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This review focuses on infants' emerging awareness of mental states and demonstrates how cultural models—consisting of parenting beliefs and practices—interact dynamically with biologically prepared developmental potentialities in shaping infant behavior and development. Contrasting very different cultural contexts, it is suggested that caregivers' visual contingent responsiveness and associated processes are key features of early mother–infant interaction. They (a) are informed by intuitive parenting and culture-specific ethnotheories that, as a consequence, (b) differentially sensitize infants for internal mental states in the 1st year and beyond, and thereby (c) provide mechanisms that specify how culture not only shapes human behavior and experience but also produces culture-specific developmental pathways.

In two experiments, the imitation of helping behavior in 16-month-olds was investigated. In Study 1 (N = 31), infants either observed an adult model helping or not helping another individual before they had the opportunity to assist an unfamiliar experimenter. In one of two tasks, more children helped in the prosocial model condition than in the no model control condition. In Study 2 (N = 60), a second control condition was included to test whether infants imitated the prosocial intention (no neediness control). Children in the prosocial model condition helped more readily than children in the no model condition, with the second control condition falling in between. These findings propose that modeling provides a critical learning mechanism in early prosocial development.

Infants begin to help other individuals in the second year of life. However, it is still unclear whether early helping behavior is based on an understanding of other individuals' needs and is thus motivated prosocially. In the present eye-tracking study, 9- to 18-month-old infants (N = 71) saw a character in need of help, unable to reach its goal because of an obstacle, and a second character that was able to achieve a goal on its own. When a third individual (a helper) initiated an action, the infants expected the helper to help the character in need (as indicated during the anticipatory-looking and violation-of-expectation phases). Their prosocial understanding did not differ between age groups and was not related to their helping behavior (measured in two behavioral tasks). Thus, infants understand other individuals' needs even before they start to help others themselves. This indicates that early helping may indeed be motivated prosocially and raises the question of which other competences underlie the ontogeny of helping behavior.

The way humans perceive and attend to visual scenes differs profoundly between individuals. This is most compellingly demonstrated for context-sensitivity, the relative attentional focus on focal objects and background elements of a scene, in cross-cultural comparisons. Differences in context-sensitivity have been reported in verbal accounts (e.g. picture descriptions) and in visual attention (e.g., eye-tracking paradigms). The present study investigates (1) if the way parents verbally guide the attention of their children in visual scenes is associated with differences in children's context-sensitivity and (2) if verbal descriptions of scenes are related to early visual attention (i.e., gaze behavior) in 5-year-old children and their parents. Importantly, the way parents verbally described visual scenes to their children was related to children's context-sensitivity, when describing these scenes themselves. This is, we found a correlation in the number of references made to the object versus the background as well as the number of relations made between different elements of a scene. Furthermore, verbal descriptions were closely related to visual attention in adults, but not in children. These findings support our hypotheses that context-sensitivity is socialized via a verbal route and that visual attention processes align with acquired narrative structures only later in development, after the preschool years.

This study analyzed German and Nso mothers' auditory, proximal, and visual contingent responses to their infants' nondistress vocalizations in postnatal Weeks 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. Visual contingency scores increased whereas proximal contingency scores decreased over time for the independent (German urban middle-class, N= 20) but not the interdependent sociocultural context (rural Nso farmers, N = 24). It seems, therefore, that culture-specific differences in the modal patterns of contingent responsiveness emerge during the 2nd and 3rd months of life. This differential development was interpreted as the result of the interplay between maturational processes associated with the 2-month shift that are selectively integrated and reinforced in culturespecific mother-infant interaction.

This cross-cultural study investigates how maternal task assignment relates to toddlers' requested behavior and helping between 18 and 30 months. One hundred seven mother-child dyads were assessed in three different cultural contexts (rural Brazil, urban Germany, and urban Brazil). Brazilian mothers showed assertive scaffolding (serious and insistent requesting), whereas German mothers employed deliberate scaffolding (asking, pleading, and giving explanations). Assertive scaffolding related to toddlers' requested behavior in all samples. Importantly, assertive scaffolding was associated with toddlers' helping in rural Brazil, whereas mothers' deliberate scaffolding related to toddlers' helping behavior in urban Germany. These findings highlight the role of caregivers' socialization practices for the early ontogeny of helping behavior and suggest culture-specific developmental pathways along the lines of interpersonal responsibility and personal choice.

Cognitive processes differ markedly between children from different cultures, with best evidence for attention to visual scenes and the activities of others. Children from urban Western cultures tend to focus on focal objects, whereas children from urban East-Asian cultures rather attend to contextual elements of a visual scene. Regarding the attention to others' activities, children from subsistence-based farming communities often observe several activities simultaneously, while children from urban Western contexts focus on activities sequentially. Here we assessed 144 5-year-old children from three prototypical cultural contexts (urban Germany, rural Cameroon, urban Japan) to investigate variations in attention across a variety of tasks. Attention to the elements of a visual scene was assessed in an optical illusion task, in picture descriptions and an eye-tracking paradigm. Attention to and learning from others' activities was assessed in a parallel action task and a rule-based game. Some tasks indicated higher context-sensitive attention in urban Japan, while other findings indicated higher context-sensitive attention in urban Germany. Levels of parallel attention and learning from others' activities were lower in rural Cameroonian children compared to the urban samples. Across tasks, the visual attention measures were unrelated. These findings substantiate that culture has a profound influence on early cognitive development, already in the preschool years. Furthermore, they raise critical questions about the early origins of cultural specificities in attention and the generalizability of attention phenomena beyond specific tasks and populations.

This study shows how Berlin (n = 35) and Delhi (n = 28) mothers scaffold a common and highly scripted social situation, namely gift giving, and enable cultural learning in 19-month-olds. Using modeling and prompting to encourage appropriate responses, mothers took culture-specific directions during scaffolding that were in line with the broader cultural model as assessed by maternal socialization goals (SGs). Whereas Berlin mothers prioritized autonomous SGs, Delhi mothers emphasized autonomous and relational SGs to similar degrees. During scaffolding, Berlin mothers focused on maximizing positive affect and acknowledging the gift, whereas Delhi mothers prompted toddlers to acknowledge the giver more often. Furthermore, there were differences in toddlers' behavior in line with these culture-specific scripts guiding gift giving.

This study relates parenting of 3-month-old children to children's self-recognition and self-regulation at 18 to 20 months. As hypothesized, observational data revealed differences in the sociocultural orientations of the 3 cultural samples' parenting styles and in toddlers' development of self-recognition and self-regulation. Children of Cameroonian Nso farmers who experience a proximal parenting style develop self-regulation earlier, children of Greek urban middle-class families who experience a distal parenting style develop self-recognition earlier, and children of Costa Rican middle-class families who experience aspects of both distal and proximal parenting styles fall between the other 2 groups on both self-regulation and self-recognition. Results are discussed with respect to their implications for culturally informed developmental pathways.

This study examined possible associations between variables related to maternal socialization goals and the manifestation of requested behaviors among children living in a Brazilian rural community, in order to answer the following question: Is there any correlation between maternal goals and the manifestation of requested behaviors in their children? A total of 39 mother-child dyads participated in the study and the children were aged between 18 and 30 months old. We applied a questionnaire on socialization goals/educational objectives and a form to record the obedience prosocial behavior task. The results indicated that the more mothers emphasize “learning to support others” and “learning to understand others’ feelings”, the more their children follow the maternal requests. A significant correlation is suggested between a child’s response in performing the task and the mothers’ socialization goals, highlighting the importance of parents and educators establishing a conducive environment for the exercise of prosociality in childhood. Resumo: Este estudo investigou possíveis associações entre variáveis referentes às metas de socialização maternas e a manifestação do comportamento solicitado entre crianças residentes em uma comunidade rural brasileira, com intuito de responder ao problema: há correlação entre as metas maternas e a manifestação do comportamento solicitado em seus filhos? Participaram do estudo 39 díades, mãe-filho, sendo crianças com idades entre 18 e 30 meses. Foram utilizados o Questionário de Metas de Socialização-Objetivos Educativos e a Ficha de Registros da Tarefa de Comportamento Prossocial de Obediência. Os resultados indicaram: quanto mais as mães enfatizam “aprender a dar suporte aos outros” e “aprender a entender o sentimento dos outros”, seus filhos seguem os pedidos maternos. Sugere-se uma correlação significativa entre a resposta da criança na realização da tarefa e as metas de socialização das mães, ressaltando-se a importância de pais e educadores estabelecerem um campo propício para o exercício da prossociabilidade na infância. Resumen: Este estudio investigó posibles asociaciones entre variables relacionadas con metas maternas de socialización y manifestaciones de comportamientos solicitados en niños de comunidad rural de Brasil, para responder la siguiente pregunta: ¿Existe alguna correlación entre metas maternas y manifestaciones de conductas solicitadas en los hijos? Participaron 39 parejas (madre-hijo); los niños tenían 18-30 meses de edad. Se utilizaron los siguientes instrumentos: Cuestionario de Metas de Socialización-Objetivos Educativos y Formulario de Registros de Tareas de Comportamiento Prosocial de Obediencia. Los resultados indicaron que cuanto más las madres enfatizan “aprender a brindar apoyo a los demás” y “aprender a entender los sentimientos de los demás”, sus hijos siguen sus instrucciones. Se sugiere una correlación significativa entre la respuesta de los niños en realizar una tarea y las metas de socialización de las madres, destacando la importancia de que tanto padres como educadores establezcan un entorno propicio ejercer la prosocialidad en la infancia.