Infants and Children in Context. Tara L. Kuther

      Cultural influences on development include the many ethnic communities that comprise most U.S. cities, and the unique foods, customs, and values that accompany each community.

      Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

      One broad aspect of context is culture. Culture refers to a set of customs, knowledge, attitudes, and values that are shared by members of a group and are learned early in life through interactions with group members (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Early studies of culture and human development took the form of cross-cultural research, comparing individuals and groups from different cultures to examine how these universal processes worked in different contexts (Mistry & Dutta, 2015).

      Most classic theories and research on human development are based on Western samples, and developmental researchers once believed that the processes of human development were universal. More recent observations suggest that development varies dramatically with context (Keller, 2017). For example, consider milestones, such as the average age that infants begin to walk. In Uganda, infants begin to walk at about 10 months of age, in France at about 15 months, and in the United States at about 12 months. These differences are influenced by parenting practices that vary by culture. African parents tend to handle infants in ways that stimulate walking, by playing games that allow infants to practice jumping and walking skills (Hopkins & Westra, 1989; Super, 1981). The cultural context in which individuals live influences the timing and expression of many aspects of development, even physical developments long thought to be influenced only by biological maturation (Mistry, 2013). Some scientists argue that applying principles of development derived from Western samples to children of other cultures is unscientific and even unethical because it may yield misleading conclusions about children’s capacities (Keller, 2017).

      There is a growing trend favoring cultural research, which examines how culture itself influences development, over cross-cultural research, which simply examines differences across cultures (Cole & Packer, 2015). Cultural research examines development and culture as fused entities that mutually interact, with culture inherent in all domains of development and a contributor to the context in which we are embedded, transmitting values, attitudes, and beliefs that shape our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors (Mistry & Dutta, 2015). The shift toward cultural research permits the examination of the multiple subcultures that exist within a society (Oyserman, 2016, 2017). For example, North American culture is not homogeneous; many subcultures exist, defined by factors such as ethnicity (e.g., African American, Asian American), religion (e.g., Christian, Muslim), geography (e.g., southern, midwestern), and others, as well as combinations of these factors. Current trends in cultural research document diversity and emphasize understanding how the historical, cultural, and subcultural contexts in which we live influence development throughout our lives.

      What Do You Think?

      1 What subcultures can you identify in your own neighborhood, state, or region of the country? What characterizes each of these subcultures?

      2 Consider your own experience. With which culture or subculture do you identify?

      3 How much of a role do you think your cultural membership has had in your own development? ●

      Basic Issues in Developmental Science

      Developmental scientists agree that the biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes that occur from infancy through adolescence are indisputable. Yet they sometimes disagree on several fundamental questions about how development proceeds and its influences. Developmental scientists’ explanations of how infants, children, and adolescents grow and change are influenced by their perspectives on several basic issues, or fundamental questions, about human development:

      1 To what extent is development influenced by inborn genetic characteristics, and to what extent is it affected by the environment in which children live?

      2 What role do children play in their own development—how much are they influenced by their surroundings, and how much do they influence their surroundings?

      3 In what ways do children change gradually, often imperceptibly, over time, and to what extent is developmental change sudden and dramatic?

      The following sections examine each of these questions.

      Nature and Nurture: How Do Nature and Nurture Influence Development?

      Perhaps the oldest question about development concerns its origin. Referred to as the nature–nurture debate, researchers once asked whether development is caused by nature (genetics) or nurture (environment). Explanations that rely on nature point to inborn genetic traits and maturational processes as causes of developmental change. For example, most infants take their first steps at roughly the same age, suggesting a maturational trend that supports the role of nature in development (Payne & Isaacs, 2016). An alternative explanation for developmental change emphasizes nurture, the environment. From this perspective, children are molded by the physical and social environment in which they are raised. Therefore, children tend to walk at about the same time because they experience similar environmental circumstances and parenting practices.

      Today, developmental scientists generally agree that the nature–nurture debate is, in fact, not a debate. Instead, most now agree that both nature and nurture are important contributors to development, and the question has changed to “How do genetics and environment work together to influence child development?” (Rutter, 2014; Sasaki & Kim, 2017). For example, walking is heavily influenced by maturation (nature), but experiences and environmental conditions can speed up or slow down the process (nurture). Although most infants begin to walk at about the same time, infants who experience malnutrition may walk later than well-nourished infants, and those who are given practice making stepping or jumping movements may walk earlier (Siekerman et al., 2015; Worobey, 2014). Developmental scientists attempt to determine how nature and nurture interact and work together to influence children’s development (Bjorklund, 2018b; Lickliter & Witherington, 2017). Developmental scientists’ research on the dynamic interaction of nature and nurture has important applied implications, as discussed in the Applying Developmental Science feature.

      Applying Developmental Science

      The Real-World Significance of Developmental Research

      In its early years, the study of child development was based on laboratory research devoted to uncovering universal aspects of development by stripping away contextual influences. This basic research was designed to examine how development unfolds, with the assumption that development is a universal process with all children changing in similar ways and in similar time frames. In the early 1980s, influenced by contextual theories (such as Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological approach, discussed later in this chapter) and the growing assumption that children are active in their development, scientists began to examine developmental processes outside of the laboratory (Lerner, Johnson, & Buckingham, 2015b). It quickly became apparent that there are a great many individual differences in development that vary with a myriad of contextual influences. The field of applied developmental science emerged, studying individuals within the contexts in which they live and applying research findings to improve people’s lives.

      Applied developmental science is a multidisciplinary field that unites scientists from around the world to examine and contribute to policies on issues that affect children, adolescents, adults, and their families, such as health and health care delivery, violence, and school failure. For example, some study contextual influences on development, such as the impact of environmental contaminants or poor access to clean water or the ways in which poverty influences children’s development and economic status later in life (Aizer, 2017; Gauvain, 2018; Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Grob, & Schlesinger, 2017; Huston, 2018). Developmental science research can help address global problems. For example, in September 2016, the United Nations defined and adopted