[xmca] Holodynski, The Internalization theory of emotions - infant smiling

["Holodynski, Manfred" <manfred.holodynski@uni-muenster.de>]

Dear Mike,
we published our empirical research in the following article: Wörmann, V., Holodynski, M., Kärtner, J. & Keller, H. (2012). A cross-cultural comparison of the development of the social smile. A longitudinal study of maternal and infant imitation in 6- and 12-week-old infants, Infant Behavior and Development, 35, 335-347. Two further manuscripts are still under review.
In this article, you can see which culture we chose (middle class mothers from Germany and mothers from the rural ethnic group of the Nso in Cameroon) and how we operationalize our ideas of mutual imitation of smiling (affect mirroring on mother's side and motor mimicry on the infant's side). I can send the pdf-version of the article if you like. 
Best
Manfred

Prof. Dr. Manfred Holodynski
Institut für Psychologie in Bildung und Erziehung
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Fliednerstr. 21
D-48149 Münster
+49-(0)-251-83-34311
+49-(0)-251-83-34310 (Sekretariat)
+49-(0)-251-83-34314 (Fax)
http://wwwpsy.uni-muenster.de/Psychologie.inst5/AEHolodynski/index.html
manfred.holodynski@uni-muenster.de


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] Im Auftrag von mike cole
Gesendet: Dienstag, 9. April 2013 05:17
An: ablunden@mira.net
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Betreff: Re: [xmca] FW: Holodynski, The Internalization theory of emotions

Yes, Andy. I read that material by Manfred and the empirical article upon which the passages were based. No complaints with the passages. For a number of reasons, I am interested in the details of the case as they are represented in empirical research. No need to do that, of course, if the summary says it all, but for those who are interested in sociocultural variation in the development of socially contingent smiling, access to the originals and discussion among those is helpful. I am such an oddball.

Not a criticism of Manfred, XMCA, or anything else. Just a lament on the constrictions on discourse among us.
:-))**2
mike

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 8:02 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Mike, page 27 of the Holodysnki article does summarise the work on 
> social smiling dealt with more fully in the other article:
>
>    Another social mechanism of emotional development can be observed
>    especially in cultures with extensive face-to-face interactions
>    between caregivers and their infants, such as Western cultures and
>    the Minangkabau culture in West Sumatra. This is called affect
>    mirroring (Gergely & Watson, 1999). When infants show emotional
>    expressions, caregivers often intuitively use their own expression
>    to mirror the inferred infant expression in a succinct and
>    conventionalized manner, for example, by mirroring a baby's smile
>    and praising him for it or by playfully mirroring a baby's painful
>    grimace and sounds of distress before accompanying the removal of
>    the distress with soothing sounds. Affect mirroring works like a
>    natural "biofeedback" training that enables the infant to also
>    experience contingencies between her own feelings and the
>    corresponding expression mirrored in the face and body of her
>    caregiver. It supports the acquisition of the conventionalized
>    expression signs within the given culture and prepares the conscious
>    perception of feelings (see Fontagy et al., 2002).
>
>    Culture-specific conditions can have an impact on the development of
>    emotions because of the incomplete state of neonate emotional
>    expression and cognitive abilities, as just described. Two pathways
>    are possible: Culture-specific educational practices determine the
>    extent to which children are exposed to situational causes of single
>    emotions, such as, elicitors that trigger distress or joy. Second,
>    culture-specific patterns regulate how caregivers interpret
>    children's expressions and how they react to them.
>
>    As cross-cultural studies have shown, parents from different
>    sociocultural contexts value different socialization goals and
>    strategies. These strategies, in turn, depend on culture-specific
>    ethnotheories of parenting that specify what is considered to be
>    appropriate contact with one's infants (Keller et al., 2006; Keller,
>    Völker, & Yovsi, 2005) and influence the interactional parenting
>    practices that parents apply (see Demuth, this issue; Kärtner et
>    al., this issue; Keller & Otto, 2009).
>
>    The differences in these practices can be observed in a
>    cross-cultural comparison of the development of social smiling in
>    the young infants of middle-class mothers in the German city of
>    Münster and rural Nso mothers from Kumbo in the northwest of
>    Cameroon (Wörmann et al., 2012). During free interactions, the urban
>    German mothers particularly preferred dialogic communication with
>    their 6- and then 12-week-old infants. This was based on positive
>    emotional expressions with smiles and a friendly intonation. Rural
>    Nso mothers, in contrast, preferred a prompt satisfaction of their
>    infant's bodily needs but considered face-to-face interactions to be
>    unimportant. In line with these different ethnotheories, German
>    mothers and their 12-week-old infants not only smiled at each other
>    more frequently but also imitated the smiling of the other more
>    frequently than Nso mothers and their infants, who only occasionally
>    displayed social smiling.
>
>    The study also shows how dialogic, face-to-face interactions between
>    infants and parents are not practiced to an equal extent across all
>    cultures, indicating that conclusions based on such behavior cannot
>    be generalized without further empirical research (see White, this
>    issue). Several cross-cultural studies have demonstrated how
>    different educational practices lead to different frequencies and
>    features of expression (Cole, Bruschi, & Tamang, 2002; Friedlmeier &
>    Trommsdorff, 1999; Lewis, Takai-Kawakami, Kawakami, & Sullivan, 2010).
>
> Andy
>
> mike cole wrote:
>
>> I believe that the idea of age periodization in Vygotsky (and 
>> Leontiev, and Piaget and ..... ) almost certainly needs to be 
>> enriched by ethnographic research on variations in what constitutes a 
>> milestone and when it is said to occur across cultures, social 
>> classes, genders, history, etc. The very use of the word, pre-school, 
>> tips the game.
>>
>> I am personally really interested in the development of social 
>> smiling in the first year of life and would love to discuss that 
>> topic with respect to the general theory because in some ways it is a 
>> paradigm case. But to do that on XMCA is to get everyone reading the 
>> empirical article on this subject in this issue of MCA and that we 
>> are not supposed to do. Groan.
>> mike
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 10:15 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Manfred, thanks for responding.
>>> Note that I did not reject what's in the article, only noted what 
>>> seems to me to be a glaring omission. I can't say I've got an easy 
>>> answer to the question of what occurs emotionally during 
>>> adolescence, because it's a period of continual change in just about 
>>> every regard. It's also not an area in which I have any sort of 
>>> expertise, so I was hoping the article would enlighten me. p
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear Peter,
>>> you're right in considering the gap between childhood and adulthood 
>>> in the internalization theory of emotion and it is necessary for 
>>> future research to fill this gap.
>>> However, addressing this is a bit like "I want all - or it could not 
>>> be good". So, what's about these developmental phases I have addressed?
>>> Neonates, infants, preschoolers and children? How do you think about 
>>> the conception of these periods? I adopted Vygotsky's periods of the 
>>> acquisition of sign use to the development of emotions. And indeed, 
>>> the internalization of sign use is completed in a first 
>>> developmental cycle during late childhood. It is an interesting 
>>> questions which are the main development tasks for adolescents in 
>>> the development of emotions. Is it the emergence of new emotions 
>>> such as falling in love or national pride or/and is it a new quality 
>>> of emotion regulation such as regulating emotions in advance, that 
>>> means, to anticipate the satisfaction of motives in the future and 
>>> to regulate one's life - and emotions - from this perspective.
>>> But then, it is a question of emotion regulation and not so much a 
>>> question of the emergence of new emotion qualities.
>>>
>>> Manfred
>>>
>>>
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>
> --
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> http://marxists.academia.edu/**AndyBlunden<http://marxists.academia.ed
> u/AndyBlunden>
>
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