Cross-Cultural Differences in the Generation of Novel Ideas in Middle Childhood.

Innovation and creativity have recently been in the center of the debate on human cultural evolution. Yet, we know very little about childrens' developing capacity to generate novel ideas, as a key component of innovation and creativity, in different cultural contexts. Here, we assessed 8- to 9-year-old children from an autonomous and a relational cultural context, namely Münster (urban Germany; n = 29) and Banten (rural Cameroon; n = 29). These cultural contexts vary largely in their ecology, social structure, and educational system, as well as the cultural models on children's individual development and thinking. Therefore, they provide an optimal contrast to investigate cultural similarities and differences in development of creative capacities. We applied classical divergent thinking tasks, namely an alternative uses task and a pattern association task. In these tasks, children are asked to generate as many ideas as possible what an object could be used for or what a pattern could be. First, our study revealed a good internal consistency and inter-task correlations for the assessment of children's fluency and the generation of unique ideas in both cultures. Second, and most critically, we found significantly higher levels of creative capacities in children from Münster in contrast to Banten. This was reflected in both a higher number of ideas (fluency) and a higher number of unique ideas (uniqueness). Third, looking at the type of answers that children gave in the alternative uses task, we found that children from Münster and Banten uttered a similar number of conventional ideas, but that children from Münster uttered more ideas to manipulate an object, invent novel things with an object, and involve an object in play or pretend play, or in a fantasy story. This demonstrates that early creative development is strongly influenced by the cultural context and substantiates the cultural nature of human cognitive development.

The Development of Context-Sensitive Attention Across Cultures: The Impact of Stimulus Familiarity.

Across cultures, there are marked differences in visual attention that gradually develop between 4 and 6 years of age. According to the social orientation hypothesis, people in interdependent cultures should show more pronounced context sensitivity than people in independent cultures. However, according to the differential familiarity hypothesis, the focus on the salient object should also depend on the familiarity of the stimulus; people will focus more on the focal object (i.e., less context sensitivity), if it is a less familiar stimulus. To examine the differences in visual attention between interdependent and independent cultures while taking into account stimulus familiarity, this study used an eye-tracking paradigm to assess visual attention of participants between 4 and 20 years who came from urban middle-class families from Germany (n = 53; independent culture) or from Nso families in a rural area in Cameroon (n = 50; interdependent culture). Each participant saw four sets of stimuli, which varied in terms of their familiarity: (1) standard stimuli, (2) non-semantic stimuli, both more familiar to participants from Germany, (3) culture-specific matched stimuli, and (4) simple stimuli, similarly familiar to the individuals of both cultures. Overall, the findings show that mean differences in visual attention between cultures were highly contingent on the stimuli sets: In support of the social orientation hypothesis, German participants showed a higher object focus for the culture-specific matched stimuli, while there were no cultural differences for the simple set. In support of the differential familiarity hypothesis, the Cameroonian participants showed a higher object focus for the less familiar sets, namely the standard and non-semantic sets. Furthermore, context sensitivity correlated across all the sets. In sum, these findings suggest that the familiarity of a stimulus strongly affects individuals' visual attention, meaning that stimulus familiarity needs to be considered when investigating culture-specific differences in attentional styles.

Visual attention in 5-year-olds from three different cultures.

Cognitive processes differ markedly between children from different cultures, with best evidence for attention to visual scenes and the activities of others. Children from urban Western cultures tend to focus on focal objects, whereas children from urban East-Asian cultures rather attend to contextual elements of a visual scene. Regarding the attention to others' activities, children from subsistence-based farming communities often observe several activities simultaneously, while children from urban Western contexts focus on activities sequentially. Here we assessed 144 5-year-old children from three prototypical cultural contexts (urban Germany, rural Cameroon, urban Japan) to investigate variations in attention across a variety of tasks. Attention to the elements of a visual scene was assessed in an optical illusion task, in picture descriptions and an eye-tracking paradigm. Attention to and learning from others' activities was assessed in a parallel action task and a rule-based game. Some tasks indicated higher context-sensitive attention in urban Japan, while other findings indicated higher context-sensitive attention in urban Germany. Levels of parallel attention and learning from others' activities were lower in rural Cameroonian children compared to the urban samples. Across tasks, the visual attention measures were unrelated. These findings substantiate that culture has a profound influence on early cognitive development, already in the preschool years. Furthermore, they raise critical questions about the early origins of cultural specificities in attention and the generalizability of attention phenomena beyond specific tasks and populations.

Waiting for the Second Treat: Developing Culture-Specific Modes of Self-Regulation.

The development of self-regulation has been studied primarily in Western middle-class contexts and has, therefore, neglected what is known about culturally varying self-concepts and socialization strategies. The research reported here compared the self-regulatory competencies of German middle-class (N = 125) and rural Cameroonian Nso preschoolers (N = 76) using the Marshmallow test (Mischel, 2014). Study 1 revealed that 4-year-old Nso children showed better delay-of-gratification performance than their German peers. Study 2 revealed that culture-specific maternal socialization goals and interaction behaviors were related to delay-of-gratification performance. Nso mothers' focus on hierarchical relational socialization goals and responsive control seems to support children's delay-of-gratification performance more than German middle-class mothers' emphasis on psychological autonomous socialization goals and sensitive, child-centered parenting.

Infants' Social Experiences in Three African Sociocultural Contexts.

This study introduces a peri-urban context of poverty to the study of child development in Africa in contrast to the more typical assessments in middle-class and rural contexts. Spot observations were used to assess universal caregiving behaviors toward seventy-six 3-month-old infants. Results show that middle-class infants experienced distal parenting behaviors instantiated by mothers, whereas rural children experienced proximal parenting practices in interactions with others. Infants growing up in poverty had mothers and other caretakers involved at mostly low levels. They experienced low levels of body contact, body stimulation, and object stimulation, and high levels of face-to-face positions. The study indicates that caregiving in the context of poverty does not necessarily follow familiar pathways and needs to be contextualized accordingly.

The development of mirror self-recognition in different sociocultural contexts.

The overarching goal of the present study was to trace the development of mirror self-recognition (MSR), as an index of toddlers' sense of themselves and others as autonomous intentional agents, in different sociocultural environments. A total of 276 toddlers participated in the present study. Toddlers were either 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21 months old at their first assessment and completed weekly MSR assessments over a period of 6 weeks (N = 1,577). The toddlers and their families were from one of four sociocultural contexts: A prototypical autonomous sociocultural context (urban German middle-class families, n = 82), two prototypical relational sociocultural contexts (rural Indian and rural Nso families living in subsistence-based ecologies, n = 54 and n = 80, respectively), or an autonomous-relational sociocultural context (urban Indian middle-class families, n = 60). In line with previous research, we hypothesized that the onset of MSR would be earlier in sociocultural contexts in which mothers value and support their toddlers' development of autonomy. In addition, we considered three factors that covary with culture and that might compromise the cross-cultural validity of MSR as a behavioral measure of toddlers' sense of themselves as independent agents: familiarity with mirrors, culture-specific norms of expressive behavior, and motivation for tactile exploration. Finally, we analyzed toddlers' reactions to their specular image (e.g., pointing, playmate, and experimenting behavior) across time and culture as well as their relation to MSR. The results indicate that MSR increased with age in all sociocultural contexts. In line with our hypotheses, MSR rates were higher in the autonomy-supporting cultural context (urban German, urban Indian) than they were in the relational cultural contexts(rural Indian, rural Nso). The sociocultural differences in MSR could not, however, be explained by differences in mirror familiarity or culture-specific norms of expressive behavior. The cross-cultural validity of MSR as an index of toddlers' sense of themselves as independent agents is further supported by positive associations between MSR and pronoun use in all sociocultural contexts. Cross-cultural variation in MSR could best be explained by caretakers' emphasis on autonomous socialization goals, followed by toddlers' motivation for tactile exploration. These findings enhance our current understanding of development in more general terms by adding one more puzzle piece to the emerging picture of culture-specific developmental pathways. In order to understand developmental processes, one must take into account caretakers' cultural models and exercise caution when generalizing beyond the specific sociocultural context at hand.

Mother-infant interaction during the first 3 months: the emergence of culture-specific contingency patterns.

This study analyzed German and Nso mothers' auditory, proximal, and visual contingent responses to their infants' nondistress vocalizations in postnatal Weeks 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. Visual contingency scores increased whereas proximal contingency scores decreased over time for the independent (German urban middle-class, N = 20) but not the interdependent sociocultural context (rural Nso farmers, N = 24). It seems, therefore, that culture-specific differences in the modal patterns of contingent responsiveness emerge during the 2nd and 3rd months of life. This differential development was interpreted as the result of the interplay between maturational processes associated with the 2-month shift that are selectively integrated and reinforced in culture-specific mother-infant interaction.

Similarities and differences in contingency experiences of 3-month-olds across sociocultural contexts.

In this study we analyzed similarities and differences in the contingency experiences of 159 three-month-olds from 6 sociocultural contexts. Across contexts, caretakers responded with similar overall contingency levels, vocalizations provided the dominant response as well as the most salient signal, and there was a relative signal-response correspondence. With two exceptions, infants in all samples most often got responses addressing their sense of hearing, followed by the sense of touch and then sight. In response to nondistress vocalizations, infants from independent contexts (Berlin, Los Angeles) experienced more contingent responses addressing their sense of sight than infants from autonomous-related (Beijing, Delhi, urban Nso from Cameroon) or interdependent contexts (rural Nso). Rural Nso infants experienced more contingent responses addressing their sense of touch than infants from all other but the Los Angeles sample. These results support the interpretation of contingent responsiveness as a part of the intuitive parenting program that manifests differentially depending on culture-specific emphases on distal and proximal caretaking.

Grandmaternal and maternal ethnotheories about early child care.

Parenting ethnotheories represent an organized set of ideas about parents, children, and development that are shared by members of cultural groups. Because these ideas and beliefs reflect cultural models and serve as representational frameworks for parenting strategies, they need to change with historical time. To analyze these changes, the authors interviewed mothers and grandmothers of 3-month-old infants in 4 different cultural environments--urban German middle-class families (41 mothers, 22 grandmothers), urban Indian middle-class families (36 mothers, 12 grandmothers), rural Cameroonian Nso families (29 mothers, 20 grandmothers), and urban Cameroonian Nso families (28 mothers, 12 grandmothers)--in regard to their ideas about infant care. The interviews were analyzed according to content and discourse style. The results reveal that there is not only transmission of parental beliefs from one generation to the next but also variation in adaptation to changing environments. Although the global trend toward more independent cultural models of parenting is confirmed, the magnitude of change varies across the different cultural environments.

The timing of verbal/vocal communications between mothers and their infants: a longitudinal cross-cultural comparison.

Early dialogues between parent and child constitute an important factor for the acquisition of culture and hence verbal interaction is considered to be a universal parenting system. Parenting strategies and socialization practices are strongly influenced by the cultural conception of the self, prototypically defined as the model of independence and interdependence. Our study focuses on the temporal organization of spontaneous verbal/vocal behavior of 20 German middle-class and 28 Cameroonian Nso mother-infant dyads. The infants and their mothers were observed weekly in a 5 min free-play interaction scene from 0 to 3 months of age. We hypothesized to find different amounts of vocalization time, synchronous vocalizations, and contingent maternal responses in the verbal/vocal patterns of the two samples. The findings indicate cross-cultural differences in the temporal structure of verbal/vocal interactions already during the first three months of life, reflecting underlying differences in the culture-specific modes of verbal interaction.

Developmental consequences of early parenting experiences: self-recognition and self-regulation in three cultural communities.

This study relates parenting of 3-month-old children to children's self-recognition and self-regulation at 18 to 20 months. As hypothesized, observational data revealed differences in the sociocultural orientations of the 3 cultural samples' parenting styles and in toddlers' development of self-recognition and self-regulation. Children of Cameroonian Nso farmers who experience a proximal parenting style develop self-regulation earlier, children of Greek urban middle-class families who experience a distal parenting style develop self-recognition earlier, and children of Costa Rican middle-class families who experience aspects of both distal and proximal parenting styles fall between the other 2 groups on both self-regulation and self-recognition. Results are discussed with respect to their implications for culturally informed developmental pathways.