Module 6: Cultural Developmental Psychology Flashcards
(3) Multilevel Developmental Theories
• Many theories emphasise importance of
family, school, community, culture and
society for supporting children’s early
learning and also later academic
performance.
• There are different entry points into
learning
• For example,
o Sociocultural Theory (Vygotsky, 1978)
o Whanau theory (Marsden, 2003) Holistic
model about family systems
o Bioecological systems theory
(Bronfenbrenner, 1986) child is integrated
into their family, community, hapu, iwi and
government educational system (not
necessarily whanau based; interdependent
environments that children are nested
within)
• Irrespective of children’s specific culture,
culture influences every child’s learning
(i.e., differences between children).
What are young children learning prior to formal instruction?
*how does family influence children’s early learning (literacy, numeracy and self-regulation)
• Literacy in early development =
conversational and dyadic interactions
between child and caregiver. Looking for
how enriched the language is because oral
language has been linked to later pre-
literacy skills. The more that adults help to
scaffold conversations with their children in
home or early childhood setting (education)
will enhance their experiential learning and
their literacy about their world and the self.
These pre-literacy skills include letter
recognition, letter identification, sounds of
letters and what are the meanings of these
words in context and decontextualized (not
with caregiver but with other peers; transfer
the meaning of words learnt in the home
context to school etc.)
• Numeracy in early development = like the
chicken and the egg debate, what came
first literacy or numeracy skills? We need a
little bit of both for them all to develop (very
basic level understanding of both; i.e., that
truck is bigger than that truck) they both
help each other develop.
• Self-Regulation in early learning: children
need self regulation skills to be able to
develop literacy and numeracy skills. Self-
regulation can include inhibition (emotion,
language and numerological skills working
simultaneously; Jason can you get me that
apple? Here Jason would need to think
about the task and what is being asked of
him; or emotions where young children who
get upset when they must wait their turn or
must share their toys; need to be able to
manage their emotions to be able to
complete task; Simon says task need to
inhibit visual information and verbal
information to know when to imitate
behaviour) Mainly this means that children
need to stop at points throughout the
behaviour sequence to cognitively think
about the task and what they need to do.
The delay of gratification: waiting to eat a
marshmallow so they could have two (larger
reward). Self-regulation is children’s ability
to manage their emotions, inhibitions,
behaviours in order to receive a beneficial
outcome.
*There is high variability in terms of age of
acquisition; depends on whether and how
they’re taught (more on this later). But
essentially, these skills are culturally variable
and not universal – they depend on the
practices of the culture.
Language as the Foundation of Early Learning
*Language is linked to all three of these
early skills and caregivers teach their
children these skills via conversation
(talking)
Does language skills underlie early
literacy? Yes!
• Vocabulary skill predicts later reading and
school success
• Vocabulary skill predicts phonological
awareness – neighbourhood density
argument (dig, dog, dug)
Does language skills underlie early
numeracy? Yes!
• Learning number, quantity (e.g., more, all
gone) and shape words predict early math
learning
Does language skills underlie early self-
regulation? Yes!
• Self-talk (or inner speech) about emotions,
behaviours, and carrying out plans predict
inhibitory control.
• Children’s moral development. Where we
focused on a transgression made by the
child in the past and talking to them about it
and teaching them a lesson about morality.
Adult lead conversation which children
didn’t really want to have. How can we talk
to children in a way to get them to learn to
inhibit their behaviour and not repeat it in
the future (self-regulation). NZ European
parent would make light of the situation
and bring the conversation back to the
event in question. NZ Maori parents would
repeatedly take the child back to the event,
till they wanted to talk about it, would focus
on maintain the child’s mana (self-esteem)
whilst teaching them to inhibit their
behaviour. Pacific parents didn’t talk much
at all about the event.
*What is common across the evidence is that
children’s learning and adults’ teaching
occurs through talk!
What are the situations where we might see adults’ talk scaffolding children’s early learning?
*Helping to learn social skills in everyday
lives.
The more experiences between caregiver
and child through talk, enriched language
opportunities, experiential learning.
Increases the likelihood that they can
apply these skills to other settings. The
more you talk the more information the
child absorbs and their emotional,
cognitive, behavioural, physical and
cultural development = school readiness
skills.
Examples:
• Through singing and chanting nursery
rhymes
• Through everyday routines (e.g., cooking,
grocery shopping, bedtime)
• Through everyday conversations (during
mealtimes, about books, about the world,
about past and future)
• Through games (e.g., Simon Says, statues,
red light - green light)
• Through direct teaching (of letters,
numbers, etc.)
Such parent-child interactions are even
more important in New Zealand with its
play-based early childhood curriculum (Te
Whariki) and around the world in covid
times with lockdowns.
*But there is variation in HOW parents
engage in such interactions!
Variation in Parent-Child Interactions
Elaborative Reminiscing Style
vs repetitive-reminiscing style
This refers to parents talking to children
about past event. The more that parents
talk, elaborate and reflect on past
experiences the greater vocab,
metarepresentational, cognitive skills, and
application children’s gain from talking.
Parent initiating conversation about past
events, validates child’s recall about the
event, and asks them to expand on their
recall of other details about the event.
Take children’s information, elaborate on it
and aid further recall of other information
about the event. It helps children retain
earlier memories, language and emotional
skills.
Example Conversation:
• M: Do you remember when Austin came to
stay and Dorothy and Uncle Nick? Did we
go to the train station, Hamish? Did we go to
the station and see the trains, the puffer
trains?
• C: Na na
• M: Puff puff ah. Is that what they did? And
did we wave bye-bye to them on the train
when they went home? They went home to
Gore, didn’t they?
• C: Brr brrr
• M: Oh, do you remember? Was it a big blue
train like Thomas?
Reminiscing is an important interaction because it appears to be culturally universal, even though the frequency and qualities differ across cultures.
*Maori culture is steeped in oral literacy;
their traditions, rituals, knowledge etc.
Title: Looking Back to the Future: Māori
and Pākehā Mother-Childbirth Stories
(Reese, Hayne, & MacDonald, 2008)
Introduction:
• Māori young adults report earlier memories
than NZ European and Chinese young
adults (MacDonald et al., 2000).
• Why?
• We know that parents’ elaborative
reminiscing predicts more detailed and
earlier memories (Reese et al., 1993; Jack et
al., 2010) & better oral language and
literacy skills (Reese et al., 2010; Leyva et al.
2012).
Hypothesis:
• Therefore, it is meaningful to raise the
following questions:
1. Are Māori parents more elaborative in their
reminiscing than Pakeha parents?
2. What kinds of memories do Māori parents
talk about with their children?
Method:
• Participants: Māori (n = 15) and Pākehā (n =
17) mums and their 3.5-year-old or 7.5-year-
old children
• Dyads recorded conversations about past
shared events (e.g., going to a special
beach) and the child’s birth
• Narratives coded for elaborations (detail
about what happened, time, place,
emotions)
Results:
• Māori mums elaborated more about the
child’s birth:
o about time (You were born quarter past 2
in the morning; You were born when I first
started teaching)
o about internal states (I felt yucky; I was so
happy; You were hungry)
• Pākehā mums elaborated more about
shared recent events (e.g., going to Otago
Museum)
Conclusion:
• A focus only on shared past event talk
underestimates the narrative environment
for Māori children
• The birth story is a particularly rich context
for Māori whanau.
Why conversations about the child’s birth? Why is it important?
*Why conversations about the child’s birth? Why is it important? In all cultures birth stories are important. It will vary across cultures how parents talk about these events. Maori mothers tended to elaborate more about these events (i.e., whakapapa or genealogy; the birth story is key to understand where they come from, who came before them and where they fit into their family history; whanau is another word for giving birth; heavy emphasis on these factors in Maori culture! Helps build their identity early on).
Reminiscing is a strength in Māori culture; other cultures will have different strengths.
*A lot of early developmental research is westernized (egocentric) these studies highlight the need to look at non-westernized (narrow uninformed view of development) methods of facilitating child development.
Recognize strengths of indigenous
knowledge; the western way is NOT the
only way.
Reminiscing is linked to autobiographic
memories. In traditional western
developmental work culture/context was
seen as noise in the data which they
controlled for and subtracted out of the
equation. This removes a key part of
children’s development.
This is not the case now; we see the
benefits of understanding culture and
development (switch from reductions to
additive view). Different cultures will have
different aspects of what is considered
important to reminiscing, child
development of self-identity, learning,
collectivism-individualism as more
important. Having this in the literature
means we can better interact with and
teach indigenous children; remove
egocentric bias and use culturally
appropriate methods.
Developmental researchers need to:
• Open eyes to non-Western ways of
organizing learning, to open eyes to
sources of strength and reliance in a
culture that can be harnessed to add to
children’s learning for the transition to
school
• Resist assumption of “One Best Way” of
teaching or learning or development
• Embrace an additive model, in which
children and their families retain their
culturally unique strengths for capacity
building
*But is there evidence that the unique home-
learning environment of New Zealand
Māori families are critical for young
children’s early learning skills? Yes! We turn
now to introduce work by Neha et al.
(2020)!
“From a hidden to a visible population”: Neha et al. (2020) is the first study to assess the home learning environment of whanau in relation to children’s (ages 3.5 to 5 years) early learning skills. Hooray!
Making a hidden population visible:
o looking at people who self-identified as
being from a hidden population, hard to
reach communities.
o What things occurred within these
communities to facilitate child early
learning which has not been captured by
mainstream developmental psychology
work.
o What is the hidden behind the hidden?
What key information do indigenous
communities have that can benefit wider
scientific research.
o Providing a voice to indigenous
communities to share their knowledge and
show that their information is equally
valuable t western knowledge, self-
determination to refine early childhood
practices to be more culturally appropriate.
Method:
o Collected 41 whānau conversations
(reminiscing about shared event and birth
story; book-reading) and assessed
preschool children’s early literacy (letter
recognition, phonological awareness), early
numeracy (number recognition, counting),
self-regulation (head-toes-knees-shoulder
task), and oral language (vocabulary,
narrative)
Neha et al.’s hypotheses (what do the
hypotheses mean?)
1. Parents using more inferential extratextual
talk during book reading would have
children with more advanced oral language
skill
• When caregivers read books to their
children in their first language (te reo Maori
and English).
• Asking children what do you think will
happen next? Show where the pet is.
Interactive book readings, where children
try to predict the ending.
• Shared joint referencing between parent-
child, following narratives, teaching
inference and prediction. What type of
language is being used in this type of
talking experience?
2. Parents using more elaborative
reminiscing would have children with more
advanced oral language, literacy, and self-
regulation
• Is elaborative reminiscing similar to
extratextual talk? We are testing if they are
The same or different (contextually
defined). The two are similar but distinct.
Which one is more salient? Story-book
reading or reflecting on past events?
• Commonality between them is that parents
go beyond what is on the page of the book
or providing more detail and reinforcing
child recall of past events (parents go the
extra mile to aid learning of child).
3. Parents’ teaching practices of literacy and
numeracy associated with children’s more
advanced literacy and numeracy skill
• Teaching practices such as: literacy (story
reading, reminiscing, everyday events in
home or community; variety of books they
owned and regularly used) numeracy
(counting, number identification, cooking;
get me a cup of flour or two eggs) what
happens between siblings.
• It dependent on the adult’s preference on
what they used with their children. It was
also matched to the children developmental
stage.
4. Parents with higher cultural affiliation
engage in more elaborative reminiscing
and have children with advanced early
learning skills
• Higher cultural affiliation: dichotomous
variable (does the adult self-identify as
moari high/low; attending a lot of maori
events, feeling comfortable in speaking te
reo maori, comfort in being in maori or non-
maori events).
• The more embodied their cultural identity
would predict the emphasis of reminiscing
strategies via talking in children’s early
learning.
5. Parents’ repetitions during reminiscing
may be linked positively to parents’
cultural affiliation and to children’s early
learning
• Repetition: oral traditions being passed
from one generation to the next. The higher
their cultural affiliation to Maori culture the
more likely they would have frequent
exposure to maori history and tradition via
talking.
• Repetition were originally viewed as
redundant in NZ pakeha (western) learning
language. However, it could be contextually
specific to Maori culture; with oral traditions.
Repetition of maori history allows children
to retain the information better and pass it
on to future generations. Unique
reminiscing priorities of the specific cultural
group you are studying/working with.
Reacp:
Lecture 1:
The motivation/rationale for her assigned
reading. How it is important to understand
parent-children’s interactions in the home.
Especially, for Maori children’s early learning
skills.
Lecture 2:
Going over the assigned reading. The key
tasks that they used in the article.
(6) Child Assessments:
(A) Narrative Task: • Hemi and the Shortie Pajamas picture books • Tests whether children can comprehend the story and retell it to an Elmo doll
(B) Vocabulary (TELD-3)
• Point to the “dog”
• Point to the “shoe in a box”
(C) Oral Counting
• Children are asked to count as high as
they can within a time limit
(D) Phonological Awareness (DIBELS)
• What’s the first sound in “blank” word
(E) Letter Identification
• Children were shown uppercase letters
and asked to name as many letters as they
could
(F) Number Identification
• Children pointed to and named as many
numbers as possible within a given time
limit
Assessments:
Assessments:
• The unique scale they use is the narrative
task. The picture book story was read to
the child. Then the children were asked to
retell it to the Elmo doll. We are looking for
the accuracy of their retelling.
• One caveat is some children are frightened
of puppets, so they had to work around
making them less scary. Children were
filmed as they re-told the story to Elmo.
• However, they were too young to have
sufficient language skills to be able to read
the story from the picture book. They were
given a break, allowed to eat an apple.
Then they were asked 6 comprehension
questions about the story.
• How do you deal with shy children? Warm
them up with a goodies bag to choose
which Elmo they like which provides them a
sense of autonomy. Helps break the ice.
Mum and dad is not too far away, in their
line of site and reassure them that they are
close. Talk to them first.
• Where all these tasks done in one day?
Depending on the child how many
sessions. Ethical constraints about fatigue
for young children. It is more demanding for
children than adults. Would try to do it. In
the morning or weekend to avoid additional
draining of cognitive resources at school.
Sessions could take 1-1.5 hours, or two
steps with a home visit up to four sessions.
Having to work around many historical
confounds which make booking sessions a
nightmare (i.e., moved home, earthquakes,
gotten sick etc.)
Child Assessments: Self-Regulation
• Heads Toes Knees Shoulders (HTKS)
• It looks at executive functioning and
inhibition control in young children’s could
they perform a reversed Simon says task.
• Children were asked to stand up and do
the opposite of whatever the researcher
told them to do: If the experimenter said
“touch your toes,” they should touch their
head, and vice versa.
• They would have to stop themselves from
reaching for their toes, think about what
the opposite and then complete the correct
action.
• They were marked for each correct action
out of two points. 0 = touched the wrong
body part, 1 = if you begun to reach for the
wrong body part but corrected yourself, 2 =
immediately went straight to the right body
part. There were 10 trials, so a max of 20
points available.
• Three steps the child goes through:
1. Listen to the instruction,
2. Stop their behaviour and think about what
the opposite body part is,
3. Reach for the correct body part.
• These skills required to complete the task
is listening, paying attention to the task
and its rules, remembering the rules,
inhibiting their behaviour (to reach for the
wrong body part).
• Children use executive functioning in their
daily lives. For example, coming back
inside from playing and switching into
quite time.
Parent Questionnaire
A. Questions about literacy activities
(frequency of storybook reading per week,
the frequency with which children initiated
shared reading, the number of children’s
books in the home, the frequency of
library visits per month, teaching child to
print words, to read words)
B. Questions about numeracy teaching
(teaching child to count, to identify
numbers).
C. Questions on cultural affiliation on a nine-
item scale (e.g., How many special
activities or traditions your family
celebrates are based on Māori culture?;
Describe your ability in speaking Te Reo
Māori; How important is it to you to be
recognized as a Māori person?)
• The scale was presented in their first
language (Te Reo Maori or English or
mixed; whatever was their preference)
• Were parents able to skip uncomfortable
questions? Yes, absolutely. The scale was
done with Maori to ensure they were
involved in each stage of the research
process, they could help influence what
questions were appropriate, the
appropriateness of the task, explaining
why the tasks are important, what they
do/measure, ensure they knew that the
questions are not meant to undermine
their parenting skills and build trust with
participants.
Book Reading
• Researcher asked mothers to read Hemi’s
Pet (Joan de Hamel) in their chosen
language (Te Reo Māori or English) to their
child as they normally would and at their
typical time of the day.
• Coded For:
o Descriptions/labels
• Descriptive naming and labelling of
items/people on the page. What is this?
Tell me more about this?
o Linking Utterances
• Looking at whether they linked what
happened in the book to their own
experience? Do parents do that when
they read the book? It’s a skill that helps
children understand, encode, and recall
stories.
• What about your pet? What pet do you
have? Is your sister your pet? Specific to
the child’s life.
o Predictions
• Can the child predict what would
happen? During or after the story was
finished (got to retell story and add onto
it; share the ribbon with the rabbit etc.)
• How did they choose Hemi’s Pet? Her
supervisor had worked with it
extensively, was printed in Maori and
English, it was out of print so most
people would not have heard it (blind
procedure; no familiarity effect).
• Some children kept the book for months
because they would get upset when it
was taken away. Retelling the story
allowed children to be able to predict
what would happen in the story. And
then… the child would be able to fill in
the blank.
§ Did the children/parents like Hemi’s Pet?
Yes, in the way that parents animated the
story with their speech, read in different
styles by different parents, mixed reading
with children, stopping starting at each
page, what’s this or tell me about this with
pointing etc.
