Cultures of Infancy

Heidi Keller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032255828
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000589597
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education
• Index: Psychology

The Classic Edition of Heidi Keller's Cultures of Infancy, first published in 2007, includes a new introduction by the author, which describes for readers the original context of her work, how she has further developed her research and thinking, and the ongoing relevance of this volume in the context of future challenges for the field.

In its original volume, Cultures of Infancy presented the first systematic analysis of culturally informed developmental pathways, synthesizing evolutionary and cultural psychological perspectives for a broader understanding of human development. In this compelling book, Heidi Keller utilizes ethnographic reports, as well as quantitative and qualitative analyses, to illustrate how humans resolve universal developmental tasks in particular sociodemographic contexts. These contexts are represented in cultural models, with three distinct models addressed throughout the text: the model of independence with autonomy as developmental organizer; the model of interdependence with relatedness as the developmental organizer; and the model of autonomous relatedness representing particular mixtures of autonomy and relatedness. The book offers an empirical examination of the first integrative developmental task during the early months of life—relationship formation. Keller shows that early parenting experiences shape the basic foundation of the self within particular models of parenting that are influenced by culturally informed socialization goals. With distinct patterns of results that the studies have revealed, Cultures of Infancy helps redefine developmental psychology as part of a culturally informed science based on evolutionary groundwork.

Scholars interested in a broad perspective on human development and culture will benefit from this pioneering volume.

1 The Conception of Infancy

THE DEVELOPMENTAL PHASE OF INFANCY

Infancy constitutes a separate life stage in all primates. However, in other mammals, infancy ends with the cessation of weaning and is followed by the juvenile period, in which the young are no longer dependent on the parents for survival but are not yet sexually mature (Bogin, 1999a). Humans are the only species that has a biologically and behaviorally distinct phase of childhood forming a stable interval between infancy and the juvenile period (Bogin, 1990, 1999b). Infancy in humans constitutes the life span between birth and about 2 years of age and, as such, is a small percentage of the average person’s life expectancy (Lamb, Bornstein, & Teti, 2002). However, a 2-year-old child is still dependent on its parents for survival and development. Infancy does not last longer in humans than in some of the other primates, but the quality is different because the greater care required by the human infant is accompanied by more intense social stimulation (Locke & Bogin, in press). Humans need this preparatory period to be able to adapt to the complex social environment that constitutes their niche. The extreme helplessness (altriciality) of the human infant has been interpreted as a consequence of a physiological preterm birth (Prechtl, 1984) or the obstetrical dilemma (Washburn, 1960) presented by hominid brain growth. Two months before birth, the human brain is already more developed than the brain of a newborn macaque (Clancy, Darlington, & Finlay, 2001). Unlike for other primates’ brains, human neonatal brain growth continues in a rapid, fetal-like trajectory for the next year (R. D. Martin, 1983). From an evolutionary perspective, the altriciality is also part of a reproductive strategy to become a better adult (Alexander, 1979; better adult hypothesis), as it allows the baby to invest all available resources in growth and development. Helplessness can therefore be regarded as a socially and cognitively beneficial state. Infants are dependent on the caregiving environment that shapes the early developmental trajectory, and this environment is determined by the investment that parents make in the child. This investment, in turn, is contingent on the ecosocial resources available to the parents. On the other hand, infants have remarkable cognitive and social abilities (Rochat, 2004) that allow them to interact with their environment. Thus, early social experiences form the basis of psychological development where infants construct and co-construct internal representations of social relations and a primary conception of the self (Keller, 2001, 2003b). In fact, an infant’s construction of a sense of self as the result of experiences commences in the early weeks of life. It originates in the processes of sensory perception (Neisser, 1993) and imitation (Meltzoff, 1990), emphasizing the primacy of perceptual, social, and affective factors in the structuring of the presymbolic self during the first months of life (Kopp & Brownell, 1991; Neisser, 1993).

The brief period of infancy has attracted the interest and the attention not only of biologists, but also of philosophers, physicians, psychologists, and anthropologists, from Plato’s time (about 350 B.C.), or perhaps even earlier. Infants are attractive social partners for everybody; they elicit positive emotions, the motivation to care and protect, and the desire to interact. The beginning of infancy research is usually dated to Tiedemann’s diary descriptions of his little son from the year 1787. Nevertheless, since then, the psychological reality of the infant has been underestimated for a long time, from scholars with various theoretical backgrounds. James (1890) made an often cited statement that "the baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin and entrails at once, feels it all as one blooming, buzzing confusion" (p. 488). W. Stern (1914/1923) also thought of infants as reflexive beings in a general state of basic sensibility that is uniform and unpattened as fog. Similarly, Stern described the state of infancy as if we were lying dreaming on the sofa with eyes closed, merging the perceptions of brightness, the noises from the street, the pressure of our clothes, the temperature of the room into one general perceptual state—only much more vague and dull, this is how we should think of the sensibility of a small child.

The psychoanalyst Spitz felt that we do not have concepts, not even words to describe this no man’s land of human beginnings. We still do not know how to talk about the psyche of the newborn, the first impulses of the mind in the twilight world before sunrise (Spitz, 1992, cited in Koehler, 1986).

Even Piaget (1953) underestimated infants’ ability as simple reflexive reactions to light:

Perception of light exists from birth and consequently the reflexes which insure the adaptation of this perception (the papillary and palpebral reflexes, both to light). All the rest (perception of forms, sizes, positions, distances, prominence, etc.) is acquired through the combination of reflex activity with higher activities, (p. 62)

Since the 1950s this picture has dramatically changed. In particular, ethologists with the patience for long-term observations have vividly documented that the blooming and buzzing confusion has been more of a historical misconception than a reflection of the behavioral organization and the social competencies of infants. Baby biographies and the belief in the importance of individual infants made the historically unprecedented documentation of infancy during the 20th century possible. The competent infant was discovered (Bell, 1968; Rochat, 2004); a human being with needs, preferences, desires, emotions, and even a free will (Ainsworth, 1973; Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma, Miyake, & Weisz, 2000; Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake, & Morelli, 2000), a human being that not only receives care, but also one that exerts a substantial influence on the caregiving environment. The first hand-book of infancy was published in 1973 (Stone, Smith, & Murphy, 1973). This new scientific discipline developed rapidly.

THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF INFANCY

The interest in the scientific study of infancy has been driven primarily by two sets of questions that are compelling for the study of behavioral development in general: questions concerning the roles of heredity and experience and questions concerning the roles of continuity and plasticity across the life span. For a long time these discussions were as ambitious as they were controversial. In the tradition of a stimulus response psychology there was no place for encompassing interactions between organism and environment. Behavior was regarded as almost infinitely pliable, which preempted the need to even consider such interactions (Keller, Poortinga, & Schölmerich, 2002). During this period views on the relation between culture and biology were primed by both implicit and often explicit views of mutual exclusivity of the physical and the mental or social domain, as if they were separate entities. In this process, much of culture and much of biology disappeared in favor of a trait-oriented understanding of human psychological functioning. Biologically oriented views focused on physiological and neurological mechanisms as the hardware correlates of mental processes. Both perspectives implied the ignorance of the biological embeddedness and the evolutionary history of human behavior; selection pressures and (biological) adaptation processes were seen as applying to other species but not humans (Keller, 2003b). If culture was of concern it was mainly in the form of an independent variable rather than being perceived as complex contexts comprising ecological, social, and psychological processes. Moreover, a developmental perspective was not acknowledged as an essential ingredient in broader frameworks of behavior and culture. However, we can only start understanding human functioning if we consider how cross-cultural invariance and variation emerge from the common biological origins in interaction with the ecocultural environment during the course of ontogenetic development (Keller, Poortinga, & Schölmerich, 2002).

Scientific advances during the last decades with respect to brain development, neurophysiology, cultural psychology, and evolutionary theory have helped us to develop a better understanding of the intrinsic interplay between heredity and experience as well as continuity and change. It has been convincingly demonstrated that culture and biology cannot be separated from each other. Humans are biologically cultural (Bussab & Ribeiro, 1998; Rogoff, 2003).

Bischof (1996) proposed the seemingly paradoxical concept of the inborn environment to emphasize that an organism defines his or her environment in a nontrivial sense. The inborn environment represents the features of the context that evolved during phylogeny into individual genetic traits that allowed for optimal adaptation. The inborn environment is equivalent to the “environment of evolutionary adaptedness“ (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990, p. 386). Therefore there are no pure genetic effects, nor pure environmental effects, with the consequence that only environmental openness can be tested and not genetic determinism.

The genotype defines a phenotypical reaction norm describing the epigenetic landscape of potential developmental pathways. This implies that the environmentally mediated relation between genotype and phenotype is crucial and not the relation between gene and environment. Complex physical and psychological characteristics are the result of epigenetic processes with the behavioral and developmental plasticity of humans representing the genetically defined adaptive potential for change. This hereditary endowment enables the individual to acquire knowledge and to flexibly organize and reorganize it over the life span. The early experiences lay the foundation for structural continuity across developmental tasks.

2 The Psychobiology of Infancy

INFANT PREPAREDNESS FOR SOCIAL LEARNING: BRAIN DEVELOPMENT DURING INFANCY

The rapid pace of human brain development begins prenatally and continues through the second year of postnatal life (Gould, 1977). By 6 months the human brain weighs 50% of what it will in adulthood, at 2 years 75%, and at 10 years 95% (Tanner, 1978). Enormous postnatal brain development is necessary because—due to evolutionary pressures that resulted in an enlarged brain as compared to other primates—gestation can only be extended to the point where the infant’s skull will fit through the birth canal. The birth canal is limited in width because of the constraints of bipedality, causing the “obstetrical dilemma" (Washburn, 1960). Thus human babies are born physically immature (physiological preterm birth; Prechtl, 1984). This prolonged period of immaturity and dependency is one of the most important aspects of human development (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002). Brain size in primates is not only related to the length of the juvenile period but also to sociality (Dunbar, 1995). It is assumed that dealing with the challenges of cooperating and competing with other members of the social group was the driving force of the evolution of intelligence and cognition (Alexander, 1979; Geary & Flinn, 2001).

Two processes in particular describe the factors typical of the species and the individual in brain development. Experience-expectant processes are common to all members of the species and evolved as neural preparation for incorporating general information from the environment. The overproduction and trimming of synaptic connections between the nerve cells illustrate experience-expectant information storage. Experience-dependent information storage reflects learning and brain change unique to the individual. The neural basis of experience-dependent processes appears to involve the active formation of synaptic connections as a product of experience (Greenough, Black, & Wallace, 1987). Thus, experience is the product of an ongoing reciprocal interaction between the environment and the brain (C. A. Nelson, 2005).

Large brains and long juvenile periods may afford greater plasticity of the brain (Gottlieb, 1992). Most of the brain growth appears to be due to increases in the size of neurons. Synapse formation (connections among neurons) continues throughout life, and thus ensures plasticity. Although synapse formation must be under genetic influence to some degree, research has indicated that experience is the primary factor in synaptogenesis (Gottlieb, 1992; Greenough et al., 1987). Experience changes the brain, which in turn affects what new information is learned (neural constructivism; Quartz & Sejnowski, 1997). Thus, the brain is organized by the electrical and chemical activity of developing neurons and by information received through the senses as much or even more than by the unfolding of a genetic “blueprint.” Neurophysiological research has thus indicated that the newborn period can be characterized as the brain imprint period. Accordingly, the neonatal environment has major and lasting consequences for development (Storfer, 1999).

Two kinds of plasticity are common in the nervous system: modifiability and compensation. Modifiability means that although cells are predesigned for specific functions, those functions may be attuned to other functions. Lamb et al. (2002) argued that specificity exists at the cellular level, that there is initial equipotentiality of sensitivity, that cells are susceptible to experience and that this susceptibility is restricted to infancy; that is, it functions only during a very early sensitive period. This implies that infants are born not only with a brain ready to respond to critical features of the environment, but that the brain can react to particular features of the particular, individual environment. Compensation involves the ability of some cells to substitute for others, indicating that local cellular defects may be compensated for by neighboring cells.

Many features of childhood serve as preparations for adulthood, yet there are also adaptive aspects of childhood that evolved to serve an adaptive purpose for that specific time in development (Bjorklund, 1997). For example, under the appropriate conditions, newborn infants will imitate a range of facial gestures, although imitation of facial expression decreases to chance levels by about 2 months (Fontaine, 1984). It has been speculated that neonatal imitation does not support the acquisition of new behaviors, but has a specific function for the neonate, like for nursing, establishing prelinguistic conversation (Legerstee, 1991) and facilitating infant-mother social interaction (Bjorklund, 1987) at a time when the infant cannot yet control its gaze and head movements in response to social stimulation (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002). These examples highlight the importance of early social interaction.

It can be concluded that environmental experience is critical to the differentiation of the brain tissue itself (Cicchetti & Tucker, 1994). A large body of evidence supports the principle that cortical and subcortical networks are generated by genetically programmed, initially overabundant production of synaptic connections, which is then followed by an environmentally driven process of competitive interaction to select those connections that are most effectively maintained by environmental information. The infant brain is designed to be molded by the environments it encounters (Thomas et al., 1997). Learning, therefore, is the driving force of human development.

LEARNING AS THE HUMAN MODE OF DEVELOPMENT

Genes exert their effects in fixed programs that are invariably coded in the DNA of the genotype, and in open programs that are environmentally labile and prepared to acquire information through learning (Mayr, 1988). Most macromorphological changes are tightly controlled by fixed genetic scripts (cf. C. A. Nelson, 1999), detailing that the environment is needed but does not exert major differential effects (experience-expectant processes). Open genetic programs set the stage for differential effects of environmental influences (experience-dependent processes). Proponents of interpersonal neurobiology (Schore, 1994; Siegel, 1999) argue that the structure and function of the developing brain are determined by how experiences, especially within interpersonal relationships, shape the genetically programmed maturation of the nervous system. The caregiver provides experiences, which shape genetic potential by acting as a psychobiological regulator of hormones that directly influence gene transcription. Psychoneuroendocrinological changes during critical periods initiate lasting effects at the genomic level, which are expressed in the imprinting of evolving brain circuitry (Schore, 2000).

The modes in which open programs influence and direct behavior are “legion” (Mayr, 1988, p. 68; MacDonald, 1988), indicating that these interactions occur at a variety o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the Classic Edition
• Foreword to the 2007 Edition
• Preface to the 2007 Edition
• 1 The Conception of Infancy
• 2 The Psychobiology of Infancy
• 3 The Concept of Culture
• 4 The Research Methodology: Infancy Assessment
• 5 Cultural Models of Parenting
• 6 Variations of Independence and Interdependence
• 7 Relations Among the Dimensions of the Parenting Model
• 8 Developmental Consequences of the Early Parenting Experiences
• 9 Cultural Models of Parenting and Developmental Pathways: Synthesis and Conclusion
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index