Cultural Psychology by S.J. Heine (third edition) – Summary chapter 5

The development niche theory is a theoretical framework for understanding and analysing how culture shapes child development:

• Physical and social setting
  This regards the question of what the social setting provides for the child (e.g. nutrition).
• Customs and practices of child-rearing
  This regards the question of what the inherited and adapted ways of nurturing, entertaining, educating and protecting the child are.
• Caretaker’s psychology
  This regards the question of what parental ethno-theories (e.g. parenting styles) are used.

A sensitive period refers to a period of time in an organism’s development that allows for the relatively easy acquisition of a set of skills. There exists a sensitive period for language learning which is demonstrated by:

• The discrimination and categorization of phonemes in early life
• The development of accents after a sensitive period (i.e. puberty).
• Bilinguals representing language in the same area in Broca’s area.
• Feral children having great difficulty in learning a language.

There appears to be a sensitive period for culture learning. After the age of 15, people have greater difficulty with learning language. Exposure with the host culture increased identification with this culture, especially if this happens before the age of 15. The sensitive period for cultural learning could be influenced by the degree of integration in the new host culture. However, the existence of a sensitive period for culture learning is controversial.

There are four major differences in cultural variation in early developmental experiences:

• Personal space
  This regards how much space the child needs.
• Co-sleeping
  This regards what the attitude towards co-sleeping is and this reflects different values in a culture.
• Parenting style
  This regards what parenting style is used in order to raise the child.
• Noun bias
  This regards to how prevalent nouns, relative to verbs are in a young child’s vocabulary.

A lot of face-to-face contact, rather than bodily contact in infants can lead to more individualism. Parenting style can be seen as a continuum rather than distinct categories and the parenting style might change with the age of the child. The measurement of parenting styles fails to consider developmental stage (1), the fact that expression and perception of warmth depend on culture (2) and the role of training (3). The noun bias might reflect differences in language (e.g. nouns being in more salient positions) or differences in analytic or holistic reasoning.

There are different parenting styles:

1. Authoritarian parenting
   This is an approach which puts a high demand on children and there are strict rules and there is little open dialogue between the parent and the child. This parenting style involves low warmth and responsiveness by the parent to the child’s protest.
2. Authoritative parenting
   This is an approach which is child-centred in which parents hold high expectations of the maturity of the child. The parents attempt to understand the child’s feeling and teach them how to regulate those feelings and encourage their children to be independent while maintaining limits and controls on their behaviour. This approach involves parental warmth, responsiveness and democratic reasoning.
3. Permissive parenting
   This is an approach in which parents are very involved with their children and there is a lot of parental warmth and responsiveness while only putting a few limits on the child’s behaviour.

Different parenting styles thrive in different cultures and it depends on the stage of development. It also reflects cultural values.

The table reflects the values that are represented by co-sleeping preferences in different cultures.

There is cultural variation in developmental transitions:

1. Terrible twos
   This is a stage in which there is obstinacy and stubbornness when the child is two years old. This stage is not universal and the interpretation of this phase differs in line with parenting styles and culture (i.e. independence vs. interdependence).
2. Adolescence
   This is a stage which is universal, although rebellion and anti-social behaviour are more prevalent in individualistic societies. This cultural variation is possible because, in individualistic societies, there are more choices a person can make, leading to delayed commitments which can cause more stress.

Schooling alters psychological experiences as it teaches people to cluster information (1), improves perceptual skill for analysing two-dimensional patterns (2) and leads people to reflect more on how information is organized (3).

There are different skills which are obtained through education and reflect attributes of a culture. In the East, there is more focus on failure in education, whereas, in the West, there is more focus on success in education.