Early Learning Environments for the Development of Attention: Maternal Narratives in the United States and Japan

Cultural Differences in Visual Attention Emerge in Infancy

East Asians are more likely than North Americans to attend to visual scenes holistically, focusing on the relations between objects and their background rather than isolating components. This cultural difference in context sensitivity-greater attentional allocation to the background of an image or scene-has been attributed to socialization, yet it is unknown how early in development it appears, and whether it is moderated by social information. We employed eye-tracking to investigate context-sensitivity in 15-month-olds in Japan (n = 45) and the United States (n = 52). Viewing faces, Japanese infants were more attentive and studied the background longer than U.S. infants. Viewing cartoon videos, Japanese infants looked at the background twice as long as U.S. infants, particularly for objects with eyes. In parent-child book reading, Japanese parents referred to the background significantly more than U.S. parents, although this was uncorrelated with infant behavior on the preceding tasks. These findings illustrated that cultural differences in attention are detectable in infancy, and that sustained attention may be an important foundation upon which culturally-specific attentional styles are built. Overall, results were consistent with the view that a context-sensitive orientation first emerges for social information and later generalizes to non-social situations.

Visual attention across cultures: Similarities and differences in child development and maternal attention styles

Previous cross-cultural research has described two different attention styles: a holistic style, characterized by context-sensitive processing, generally associated with interdependent cultural contexts, and an analytic style, a higher focus on salient objects, generally found in independent cultural contexts. Though a general assumption in the field is that attention styles are gradually socialized in culture-specific interactions in childhood, empirical evidence for the proximal mechanisms underlying this development is scarce. This study aimed to document the emergence of cross-cultural differences in attention styles in three cultural contexts differing in social orientations, namely in urban middle-class families from Münster, Germany (i.e., more independent context), and Kyoto, Japan, and Indigenous-heritage families from Cotacachi, Ecuador (i.e., more interdependent contexts). Furthermore, to test the assumption that caregivers' attention guidance is one of the forces driving differential development, we investigated how caregivers guide children's attention. In total, 270 children between 4 and 9 years of age and their mothers participated in three tasks: an eye-tracking task, a picture description task and a forced-choice recognition task. Results indicate a mixed pattern of findings: While some tasks revealed the expected cultural differences, namely a higher object focus in Münster compared to Kyoto and Cotacachi, others did not. Regarding caregivers' attention guidance, we found that mothers in Münster more strongly emphasized the focal object than mothers in Kyoto and Cotacachi. The results are discussed in terms of culture-specific developmental trajectories and the generalizability of attentional processes across tasks and cultural contexts. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We investigated visual attention styles in 4- to 9-year-old children and their mothers from urban Germany, urban Japan, and rural Ecuador in three different tasks. Special emphasis lied on mothers' verbal attention guidance toward their children as a proximal mechanism underlying the emergence of culture-specific attention styles. Mothers from urban Germany guided their children's attention in more analytic ways than mothers from urban Japan and rural Ecuador. The relevance of verbal attention guidance in the development of culture-specific attention styles has been demonstrated beyond the East-West dichotomy.

Association between relational mobility, brain structure, and prosociality in adolescents

Trust plays a vital role in human society. Previous studies have suggested that trust comprises general trust and caution. General trust is a belief that others, in general, are trustworthy, and caution is a belief in the importance of vigilance in dealing with others. Adolescence is a critical period for establishing these psychological traits. It is a period of physical and mental development, and the social environment during this period influences adolescents' psychology, including their brain structures. In this study, we focus on relational mobility as a socio-environmental factor that influences the development of adolescents' psychology and the brain. Relational mobility refers to the degree of freedom to choose and replace social relationships and consists of two subfactors (the degree of freedom to choose and replace social relationships and the number of opportunities to meet new people). Accordingly, we analyzed each subfactor separately. Results showed that the degree of freedom to choose and replace social relationships was only negatively associated with caution and left posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) volume in adolescents. Furthermore, the effect of the freedom to choose and replace social relationships on caution was significantly relevant to the left pSTG volume. In contrast, the degree of opportunities to meet new people was associated with neither general trust nor caution, whereas it was positively associated with the right supramarginal gyrus volume. This study suggests that the social environment during adolescence influences brain structures related to prosociality.

Emotion or Evaluation: Cultural Differences in the Parental Socialization of Moral Judgement

Moral reasoning develops rapidly in early childhood. Recent evidence from cognitive neuroscience literature suggests that the development of moral reasoning is supported by an integration of cognitive and affective components. However, the role of culture in the development of moral reasoning in young children is under-investigated. Previous cross-cultural research suggests that culture shapes how people interpret other's behaviors. In particular, people raised in independent cultures, such as the United States, tend to form impressions of others and attribute others' behaviors to their personal dispositions more quickly than people raised in interdependent cultures, such as Japan. In the present cross-cultural study, we examined parents' discourse with children in Japan and the United States. Parents and their 3- to 4-year-old children were asked to view and discuss cartoon characters depicting prosocial and antisocial acts. Results indicated that in both cultures, parents discussed about moral actions (e.g., helping, harming) of characters. Furthermore, United States parents were more likely to evaluate dispositional characteristics of characters based on their pro-social and anti-social acts, whereas Japanese parents were more likely to refer to emotion of the characters who got hurt. We discuss implications of cross-cultural differences and similarities in parental moral socialization and the development of moral reasoning in young children.

Different types of focus: Caregiver-child interaction and changes in preschool children's attention in two cultures

Social contexts shape the development of attention; however, little is known about joint attention beyond infancy. This study employed behavioral and eye-tracking measurements to investigate cultural variations in how caregivers direct 3- to 4-year-old children's attention and subsequent changes in children's attention to objects and contextual backgrounds in the United States (predominantly non-Hispanic Whites) and Japan (N = 60 mother-child dyads, 29 girls, 31 boys). The findings revealed that caregivers directed children's attention to culturally sensitive information, and significant cross-cultural differences in attention emerged after caregiver-child interaction, with Japanese children shifting their attention to the backgrounds. Results provide new insights into the role of social interaction and cultural diversity in the development of attention.

The effect of verbal priming of visual attention styles in 4- to 9-year-old children

The way humans attend to their visual field differs profoundly between individuals. Previous research suggests that people tend to have either an analytic style, with a higher focus on the salient object of a scene, or a holistic style, characterized by higher attention to a scene's contextual information. Although a general assumption in many studies has been that these attention styles are socialized in social interaction during childhood, not much work has focused on the proximal mechanisms underlying this development. This study focuses on language as a potential cultural tool to habitualize ways of perceiving the world and investigates whether the visual attention of 4- to 9-year-old children can be experimentally manipulated via verbal primes that accentuate either analytic or holistic processing. Results indicate that verbal priming is effective in guiding children's gaze behavior in an eye-tracking task and their verbal accounts in a picture description task, but it only influences the way visual scenes are remembered in a forced-choice recognition task after own verbal productions. In concert with previous cross-cultural and correlational studies, these findings provide convergent evidence for the assumption that verbal attention guidance plays an important role in the socialization of attention styles.

The development of temperament and maternal perception of child: A cross-cultural examination in the United States and Japan

Previous research shows cross-cultural differences in adult personality and child temperament, yet the developmental origin of these cultural differences remains unclear. To understand a potential role of socialization grounded in cultural values, this study investigated culturally specific maternal perceptions of child and children's development of temperament in the U.S. and Japan. Maternal perception of child was assessed via maternal interview in the U.S. (n = 42) and Japan (n = 40). Six months after the interview, child's temperament was assessed. Cross-cultural differences in maternal perception of child and child's temperament, and the relation between the two were analyzed. US-American infants scored higher on the surgency/extraversion trait than Japanese infants, whereas Japanese infants scored higher on the negative affectivity/neuroticism trait than US-American infants. US-American mothers used more positive evaluation and private/autonomy descriptions of their infants, whereas Japanese mothers used more negative evaluation and context-specific descriptions of their infants by making references to other people, time, or location. Child's negative affectivity trait was closely related to maternal perception of child's social/context characteristics and negative evaluations. The findings provide support for the socio-cultural framework of temperament development and suggest an important consideration of cultural factors when designing educational and parenting programs.