Development

Childhood is a period of considerable change and flux, subject to more cultural influences than any other periods in the life span. 

Periods that are optimal for the acquisition of certain abilities and skills. 

If certain abilities and skills are not well established during such periods they may not fully develop to their full potential 

Children must be exposed to certain stimuli or surrounded by the environment with the full of such stimuli during sensitive periods. 

This seems to be related to brain development. 

Neurons and synapses that are not used often get eliminated and only the strong ones survive into adulthood.

This process begins before a baby is born and continues up until early adulthood. In total around 50% of neurons and synapses are eliminated via this process.

Geertz: stated that we have a natural equipment, our brain, and unless we are exposed to certain stimuli and environment, neurons and synapses do not live for long. 

Some aspects of language are learned during a sensitive period. Humans have evolved such that they learn a language in a particular period of life from early life and the sensitivity declines after puberty. 

Real world examples: 

- Wild boy of Aveyron: a 12 year old boy who had lived in the wild found in France in 1800

- Genie: a girl in California found in the 1970s, raised alone in silence, confined to a cage till the age of 13

Both had little to no exposure to spoken language growing up. Both were never able to gasp grammatical structures of their respective languages. As infants, our brains begin to pay selective attention to sounds from the language most familiar to us. As brains become accustomed to a particular language's sounds it also loses the ability to perceive sounds not used in this language. 

Japanese have difficulty distinguishing L and R

Hindu consonants ta and ta, Hindu adults and infants can discriminate between ta and ta but English adults even with training cannot discriminate them. 

Werker and Tees: Hindu versus English infants, investigated whether English infants discriminate between Hindu retroflex and dental consonants as accurately as Hindu infants do and what age differences may be observed. As English infants get older, they lost the ability to distinguish the two sounds. This was a head turn procedure. 

Examined cultural identification with both Chinese and Canadian culture among Hong Kong immigrants to Canada. 

Younger at immigration, identified with Canadian culture more. 

Immigration before age 15, identification with Canadian culture increased as one spends more time in Canadian culture.

Immigration after age 31, identification with Canadian culture decreased as one spends more time in Canada. 

Interview study informants: Japanese children aged 11-18 and their mothers who came to the US because of the overseas assignment of their father. 

They looked at the age of entry to the US and measured number of children in types 1-5 coding categories.

Children before age 9 may not yet internalised Japanese culture such as thoughts, behaviours, emotions. Thus can internalise American culture without much resistance. 

After the age of 9, children can still learn new culture but earlier acquired Japanese culture may persist. 

Based on findings, Minoura has suggested that the sensitive period for cultural acquisition appears to be around 9 years old. 

If we are born open to learning any culture, this has two implications:

1. Younger children across cultures should be relatively similar due to little socialisation.

2. Older children and adults should show more cultural differences due to more socialisation. 

Richard grew up in a poor family but he managed to go to college, how likely is it that he will become rich one day? Vincent has been the chess champion for 3 years in high school, how likely is it that he will lose in the next game against his strongest opponent?

- Chinese adults responded that there would be a high probability in becoming rich and that he will lose the next game. Chinese are more likley to predict changes than Americans.

Ji (2008) Participants were Canadian and Chinese children (7,9,11 years old) they measured the liklihood of predicting that a current trend will continue in the future. 

No cultural differences between aged 7. 9 years old, Canadians have a higher likelihood of predicting that a current trend will continue in the future and 11 years. Showing a cultural difference. Whereas Chinese children showed less likelihood that current trend will continue and change will occur. 

Participants were American adults and children and Hindu adults and children 

Participants were asked to narrate someone's prosocial behaviour and deviant behaviours and asked why the behaviour was undertaken. 

They measured by coding the attribution; dispositional attribution and situational attribution

At 8 year's old there was no difference. However, adults and as age increases Americans respond with a higher number of dispositional attributions, attributing personal characteristics. 

Hindus however, use less dispositional attributions. Hindu's at age increases, they use a lot of situational attribution as it is holistic cognitive styles, that uses behaviour based on relationships and situational factors, attributing social norms and external factors that influence a person's behaviour.

Visual attention: Masuda and Nisbett = Americans tend to focus on the central objects, using analytic thinking. Japanese attend to background more than Americans, holistic thinking. 

Ebbinghaus illusion: Doherty et al = Japanese are more susceptive to the illusion than Americans because Japanese are more holistic in their attention style, attending to the background more than the focal objects. 

Imada, Carlson and Itakura: European American and Japanese children in age groups: 4-5, 6-7, 8-9 years old. 

The task was free description and ebbinghaus illusion. The description task was 14 pictures, they measured first mention of objects such as cat, wall and descriptive accounts such as black cat, stone walls, relational accounts such as behind the cat, near the wall. If they focus more on the background than the focal objects this is holistic attention. 

Ebbinghaus illusion: measured the percentage of correct answers, they found that Japanese displayed holistic attention that this increased with age. 

* Young children aged 4-5 years old, look similar across cultures in terms of the change prediction, attribution and visual attention. 

* As they grow older, cultural differences become larger, suggesting that the cultural difference is due to social learning

* Also suggesting that some sensitive periods for particular cognitive styles.

Early experiences of infants differ dramatically around the world. it is not unreasonable to expect that these early experiences are critical to shaping people's development. 

Parenting styles: one big source of differences in socialisation comes from infants interactions with their parents especially mothers. Any differences found in this domain is great importance these interactions mark the beginning of children's socialisation process. 

American and Indian participants: 

The task was for participants to arrange the sleeping arrangements for a hypothetical family with 7 members. 

Americans made the sleeping arrangements of daughters, sons...mother and father seperate rooms

|one room: daughters |second room: sons| third room: mother and father|

Whereas Indians, chose daughter and son, the two sons and mother and father with the youngest daughter. 

|one room: daughter and son| second room: sons| third room: mum, dad and 3yr|

In 136 societies, babies in majority of these groups slept in the same room as their mothers and 2/3 slept in the same bed as their mothers.

Americans are the only group who created seperate room for their babies to sleep in.

Caudill and Weinstien: American mothers encourage their baby to be active, stimiluation, vocally responsible and chat with the baby. Japanese mothers, soothe and quiet the baby by carrying, rocking and lulling them. 

Keller (2007): Contrasted parenting interactions with infants in 5 cultural contexts; German, Greek, Costa Rican, Gujarati, NSA. They found that German and Greek had the highest percentage of time face to face contact with infants. whereas NSO, Gujarati and costa rican spent more time in bodily contact with infant.

Keller investigated face to face contact and whether this fosters self-recognition and body contact whether this fosters self-regulation. Participants were 18-20 month old babies. 

Greek babies were the highest in self-recognition

NSO babies were highest in self-regulation.

Attachment styles, proposed by Bowlby and Ainsworth, three kinds of attachment styles, common among parents and children; 

Secure: infants have a warm relationship with parents, and are comfortable and explorative in their presence. Although they get upset to see their parents leave, they are happy to see them upon their return. 

Avoidant: infants have a detached style around their parents and not upset when their parents are not around

Anxious-ambivalent: infants show frequent distress either in the presence or absence of parent. They oscillate between wanting the parent to be closer and pushing them away. 

USA have the highest % of babies with = secure attachment

Germany had the highest % of = avoidant attachment

Iserali had a high percentage of = secure and anxious attachment

Japanese = high rate of anxious ambivalent

ideal attachments may differ depending on cultural contexts. 

Qi Wang: participants were American and Chinese mothers and their 3 year old children in Boston and Bejing. Mothers were asked to discuss with their children specific events that they both participated in first time trip on a train for example. They measured coding of the conversations

Coding schemes were autonomous talk: statements about childrens personal preferences and judgements

Didactic talk: were statements or questions about moral standards, social norms or behavioral expectations

Findings= American mothers and children displayed significatly higher autonomous talk discussing more personal feelings/actions. 

Chinese mothers and children displayed higher didactic talk discussing more situational factors and involving others. 

Visual ethnography: site, middle class preschools in urban areas of Japan, China and America. Class of four years old children's classroom. The procedure was:

- videotaped a typical day of class with a focus on two or three children in a class

- insider explanation

- outsider judgement

- they investigated how preschools in 3 different cultures differ. In terms of number of teachers/students, content of class activities and aims of activities and how much differences reflect cultural ethos. In terms of cultural values, understanding of self and others.

They found that japanese students and teacher ratio was 28:1, activities consisted of maths exercises, singing, group based. Goals were oneness, persistence and learn through peer interaction.

American students and teacher ratio was 12:1. Activities were word exercises and writing, puzzles, cooking. They were individual based. Goals were self-expression, free choice of individual interest creativity and learning through rules, teacher's instructions.