development across cultures Flashcards
what are 3 common assumptions in developmental psychology
1) development has a specific, universal timeline
2) development follows a consistent procedure
3) methods used to study development are appropriate in different cultures
what are problems with assumptions in development
- ethnocentric - evaluating other cultures according to preconceptions, standards, and customs of one’s own culture
- bias in who does the research
- bias in who participates in the research
- methods and tools
what does bronfenbrenner’s (1977) say about developmental psychology?
- the science of strange behaviour of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time
what are the stages of bronfenbrenner’s ecological model?
- child is the centre
- microsystem
- mesosystem
- exosystem - extended fam
- macrosystem - attitudes and ideologies of the culture
- chronosystem - environmental changes that occur over the life course
what did Neilsen et al (2017) find about developmental psychology
- reviewed 1582 articles published in top developmental psychology journals between 2006-2010
- 91% came from WEIRD counties
- non WEIRD 7%
what does the acronym WEIRD stand for?
western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic
what does the term culture mean?
an umbrella term which encompasses social behaviour and norms of society
what did Legare and Nielson (2015) say about foundations of culture?
- Relatively stable over time, yet variable across communities.
- Cumulative – knowledge, skills and social conventions passed from one generation to the next.
- Shaped by social learning.
what did Legare and Harris (2016) say about how children learn about culture?
Young children make use of multiple strategies to learn about culture. These are all features of social learning:
Emotion learning.
Natural pedagogy (receptivity to demonstrations).
Questioning.
High-fidelity imitation.
what are the types of imitation
- imitation
- mimicry
- high-fidelity imitation of overimitation
what does Thorndike (1898) define imitation as
learning to do an act from seeing it done
how do Lakin and Chartrand (2003) define mimicry
occurs when a person unwittingly imitates behaviour of another person
how does Lyons (2007) define high-fidelity imitation or overimitation
copying another’s action despite visible evidence that it is causally unnecessary
what research did Horner and Whiten (2004) do to support overimitation and culuture
- A series of necessary and unnecessary actions are demonstrated on transparent and opaque puzzle-boxes.
- Chimpanzees copy everything on the opaque box but solve the puzzle efficiently in the transparent box.
- Children copy everything in both opaque and transparent conditions.
- Learning social convention can sometimes be more important than learning about physical causality.
what did Whiten et al 2016 say about developing and maintaining cultures
demand characteristics - children and adults engage in overimitation “in the wild”
what did Krieger et al 2020 say about developing and maintaining culture
social sensitivity - some evidence to suggest children imitate ingroup over outgroup
what is global phenomenon in developing and maintaining culture
overimitation has now been demonstrated in children from many countries around the world
what did Kenward et al 2011 say about developing and maintaining culture
maintenance - children protest when a puppet fails to perform the unnecessary actions
what are three examples of how culture impacts social development
- Ownership reasoning (Rochat et al., 2014).
- ‘Norms’ around sharing (Blake et al., 2015).
- Sharing and family structure (Weltzein et al., 2019).
what is ownership reasoning
How we relate to material possessions can reflect cultural values:
- Extent of wealth.
- Generosity.
- Political ideals.
Ownership concepts develop by 2 years of age (‘it’s mine’):
- Attachment to objects (Faigenbaum, 2005).
- Exclusive control over objects (Rochat, 2011).
what did Rochat et al 2014 research about ownership and culture
- researched whether early institutions about ownership reflect cultural values or whether they’re universal principles which govern ownership reasoning
what procedure did Rochat et al 2014 use to research ownership and culture
- 176 3-to-5-year old children from 7 distinct socio-cultural environments:
USA, China, Vanuatu, Brazil.
Private daycare, public daycare, village, street kids.
Rural and urban
High, middle and low SES
Two dolls, who are friends, took a walk together and ended up fighting for possession of an object.
Conditions:
First contact.
Familiarity.
Creation.
Rich-Poor.
Neutral.
Children were asked “Whose is it?”
what results did rochat et al 2014 find about ownership and culture
By age 5, children in all cultures consistently attributed ownership in the creation and familiarity conditions.
There was no consistent pattern in the first-contact or rich-poor conditions.
Children from USA and China were more likely to assign ownership to the poor puppet.
Culture and socio-economic context both influence early intuitions about ownership.
what procedure did Blake et al 2015 use to research fairness norms
Children play in pairs, one child is the ‘actor’.
Sweets are distributed on the apparatus and the actor chooses to accept or reject the distribution.
Rejecting an offer leads to zero payoffs for everyone.
Do children reject unfair offers that disadvantage themselves?
Do children reject unfair offers that disadvantage others?
what results did Blake et al 2015 find about fairness norms
- Low levels of rejection for ‘fair’ offers.
- As children get older they tend to reject unfair offers when they are disadvantaged by the distribution of resources (except for Mexican children).
- In USA, Canada and Uganda, older children reject unfair offers when they are advantaged by the distribution of resources.
- Mexican, Peruvian, Chinese and Senegalese children are unlikely to reject unfair offers which advantage them.
what did Weltzein et al 2019 research about sharing
What drives differences in resource allocation?
Level of cultural specificity:
Country level differences.
Family level differences
what was the procedure of Weltzein et al 2019 research into sharing
7-to-8-year old Indian children completed a priming interview designed to promote independence or interdependence.
Sharing game where they could choose between one of two resource distributions:
Take two for self.
Divide resources equally between self and another child.
what results did Weltzien et al 2019 find avout sharing
- Independence priming made children choose the selfish option more frequently.
- Interdependence priming only worked to make children more prosocial if they came from an extended family.
- Family-level variable was more important than country-level variable.
