently moved to Canada after living in Hong Kong all their lives. Based on research into a sensitive period for culture acquisition, what best characterizes their adjustment to Canada?
The younger they are when they move to Canada, the more they identify with being Chinese
