ABSTRACT
This study aims to analyze culture-specific development of maternal interactional behavior longitudinally. Rural Cameroonian Nso mothers (n = 72) and German middle-class mothers (n = 106) were observed in free-play interactions with their 3- and 6-month-old infants. Results reveal the expected shift from a social to a nonsocial focus only in the German middle-class mothers' play interactions but not the rural Nso mothers' play. Nso mothers continue their proximal interactional style with a focus on body contact and body stimulation, whereas German middle-class mothers prefer a distal style of interaction with increasing object-centeredness. These cultural differences are in line with broader cultural models and become more accentuated as the infants grow older.
Subject(s)
Cross-Cultural Comparison , Maternal Behavior/ethnology , Maternal Behavior/psychology , Mother-Child Relations , Mothers/psychology , Rural Population/statistics & numerical data , Adult , Female , Germany , Humans , Infant , Longitudinal Studies , Male , Play and Playthings/psychologyABSTRACT
The present three-wave longitudinal study analyzed the development of declarative memory in N=92 infants (12-, 18- and 24-month-olds) using a deferred imitation task. As expected, overall memory performance improved throughout the second year. Previous research is also replicated insofar as stability of inter-individual differences was low to moderate within this age range. In addition, cluster analyses identified two developmental groups showing different growth and different stability patterns. Multivariate analyses revealed specificities in language and self-development in these two developmental groups having different developmental trajectories.
Subject(s)
Child Development , Memory , Analysis of Variance , Child, Preschool , Cluster Analysis , Female , Humans , Infant , Longitudinal Studies , Male , Multivariate Analysis , Neuropsychological TestsABSTRACT
Three experiments using a visual half-field technique were conducted to address the question of lateralised processing of three-dimensional aspects of visual stimuli. We used drawings of "possible" and "impossible" triangles and quadrilaterals. In one condition subjects had to decide whether these stimuli were possible (i.e., the depicted figures could exist in the three-dimensional world) whereas in the second condition the task was to distinguish between triangular and quadrangular shapes. All experiments revealed an interaction of task and visual field on discrimination indices (d') suggesting a dissociation of the processing of two- and three-dimensional aspects of visual stimuli. These results are discussed with respect to known perceptual differences between the cerebral hemispheres.
