Cultural influences on development

Culture is defined as:

• Norms, beliefs, behaviours and traditions that are shared by a large group of people, and passed on from generation to generation
• Cultural groups develop norms (or rules) that can be explicit or implicit, which govern behaviour
• These norms are internalised via socialisation e.g socialisation from parents or socialisation from school

Vygotsky described natural and cultural lines of development. He stressed the role of culture in shaping the individual.

Super & Harkness (1997): "Developmental Niche" - the child brings its own temperament and species-specific potentials to the developmental niche provided by its culture. 1) the physical and social setting of the child's daily life. 2) culturally regulated customs of child care and rearing. 3) the psychology of the caretakers, their belief systems.

Robert Guthrie (1976): "Even the rat was white: a historical view of psychology". The quote means to explain that modern psychology is very focused on western industrial cultures, particularly on white middle class males.

• Individualism places an emphasis on personal attributes, goals and achievements
• Many cultures in Asia, Africa and South America are collectivist. Identity is strongly linked to ties with family and other social groups
• Social learning experienes differ depending on whether they take place in individualist or collectivist cultures, e.g in Japan children tend to work on group assignments. In Europe children tend to work on individual assignments
• Markus & Kitayama (1998): Proposed the question "are you ordinary" to adolescents. 18% of US adolescents compared with 84% of Japanese adolescents agreed that they were "ordinary". Within Japan's collectivist culture where the stress is on the group rather than the individual, people are less likely to think of themselves as unique

• Freedman (1979): infant temperament compared across white, Chinese, Japanese and Navaho infants. White babies were most active, fussy and difficult to comfort. Japanese babies responded actively to things but were easier to comfort than white babies
• Cross-cultural comparisons of secure and insecure attachments (van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg 1988): Attachment studies from the UK, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, Israel, Japan, China, and the USA were compared. Majority of infants appeared to be securely attached
• Tronick, Morelli & Ivey (1992): Study involved pygmy people who live in groups of around 20, in the forests of Zaire. Infants are cared for communally, carried and handled by many people each day. Infants will use any adult or older child as a "safe base". By 6 months they begin to show a preference for their own mother. They appear to have a central attachment but this may be less dominant
• Bretherton (1992): Attachment behaviour is never purely instrinctive but is heavily overlain with cultural prescriptions

• Language development has some universal stages. All infants coo and then babble. All infants can understand language before they can speak it. All infants begin to use their first words around 12 months. All infants use one word before two word phrases. Two word phrases are observed around 18 months
• Gentner (1982): Compared German, English, Turkish, and Chinese first words. All infants had names for mum, dad, some other relative, and some live creature. All but Chinese children had words for clothes and toys. All had learned more naming words than any other type.

• Goldberg (1972): Investigated object permanence cross-culturally. Zambian infants not given objects to play with and seem uninterested in them. Obedience is expected and if an infant touches an object it might be taken away, so the infant will not search for it.
• Flavell (1983): 3, 4, and 5 year olds were shown a sponge that looked like a rock. They were asked (1) what it looked like and (2) what it was. Most 3 year olds answered "sponge" to both questions. They knew this was what it was. The 4 and 5 year olds generally were able to answer that really it was a sponge even though it looked like a rock.

• 85% of typically developing 3-4 year old children can pass the "Sally-Anne" test
• Avis & Harris (1991): Adapted the Sally-Anne test for use with children from the Baka tribe who live in the Cameroon. They found that 2, 3 and young 4 year olds failed the test; they couldn't understand that a protagonist had a false belief. This ability emerged around 4-5 years
• Formal operations - 11-15 years (Piaget). According to Piaget, abstract reasoning occurs fairly late. However, Jahoda (1983) showed that 9 year old children of shopkeepers from Harare had much more advanced notions about economics than British children of the same age but without knowledge about trade did. They could grasp abstract principles e.g profit, loss, far earlier than Piaget would have predicted
• Saxe (1988): Brazillian child sweet sellers don't go to school, yet develop good mathematical skills due to buying sweets from wholesalers, pricing them to include a profit margin, then bartering with customers on the streets. These findings reflect Vygotsky's ideas about the importance of culture on the child's development

• Indian hook-swinging ceremony - holy person travels from village to village blessing the people and crops. At points, the holy person swings from hooks shoved under the skin and muscles of his back - however he does not seem to be in pain, rather he is ecstatic
• Kroeber (1948): anthropological study showed father of to-be-born infant in bed with the mother and appearing to be in great pain. The woman's experience of giving birth did not seem to be painful. After the birth the male stayed in bed with the infant and the woman went back to work in the fields
• Bates et al (1993) studied 372 hospital patients with similar types of pain problems. Hispanic and Italian Americans reported highest levels of suffering. They though the pain was: out of their control, it made them worried and angry, they could not be happy until it went, and felt that they could express these feelings openly. Old American and Polish Americans suppressed outward expressions of pain, reported being less upset by the pain and felt they had personal control. These sub groups reported lower levels of suffering

• Segall et al (1966): Proposed that people who live in a more rounded environment are less likely to succumb to the Muller-Lyer illusion than people who live in a carpentered environment
• Davidoff, Fonteneau & Fagot (2008): Himba are a semi-nomadic tribe from Southern Africa. They show a local information processing bias
• The Himba also use a small number of colour terms and these influence how they perceive colour (Roberson, Davidoff, Davies & Shapiro, 2005)