3-073 - Community Effects on Children’s Interests, Behaviors, and Beliefs

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children’s beliefs and behaviors are shaped by both social and environmental factors and can vary widely across societies. In particular, community consensus about the importance of specific beliefs and behaviors may lead to cross-cultural variation in their development. Explaining this variation requires cross-cultural examination of specific beliefs and behaviors, combined with within-society measures of theoretically-relevant factors. This symposium presents three papers investigating the relation between social and environmental factors and the development of related beliefs and behaviors across diverse societies. The papers examine how community beliefs and norms impact: 1) children’s interest in natural versus artificial objects in Fiji; 2) the development of prosocial behaviors in Zambia; and 3) children’s scientific and religious beliefs in Iran, China, and the US.

Together, these papers present data from diverse societies, a wide developmental range, and a variety of behaviors that each reflect a specific developmental question. The first paper explores the role of community beliefs regarding the importance of plants in daily life in relation to infants’ preferences for interacting with plants. The second paper presents data from 3-year-olds on the origins of prosociality in relation to multiple community factors. The third paper presents data on 5-6-year-old and 9-10-year-old children’s beliefs about unobservable entities in relation to the broader community consensus regarding the existence of these entities. An expert discussant will consider the implications of these findings for the extension of developmental paradigms to capture the intricate role of culture in children’s learning.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chairs

• Jennifer M. Clegg, Texas State University

• Telli Davoodi, Boston University

Discussant

• Peter R Blake, Boston University

Individual Presentations

• Early plant learning in Fiji - Presenting Author: Rita Anne McNamara, Victoria University of Wellington; Non-Presenting Author: Annie Wertz, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

• Varieties of young children’s prosocial behavior in Zambia - Presenting Author: Nadia Chernyak, University of California - Irvine; Non-Presenting Author: Teresa Harvey, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Amanda Tarullo, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Peter C Rockers, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Peter R Blake, Boston University

• Children’s beliefs about unobservable entities in three societies - Presenting Author: Telli Davoodi, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Jennifer M. Clegg, Texas State University; Non-Presenting Author: Yixin Kelly Cui, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Paul Harris, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Non-Presenting Author: Kathleen Helen Corriveau, Boston University