Infants' use of the index finger for social and non-social purposes during the first two years of life: A cross-cultural study

The emergence of the pointing gesture is a major developmental milestone in human infancy. Pointing fosters preverbal communication and is key for language and theory of mind development. Little is known about its ontogenetic origins and whether its pathway is similar across different cultures. The goal of this study was to examine the theoretical proposal that social pointing is preceded by a non-social use of the index finger and later becomes a social-communicative gesture. Moreover, the study investigated to which extent the emergence of social pointing differs cross-culturally. We assessed non-social index-finger use and social pointing in 647 infants aged 3- to 24 months from 4 different countries (China, Germany, Japan, and Türkiye). Non-social index-finger use and social pointing increased with infants' age, such that social pointing became more dominant than non-social index-finger use with age. Whereas social pointing was reported across countries, its reported frequency differed between cultures with significantly greater social pointing frequency in infants from Türkiye, China, and Germany compared to Japanese infants. Our study supports theoretical proposals of the dominance of non-social index-finger use during early infancy with social pointing becoming more prominent as infants get older. These findings contribute to our understanding of infants' use of their index finger for social and non-social purposes during the first two years of life.

Social Support From Friends Among Unaccompanied Young Refugees

Abstract. Background: Social support is an important resource and source of self-esteem and belongingness for all children and youths. Yet, for unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee minors, who leave their home countries without a caretaking adult, extra-familial social, supportive networks in exile may be crucial for their well-being. We propose that their origin in collectivist cultures involves resources for re-establishing social networks in countries of resettlement. Aim: The overall aim of this study is to examine if cultural factors such as values and self-construals are associated with variations in perceived social support from friends among unaccompanied young refugees. We propose a model in which related self-construals mediate the association between collectivist values and perceived friend support. Method: We collected cross-sectional self-report questionnaire data from 611 unaccompanied young refugees (84.5% male; Mage = 18.49 years,  SD = 2.57 years) who had been granted residence in Norway. Results: Structural equation analyses revealed that higher levels of collectivist values were associated with stronger related self-construals, which, in turn, were positively associated with stronger perceived support from friends. However, related self-construals only acted as a partial mediator. Limitations: The generalizability of our findings to other groups of immigrant children and youth and/or to unaccompanied refugees in other countries is unknown and should be examined in future studies. Conclusion: Our results contribute new theoretical knowledge about how the development of social supportive relationships in the diaspora is embedded in cross-cultural contexts. Maintaining aspects of one’s heritage culture can promote resilient outcomes among unaccompanied young refugees.

Doing Psychology With a Cultural Lens: A Half-Century Journey

My first international publication started out with the following sentences: "Some findings of social psychology may refer to general panhuman relationships, others to relationships that hold only within specific socio-cultural settings. Only systematic cross-cultural comparison can separate these or identify the limits within which particular generalizations hold" (Kagitcibasi, 1970, p. 444). These words still reflect my orientation to psychology and have shaped my work over half a century.

How Usual Is “Play As You Usually Would”? A Comparison of Naturalistic Mother-Infant Interactions with Videorecorded Play Sessions in Three Cultural Communities

In developmental research, mothers are frequently asked to “play as you usually would.” In this study, maternal behavior towards their three-month-olds in three cultural communities (Nso, Cameroon; Gujarati, India; Athens, Greece) was compared between videorecorded “play” situations and naturalistic observations. If there is consistency, videorecorded “play” episodes can be used as a proxy for daily behavior. Body contact, body stimulation, face-to-face situations, and object stimulation were coded. While individual mothers showed consistent levels of body contact and face-to-face and object stimulation in both situations, there were also high correlations across the different types of behaviors. Only body contact and object stimulation correlate significantly across behavioral frames but not with each other across or within either observational frame. They can therefore be understood as behaviors with some discriminatory power. Mothers generally show a higher frequency of behaviors in the videorecorded play situations than during the everyday observations across all three communities. However, the samples differ in the extent to which three of the four behaviors are seen more in the videorecorded play sessions. A broader and general understanding of mothers’ ethnotheories and daily activities in each community is required in order to interpret videographed “play as you usually would” situations.

Autonomy and Relatedness in Cultural Context

Autonomy and agency are used extensively and often interchangeably; there is a debate regarding their intersections with relatedness and separateness. This scholarship occurs within mainly a Euro-American cultural context that provides an ideological background of individualism, shedding light on psychological thinking. The article attempts to provide a broad overview of the issues involved. Two distinct dimensions, agency and interpersonal distance, are seen to underlie the self constructs involving autonomy and relatedness that are developed in different spheres of psychological inquiry. Autonomy and relatedness are viewed as basic human needs, and though apparently conflicting, are proposed to be compatible. Problems of conceptualization and operationalization are noted that have prevented the recognition of this compatibility. A model is put forward that involves a fourfold combination of the two dimensions, leading to different types of self and the societal and familial contexts in which they develop. Recent research provides credibility to the model proposed.

Cultural orientations and historical changes as predictors of parenting behaviour

This study addresses the stability and variability of patterns of parenting in three cultural environments that can be assumed to differ with respect to their cultural models. German middleclass families can be assumed to follow primarily independent socialisation goals, Cameroonian Nso farmers can be assumed to follow primarily interdependent socialisation goals, and Costa Rican families can be assumed to follow an autonomous relational orientation. Parenting patterns of mothers interacting with their 3-month-old babies were assessed at two points in time, being 4 to 6 years apart. The data confirm the predicted cultural differences in style of parenting, which proved to be stable across the covered time span. We also predicted changes in parenting styles that should be oriented to a more independent cultural model across the cultural samples. Our data confirm this hypothesis, although the changes are differentially represented in the three samples, with the Cameroonian Nso sample expressing no significant changes and the German middle-class sample representing the most pronounced changes. The data are interpreted as documenting linkages between parenting and macrolevel societal changes.

Parenting as the expression of sociohistorical time: The case of German individualisation

This study addresses sociohistorical changes in parenting in a prototypical independent society: Germany. In Germany, a distinct societal increase in individualisation has been described as beginning with the mid-1980s. It is assumed that these changes not only affect children and adolescents, but also the first formative developmental period: infancy. Mothers' interactions with 3-month-old babies belonging to two cohorts (cohort 1: 1977/1978; cohort 2: 2000) show significant changes with respect to parenting behaviours that have been related to independence as a socialisation goal: increase of face-to-face contingency and object play and decrease of bodily and facial/vocal warmth. The results are interpreted as supporting the view that sociohistorical times form distinct cultural environments.

Surrogacy: The experience of Greek commissioning women

BACKGROUND

Available studies on surrogacy are extremely limited. Findings suggest that surrogacy is experienced as problem free, with a significant number of commissioning mothers maintaining contact with the surrogates over time.

AIM

To explore the experiences of Greek commissioning women regarding the surrogacy arrangement and birth of a child through surrogacy.

METHODS

The data of this study were collected from 7 intended mothers who had either a long history of infertility or serious health problems. Interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and analysed employing content analysis.

FINDINGS

The analysis of the women's accounts revealed three themes: (a) a shared journey, (b) the birth of a long-awaited child, and (c) the surrogacy disclosure. The surrogacy process became the women's affairs, with their partners offering backstage support. A very close bond was developed with the surrogates, characterised by daily contacts and care-giving behaviours. While this bond was abruptly discontinued after the child's birth, it was interiorised with all participants being grateful to their surrogate. The timing and content of the surrogacy disclosure to family and child(ren) were carefully chosen by participants, who avoided providing information when egg donation was involved.

CONCLUSION

Findings are reassuring for women who want to parent a child through a surrogate arrangement, and suggest that the availability of counselling services may help intended mothers to cope with disclosure issues.

Mother–Child Relations in Adulthood

Based on the Model of Family Change, the authors examined how mother–child relations among non-Western immigrants and natives were characterized by patterns of solidarity. Latent Class Analysis was applied to data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (2004) on the practical and emotional support that Dutch, Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, and Antillean adult children gave and received from their mother ( N = 1,267). A similar five-class typology in all origin groups revealed three types of full-interdependence (“reciprocal,” “upward,” and “downward”), emotional-interdependent, and independent mother–child relationship. Whereas full-interdependence prevailed among immigrants, Dutch were more characterized by downward-interdependence and emotional-interdependence. Irrespective of the child’s origin, independent relationships were uncommon. The results evidence the importance of emotional intergenerational ties in adulthood across families of different origins.

Parental goals and talk with toddlers

Myriad studies support a relation between parental beliefs and behaviors. This study adds to the literature by focusing on the specific relationship between parental goals and their communication with toddlers. Do parents with different goals talk about different topics with their children? Parents' goals for their 30-month-olds were gathered using semi-structured interviews with 47 primary caregivers, whereas the topics of conversations that took place during interactions were investigated via coding videotapes of observations in the home. Parents' short- and long-term goals spanned several areas including educational, social-emotional, developmental and pragmatic goals. Parental utterances most frequently focused on pragmatic issues, followed by play and academic topics. Parents who mentioned long-term educational goals devoted more of their talk to academic topics and less to pragmatic topics, controlling for socio-economic status. Thus, parental goals differ and these differences relate to the conversations parents engage in with their children.

Vocabulary development in Greek children: a cross-linguistic comparison using the Language Development Survey

This study investigated vocabulary size and vocabulary composition in Greek children aged 1;6 to 2;11 using a Greek adaptation of Rescorla's Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989). Participants were 273 toddlers coming from monolingual Greek-speaking families. Greek LDS data were compared with US LDS data obtained from the instrument's normative sample (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). Vocabulary size increased markedly with age, but Greek toddlers appeared to get off to a slower start in early word learning than US children. The correlation between percentage word use scores in Greek and US samples was moderate in size, indicating considerable overlap but some differences. Common nouns were the largest category among the fifty most frequent words in both samples. Numbers of adjectives and verbs were comparable across languages, but people and closed-class words were more numerous in the Greek sample. Finally, Greek late talkers showed similar patterns of vocabulary composition to those observed in typically developing Greek children.

Distal and proximal parenting as alternative parenting strategies during infants’ early months of life: A cross-cultural study

Cultures differ with respect to parenting strategies already during infancy. Distal parenting, i.e., face-to-face context and object stimulation, is prevalent in urban educated middle-class families of Western cultures; proximal parenting, i.e., body contact and body stimulation, is prevalent in rural, low-educated farmer families. Parents from urban educated families in cultures with a more interdependent history use both strategies. Besides these cultural preferences, little is known about the relations between these styles as well as the behavioural systems constituting them. In this study therefore, the relations between the styles and the constituting behaviours were analysed in samples that differ with respect to their preferences of distal and proximal parenting. The hypothesized differences between the samples and the negative relationship between distal and proximal parenting, as well as between the respective behavioural systems can clearly be demonstrated. Furthermore, the impact of the sociodemographic variables with respect to the parenting strategies can be shown. Results were discussed as supporting two alternative parenting strategies that serve different socialization goals.

Parents' Personal and Cultural Beliefs Regarding Young Children

Parental beliefs about desired socialization goals and the reasons why these goals were important were examined among Aboriginal and European Canadian mothers. These beliefs were examined on personal (desired by mothers for their own children) and cultural (perceived to be desired by mothers from each cultural group) levels; 50 Aboriginal and 51 European Canadian mothers of preschoolers were interviewed regarding their parenting beliefs. Commonalities in the tasks that mothers regard as relevant to a young child's social development were found across both groups. However, several goals, behaviors, and qualities were endorsed differently by mothers from the two cultures, according to cultural values and ideologies that were significant for each culture. Moreover, mothers did not automatically accept all culturally sanctioned values but held these values as significant for their own children in different degrees. The study highlights the significance of contemporary sociocultural issues in the cultural study of child socialization.