Early socio-cognitive development

Self-development in different cultures

From birth the infants’ lifeworld is primarily provided by primary caregivers. The way in which (m)others structure social interaction has implications for infants’ experience and behavior. Later in development these experiences influence the development of self-awareness and infants’ sense of self. For example, we could show that in the second year, the age of emergence of the categorical self (assessed via mirror self-recognition and personal pronouns) and autobiographical memory and the narrative self with four years differs between cultures.

Selected publications:

Kärtner, J. (2015). The autonomous developmental pathway: The primacy of subjective mental states for human behavior and experience. Child Development, 86, 1298-1309.
Kärtner, J., Keller, H., Chaudhary, N., & Yovsi, R. (2012). Sociocultural influences on the development of mirror self-recognition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.
Keller, H., Yovsi, R., Borke, J., Kärtner, J., Jensen, H., & Papaligoura, Z. (2004). Developmental consequences of early parenting experiences: self-recognition and self-regulation in three cultural communities. Child Development, 75(6), 1745-1760.
Schröder, L., Keller, H., Kärtner, J., Kleis, A., Abels, M., Yovsi, R. D., Chaudhary, N., Jensen, H., Papaligoura, Z. (2013). Early reminiscing in cultural context: Cultural models, maternal reminiscing styles, and children’s memories. Journal of Cognition and Development, 14, 10-34.