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Children all over the world learn language, yet the contexts in which they do so vary substantially. This variation needs to be systematically quantified to build robust and generalizable theories of language acquisition. We compared communicative interactions between parents and their 2-year-old children (N = 99 families) during mealtime across five cultural settings (Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Germany, and Japan) and coded the amount of talk and gestures as well as their conversational embedding (interlocutors, function, and themes). We found a comparable pattern of communicative interactions across cultural settings, which were modified in ways that are consistent with local norms and values. These results suggest that children encounter similarly structured communicative environments across diverse cultural contexts and will inform theories of language learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

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Previous studies based on non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples provide initial evidence that the still-face effect is universal. Based on the assumption that - independent of their cultural niches - infants share some fundamental expectations of social interactions, we put forth the assumption that a universal response exists for when a social interaction is interrupted. At the same time, we hypothesized that the size of the effect depends on the typicality of the interaction that precedes the adult partners' interruption. To test these hypotheses, we conducted the Still-Face Paradigm (SFP) with infants (3- and 4.5-month-olds) from two cultural milieus, namely Münster (urban Germany) and the Kichwa ethnic group from the northern Andes region (rural Ecuador), as these contexts presumably offer different ways of construing the self that are associated with different parenting styles, namely distal and proximal parenting. Furthermore, we developed a paradigm that comes much closer to the average expected environment of Kichwa infants, the "No-Touch Paradigm" (NTP). Overall, the results support our initial hypothesis that the still-face effect is universal. Moreover, infants from both cultural milieus responded to the no-touch condition with a change in negative affect. At the same time, some of the infants' responses were accentuated in a culture-specific way: Kichwa infants had a stronger response to an interruption of proximal interaction patterns during the NTP. While our findings underline infants' universal predisposition for face-to-face interaction, they also suggest that cultural differences in internalized interactions do influence infant behavior and experience and, in turn, development.

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Human perception differs profoundly between individuals from different cultures. In the present study, we investigated the development of context-sensitive attention (the relative focus on context elements of a visual scene) in a large sample (N = 297) of 5- to 15-year-olds and young adults from rural and urban Brazil, namely from agricultural villages in the Amazon region and the city of São Paulo. We applied several visual tasks which assess context-sensitive attention, including an optical illusion, a picture description, a picture recognition and a facial emotion judgment task. The results revealed that children and adults from the urban sample had a higher level of context-sensitive attention, when compared to children and adults from the rural sample. In particular, participants from São Paulo were more easily deceived by the context elements in an optical illusion task and remembered more context elements in a recognition task than participants from rural Amazon villages. In these two tasks, context-sensitivity increased with age. However, we did not find a cultural difference in the picture description and the facial emotion judgment task. These findings support the idea that visual information processing is highly dependent on the culture-specific learning environments from very early in development. Specifically, they are more consistent with accounts that emphasize the role of the visual environment, than with the social orientation account. However, they also highlight that further research is needed to disentangle the diverse factors that may influence the early development of visual attention, which underlie culture-specific developmental pathways.

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The purpose of this descriptive-correlational study was to investigate possible associations between maternal socialization goals and prosocial behavior (spontaneous helping) among children living in a rural context. This study involved 39 dyads of mothers, aged 17 to 48 years (M = 24.28 years, SD = 5.97), and their children, with a mean age of 24 months. The data collection included a Sociocultural Sociodemographic Characterization Questionnaire (SSCQ), a Socialization Goals Questionnaire (SGQ), and a Spontaneous Prosocial Behavior Task (SPBT). Most importantly, we found that the maternal socialization goal to "Learning to support others" exhibited a significant correlation (r = 0.40, p < 0.05) with the helping task performed by the children. This finding sustains the hypothesis that maternal goals, which emphasize the importance of their children in learning to help others, are correlated with an increased frequency of prosocial behavior in young children, around their second birthday.

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The purpose of this descriptive-correlational study was to investigate possible associations between maternal socialization goals and prosocial behavior (spontaneous helping) among children living in a rural context. This study involved 39 dyads of mothers, aged 17 to 48 years (M = 24.28 years, SD = 5.97), and their children, with a mean age of 24 months. The data collection included a Sociocultural Sociodemographic Characterization Questionnaire (SSCQ), a Socialization Goals Questionnaire (SGQ), and a Spontaneous Prosocial Behavior Task (SPBT). Most importantly, we found that the maternal socialization goal to "Learning to support others" exhibited a significant correlation (r= 0.40, p < 0.05) with the helping task performed by the children. This finding sustains the hypothesis that maternal goals, which emphasize the importance of their children in learning to help others, are correlated with an increased frequency of prosocial behavior in young children, around their second birthday. (AU)

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This cross-cultural study investigates how maternal task assignment relates to toddlers' requested behavior and helping between 18 and 30 months. One hundred seven mother-child dyads were assessed in three different cultural contexts (rural Brazil, urban Germany, and urban Brazil). Brazilian mothers showed assertive scaffolding (serious and insistent requesting), whereas German mothers employed deliberate scaffolding (asking, pleading, and giving explanations). Assertive scaffolding related to toddlers' requested behavior in all samples. Importantly, assertive scaffolding was associated with toddlers' helping in rural Brazil, whereas mothers' deliberate scaffolding related to toddlers' helping behavior in urban Germany. These findings highlight the role of caregivers' socialization practices for the early ontogeny of helping behavior and suggest culture-specific developmental pathways along the lines of interpersonal responsibility and personal choice.

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So far, cross-cultural research on generativity has been lacking. The present study tests the cross-cultural applicability of an integrative model of generativity proposed by McAdams and de St. Aubin. Measures of implicit pro-social power motivation, a general disposition for generativity, generative goals, and life satisfaction were administered to adults in Cameroon, Costa Rica, and Germany. These measures cover the intrapersonal part of the generativity model. After examining the comparability of the measures across the three cultures, cultural differences in the level of each variable were inspected. Finally, the hypothesized model was tested via structural equation modeling. Results show that the model can be successfully applied in all three cultural samples. This finding has interesting implications for the further investigation of generativity, particularly its social antecedents and behavioral consequences.

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