development across cultures

Question 1

what are 3 common assumptions in developmental psychology

Answer 1

1) development has a specific, universal timeline
2) development follows a consistent procedure
3) methods used to study development are appropriate in different cultures

Question 2

what are problems with assumptions in development

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

what does bronfenbrenner’s (1977) say about developmental psychology?

Answer 3

• the science of strange behaviour of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time

Question 4

what are the stages of bronfenbrenner’s ecological model?

Answer 4

• 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

Question 5

what did Neilsen et al (2017) find about developmental psychology

Answer 5

• reviewed 1582 articles published in top developmental psychology journals between 2006-2010
• 91% came from WEIRD counties
• non WEIRD 7%

Question 6

what does the acronym WEIRD stand for?

Answer 6

western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic

Question 7

what does the term culture mean?

Answer 7

an umbrella term which encompasses social behaviour and norms of society

Question 8

what did Legare and Nielson (2015) say about foundations of culture?

Answer 8

• 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.

Question 9

what did Legare and Harris (2016) say about how children learn about culture?

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

what are the types of imitation

Answer 10

• imitation
• mimicry
• high-fidelity imitation of overimitation

Question 11

what does Thorndike (1898) define imitation as

Answer 11

learning to do an act from seeing it done

Question 12

how do Lakin and Chartrand (2003) define mimicry

Answer 12

occurs when a person unwittingly imitates behaviour of another person

Question 13

how does Lyons (2007) define high-fidelity imitation or overimitation

Answer 13

copying another’s action despite visible evidence that it is causally unnecessary

Question 14

what research did Horner and Whiten (2004) do to support overimitation and culuture

Answer 14

• 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.

Question 15

what did Whiten et al 2016 say about developing and maintaining cultures

Answer 15

demand characteristics - children and adults engage in overimitation “in the wild”

Question 16

what did Krieger et al 2020 say about developing and maintaining culture

Answer 16

social sensitivity - some evidence to suggest children imitate ingroup over outgroup

Question 17

what is global phenomenon in developing and maintaining culture

Answer 17

overimitation has now been demonstrated in children from many countries around the world

Question 18

what did Kenward et al 2011 say about developing and maintaining culture

Answer 18

maintenance - children protest when a puppet fails to perform the unnecessary actions

Question 19

what are three examples of how culture impacts social development

Answer 19

• Ownership reasoning (Rochat et al., 2014).
• ‘Norms’ around sharing (Blake et al., 2015).
• Sharing and family structure (Weltzein et al., 2019).

Question 20

what is ownership reasoning

Answer 20

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).

Question 21

what did Rochat et al 2014 research about ownership and culture

Answer 21

• researched whether early institutions about ownership reflect cultural values or whether they’re universal principles which govern ownership reasoning

Question 22

what procedure did Rochat et al 2014 use to research ownership and culture

Answer 22

• 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?”

Question 23

what results did rochat et al 2014 find about ownership and culture

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

what procedure did Blake et al 2015 use to research fairness norms

Answer 24

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?

Question 25

what results did Blake et al 2015 find about fairness norms

Answer 25

• 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.

Question 26

what did Weltzein et al 2019 research about sharing

Answer 26

What drives differences in resource allocation?
Level of cultural specificity:
Country level differences.
Family level differences

Question 27

what was the procedure of Weltzein et al 2019 research into sharing

Answer 27

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.

Question 28

what results did Weltzien et al 2019 find avout sharing

Answer 28

• 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.