We focus our review on three universal tasks of human development: relationship formation, knowledge acquisition, and the balance between autonomy and relatedness at adolescence. We present evidence that each task can be addressed through two deeply different cultural pathways through development: the pathways of independence and interdependence. Whereas core theories in developmental psychology are universalistic in their intentions, they in fact presuppose the independent pathway of development. Because the independent pathway is therefore well-known in psychology, we focus a large part of our review on empirically documenting the alternative, interdependent pathway for each developmental task. We also present three theoretical approaches to culture and development: the ecocultural, the sociohistorical, and the cultural values approach. We argue that an understanding of cultural pathways through human development requires all three approaches. We review evidence linking values (cultural values approach)...

Cultural Pathways Through Universal Development

This paper conceptualizes cultural models about the developmental period of infancy. The models are derived from existing literature and our own research. We are especially focusing on observational s

Socialization for Competence: Cultural Models of Infancy

The present study compares conceptions about parenting in two cultural communities that may be expected to hold different views on parent–child relationships. Sociodemographically diverse samples of 46 Northern German and 39 West African Nso women evaluated parenting behavior observed in 10 Nso and 10 German videotaped mother–infant interaction sequences. The individual evaluations were assessed in group contexts. The statements were analyzed with respect to their reference to parenting systems and interaction mechanisms as conceptualized in the component model of parenting. As expected, the Nso respondents addressed primary care, body contact and body stimulation more often than the German respondents who focused more on face-to-face communication and exclusive attention. Contrary to our expectations, distress regulation was addressed more often by the German respondents. Quantitative analyses are combined with the qualitative elaboration of the respondents’ evaluative comments. The identified ideas about parenting are discussed as reflecting the conscious nature of parenting as a shared cultural activity and related to cultural goals.

Conceptions of Parenting in Different Cultural Communities: The Case of West African Nso and Northern German Women

Communication with children plays a crucial role not only for cognitive and social-emotional development but also in a more general sense for an understanding of self and self in relation to others. Research from linguistic anthropology and cultural developmental psychology have shown that there exists a great variety of cultural genres of communicating with children that are in line with the relevant broader cultural ideologies of good child care. Culture, communication, and self-development are inextricably intertwined. Culturally distinct communicative practices in which children participate will therefore ultimately lead to different cultural developmental pathways. While traditional research in developmental psychology has focused on mother–child dyads and experimental designs there is an increasing recognition of the need for naturalistic studies of everyday communication with children including their broader social network.

Mother-child communication: Cultural differences

This paper is aimed at analyzing verbal and nonverbal strategies in terms of body contact, face-to-face contact, and discourse style during the first three months of life in two cultural communitie...

Developing patterns of parenting in two cultural communities

The infant-directed speech of Wolof-speaking Senegalese mothers and French-speaking mothers living in Paris were compared to relate infantdirected communicative acts to the value system of the society to which the speaker belongs, and to describe the child's place in those societies. Motherinfant linguistic interactions with 4-month-old infants were recorded (five dyads in the French group and four in the Wolof group). The discourse variables of the pragmatic and semantic categories in the mothers' speech were analysed. The cross-cultural analysis included a comparison of the conventional versus shifted use of person markers by the mothers in the two cultures. The results demonstrated some features common to both groups, namely, a high percentage of expressive speech acts and the importance of affect-related statements. Some culture-specific emphases and tendencies were also noted. Whereas the French mothers' conversational exchanges with their infants were dyadic in organisation and centred on the immedi...

Maternal Speech to 4-month-old Infants in Two Cultures: Wolof and French

Conventional and displaced uses of pronouns in maternal speech to refer to the baby were investigated in a developmental study of six mother-infant dyads using video-recordings of their free play at three, seven and ten months. These pronominal uses were analysed in a number of semantic contexts to determine how interactive situations influence the use of different types of pronouns. Results show that third- and first-person pronouns occur significantly more often in the semantic context of affect-oriented activities than in the semantic context of goal-directed activities. For second-person pronouns the results are the opposite. The contrast found between these two contexts, i.e. where the child is presented as the agent of a meaningful activity or not, shows how the place constructed for the baby as an interlocutor in maternal speech evolves with age. This study underlines the part the third person plays with its descriptive value in the acquisition of the system of pronouns.

Jacqueline Rabain-Jamin

Papers

Maternal Speech to 4-month-old Infants in Two Cultures: Wolof and French

Playing with pronouns in French maternal speech to prelingual infants.