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Lecture PowerPoint Slides

Benjamin Cheung

Chapter 5—Development and Socialization

Cultural Psychology

Third Edition

Steven J. Heine

Chapter Objectives

In this chapter, you will:

Discuss empirical evidence for a sensitive period for language acquisition

Discuss empirical evidence for a sensitive period for cultural acquisition

Describe how age of immigration and years in the host culture can affect one’s identification with the host culture

Discuss how the emergence of cultural differences can be subject to developmental trajectories

Understand how different cultures prioritize different values in creating sleeping arrangements

Define each value demonstrated to impact sleeping arrangements

Compare and contrast each parenting style

Understand the different outcomes resulting from different parenting techniques across various cultures

Chapter Objectives

In this chapter, you will:

Define noun bias

Explain why cultural differences in noun bias emerge

Explain why cultural differences exist regarding the emergence of the Terrible Twos

Discuss why there is cultural variation in expectations about adolescent rebellion

Understand the different ways in which education affects the ways in which we think

Explain the reasons behind cultural differences in math performance

Overriding Theme in This Chapter

Cultural norms (and cultural differences) come about as a result of the different ways that people are socialized into the world.

Out of Many, One Cultural Life

Despite entering the world with the ability to internalize any cultural world, we generally end up internalizing one.

Is this due to restricted exposure, or general inability to internalize multiple worlds?

Role of Sensitive Periods

Sensitive period = span of organism’s life when it can gain a new skill relatively easily

Skill acquisition subsequent to this becomes much more difficult.

Evident across many different species, across many domains

Not applicable to all domains of learning in humans but applies to language and culture acquisition

Sensitive Periods—Language Acquisition

We enter the world capable of speaking any language; so why do we have trouble learning second/third/fourth languages?

Even as infants, our brains begin to pay selective attention to sounds/phonemes from the language most familiar to us.

As brain becomes accustomed to a particular language’s phonemes, it also loses ability to perceive phonemes not used in this language.

Sensitive Periods—Language Acquisition

Example of loss of phoneme perception:

Hindi: /b/

/bh/

English: /b/

Example of loss of phoneme perception:

Hindi has two phonemes, a b and an aspirated b, that sound different to native speakers, but the same to English speakers since English makes no such differentiation.

This inability to detect a difference has been shown to be predicted by age.

Sensitive Periods—Language Acquisition

The brain processes languages differently depending on age of acquisition

If both languages acquired early:

If second language acquired late:

The brain also processes languages differently depending on age of acquisition.

First and second languages are processed in the same regions if learned early on.

Second language is processed in a different region if acquired much later.

This suggests that the brain is flexible at restructuring itself and accommodating different linguistic inputs, but only during a sensitive period.

Stories of Rochom P’ngieng (left), Genie, and the Wild Boy of Aveyron (right) provide real-world examples of language learning (or lack thereof) after the sensitive period closes.

Sensitive Periods—Language Acquisition

All three had little to no exposure to spoken language growing up.

They were never able to grasp grammatical structures of their respective languages.

Sensitive Periods—Culture

Discuss: Can culture exist without language, or vice versa?

Culture and Language are both cultural meaning systems acquired through social learning; some argue that they are inseparable.

Accordingly, just as language acquisition has a sensitive period, so, too, should cultural acquisition.

Discuss: Can culture exist without language, or vice versa?

Sensitive Periods—Culture

Cheung, Chudek, and Heine (2011) investigated the existence of a sensitive period for acquiring culture.

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

Analyses focused on finding the role of (a) age of immigration; and (b) years spent in Canada.

Sensitive Periods—Culture

Immigration before age 15 = greater identification with Canadian culture as one spends more time in Canada

Immigration after age 15 = no relationship between time spent in Canada and Canadian identification

Suggests 15 years of age as end of sensitive period for identifying with another culture

Revealing Differences with Age

Because we are born open to learning any culture:

Younger children across cultures should be relatively similar because there has been relatively little socialization.

Older adults should show greater cultural differences between cultures due to more socialization.

Evidence backs up these ideas.

Babies and Their Mommies

One big source of differences in socialization: infants’ interactions with their mothers

Keller (2007) found vast cultural differences in mother-infant interactions

Any differences found in infants’ interactions with their mothers is of great importance: these interactions mark the beginning of children’s socialization process.

Mothers from some cultures engage in much more physical contact with their infants than mothers from other cultures.

Mothers from some cultures also spend much more time in face-to-face interaction contexts with their children.

Babies and Their Mommies

Where Should They Sleep?

Discuss: As a child, did you sleep in a) your own room; b) your own bed in parents’ room; c) same bed in parents’ room?

Discuss: Is any of these answers more “right” or “better for the child” than the others? If so, why?

Consider your own childhood (if such memories still exist). Did you sleep in your own room? Did you sleep in your own bed/crib in your parents’ room? Did you sleep in your parents’ bed with them?

Is any one of those answers more “right” than the others, or “better for the child” than the others? If so, what makes it so?

Several surveys have found variability in sleeping arrangements across cultures

Notably, most societies co-sleep (children sleep in parents’ room or in parents’ bed)

The United States is often the only country to have a society where parents have a separate room for the child.

Within the United States, co-sleeping is common among many subcultures (e.g. Asian Americans, African-Americans).

Such practices become so entrenched that they become “moralized” —acting to the contrary suggests abnormal parent-parent or parent-child relationships.

Where Should They Sleep?

Shweder et al. (1995) found that such differences may be due to cultural differences in value prioritization.

A comparison of Indian and American participants found that they focused on different values when deciding who sleeps with whom.

Where Should They Sleep?

Indians valued the following (in descending order of importance):

Incest avoidance = opposite-sex post-pubescent family members cannot share a room

Protection of vulnerable = young children should not be left alone at night

Female chastity anxiety = unmarried post-pubescent women must be chaperoned to prevent them from engaging in sexual activities

Respect for hierarchy = post-pubescent males are given social status by not having to sleep with parents

Americans valued the following (in descending order of importance)

Incest avoidance

Sacred couple = married couples should be given own space for emotional intimacy and sexual privacy

Autonomy ideal = younger children should be self-reliant and take care of themselves

Culture and Parenting

Effects of parenting generally studied under Baumrind’s (1997) typology:

Authoritarian: high demands, strict rules, little open parent-child dialogue, parent-centered

Authoritative: high expectations of maturity, parent-child dialogue about understanding feelings, independence encouraged (within limits), parental warmth associations, child-oriented

Permissive: lots of dialogue, few limits/controls, lots of parental warmth

Culture and Parenting

Studies usually show authoritative parenting to yield best results in terms of school achievement and perceived parental warmth, among others.

But some suggest the typology is laden with Western notions of development.

It is common in many other cultures to have a strict, parent-centred parenting style; but these do not fit neatly into Baumrind’s “authoritarian” style.

In many Asian cultures, parenting style changes according to child’s stage of development.

There is more explicit communication of parental warmth in Western societies, but more implicit communication of it in Asian societies.

“Authoritarian” style fails to capture nuances of culture-specific notions of parenting styles (e.g. jiao xun or training, in Chinese parenting).

Culture and Parenting

Yet Another Early Socialization Experience

Noun bias = children’s tendency to think more about, and in terms of, nouns relative to verbs and other relation words

Once assumed to be universal; but little evidence exists for it in many other cultural groups

Yet Another Early Socialization Experience

One explanation: certain languages have verbs in salient places in speech, like nouns are in English

English: I ate the papaya.

Subject

Verb

Object (more salient position)

Subject

Object

Verb (more salient position)

Korean: 나는 파파야를 먹었어요.

Literally: I papaya ate.

Sounds like: Na-neun pa-payareul meog-eoss-eoyo.

One explanation: certain languages have verbs in salient places in speech, like nouns are in English.

Yet Another Early Socialization Experience

One explanation: certain languages have verbs in salient places in speech, like nouns are in English

*Some languages even allow nouns to be dropped.

English: I love you.

Korean: 사랑해요.

Sounds like: Saranghae-yo.

Literally: Love.

Another explanation: mother-child communications have different focuses.

While North American mothers focus on objects as independent agents, East Asian mothers portray objects as they relate to other objects.

This difference leads children to attend to different things.

Yet Another Early Socialization Experience

Growing Pains—Terrible Twos

Terrible twos = a developmental milestone in the West

Important for children to assert autonomy and individuality

Serves as foundation for future mature relationships

But this developmental stage is not seen universally.

Some cultures view noncompliance as immaturity, not a step toward personal growth.

Growing Pains—Adolescent Rebellion

Adolescent rebellion = a developmental milestone considered by Western researchers to be natural

Assumed to be due to hormonal changes in puberty

Characterized by disobedience, delinquency, and defiance of authority

But examining ethnographies of 175 pre-industrialized societies revealed that over half of them did not associate adolescence with antisocial behavior.

Some factors that predict the existence of “adolescent rebellion” appear to be individualism and modernity.

Effects of Education

Question: Which object does not belong?

How did you come to your conclusion?

Question: Given a group of four objects—

a hammer, a saw, a log, and a hatchet, which object does not belong?

How did you eliminate the choice?

Effects of Education

Luria (1976) posed the same question to people without formal education

In their responses, they created groups based on relationships rather than some shared attribute.

If by relationships

If by attributions

Effects of Education

Evidence across a variety of cultures show that formal education affects how people reason.

Formal education allows people to think abstractly, and go beyond knowledge derived from direct experience

Also affects people’s ability to create taxonomic categories (categories based on some shared attribute, or some rule)

Case Study: East Asians and Math

Stevenson and Stigler’s (1992) large-scale study on math performance found some interesting trends:

Scores in East Asian schools were more similar (less spread out) to each other’s than American schools.

East Asian schools were much better than American schools.

Cultural difference became more pronounced as children received more education.

Case Study: East Asians and Math

Several explanations:

Math is taught differently between cultures (viz. school days in session, amount of homework, etc.)

Cultural differences in the value of education among both mothers and children

Cultural differences in how high expectations are that mothers have for their children

East Asian numbering systems lend themselves to be manipulated and understood more easily than does the English numbering system

The authors proposed several explanations:

Math is taught differently between cultures (viz., school days in session, amount of homework, etc.)

Cultural differences in the value of education among both mothers and children

Cultural differences in how high expectations are that mothers have for their children

East Asian numbering systems lend themselves to be manipulated and understood more easily than does the English numbering system

Summary

We are born ready to acquire any language and culture, but a sensitive period limits what we can learn easily.

Cultural differences in socialization experiences (particularly parenting and formal education) are pervasive and come to engender larger cultural differences as one grows up.

Discussion

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