Culture and gender influence self-construal in mother-preschooler reminiscing.

The present study examined how culture and gender influence the self-construal of mothers and their four-year-olds during dyadic reminiscing. Participants were 21 Thai (11 girls, 10 boys) and 21 American (10 girls, 11 boys) mother-child dyads. Thai dyads exhibited a more interdependent self-construal, whereas American dyads exhibited a more independent self-construal, as measured by personal and group pronoun usage and discussions of behavioral expectations, thoughts and feelings, and personal attributes. Girls and boys differed in the extent to which their self-construal was defined in relation to others in their social groups, for example girls mentioned teachers and classmates more than boys. Culture and gender also interacted in influencing self-construal, with Thai girls (but not boys) mentioning family members more than American counterparts. These findings suggest that the development of children's self-construal, particularly the extent to which children are socialized to view and express themselves independently of others or interdependently with others, differs depending on culture and gender. This work contributes to our understanding of the relationship between autobiographical memory and self during the formative years. Starting as early as preschool, our social environment influences the way we remember our experiences, which in turn shapes our self-construal.

Thai and American mothers socialize preschoolers' emotional development differently.

Cultures vary in beliefs about appropriate display of emotion. Children rely on adults to help them understand emotional experiences and display emotions in a culturally appropriate manner. The present study compared how emotion display differs between Thai and American mother-child interactions during preschool. Language samples from 21 Thai and 21 American mother-child dyads were elicited using prompted reminiscing, book reading, toy play, and child personal narrative tasks. Results revealed group differences in emotion talk and behavior. American dyads expressed more intense emotions during interactions compared to Thai dyads. American dyads also displayed more emotion behaviors than Thai dyads, whereas Thai dyads used more emotion words compared to American dyads. Additionally, there were gender differences in the expression of emotion, with boy dyads more emotionally intense than girl dyads in both groups. Boys displayed more negative emotion behaviors compared to girls during prompted reminiscing, whereas girls used more negative emotion words than boys during the personal narrative task. These findings demonstrate cultural and gender differences in socialization goals and practices regarding emotion display and underscore the influence of mothers' scaffolding on children's emotional development. This research reveals the variability in beliefs and values that underlie emotional development across sociocultural contexts.

Diversity in bilingual child language acquisition research: A commentary on.

Kidd and Garcia (2022) report that language acquisition studies are skewed towards monolingual and English-speaking populations. This commentary considers Kidd and Garcia's arguments in light of our research on mother-preschooler discourse and non-verbal communication in Thai monolingual and Thai-English bilingual children. We discuss lessons learned from testing linguistically diverse children and underscore the importance of research on non-WEIRD populations. We advocate for the inclusion of children who speak understudied languages and those who speak multiple languages in developmental science.

The role of syntactic cues in monolingual and bilingual two-year-olds' novel word disambiguation.

Although linguistic and nonlinguistic cues help young children infer meaning when presented with unfamiliar words, little is known about how syntactic information and early bilingual experience shape word learning. This study examined how monolingual and bilingual 24- to 30-month-olds' disambiguation of novel words during a mutual exclusivity task differs as a function of syntactic cues, age, and productive vocabulary. English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals were presented with familiar and novel objects within a syntactic context (e.g., "Give me the blick!") or in isolation (e.g., "Blick!"). Results showed that monolinguals and bilinguals adhered to mutual exclusivity more often when provided with syntactic cues than when those cues were absent. Furthermore, bilinguals' mutually exclusive disambiguation of novel words increased with age, but only when syntactic cues were available. These results provide insight into factors that influence children's disambiguation of novel words. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Culture at play: A cross-cultural comparison of mother-child communication during toy play.

Maternal scaffolding and four-year-old children's linguistic skills were examined during toy play. Participants were 21 American-English monolingual and 21 Thai monolingual mother-child dyads. Results revealed cross-cultural differences in conversation styles between the two groups. American dyads adopted a high-elaborative style relative to Thai dyads. American and Thai mothers utilized unique sets of elicitation strategies to facilitate different aspects of children's language development, specifically American mothers focused on children's narrative skills whereas Thai mothers emphasized vocabulary learning. The two groups of children showed distinct patterns of conversation, for example American children produced greater evaluative statements whereas Thai children repeated their mothers' utterances more, which aligned with socialization goals of each respective culture. Mother-child narrative styles also differed as a function of child gender. Additionally, significant positive correlations were observed between maternal and child linguistic measures. These findings provide evidence for cross-cultural variation in communicative styles and toy play practices of American and Thai mother-child dyads, which reflect the social norms of individualistic and collectivist cultures. More broadly, the present study suggests that dyadic engagement during play is important for children's development and socialization, as maternal speech transfers knowledge of culture-specific pragmatic rules that the children learn to apply in social interactions.

Cross-cultural differences in mother-preschooler book sharing practices in the United States and Thailand.

Cross-cultural differences in book sharing practices of American and Thai mother-preschooler dyads were examined. Twenty-one Thai monolingual and 21 American-English monolingual mothers and their four-year-olds completed a book sharing task. Results revealed narrative style differences between the American and Thai groups: American mothers adopted a high-elaborative story-builder style and used affirmations, descriptions, extensions, and recasting more than Thai mothers. Thai mothers adopted a low-elaborative story-teller style and used more attention directives and expansions than American mothers. American children produced longer narratives than their Thai peers, whereas Thai children repeated their mothers' utterances more than their American counterparts. Maternal and child narrative styles were associated. These results suggest that maternal scaffolding styles differ across cultures and influence children's developing narrative skills.

Maternal scaffolding styles and children's developing narrative skills: A cross-cultural comparison of autobiographical conversations in the US and Thailand.

Cross-cultural differences in reminiscing styles between American and Thai mothers and their four-year-olds were examined. Twenty-one English monolingual and 21 Thai monolingual mother-child dyads participated in a Prompted Reminiscing task (Task 1). Children also completed a Child Personal Narrative task with the researcher (Task 2). Results from the first task revealed that dyads from the two cultures differed in the elaborateness of their conversations. American mothers adopted a high-elaborative style, characterized by greater use of evaluative feedback and scaffolding strategies including descriptions, extensions, labels, and recasts, compared to their Thai counterparts. Thai mothers adopted a low-elaborative style, evidenced by greater use of directives and requests for repetitions. Similar to their mothers, American children adopted a high-elaborative style compared to their Thai peers. Findings from the second task demonstrated that interlocutor scaffolding influences children's communicative styles. When reminiscing without their mother, American children produced longer narratives than their Thai peers. The present work suggested that maternal elicitation strategies differ across cultures and play a role in shaping children's developing narrative skills. By interacting with more competent social partners, particularly their mothers, children start to internalize culture-specific socialization goals and learn to converse in a culturally-appropriate way as early as preschool.

Listening to speech and non-speech sounds activates phonological and semantic knowledge differently.

How does the mind process linguistic and non-linguistic sounds? The current study assessed the different ways that spoken words (e.g., "dog") and characteristic sounds (e.g., ) provide access to phonological information (e.g., word-form of "dog") and semantic information (e.g., knowledge that a dog is associated with a leash). Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we found that listening to words prompted rapid phonological activation, which was then followed by semantic access. The opposite pattern emerged for sounds, with early semantic access followed by later retrieval of phonological information. Despite differences in the time courses of conceptual access, both words and sounds elicited robust activation of phonological and semantic knowledge. These findings inform models of auditory processing by revealing the pathways between speech and non-speech input and their corresponding word forms and concepts, which influence the speed, magnitude, and duration of linguistic and nonlinguistic activation.

Bilingual Cortical Control of Between- and Within-Language Competition.

The human capacity to master multiple languages is remarkable and leads to structural and functional changes in the brain. Understanding how the brain accommodates multiple languages simultaneously is crucial to developing a complete picture of our species' linguistic capabilities. To examine the neural mechanisms involved in processing two languages, we looked at cortical activation in Spanish-English bilinguals in response to phonological competition either between two languages or within a language. Participants recognized spoken words in a visual world task while their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Results revealed that between-language competition recruited a larger network of frontal control and basal ganglia regions than within-language competition. Bilinguals also recruited more neural resources to manage between-language competition from the dominant language compared to competition from the less dominant language. Additionally, bilinguals' activation of the basal ganglia was inversely correlated with their executive function ability, suggesting that bilinguals compensated for lower levels of cognitive control by recruiting a broader neural network to manage more difficult tasks. These results provide evidence for differences in neural responses to linguistic competition between versus within languages, and demonstrate the brain's remarkable plasticity, where language experience can change neural processing.