Early (m)other-infant interaction

Contact: Joscha Kärtner & Helen Wefers

This line of research focuses on the universal and culture-specifics of parenting. So far, the studies suggest that 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, the studies show 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 first 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 a current cross-cultural project, we investigate maternal ideals (ethnotheories) on major areas of infant development. That is, we are interested in how emotional and how active mothers ideally want infants to be and how those ideals inform mothers’ co-regulation of infant states. Moreover, we explore the implications of culture-specific interaction experiences with the mother for infant development. 

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.
  • Keller, H. & Kärtner, J. (2013). Development – The cultural solution of universal developmental tasks. In M. Gelfand, C.-Y. Chiu & Y.-Y. Hong (Eds.), Advances in Culture and Psychology (Vol. 3), (pp. 63-116). Oxford University Press.
  • Kärtner, J., Holodynski, M., & Wörmann, V. (2013). Parental ethnotheories, social practice and the culture-specific development of the social smile in infants. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 20, 79-95.
  • Kärtner, J., Keller, H., & Yovsi, R. (2010). Mother-infant interaction during the first three months: The emergence of culture-specific contingency patterns. Child Development, 81, 540-554.