Development & Socialization

Question 1

Socialization in the womb

Answer 1

• At 28 weeks (~7 months in womb): fetuses exhibit reliable response to acoustic stimulation
• Intelligible speech for the fetus must surpass background noise (aka noise floor) and other factors obscuring speech
• What can fetus hear?
• • Rhythm, patterns of speech sounds (ex. Singing vs talking, different languages)
• • Vowels (not likely to pick up consonants)

Question 2

what background noise do babies hear in the womb?

Answer 2

• Sounds fetuses mostly hear in the uterus:
• • Maternal respiration
• • Maternal cardiovascular and intestinal activity
• • Maternal physical movements
• Other factors obscuring perception of external sounds:
• • Tissues and fluids surrounding fetal head
• • Route of sound transmission into fetal inner ear
• • Sensitivity of fetal hearing mechanism

Question 3

socialization of sleep

Answer 3

• Once babies are born, they sleep a lot
• Sleep = biological necessity, a biological universal
• But parameters of sleep are not universal (ex. Sleep duration, beliefs we have about sleep, environments we sleep in)
• • Ex. Babies in Western countries sleep about ~1.5 more than babies in Eastern countries

Question 4

comparing cultural backgrounds: sleep time, latency, problems

Answer 4

• Babies of European-cultured parents have higher sleep time at night compared to Asian
• Babies of Asian-cultured parents have longer sleep latency times (time between going to bed and falling asleep) and more sleep problems
• • Note: “sleep problems” defined via subjective ratings (problematic with cross-cultural comparisons –> lack of objective definitions of sleep problems that are cross-culturally applicable)

Question 5

comparing cultural backgrounds: co-sleeping

Answer 5

Babies of European-cultured parents more likely to say baby slept alone; Asian more likely to say baby slept in parents’ room or parents’ bed

Question 6

benefits and drawbacks of co-sleeping

Answer 6

• Benefits of co-sleeping:
• • Facilitates night-time feeding (esp. breastfeeding)
• • Promotes bonding/contact between child and parent → stress relief for child
• Drawbacks of co-sleeping:
• • Associated with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) → when child passes away without signs of acute trauma or chronic health problems

Question 7

evidence for dangers of co-sleeping

Answer 7

• Majority of sudden and unexpected infant deaths during sleep occurred outside of the crib
• bed-sharing/co-sleeping associated with 5x higher likelihood of SIDS
• Co-sleeping may be associated with thermal stress, airway obstruction, or re-breathing of parental expired air

Question 8

evidence against the dangers of co-sleeping

Answer 8

• As co-sleeping has increased significantly over time, SIDS deaths in the parental bed have significantly decreased
• Risk factor =/= cause → association of co-sleeping and SIDS most commonly found in conjunction with other factors
• Cultures that do more co-sleeping actually have fewer SIDS cases than cultures that do less co-sleeping

Question 9

co-sleeping recommendations

Answer 9

• No smoking, alcohol, or drug use around the baby in bed or for adults before going to bed
• Babies should be placed on their backs
• Mattress should be stiff, bed sheets should be tight, beds should no have cracks or crevices → babies shouldn’t be able to fall into crevices, get stuck in mattress, get rolled in sheets
• Avoid couches

Question 10

2 primary dimensions of Baumrind’s parenting styles

Answer 10

• Responsiveness: degree of warmth, support, and acceptance versus parental rejection and non-responsiveness
• Demandingness: degree to which parents are controlling and demanding

Question 11

Baumrind’s 4 parenting styles

Answer 11

• Authoritative: high on both, concerned with child’s needs and wants, child-centered, warm but sets rules/expectations → fostering emotional regulation
• Authoritarian: high on demandingness, low on responsiveness; high demands, strict rules, little open dialogue
• Permissive parenting: high on responsiveness, low on demandingness; few rules, limits, and controls → kids do whatever they want
• Rejecting-neglecting: low in both; parent disengaged, not supportive, no limits or monitoring, focused on own needs

Question 12

Western research findings on parenting

Answer 12

• Western research consistently arrives at one finding: authoritative is best → associated with high perceived parental warmth and acceptance, and child’s autonomy, self-reliance, and better school achievement
• This typology is wrapped up in Western ideas (Ex. expression of warmth → appears that other cultures have less warmth, but it’s just expressed differently (ie. through food instead of words, implicit rather than explicit communication, etc.) and does not take into account parenting styles that exist in other cultures

Question 13

cultural differences in parenting

Answer 13

• Many Chinese parents use authoritarian parenting styles, but not quite → Jiao xun (parenting style component that focuses on training child to be good members of society at significant costs to oneself)
• parents themselves have different parenting styles (ex. hispanic and chinese fathers often less responsive than mothers)
• Hispanic fathers often less responsive than hispanic mothers
• effects of parenting styles aren’t culturally consistent:
• • Authoritarian:
• – Instills fear from European-American children
• – Trains assertiveness among African American children
• – Bad for academics for European-American children, not for other ethnic minority children
• Authoritative:
• • Good for academics for European-American children, no such relation for other ethnic minority children

Question 14

noun bias

Answer 14

• Children’s tendency to think more about, and in terms of, nouns relative to other types of words (ie. verbs)
• • Used to think this was universal, but it’s not (outside of Western culture)
• • Cultural variability in noun bias: English puts nouns in salient positions, Korean puts verbs in those salient positions

Question 15

acculturation: plasticity vs. specificity

Answer 15

• Lots of organisms start out with a period of plasticity → determining what traits are useful, what strategies are helpful, etc.
• As we age, we engage in specificity → becoming experts in certain cultural traits and honing skills
• ex. As students age, they have more complex relationships, more independence, bigger classrooms, and more workload

Question 16

Arends-Toth & Van de Vijer: acculturation model

Answer 16

• Acculturation based on:
• • Person factors (taking initiative to acculturate)
• • Group factors (how much groups want members to interact with other cultures vs. stay insular)
• • Context factors (is government adopting multicultural approach or colour-blind approach)
• Acculturation influences:
• • Psychological outcomes (psychological well-being, adjustment)
• • Cultural competence (how many friends you have from mainstream culture, how easily you can navigate it)
• Underlying assumption: 2 components of acculturation: mainstream identification and heritage identification

Question 17

Types of family interactions underlying heritage ID and mainstream ID

Answer 17

• Parental involvement (demonstrating interest in things kids do, ex. Asking how their days were): positive association with mainstream and heritage identification
• Encouraging mainstream adoption (encouraging kids to watch certain types of TV shows, play certain sports, etc.): positive association with mainstream; no association with heritage identification
• Encouraging heritage cultural maintenance (going to festivals/events associated with heritage culture, going to Japanese school, etc.): positively associated with heritage identification, negatively associated with mainstream identification
• Mainstream language use at home (using English vs. another language): positively associated with mainstream identification; negative association with heritage identification
• Mainstream identification is positively associated with cultural competence, which is important for succeeding/doing well in that cultural environment
• Both mainstream and heritage identification are positively associated with psychological outcomes (ex. Feeling accepted by your communities)

Question 18

agents of acculturation

Answer 18

• Parents, teachers, friends → the microsystem (inner circle)
• • Proximal processes that occur here involve interactions between these people and the child
• Interactions between parents, teachers, friends → the mesosystem
• • Proximal processes that occur here do not involve the child