Cross-cultural factors and environmental variation

 Cross-cultural factors and environmental variation

 Cross-cultural factors and environmental variation are crucial factors when one is studying cognitive development; this is because both of these factors affect the cognitive development of a child in one way or another. Cross-culture will allow children to learn by enabling them to experience different psychological processes present in the community through guidance, modeling, and instructions. On the other hand, environmental variation will influence cognitive development through the kind of exposure and opportunity the child has when he is growing; also, the child’s socio-economic background may determine the level of cognitive development he might be able to achieve.

Cross-cultural and environmental variation

Culture has been described as a developmental niche conceptualized where children acquire skills and knowledge; we can see that Indian and Chinese children are usually more concerned about their relationship with other people when discussing conflict and are less concerned about their self-interest. This is contrary to what the Western children do when dealing with that same situation; priorities of cultures have been seen to affect different values when it comes to emotions. We can clearly see that the values of Asians put more priorities on things such as respect to authority and harmony and discourage the value of shame and expression of anger (Cole et al., 2002). In a case where a Brahman child was slapped for snatching an eraser but was only to feel anger and not show it, explained how culture had a great influence on a child’s emotion. Therefore culture is becoming an important factor in the study of cognitive development.

Children’s spatial learning is mostly affected by how they navigate their surrounding community and how far they live. This may affect their spatial performance; the children of a community such as Tsimane, who in most cases are involved in activities associated with taking unpredictable routes, would have stronger about surveying their environment, which will make them perform well in spatial navigational tasks. The boys and girls who were found to have taken more complex routes, and have traveled in many places and regions, were found to perform well on a spatial task on a large-scale, i.e., perspective-taking and pointing accuracy. Evidence has shown that perspective-taking is much more related directly to the ability to navigate than it is for mental rotation (Davis & Cashdan, 2019). Therefore, we can see how environmental variation can affect a child’s cognitive development from the above study.

Conclusion

When we take a look at these two studies, we can understand how cognitive development, in some cases, might rely on cross-cultural and environmental variation so that we can study and view it from a broader perspective. Those studies have given various examples proving how they are significant when studying a child’s cognitive development process; therefore, they should be keenly taken into consideration when cognitive development studies are being conducted.

References

Cole, P. M., Bruschi, C. J., & Tamang, B. L. (2002). Cultural differences in children’s emotional reactions to difficult situations. Child development, 73(3), 983-996.

Davis, H. E., & Cashdan, E. (2019). Spatial cognition, navigation, and mobility among children in a forager-horticulturalist population, the Tsimané of Bolivia. Cognitive Development, 52, 100800.