Chapter 5: Development and Socialization
Two possibilities of the origin of cultural differences:
1. Inherent genetic predisposition: it’s possible that the genes underlying inherited
psychological traits aren’t distributed equally across the globe, but no good evidence
yet for population differences in genes underlying differences in ways of thinking.
Research finds weaker cultural differences among those who have moved to other
cultures.
2. Early experiences with environments: People with different cultural backgrounds
are born with similar genetic temperaments, yet interact with different environments as
they grow up. People acquire their cultures through socialization.
This chapter will cover:
1. How do people come to be socialized into particular cultural worlds?
2. How do people acquire culture?
3. How do child-rearing experiences differ around the world?
Themes:
1. How universal predispositions become shaped in culturally specific ways.
2. How people’s experiences, when infants/children, influence the way they think.
Universal Brains Develop into Culturally Variable Minds
One key adaptation of humans is their ability to learn and accumulate cultural information.
Other animals are born with instinctual knowledge that helps them adapt. In contrast, we
come into the world cultureless, but prepared to adjust to and seize meaning from any
environment. All humans have been socialized into some kind of cultural environment that
influences how they perceive and understand themselves and their worlds.
Cultural norms (and cultural differences) come about as a result of the different ways that
people are socialized into the world. Despite entering the world with the ability to internalize
any cultural world, we generally end up internalizing one.
Sensitive Periods for Cultural Socialization
The fact that there’s a sensitive period for being enculturated is evidence that the human
brain is preprogrammed to learn cultural meaning systems.
Sensitive period: span of organism’s developmental life when it can gain a new skill
relatively easily. Skill acquisition subsequent to this becomes much more difficult.
o Evident across many different species and across many domains.
o Most species go through a critical developmental transition from emphasizing
acquisition of new skills to emphasizing specialization of acquired skills. This
transition indicates the existence of a sensitive period.
o Sensitive periods aren’t applicable to all learning domains in humans but applies to
language/culture acquisition.
Sensitive Periods for Language Acquisition
We enter the world capable of speaking any language; so why do we have trouble learning
second/third/fourth languages?
1
, The evidence of a sensitive period for language acquisition is our ability to distinguish
among different sounds. Humans are capable of producing, recognizing, and using
approximately 150 phonemes in communication, but no language uses more than 70.
People aren’t able to discriminate easily between some phonemes that aren’t in their own
language.
Young infants can discriminate among all the phonemes that humans are able to produce.
But when we learn a new language, it’s functional to perceive sounds categorically. If we
didn’t, we would have difficulty understanding the sounds we hear.
Even as infants, our brains begin to pay selective attention to sounds or phonemes from the
language most familiar to us. As we are exposed to a language, we begin to categorize
sounds in ways that are used by the language. The brain becomes accustomed to a
particular language’s phonemes, it also loses ability to perceive phonemes not used in this
language. For instance, although young infants in English-speaking households can
distinguish between two Hindi phonemes, older infants being raised by English speakers can
no longer do so.
In the process of learning a language, our brain needs to organize language sounds in order
to recognize them. Humans are better at acquiring and mastering languages early in life, but
this capacity declines with age, especially in accent and grammar. The differences in
language competence can be striking among members of family who were of different ages
when they immigrated to a new country.
The brain processes languages differently depending on age of acquisition.
o First and second languages are processed in the same regions if learned early on.
o Second language is processed in a different region if acquired much later.
The brain is flexible at restructuring itself and accommodating different linguistic inputs, but
only during a sensitive period because it’s much more difficult to master a language after
that.
Stories of Rochom P’ngieng, Genie, and the Wild Boy of Aveyron provide real-world
examples of language learning (or lack thereof) after the sensitive period closes.
o All three had little to no exposure to spoken language growing up.
o They were never able to grasp grammatical structures of their respective languages.
We’re born biologically prepared to learn a new language, but our early experiences
determine how our minds process the different kinds of human speech we later encounter.
We’re socialized to learn different languages.
Sensitive Periods for Acquiring Culture
Cheung, Chudek, and Heine investigated the existence of a sensitive period for acquiring
culture. They reasoned that immigrants who move to a new culture after a sensitive window
had closed would have a difficult time adjusting to their new culture. They targeted a group
of immigrants who had moved from the same origin to the same culture at different ages.
The study examined cultural identification with Chinese and Canadian culture among Hong
Kong immigrants to Canada. Analyses focused on finding the role of
(a) age of immigration
2
Two possibilities of the origin of cultural differences:
1. Inherent genetic predisposition: it’s possible that the genes underlying inherited
psychological traits aren’t distributed equally across the globe, but no good evidence
yet for population differences in genes underlying differences in ways of thinking.
Research finds weaker cultural differences among those who have moved to other
cultures.
2. Early experiences with environments: People with different cultural backgrounds
are born with similar genetic temperaments, yet interact with different environments as
they grow up. People acquire their cultures through socialization.
This chapter will cover:
1. How do people come to be socialized into particular cultural worlds?
2. How do people acquire culture?
3. How do child-rearing experiences differ around the world?
Themes:
1. How universal predispositions become shaped in culturally specific ways.
2. How people’s experiences, when infants/children, influence the way they think.
Universal Brains Develop into Culturally Variable Minds
One key adaptation of humans is their ability to learn and accumulate cultural information.
Other animals are born with instinctual knowledge that helps them adapt. In contrast, we
come into the world cultureless, but prepared to adjust to and seize meaning from any
environment. All humans have been socialized into some kind of cultural environment that
influences how they perceive and understand themselves and their worlds.
Cultural norms (and cultural differences) come about as a result of the different ways that
people are socialized into the world. Despite entering the world with the ability to internalize
any cultural world, we generally end up internalizing one.
Sensitive Periods for Cultural Socialization
The fact that there’s a sensitive period for being enculturated is evidence that the human
brain is preprogrammed to learn cultural meaning systems.
Sensitive period: span of organism’s developmental life when it can gain a new skill
relatively easily. Skill acquisition subsequent to this becomes much more difficult.
o Evident across many different species and across many domains.
o Most species go through a critical developmental transition from emphasizing
acquisition of new skills to emphasizing specialization of acquired skills. This
transition indicates the existence of a sensitive period.
o Sensitive periods aren’t applicable to all learning domains in humans but applies to
language/culture acquisition.
Sensitive Periods for Language Acquisition
We enter the world capable of speaking any language; so why do we have trouble learning
second/third/fourth languages?
1
, The evidence of a sensitive period for language acquisition is our ability to distinguish
among different sounds. Humans are capable of producing, recognizing, and using
approximately 150 phonemes in communication, but no language uses more than 70.
People aren’t able to discriminate easily between some phonemes that aren’t in their own
language.
Young infants can discriminate among all the phonemes that humans are able to produce.
But when we learn a new language, it’s functional to perceive sounds categorically. If we
didn’t, we would have difficulty understanding the sounds we hear.
Even as infants, our brains begin to pay selective attention to sounds or phonemes from the
language most familiar to us. As we are exposed to a language, we begin to categorize
sounds in ways that are used by the language. The brain becomes accustomed to a
particular language’s phonemes, it also loses ability to perceive phonemes not used in this
language. For instance, although young infants in English-speaking households can
distinguish between two Hindi phonemes, older infants being raised by English speakers can
no longer do so.
In the process of learning a language, our brain needs to organize language sounds in order
to recognize them. Humans are better at acquiring and mastering languages early in life, but
this capacity declines with age, especially in accent and grammar. The differences in
language competence can be striking among members of family who were of different ages
when they immigrated to a new country.
The brain processes languages differently depending on age of acquisition.
o First and second languages are processed in the same regions if learned early on.
o Second language is processed in a different region if acquired much later.
The brain is flexible at restructuring itself and accommodating different linguistic inputs, but
only during a sensitive period because it’s much more difficult to master a language after
that.
Stories of Rochom P’ngieng, Genie, and the Wild Boy of Aveyron provide real-world
examples of language learning (or lack thereof) after the sensitive period closes.
o All three had little to no exposure to spoken language growing up.
o They were never able to grasp grammatical structures of their respective languages.
We’re born biologically prepared to learn a new language, but our early experiences
determine how our minds process the different kinds of human speech we later encounter.
We’re socialized to learn different languages.
Sensitive Periods for Acquiring Culture
Cheung, Chudek, and Heine investigated the existence of a sensitive period for acquiring
culture. They reasoned that immigrants who move to a new culture after a sensitive window
had closed would have a difficult time adjusting to their new culture. They targeted a group
of immigrants who had moved from the same origin to the same culture at different ages.
The study examined cultural identification with Chinese and Canadian culture among Hong
Kong immigrants to Canada. Analyses focused on finding the role of
(a) age of immigration
2
