2-057 - Cultural Action Understanding and Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

For many decades, motor development was viewed as the product of biological maturation (Gesell, 1934) with little attention focused on how culture may influence the understanding or acquisition of various actions. Recent research, however, highlights the role of experience in the attainment of basic motor milestones (Adolph & Robinson, in press). That research, in turn, directs attention to the possibility that action understanding and development may also be culturally mediated. Nevertheless, systematic studies of motor development from a cross-cultural perspective where variation in experience occurs naturally and arises in particular cultural contexts remain rare. The goal of this symposium is to address this gap. The symposium features a group of international and interdisciplinary researchers who are conducting new work on motor development in different cultures to understand experiential contributions to action development. Presentation 1 addresses how action understanding is culturally mediated by examining whether European and Asian infants only comprehend actions with eating utensils (Western spoons vs chopsticks) that are native to their culture. Presentation 2 considers how restricted movement of infants raised in Tajikistan affects motor development and play. Presentation 3 addresses how locomotion and language co-develop in American and Asian cultures. Finally, Presentation 4 offers a theoretical analysis of action development that is based on the author’s cross-cultural studies of skill learning. Collectively, the presentations showcase research on different motor systems (manual, locomotor) in children from different cultures and continents, ensuring broad-based consideration of the role of culture in motor development.

Sub Unit

• Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Chair

• Jeffrey J Lockman, Tulane University

Individual Presentations

• Culture influences action understanding in infancy: A comparative study of action prediction in Chinese and Swedish infants - Presenting Author: Dorota Green, University of Uppsala; Qi Li, Tulane University; Jeffrey J Lockman, Tulane University; Gustaf Gredebäck, Uppsala Universitet

• All bound up, nowhere to go: Effects of childrearing on motor development and object engagement - Presenting Author: Lana Karasik, College of Staten Island; Dejana Mladenovic, College of Staten Island and Graduate Center, CUNY; Evelyn Abraham, College of Staten Island, City University of New York; Scott Reginald Robinson, No Institutional Affiliation; Catherine S Tamis-Lemonda, New York University; Karen E Adolph, New York University

• A Cross-national Investigation of the Relationship Between Infant Walking and Language Development - Presenting Author: Minxuan He, University of California, Berkeley; Eric A Walle, University of California, Merced; Joseph J Campos, University of California Berkeley

• Cultural impact on the development of action and on tool use - Presenting Author: Blandine Bril, N/A