Culture and early social-cognitive development

Screening, Diagnosis, and Intervention for Autism: Experiences of Black and Multiracial Families Seeking Care

PURPOSE

Despite advances in screening and awareness, Black and multiracial families continue to experience challenges when seeking an autism diagnosis for their children.

METHODS

We surveyed 400 Black and multiracial families of young children with autism from an existing research database in the United States about their retrospective diagnostic experiences. We gathered quantitative and qualitative data and engaged in iterative coding to understand timing and content of first concerns, families' experiences of care providers and systems, and the impact of race and culture on accessing care.

RESULTS

Families provided examples of early developmental concern and described provider, systemic, and cultural barriers and facilitators to care. Families also provided insight into the influence of culture and made recommendations on how the medical system could better care for Black and multiracial families of children with autism.

CONCLUSIONS

Results add to a growing body of literature supporting the need for culturally sensitive and accessible care related to developmental monitoring, diagnosis, and follow-up care for Black and multiracial children.

Intentional Understanding Through Action Coordination in Early Triadic Interactions

The ability to understand the behaviour of other people in intentional terms has been traditionally explained by resorting to inferential mechanisms that would allow individuals to access the internal mental states of others. In recent years, the second-person perspective has established itself as a theoretical alternative to traditional models. It argues that intentional understanding is an embodied, natural, and immediate process that occurs in situations such as face-to-face early dyadic interactions between adults and infants. In this article, we argue that the way in which the second-person perspective regards body and object is problematic. Based on psychological evidence that demonstrates the constitutive role of the body and objects for cognitive development, we propose the foundations of an ecological-enactive, semiotic and pragmatic model of intentional understanding. We argue that intentional understanding should be conceived as the skilful coordination of behaviours that subjects come to enact in interactive settings, following the dynamics of bodily and material practices that have acquired normative force over time.

Der Einfluss von Kultur auf die Entwicklung in den ersten drei Lebensjahren

Zusammenfassung: Ausgehend von der Annahme, dass kulturell geprägte soziale Interaktionen die Grundlage für kulturspezifische Entwicklungspfade bilden, veranschaulichen wir in diesem Beitrag den Einfluss von Kultur auf die Entwicklung des sozialen Lächelns und sozialer Erwartungen im Säuglingsalter sowie auf das Hilfeverhalten im 2. und 3. Lebensjahr. Die methodisch breit aufgestellten Studienbeispiele aus drei kulturellen Kontexten zeigen, dass die elterlichen Ethnotheorien und die damit assoziierten Formen der Ko-Regulation und Strukturierung als zentraler Teil des kindlichen Entwicklungssystems mitgedacht werden müssen, um die menschliche Entwicklung angemessen beschreiben zu können. Zukünftige Schritte hin zu einer Entwicklungspsychologie, die ihr Verständnis von universellen und kulturspezifischen Aspekten der kindlichen Entwicklung weiter vertieft, werden diskutiert.

Culture influences the development of children's gender-related peer preferences: Evidence from China and Thailand

Current understanding of how culture relates to the development of children's gender-related peer preferences is limited. To investigate the role of societal acceptance of gender nonconformity, this study compared children from China and Thailand. Unlike China and other cultures where the conceptualization of gender as binary is broadly accepted, individuals who identify as a nonbinary "third" sex/gender have been highly visible and tolerated in Thai society for at least several decades. Chinese and Thai 4- to 9-year-olds (N = 458) viewed vignettes of four hypothetical peers who varied on gender (i.e., boy vs. girl) and gender-typed toy play behavior (i.e., masculine vs. feminine), and were asked to give a friendship preference rating for each peer. Chinese, compared with Thai, children evidenced gender-related peer preferences that emerged earlier, remained more stable across age groups, and were relatively more biased against gender-nonconforming behavior. The only cultural similarity was in children's preference for peers who were of the same gender and/or displayed same-gender-typed behavior. Thus, while preference for peers who are of the same gender and/or display same-gender-typed behavior is common among children across cultures, the developmental onset and course of these preferences vary by culture. Moreover, societal acceptance of gender nonconformity might be key to limiting children's bias against gender-nonconforming peers.