Mothers' beliefs about listening: Implications for children's comprehension and conceptions of listening

Forty-four mothers offered their beliefs about listening and methods for encouraging listening in their 3- to 5-year-old children. Children's comprehension performance and conceptions of listening were also obtained. Mother perceived themselves as the primary agent responsible for children's development of basic listening competencies, such as figuring out the main point of what someone said to them, not interrupting others, and asking a question of the speaker when confused. Children who had strong comprehension skills had mothers who believed that listening is a complex set of activities, emphasized their own responsibility in ensuring that their children develop basic listening competencies, stressed comprehension processes and question asking in their conceptions of listening and in their techniques for enhancing children's listening, and began reading to their children at an early age.     

Behavioral disordered children's conceptions of moral,conventional, and personal issues

This study employed a series of sorting tasks with 22 normal and 20 children with behavioral disorders (BD) to determine whether BD children discriminate among three classes of social actions viewed by normal children as distinct. These categories are (1) the moral (actions having intrinsic effects upon the rights or well-being of others), (2) the conventional (actions whose propriety is determined by social consensus), and (3) the personal (actions whose propriety is a matter of individual prerogative). Findings were that although BD children distinguished among the three forms of behavior, they differed with normals in the classifications of specific acts and in the reasons given for act classifications. Chief among these differences was the finding that BD children were less likely than normals to identify acts as within their personal domain.We wish to thank Mary Confray, Denise Jaffe, and Christopher Pellikan for their help with the data collection. Thanks are also due to Diana Algminas of the Proviso Area Exceptional Children's Program, Ted Lawrence of the West Suburban Association for Special Education, and Wayne Thorne of the Board of Education District No. 89 (Maywood and Melrose Park, Illinois) for the cooperation of schools in their respective districts. We wish also to thank Mark Oberlander and Ronald Brown for their suggestions regarding identification of the BD sample. Portions of these data were presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Los Angeles, April 1981.     

Children,television, and conceptions about chores: Attitudes and behaviors

This study examines the relationship between television viewing and sex role attitudes/behaviors from the perspective of cultivation theory. It uses a sample of fourth- and fifth grade children to examine if television viewing is related to children's attitudes and behaviors in relation to household chores that are typically viewed as something boys do or something girls do. The sample was equally divided into fourth and fifth graders as well as boys and girls; the racial distribution was 64% white, 21% black, and 14% other races. There were statistically significant relationships between television viewing and scores on an index of attitudes toward sex-stereotyped chores that maintained statistical significance under conditions of multiple controls. Although viewing was not related to which chores the children actually performed, there were statistically significant relationships between attitudes, behaviors, and viewing. For both the boys and girls there were moderate to strong statistically significant relationships which increased with television viewing, between attitudes about who should do certain chores, and about whether or not the children said they did chores typically associated with the other sex.     

Philosophical conceptions of identity and culture

Identity and culture as the main concepts of INPE '94 were analyzed from philosophical perspectives that questioned their implications for our era of globalization. The formation of identities in a cultural context and their relationships with education gave focus to discussion. In other words, the effects of culture upon the individual and the role of education in strengthening or degrading these effects afforded the main concerns of our topical group.     

There's something about obesity: culture, contagion, rationality, and children's responses to drinks "created" by obese children

Theories of the development of obesity stereotypes cannot easily explain the stigma associated with being obese. Evidence that important similarities exist between the symptoms of obesity and contagious illnesses, young children have "theories" of illnesses, and obesity stereotypes are among the earliest that children develop led to the hypothesis that children would find beverages purportedly created by obese children less tasteful and more memorable than beverages created by average weight children. After assignment to two story conditions in which a child became ill after eating an unfamiliar food, Caucasian-American and Chinese 7- and 10-year-olds sampled identically flavored "obese-created" and "average-created" beverages. Taste ratings were lower, ratings of the chances of feeling sick were higher, and memory was superior for obese-created drinks than for average-created drinks, particularly when the character in the story contracted a contagious illness and memory was scored for "gist." Finally, children often created the false memory that the story character was an obese beverage creator. The roles of contagion and magical beliefs are discussed, as are the rationality of children's responses and the relevance of the findings for theories of obesity stereotypes.     

Function, goals and intention: children's teleological reasoning about objects

A fundamental aspect of adult thought is the 'teleological' tendency to assume that objects exist for a purpose. When seeing an unfamiliar artifact or strange anatomical part on an animal, the first question an adult will usually ask is 'what's that for?' - a query that assumes that the object can be teleologically explained in terms of its function. Current debate focuses on the origin and scope of teleological thought, and its role in children's emerging theories of the biological world. The bias to view objects as 'designed for a purpose' probably derives from children's privileged understanding of intentional behavior and artifacts. This makes children prone to a 'promiscuous teleology' in which artifacts and natural objects of all types are viewed as existing for a function. Because of this, I argue that we should be cautious about taking the existence of an early teleological bias as evidence that there is biological understanding that exists independently of a psychological construal of living things.     

When values (do not) converge: Cultural diversity and value convergence in work groups

Culturally diverse work groups do not always reach their full potential compared with less diverse groups. As shared values facilitate group functioning, we examined whether constructing shared values among group members is constrained by high degrees of cultural diversity. Following 33 real‐life work groups, we investigated how members influenced each other's achievement and relational values over time. Although low and high diversity groups did not differ in initial value similarity between members, they differed in the process of value convergence. In low diversity groups, members developed shared values by influencing each other's values towards consensus. In high diversity groups, however, members did not influence each other's values towards consensus. Low diversity groups also performed better than high diversity groups. These findings extend earlier findings establishing value convergence in culturally homogenous groups and reveal the distinctive processes in highly diverse groups as a focus for interventions to promote diverse group functioning. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

If it's an animal it has axons: Experience and culture in preschool children's reasoning about animates

To claim that young children's biological thought is anthropocentric or that their induction depends on similarity rather than categories is to overlook the role of experience in reasoning. We tested four groups of 4-year-olds differing in two aspects of exposure to biological information: (a) their direct experience with nature (urban versus rural) and (b) biological expertise of their parents (expert biologists versus laypeople). We used a modified version of a novel feature projection task—in which projections are made from humans, mammals and insects to an array of nine targets representing various ontological kinds. Children's exposure to biology had consequences on their patterns of induction. There was an effect of parents’ expertise: laypeople's children's projections were based on similarity, while experts’ children's projections were based on the category animal. There was also an effect of direct experience: rural children were more restricted in their responses than were urban children. Although we found asymmetries in projections between humans and animals, humans were not a better source of knowledge about animates than were mammals or insects. These results show that the early emergence of domain specific biological thought and the use of biological categories in induction are highly contingent on children's experience.     

Talking about emotions: Semantics,culture, and cognition

Abstract

The author argues that the so-called “basic emotions”, such as happiness, fear or anger, are in fact cultural artifacts of the English language, just as the Ilongot concept of liget, or the Ifaluk concept of song, are the cultural artifacts of Ilongot and Ifaluk. It is therefore as inappropriate to talk about human emotions in general in terms of happiness, fear, or anger as it would be to talk about them in terms of liget or song. However, this does not mean that we cannot penetrate into the emotional world of speakers of languages other than our own. Nor does it mean that there cannot be any universal human emotions. Universality of emotions is an open issue which requires further investigation. For this further investigation to be fully productive, it has to be undertaken from a universal, language and culture-independent perspective; and it has to be carried out in a universalist framework that is language and culture-independent. The author proposes for this purpose the “natural semantic metalanguage” based on universal (or near-universal) semantic primitives (or near-primitives), developed over two decades by herself and colleagues, and she argues that the use of this metalanguage facilitates such a perspective and offers such a framework.     

On medicine, culture, and children's basic interests: a reply to three critics

Margaret Mohrmann, Paul Lauritzen, and Sumner Twiss raise questions about my account of basic interests, liberal theory, and the challenges of multiculturalism as developed in Children, Ethics, and Modern Medicine. Their questions point to foundational issues regarding the justification and limitation of parental authority to make decisions on behalf of children in medical and other contexts. One of the central questions in that regard is whether adults' decisions deserve to be respected, especially when they seem contrary to a child's or adolescent's basic interests. Questions about respect, in turn, focus attention on other's decisions about what seems good for families and children, decisions that may be paternalistic or utilitarian. Such decisions are further complicated by a child's or adolescent's budding autonomy and need for respect and recognition. Pediatric bioethics grounded in an account of a child's basic interests produces a theory of negative and positive rights for assessing adults' actions in relation to children, especially (but not only) when adults demand respect in their expressions of care.     

Television and conceptions about sex roles: Maintaining conventionality and the status quo

This paper explores the image of men and women in annual sample of primetime network dramatic television programming, and the relationship between television viewing and espousing sexist views of the roles of men and women in society. The analysis revealed that sex role images, over the past 10–15 years, have been quite stable, traditional, conventional, and supportive of the status quo. The cultivation analysis, a secondary analysis of data from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) General Social Surveys, provides some evidence that television viewing may be related to more sexist views of women's role in society.     

Concepts,conceptions, and critics

The author responds to the various reactions to his original article on the concept of deviant behavior (see p. 1). Some points of the original (empirical) proposal are clarified; the necessity for a clear concept of norm is observed.     

Creativity,biology, and culture: Further comments on evolution of the creative mind

Abstract:

Lumsden and Findlay (1988) presented a sociobiological model concerned with the ontogeny of the creative act and its potential influences on geneculture coevolution. In reviewing the content and implications of this model, we found that it is consistent with certain aspects of the creative process, and that it suggests several promising new research avenues. When the ongoing debate concerning biological and cultural determinants of human behavior was considered, however, we came to the conclusion that biologically based models must be applied cautiously, particularly as they pertain to cultural innovation.     

When culture fails: coping with cultural trauma

The research into the phenomenon of cultural trauma is growing as the effects of historical transformations are recognized and analysed. The concept of cultural trauma and the analytic concept of the cultural complex is a suitable theoretical approach for this research. The Lithuanian experience of cultural trauma after the historical shifts indicates the importance of the interplay between societal and individual factors in coping with trauma. Academic psychotraumatological studies carried out at Vilnius University indicate a stronger traumatic experience by people who are survivors of direct political repression and even intergenerational transmission of trauma, but this group also seems to demonstrate an intergenerational transmission of resilience. Paradoxically, from a long‐term perspective, the victims of direct repression seem to have suffered less than the people who accommodated to the regime, and this applies also to their offspring. Analysis in terms of overcoming cultural trauma indicates that society is gradually integrating historic traumatic experiences, although a healthy cultural identity has not yet been restored.     

When ancestral heritage is a source of discomfort: culture, pre-object relatedness, and self-alienation

The ancestral claims on an individual can evoke mental conflict when they involve separating from an ethnic group whose beliefs and customs are devalued by the dominant culture. However, these claims are engraved on the psyche early in development by caretakers to the level of pre-object relatedness, where contents and affect tones are implicit and may be unavailable for later psychoanalytical interventions. In addition, as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes, one's culture of origin precedes the development of psyche and creates its own set of claims that must be renegotiated when one encounters a different domain of cultural symbols, a confrontation that can produce psychological dissonance and self-alienation. In this paper, three cases are examined in which mental conflicts were evoked by attempts at divesting ancestral claims in response to conscious efforts to assimilate into the dominant culture. These patients suffered from separation guilt and unstable self-esteem and reported dream imagery suggesting psychological imbalance. The requirement to carefully delineate the ancestral claims on psyche as well as those contents and affects that may not be accessible to therapeutic intervention is emphasized, and the importance of compromise and acceptance with respect to the psychological demands of the unconscious are considered.     

Mothers', fathers' and children's perceptions of parents' expectations about children's family obligations in nine countries

Children's family obligations involve assistance and respect that children are expected to provide to immediate and extended family members and reflect beliefs related to family life that may differ across cultural groups. Mothers, fathers and children (N = 1432 families) in 13 cultural groups in 9 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand and United States) reported on their expectations regarding children's family obligations and parenting attitudes and behaviours. Within families, mothers and fathers had more concordant expectations regarding children's family obligations than did parents and children. Parenting behaviours that were warmer, less neglectful and more controlling as well as parenting attitudes that were more authoritarian were related to higher expectations regarding children's family obligations between families within cultures as well as between cultures. These international findings advance understanding of children's family obligations by contextualising them both within families and across a number of diverse cultural groups in 9 countries.     

The child's conceptions about means of production and their owners

Investigated the child's social ideas, namely notions about production means (factory, public transportation, farmland) and family influence on notion acquisition. 120 children of jive age groups (4 to 13 years) were clinically interviewed (sensu Piaget). Children's parents, workers and housewives of an Italian industrial centre, answered to questionnaires inquiring background information on parents and child and appraisal of child's level of understanding. Interview answers were classified on ten level sequences concerning father's job, home ownership, function and ownership of production means and produce. Correlational analyses and separate ANOVAs [5(age) × 2(sex) × 3(production mean)] in three subject areas (owner of production mean, of produce, and produce use) of interview answers reveal that children's ideas about different production means develop with differing rhythms through the same level sequences, which are clearly related to the general characterstics of intelligence described by Piaget. Questionnaires show that parents tend to furnish their children with the degree of information concerning jobs appropriate to the level of development at which the parents believe their children to be.     

Ethology,ethogeny, etics,emics, biology,culture: On the limitations of dichotomies

Ethogeny, supposedly patterned on ethology, differs as an approach to human social behaviour in obvious respects. Ethogenists follow an emic research strategy, whereas human ethologists have strongly favoured etic research options. However, recent trends to a broader, evolutionary approach in human ethology suggest that an avoidance or rejection of verbal reports and ethogenic methods merits reconsideration, The distinctions involved in the eticlemic contrast are examined, and compared to Richer's distinction between D- and N-type agreements. It is argued that none of the distinctions are dichotomous. The useful aspects of the distinctions refer to the generality of findings, and the validity of evidence. Bearing these in mind, ethogenic methods have a place in a broader human ethology. So far as validity is concerned, the value of a comparison of information from different sources, such as verbal and non-verbal data, is stressed. So far as generality is concerned, ethogenists may consider this to be very limited because of idiosyncratic cultural factors in the causation of human social action. A reconsideration of the biology/culture dimension in terms of function rather than causation may lead to more optimism in this respect, and be more productive scientifically.