explaining individual and cross-cultural differences in mirror...
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Explaining Individual and Cross-cultural Differences
in Mirror Self-recognition
by
Senay Cebioğlu
M.A. (Psychology) Koç University, 2010
B.A. (Hons, Psychology) Ege University, 2006
Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the
Department of Psychology
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
© Senay Cebioğlu 2019
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
Spring 2019
Copyright in this work rests with the author. Please ensure that any reproduction or re-use is done in accordance with the relevant national copyright legislation.
ii
Approval
Name: Senay Cebioğlu
Degree: Doctor of Philosophy
Title: Explaining Individual and Cross-cultural Differences in Mirror Self-recognition
Examining Committee: Chair: Tom Spalek Professor
Tanya Broesch Senior Supervisor Associate Professor
Jeremy Carpendale Supervisor Professor
Michelle Kline Supervisor Assistant Professor
Maureen Hoskyn Internal Examiner Associate Professor Faculty of Education
Mark Nielsen External Examiner Associate Professor School of Psychology The University of Queensland
Date Defended/Approved: April 3, 2019
iii
Ethics Statement
iv
Abstract
Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is considered the benchmark of the capacity to think about
oneself. Around 18 months of age, infants across cultures vary systematically in their
MSR abilities. Understanding the developmental processes that underlie these
differences is critical to understanding the ontogeny of human self-awareness. The
overarching goal of my dissertation was to identify the early experiences that are linked
to infants’ ability to self-recognize, with three independent but linked studies. In study 1, I
recruited 18- to 22 months-old infants and their mothers from two distinct sociocultural
environments: urban Canada and rural Vanuatu, a small-scale island society located in
the South Pacific. Consistent with previous cross-cultural research, ni-Vanuatu infants
passed the MSR test at significantly lower rates (7%) compared to Canadian infants
(68%). Among a suite of social-interactional variables, mothers’ imitation of their infants
during a short free play session with toys best predicted infants’ performance on the
MSR test. In addition, low passing rates among ni-Vanuatu infants could not be
attributed to reasons non-related to self-development (i.e., motivation to show mark-
directed behavior, understanding mirror-correspondence, representational thinking). In
study 2, I aimed to replicate my previous results on imitation, this time in a culturally
diverse urban Canadian sample of 15- to 21-month-old infants and their parents, in order
to bypass potential confounding factors related to the cross-cultural validity of the test. In
this study, mothers’ imitation of their infants observed during a short free play session
predicted infants’ MSR, while controlling for infants’ temperament. In study 3, I examined
whether the referential content of mothers’ child-directed speech systematically differed
between ni-Vanuatu and Canadian cultures. When interacting with their 18- to 28-month-
olds during a dyadic free play session, Canadian mothers referred significantly more to
their toddlers’ mind-minded internal states (e.g., desire), linked toddlers’ internal states
to their acts and perceptions, and produced more references to past events. These
results bring attention to the role that language interactions may be playing in the
emergence of a self-concept. Together, these 3 studies provide evidence that will help
us better understand the social-interactional processes underlying the development of
self-awareness in infancy.
Keywords: Mirror self-recognition; objective self-awareness; culture; imitation;
language interactions
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Dedication
I dedicate my dissertation to the children of Tanna. I caught sight of pure happiness as I
watched them play.
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Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to thank the people without whom I would not have been able to
accomplish this work. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to
my senior supervisor Dr. Tanya Broesch. She provided her generous help at every step
of this project and she changed my life by introducing me to fieldwork, and to my family
in Tanna Island, Vanuatu. I am also grateful to my committee members Dr. Jeremy
Carpendale and Dr. Michelle Kline for providing much appreciated feedback on this
work. Moreover, both of them have been role models; they have thought me how to be a
better academic, a better teacher, and a better person.
I would like to thank Dr. Kiley Hamlin and Van de Vondervoort, J. W., our
collaborators at the UBC Psychology Department, for their contribution to data collection,
and Dr. Kelly Marin for providing her expertise in language. I would also like to thank Dr.
Lara Aknin for her feedback at the earlier steps of the project, and Dr. Mike Maraun for
his vigilant statistical counselling. A special thanks goes to my former advisor Dr. Nazan
Aksan, for her continuing support. Last but not least, I gratefully acknowledge the
Graduate International Research Travel Award that was granted to me by the Graduate
and Postdoctoral Studies at SFU, which made my first trip to Vanuatu possible.
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all the parents and children
who participated in this research. Our knowledge on infant development progresses
thanks to them. I am indebted to Rachel Iakin who is a ni-Vanuatu field worker affiliated
with the Cultural Center in Vanuatu. She worked as a research assistant in this project.
She welcomed me to the village of Lounikavik and helped me survive and thrive in a
culture that was initially foreign to me. I will be forever grateful for her help and
friendship. I am also grateful to Chief Tom Noam, my father in Tanna, for accepting me
into his family. Hilary Aime, a dear friend and a member of Culture and Development
Lab at SFU shared some of this journey with me. I am grateful for her valuable support
and companionship.
Several research assistants have contributed to this project including Sam Allen,
Sukhneet Bains, Diana Bajo, Sila Kiral, Jennifer Lawley, Kirsten Martin, Puneet Sekhon,
and Marieke Vandenhende. Most of them were undergraduate students who worked part
vii
time jobs elsewhere to fund their education. The fact that they volunteered in this project
proves that they had high internal motivation to learn and to be part of the academic
community. Undergraduate research assistants fulfil an important role in the research
that is being conducted in our universities world-wide; they are the foot soldiers of
science.
My family has been incredibly supportive during all the years I have been away
from home to complete my PhD degree. They provided me with financial and moral
support. They endured years of yearning for their daughter so that she could achieve her
dreams. I am thankful for their support. I also would like to take the opportunity to thank
my friends in Vancouver, who have been a second family to me. Nural Sumbultepe, Ece
Sonmez, Ataman Avdan, and Burcak Dogan are a few names among many. One of the
advantages of being a psychologist is that you get to have friends who are mental health
professionals. I have a terrific support team constituting of 4 psychologist women whom I
met in Istanbul in 2008. They were a phone call or a text message away whenever I felt
overwhelmed with the adversities of life as a graduate student. Thank you, Ceren
Sonmez, Irem Guroglu, Beyza Ates, and Pinar Arslan. Two people helped me survive
the struggles of finishing up this work. I offer my gratitude and appreciation to my
colleague Andrea Smit who has been a huge source of support over the last few months
as both of our defence dates approached. And I thank Bruno Olaizola Mampaso for his
valuable emotional support during those daunting weeks prior to the defence. In
addition, I would like to thank my friend Beau Wallbridge for proofreading my dissertation
and my friend Canan Gunes for polishing my bibliography. Thank you Ishtar Beck,
Adrian de Bruyn, and Thais Amaral for helping me celebrate which was unsurprisingly
hard once it was all over. Finally, thanks to all friends and colleagues who have listened
to me, challenged me, and inspired me over the years either inside or outside the walls
of the university. It takes a village to write a dissertation, or to accomplish anything for
that matter.
viii
Table of Contents
Approval .......................................................................................................................... ii
Ethics Statement ............................................................................................................ iii
Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication ....................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ vi
Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... viii
List of Tables .................................................................................................................. xi
List of Figures................................................................................................................ xii
General Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1
Defining objective self-awareness ............................................................................... 1
Mirror Self-recognition ..................................................................................................... 2
Cross-cultural Variation in MSR Passing Rates ............................................................... 6
Methodology ................................................................................................................... 7
Research Methods and Theoretical Framework ........................................................... 7
Field Sites .................................................................................................................... 8
Three Studies on Self in Infancy ...................................................................................... 9
Chapter 1. Study 1. Understanding Cross-cultural Differences in Mirror Self-Recognition ........................................................................................................ 11
1.1. Abstract ............................................................................................................... 11
1.2. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 11
1.2.1. MSR Varies across Sociocultural Contexts .................................................. 13
1.2.2. Framing the Differences in Developmental Trajectories ............................... 14
1.2.3. Understanding the Developmental Mechanisms .......................................... 16
1.2.4. Alternative Explanations .............................................................................. 18
1.2.5. Summary and Hypotheses........................................................................... 21
1.3. Methods .............................................................................................................. 22
1.3.1. Sociocultural Contexts ................................................................................. 22
Tanna. .................................................................................................................... 23
Vancouver. ............................................................................................................. 23
1.3.2. Participants .................................................................................................. 24
1.3.3. Procedure .................................................................................................... 25
1.3.4. Measures ..................................................................................................... 27
Invisible displacement (ID) test............................................................................... 27
Mirror mediated behaviour (MMB) test ................................................................... 27
Mirror self-recognition (MSR) test ........................................................................... 28
Knee-marking test .................................................................................................. 29
Free Play sessions ................................................................................................. 29
1.3.5. Coding and Reliability .................................................................................. 30
Behavioral tasks ..................................................................................................... 30
ix
Free play interactions ............................................................................................. 31
1.4. Results ................................................................................................................ 33
1.4.1. Differences in MSR Passing Rates .............................................................. 33
1.4.2. Examining Alternative Explanations for Cross-cultural Variability ................. 34
1.4.3. Predicting MSR ............................................................................................ 35
Correlations between social interactional variables and MSR ................................ 36
Comparing joint attention levels between Vanuatu and Canada ............................. 36
Comparing imitation levels between Vanuatu and Canada ..................................... 37
Summary of associations ....................................................................................... 38
Logistic regression Model Predicting MSR ............................................................. 38
1.5. Discussion ........................................................................................................... 39
Chapter 2. Study 2. Parental Imitation and Mirror Self-Recognition: Examining Within-Culture Variability .................................................................................. 44
2.1. Abstract ............................................................................................................... 44
2.2. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 44
2.3. Current Research ................................................................................................ 48
2.4. Methods .............................................................................................................. 48
2.4.1. Participants .................................................................................................. 48
2.4.2. Procedure .................................................................................................... 50
2.4.3. Measures ..................................................................................................... 50
2.4.4. Coding and Reliability .................................................................................. 52
2.5. Results ................................................................................................................ 54
2.5.1. Predicting Self-recognizers .......................................................................... 54
2.5.2. Describing the Effects of Culture, Gender and Free play Context on Imitation . .................................................................................................................... 55
2.5.3. Describing the Effects of Culture and Gender on Temperament .................. 57
2.6. Discussion ........................................................................................................... 57
Chapter 3. Study 3. Child-directed Speech as a Context for the Socialization of Self: A comparison of Canada and Vanuatu .................................................... 61
3.1. Abstract ............................................................................................................... 61
3.2. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 61
3.3. Methods .............................................................................................................. 66
3.3.1. Participants .................................................................................................. 66
3.3.2. Societies ...................................................................................................... 67
3.3.3. Procedure .................................................................................................... 67
3.3.4. Transcription and Translation of the Interactions ......................................... 69
3.3.5. Parsing the Transcriptions ........................................................................... 71
3.3.6. Coding ......................................................................................................... 71
General referential content ..................................................................................... 72
Referential content focused at the child .................................................................. 73
Referential content focused at the child’s internal states ........................................ 73
Past talk ................................................................................................................. 74
3.4. Results ................................................................................................................ 75
x
3.4.1. General Referential Content ........................................................................ 75
3.4.2. Referential Content Focused on the Child ................................................... 76
3.4.3. Referential Content Focused on the Child’s Internal States ......................... 78
3.4.4. Past Talk ..................................................................................................... 80
3.5. Discussion ........................................................................................................... 80
General Discussion ..................................................................................................... 87
Maternal Imitation Predicts MSR ................................................................................... 87
Child-directed Speech Varies across Cultures............................................................... 89
MSR Is a Cross-culturally Valid Measure of Objective Self-awareness.......................... 90
The Path Forward ......................................................................................................... 91
References ................................................................................................................... 93
Appendix A. Supplementary Material on Study 1 .............................................. 107
Section A.1. Pictures of Testing Materials ................................................................... 107
Section A.2. Information on contingency tables used to compare imitation levels between cultures ....................................................................................................................... 111
Appendix B. Supplementary Material on Study 2 .............................................. 113
Section B.1. Comparing mother-infant and father-infant dyads .................................... 113
Section B.2. Procedural differences with regards to the number of visits ..................... 113
Section B.3. Procedural differences with regards to parents’ gender ........................... 114
Section B.4. Procedural differences with regards to the identity of the experimenter ... 114
Section B.5. Differences in children’s mean age due to procedural differences ........... 115
xi
List of Tables
Table 1.1. Correlations between Social-interactional Variables and the MSR Test . 36
Table 1.2. Summarizing the Associations between Site, Social Interactions, and MSR ....................................................................................................... 38
Table 1.3. Regression Model Predicting MSR ......................................................... 39
Table 2.1. Logistic Regression with all Potential Predictors in the Model ................ 55
Table 3.1. Coding of the General Referential Content ............................................. 72
Table 3.2. Coding of the Referential Content Focused on the Child ........................ 73
Table 3.3. Coding of the Referential Content Focused on the Child’s Internal States ............................................................................................................... 74
xii
List of Figures
Figure 1.1. Comparison of Ni-Vanuatu and Canadian infants’ passing rates for the MSR test and the control measures ....................................................... 35
Figure 3.1. Percentage distribution of referential content categories focused on the child in ni-Vanuatu and Canadian parents’ child-directed speech ........... 78
Figure 3.2. Percentage distribution of mind-minded and body-minded internal state references among ni-Vanuatu and Canadian parents’ total internal state references .............................................................................................. 80
1
General Introduction
Infants begin to recognize themselves in a mirror around 18 months of age. This
seemingly simple ability marks the benchmark of objective self-awareness —ability to
think about oneself. Interestingly, cross-cultural research indicates that the age at which
infants start to recognize themselves in a mirror varies systematically between cultures
(Broesch, Callaghan, Henrich, Murphy, & Rochat, 2011; Kärtner, Keller, Chaudhary, &
Yovsi, 2012). Explaining how infants’ early experiences contribute to this variation is
critical to our understanding of the ontogeny of human self-awareness. The overarching
goal of my dissertation is to better understand the links between infants’ social-
interactive experience and self-recognition ability with three studies. In this general
introduction, I briefly introduce the underlying motivation for this research as well as my
theoretical framework and research methodology. Finally, I will present the specific
research questions I addressed in each study and summarize my findings.
Defining objective self-awareness
The concept of objective self-awareness refers to the ability to think about the
self. This ability marks the transition from a subjective level of self-experience to a more
complex form of self-experience where one becomes the object of one’s own thought
(Duval & Wicklund, 1972; James, 1890/1950; Mead, 1934/1967).
Subjective self-awareness refers to experiencing oneself as the source of
perception and action while the awareness remains at an organismic level (Duval &
Wicklund, 1972). In other words self-other distinction is functionally present and can be
observed in perception and action but not yet in thought. For example, newborns
differentiate their own touch from that of others, a phenomenon measured through the
rooting reflex (Rochat & Hespos, 1997). Starting from two months of age they become
engaged participants in face to face exchanges by taking turns (Bigelow & Rochat,
2006) and start to act agentically to reproduce the consequences of their actions
(Rochat & Striano, 1999). By nine months, they show signs that they have learned to
use others to regulate their behavior or affect as in the case of social referencing
(Feinman, 1982). However, they cannot yet dissociate from their subjective experience
and treat themselves as an object of thought. This difference becomes easier to observe
2
when infants are presented with their reflected image in front of a mirror. Throughout the
first year and a half of their lives, infants express a growing interest in the mirror and
demonstrate an increasing appreciation of the synchronicity between their body
movements and the image in the mirror (Amsterdam, 1972; Dickie & Strader, 1974).
However, they cannot cognize that the infant in the mirror is them until they are about 18
months of age. The level of reflexive thinking that goes into recognizing the mirror image
as ‘me’ requires the infant to construe a mental representation of the self (Lewis &
Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Gallup, 1977; Rochat, 2009); in other words, an ‘idea of me’ (Lewis,
2003). This revolutionary idea is a human universal which can be considered as the first
step towards building a personhood that will integrate the individual into a complex
system of social, emotional, and moral network.
Mirror Self-recognition
For adults, the experience of objective self-awareness clearly manifests when we
look in the mirror and face the “self”. Whether infants also recognized themselves in the
mirror had long been a matter of curiosity but the conclusions had been discrepant
before the mirror self-recognition (MSR) test. Darwin thought that visual self-recognition
was present at 9 months (Darwin, 2010) and Gesell, after testing over 500 babies, had
doubted that recognition could occur in early childhood (Gesell, Thompson, & Amatruda,
1934). The challenge is to identify a reliable non-verbal indication of infants’ knowledge
of the identity of the mirror image since we cannot directly observe this construct. The
invention of the mirror self-recognition (MSR) test (Gallup, 1970; Amsterdam, 1972), also
known as the mark test, resolved this problem and became widely adopted by
developmental researchers thanks to its strong face validity (Amsterdam & Lewitt, 1980).
During the MSR test procedure, an experimenter surreptitiously places a mark
(typically a sticker or lipstick) on an infant’s forehead, cheek, or nose. The infant is then
presented with a mirror and the infant’s response to the mirror image is recorded. If the
infant shows mark-directed behavior (i.e., touches the mark on her face) upon seeing the
mirror, it is considered that they have recognized themselves and passed the test. Other
responses commonly observed among infants who fail the test include
sociable/playmate behaviors such as smiling at the mirror, mirror-directed behaviors
such as touching the mirror, moving one’s body and observing the mirror image, and
search behaviors such as checking behind the mirror (Amsterdam, 1972; Lewis &
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Brooks-Gunn, 1979). While they are all considered as a fail, it is difficult to interpret the
exact meaning of these behaviors. Sociable/playmate and mirror-directed behaviors
which are also common among animals such as birds, cats, dogs, and monkeys are
considered indication of wrongly identifying the mirror as someone else (Gallup, 1968).
Moving one’s body and observing the mirror image may be indicating an enjoyment of
the symmetry between kinesthetic and visual stimuli which would indicate that the infant
at least differentiates between these two perceptual stimuli. According to Rochat (2009),
this is an indication of a differentiated self, the very first level of subjective self-
awareness. On the other hand, a systematic exploration of the intermodal link between
the seen and felt movements may be an indication of a situated self (Rochat, 2009), a
relatively more advanced sense of subjective self where the infant is aware that the
image in the mirror is unique to the self and situated spatially in relation to the self.
Regardless, in both of these cases, infants are not yet able to identify who is in the
mirror. Finally, checking behind the mirror could either be interpreted as a sociable-
playmate behavior or a systematic exploration of the image out there which would be an
indication of a situated self. In either case, this behavior also does not imply self-
recognition.
Touching the mark on one’s face provides compelling evidence of self-
recognition because the infant is not only making a distinction between her body and the
image in the mirror but also directing her behavior purposefully towards their body
(Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979). Developmental observations show us that these
behaviors which we consider as failing the test are present among infants as early as 3
to 5 months and their display decreases as mark-directed behavior appears starting from
15- to 18-months of age (Amsterdam, 1972; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979). In addition,
mark-directed behavior is correlated with personal pronoun use (Courage, Edison, &
Howe, 2004; Lewis & Ramsay, 2004) and the display of “exposure embarrassment”, a
form of embarrassment that appears when we become aware of being seen by others
such as in the case of receiving a compliment (Lewis, Stanger, & Sullivan, 1989). These
evidence further point to the mark test’s ability to discriminate between different levels of
self-awareness.
Self-recognition is typically considered a demonstration of a self-concept in the
infant. The proponents of this rich interpretation suggest that in order to recognize the
mirror image as oneself, the infant must construe a mental representation of the self
4
(Gallup, 1977; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Rochat, 2009), in other words, an idea of
me (Lewis, 2003). When a child is secretly marked on their face and shown a mirror,
they see a distorted (marked) image of themselves. In order to identify this as a distorted
image, the infant must compare the image in the mirror to a mental image of their
“typical” visual features. In other words, recognizing oneself in the mirror requires the
ability to hold both the existent and the non-existent models of their face in mind (Perner,
1991; Gergely, 1994; Parker & Mitchell, 1994). Recently, Nielsen and his colleagues
provided empirical evidence supporting the representational account of the MSR test
(Nielsen, Suddendorf, Slaughter, 2006). To do this, researchers invented a novel version
of the MSR test where toddlers are surreptitiously marked on their clothing (i.e., knees of
the pants) rather than their faces. Toddlers’ performance on the classical face-
recognition test and the knee-recognition test proved comparable. Then, in two other
studies, authors manipulated infants’ knowledge of how their clothing looked. They found
that those infants who had no correct knowledge of their clothing showed lower levels of
knee-recognition compared to those who had been exposed to their new clothing. These
results support the hypothesis that infants pass the MSR test by comparing two models
of self; one being how they look like in the mirror and one being how they think they
should look.
On the other hand, according to some researchers, the ability to recognize one’s
mirror image is a result of some lower level skills and does not imply a self-concept. For
example, Heyes (1994) argued that to pass the test, one only needs the ability to
distinguish between sensory input originating from the self and from outside the self.
Loveland suggests (1986) that passing the test requires discovering the affordances of a
reflecting surface. Finally, Mitchell’s (1993) inductive theory of visual self-recognition
suggests that passing the test requires both mature kinesthetic-visual matching and
understanding of mirror-correspondence. However, these lean interpretations cannot
explain findings such as infants being able to use mirrors’ reflective features to locate
objects before they can recognize their mirror image (Bertenthal & Fischer, 1978; Gouin
Décarie, Pouliot, & Poulin-Dubois, 1983). Moreover, infants can identify discrepancies
between kinesthetic and visual stimuli as early as 5 months of age (Bahrick & Watson,
1985) and being able to detect whether someone is imitating them does not differentiate
between toddlers who are recognizers and non-recognizers (Asendorpf, Warkentin, &
Baudonniere, 1996). Thus, based on the current evidence, it seems that lower levels
5
skills such as kinesthetic-visual matching and understanding mirror correspondence are
not enough to pass the test.
Although it is the most widely adopted one, MSR is not the only test available to
measure objective self-awareness. Recently, self-recognition beyond the face (i.e., leg)
was shown to be a viable alternative to facial self-recognition (Nielsen, Suddendorf, &
Slaughter, 2006). Self-recognition in pictures and videos (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979;
Povinelli, Landau, & Perilloux, 1996) has been examined as measures that are capturing
increasingly more complex aspects of visual self-recognition. Other indications of
objective self-awareness which do not involve visual recognition have also been
addressed. Some of these involve the use of the pronoun ‘me’ (Courage, Edison, &
Howe, 2004; Kärtner et al., 2012; LeVine, 1983, Lewis & Ramsay, 2004), expression of
self-conscious emotions such as embarrassment (Lewis, Sullivan, Stranger, & Weiss,
1989), and pretense involving the self at different levels of complexities (Pipp, Fischer, &
Jennings, 1987). Finally, researchers recently introduced different body awareness tasks
that measure infants’ ability to think about the relationship between their body and the
world of objects (e.g., Brownell, Zerwas, & Ramani, 2007; Moore, Mealiea, Garon, &
Povinelli, 2007). One of these is the body as obstacle (BAO) test where the infant is
asked to push a toy shopping cart forward. However, the cart is attached to the mat from
its back axle which prevents the child who is standing on the mat from pushing the cart
forward (Moore et al., 2007; Piaget, 1936/1977). To solve this task, the child must think
about the relationship between their body weight and the cart (i.e., ‘the chart is stuck
because of me, so I must move off the mat first’). These different tests clearly measure
independent but related domains or aspects of objective self-awareness. For example,
Moore and colleagues (2007) argue that the BAO test measures the understanding of
self as an object within the world of objects, as opposed to the MSR test that measures
the understanding of self as a person who is separate from other people in terms of
visual appearance.
In this dissertation, I am adopting the MSR for several reasons. First of all, the
test has strong face validity. Self-recognition is intuitively seen as central to one’s own
knowledge of themselves as a person. It is also the best studied test of in WEIRD
societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic; Henrich, Heine, &
Norenzayan, 2010). We know its age of onset, its correlates, and its relationship with
other milestones in the developmental trajectory. This offers us the capacity to judge the
6
comparability of the test across cultures within a nomological framework. In addition, it is
easier to implement and to reliably code compared to some other indices of objective
self-awareness such as expression of self-conscious emotions. Moreover, particularly
because the face is not directly visible to the child like other body parts such as hands or
legs, developing a representation of one’s face should rely more heavily on social
experience rather than experience with the world of objects (Piaget, 1945/1962; Moore
et al., 2007). In this sense, I argue that the test exceptionally captures the social nature
of self-objectification that is stressed by the relational theories of objective self-
awareness (e.g., Mead, 1967; Cooley, 1964). Although I acknowledge that there are
arguments towards leaner interpretations of the MSR test (e.g., Heyes, 1994; Loveland,
1986), based on the arguments reviewed above, I adopt the traditional rich interpretation
which suggests that MSR pinpoints the emergence of a self-concept (Gallup, 1977;
Amsterdam, 1972; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979).
Cross-cultural Variation in MSR Passing Rates
Infants from Western, urban societies typically begin passing the MSR test at
approximately 18 months of age and most of them become self-recognizers by 24
months (Amsterdam, 1972; Courage, Edison & Howe, 2004; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn,
1979; Nielsen, Dissanayake, & Kashima, 2003). Unfortunately, as with other
developmental research, much of the research on this ability is based on urban, Western
sociocultural contexts (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010; Kline, Shamsudheen, &
Broesch, 2018; Nielsen, Haun, Kärtner, & Legare, 2017). Recently, a handful of studies
have examined this ability in children across diverse sociocultural contexts and the
findings indicate significant cross-cultural variability (Broesch et al., 2011, Kärtner et al.,
2012; Keller et al., 2004; Ross et al., 2016). The cross-cultural differences observed in
MSR test performance are typically interpreted as a discrepancy in the age of onset and
taken as indication either that self-developmental trajectories are sensitive to variations
in infants’ early experiences (Keller et al., 2004; Keller, Kärtner, Borke, Yovsi, & Kleis,
2005). However, it was also argued that the test is not robust across cultures (Broesch
et al., 2011). Understanding the source of this variation is the main goal of this research
project.
7
Methodology
Research Methods and Theoretical Framework
Cross-cultural research gives us access to a wider range of variability in early
experiences. We can use this variability to test the relationships between the variables of
interest and their theorized outcomes. In this dissertation, I used cross-cultural
comparison as a method to describe the relationships between social-interactive
experiences between toddlers and their caregivers and infants’ MSR abilities. However,
because cultures vary simultaneously along many dimensions of children’s early
experiences, it is crucial to target variables guided by theory (Campbell, 1961; Bornstein,
1980). In this dissertation, I took a constructivist, relational and developmental
perspective (Mead, 1934/1967; Piaget, 1950/1970; Vygotsky, 1934/1962). Based on this
perspective, all knowledge about self, others, and the world is constructed by the infant
through direct interaction with the world (Piaget, 1950/1970; Vygotsky, 1934/1962).
Moreover, knowledge pertaining to objective self-awareness is dependent on infants’
social experience since the objective self is an essentially social structure, an
organization derived from others’ attitudes towards oneself (Cooley, 1902/1964; Mead,
1934/1967). Finally, due to the relational nature of objective self-awareness (Cooley,
1902/1964; Mead, 1934/1967), the proximal developmental antecedents of objective
self-knowledge are found within secondary intersubjectivity rather than early infancy
(Carpendale & Lewis, 2011; Chapman, 1991; Mitchell, 1993; Moore, 2007; Rochat,
2001; Tomasello, 1995; Trevarthen, 1980). The decision to study the specific social-
interactional predictors I examined in this dissertation is a product of this theoretical
perspective and is elaborated in each of the three papers.
Cross-cultural validity of our measurements becomes an important concern when
conducting cross-cultural research. Currently, there is not enough empirical evidence to
reject the possibility that the observed differences in MSR passing rates are not, at least
partially, confounded by factors such as compliance norms (Broesch et al., 2011) and
mirror experience. To overcome these challenges, I took a multi-method approach. In
study 1, where I implemented the MSR test in Canada and Vanuatu, I used a battery of
control measures and directly tested three alternative explanations for cross-cultural
variation in MSR. In study 2, I aimed to replicate the results of study 1 by recruiting
exclusively from an urban middle-class sociocultural context in Vancouver and
8
examining within-culture variability. I aimed to maximize within-culture variability in the
constructs of interest by recruiting from different self-identified cultural backgrounds (i.e.,
English-speaking monolingual families and Cantonese-speaking bilingual families).
Field Sites
I recruited my participants from two different field sites: urban Canada
(Vancouver) and rural Vanuatu (Tanna). These two societies were selected due their
distinct values sociocultural orientations that are theorized to be linked to differences in
the trajectory of self-development. The sociocultural perspective to self-development
suggests that children’s self-developmental trajectories are shaped to fit the sociocultural
pressures (Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard, 2003; Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996; Keller et al.,
2004; Keller et al., 2006). Based on this perspective, parents in cultures of
independence (typically Western and urban societies) put a higher emphasis on
supporting psychological autonomy in their children compared to parents in cultures of
interdependence (typically rural subsistence societies) and these differences are
manifested in the relatively early attainment of self-developmental milestones among
infants from cultures of independence (Keller et al., 2006). Consistently, researchers
observed higher MSR passing rates among toddlers from Western urban environments
compared to their counterparts from non-Western/rural and small-scale societies
(Broesch et al., 2011, Kärtner et al., 2012; Keller et al., 2004; Ross et al., 2016). As a
cosmopolitan city with a highly specialized, competitive job market, Vancouver shows
the typical characteristics of a culture of independence. As a small-scale society that has
a communal lifestyle, Tanna Island in Vanuatu shows the typical characteristics of a
culture of interdependence. Based on the predictions of the sociocultural perspective I
described (Greenfield et al., 2003; Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996; Keller et al., 2004, 2006), I
expected that infants’ social-interactive experiences and as well as their MSR abilities
would vary significantly in Vancouver and Tanna –making these two societies suitable
comparison groups for this study.
I was a resident of the city of Vancouver in Canada between 2011 and 2019. I
lived in this city for the duration of my graduate studies as an international student. My
experience in Tanna Island in Vanuatu consists of 3- to 8-week visits that span over 4
years. I spent a total of 6 months living in the village of Leneukivik in Western interior
Tanna. During my visits, I was hosted by a member of the local community, Rachel
9
Iakin, who also worked as a field worker at the Cultural Center in Tanna –an
organization that governs researchers’ activities in the island. My stay in the village and
my research program was fully supported by the residents of the village as well the local
chief, Tom Noam, who has graciously accepted me into the community and bestowed a
traditional name on me. The recruitment process was lead with the permission and
support of local chiefs in West Tanna and through the personal connections of Rachel
Iakin. To reduce the effects of my presence, especially in infant participants who are not
used to interact with outsiders, I did not directly engage with participants during the study
procedure which was run by Rachel Iakin in participants’ local language.
Three Studies on Self in Infancy
In the first study, I examined cross-cultural differences in infants’ MSR abilities in
urban Canada and rural Vanuatu. As expected, I found that significantly fewer ni-
Vanuatu infants passed the MSR test between 18 and 22 months of age, compared to
urban Canadian infants. This study had two main goals. The first goal was to examine
whether parent-infant interactions observed during a semi-structured free play session
could explain differences in MSR performance. With this aim, I analysed the links
between culture, MSR, and three social-interactional variables (i.e., joint attention to
object, joint attention to self, and imitation). My findings pointed to one variable as the
predictor of self-recognition ability: maternal imitation. Another goal of this study was to
test whether cross-cultural differences in MSR test performance could be attributed to
reasons other than differences in the developmental trajectory of self-awareness. To
examine this question, I tested three alternative explanations using control measures.
The evidence I collected suggested that the differences observed in the MSR test
performance couldn’t be explained by these alternative hypotheses, therefore providing
support for the idea that the differences reflect true differences in the trajectory of self-
development.
In the second study, I aimed to replicate my previous results on imitation, this
time in a culturally diverse urban Canadian sample. Examining within-culture differences
has several advantages such as bypassing potential confounding factors related to the
cross-cultural validity of the test. This study also examined whether infant temperament
could explain some of the variation in MSR. Results revealed that only maternal imitation
predicted MSR. This study further underscores the link between imitation and MSR, and
10
suggests that it could be a mechanism through which infants learn to think objectively
about their appearance. It also raises more questions with regards to the mechanisms
underlying the links between imitation and self-recognition.
In the third study, I turned my attention to language, which has long been seen to
be at the heart of self-awareness by theoreticians such as Vygotsky (1934/1962). There
is substantial empirical evidence suggesting that language interactions are very
important for the development of a self-concept in preschool children. However, we
know very little about the relations between language and thought during the pre-verbal
period. As a first step, this paper examines whether language interactions before the
second year systematically differ between ni-Vanuatu and Canadian societies in a way
that could give rise to differences in the emergence of self-concept. Specifically, I
investigated the content of mothers’ child-directed speech with their 21-month-old
toddlers in Vanuatu and Canada.
Together, these studies make a significant contribution to the MSR literature by
addressing some of the methodological challenges of cross-cultural research in MSR,
offering a theoretically informed roadmap for the examination of developmental
antecedents of objective self-awareness, and providing new empirical evidence that
advances our understanding of how developmental trajectories of self-awareness may
be shaped.
11
Chapter 1. Study 1. Understanding Cross-cultural Differences in Mirror Self-Recognition
1.1. Abstract
Mirror self-recognition is considered to be the benchmark of objective self-
awareness —the ability to think about oneself. Recent cross-cultural research has
shown that there are systematic differences in infants’ MSR abilities between 18 and 24
months. Understanding whether these differences result from systematic variation in
early social experiences will help us understand the mechanisms through which
objective self-awareness develops. In this study, I examined MSR performance of 18- to
22-month-old infants and their mothers from two diverse sociocultural environments:
urban Canada and rural Vanuatu, a small-scale island society located in the South
Pacific. I had two main goals: 1) to identify the social-interactional correlates of MSR
ability in this cross-cultural sample, 2) to examine whether passing rates in Vanuatu
could be attributed to confounding factors unrelated to self-development. Consistent with
previous cross-cultural research, ni-Vanuatu infants passed the MSR test at significantly
lower rates (7%) compared to Canadian toddlers (68%). Among a suite of social
interactional variables, only mothers’ imitation of their infants that was observed during a
short free play session with toys predicted who passed the MSR test. In addition, low
passing rates among ni-Vanuatu infants could not be attributed to reasons unrelated to
self-development (i.e., motivation to show mark-directed behavior, understanding mirror-
correspondence, representational thinking). This suggests that imitation may have an
important role in shaping the construction of objective self-knowledge.
1.2. Introduction
The mirror self-recognition (MSR) test measures whether infants recognize
themselves in the mirror (Amsterdam, 1972; Gallup, 1970). This seemingly simple ability
marks an important milestone in the trajectory of self-development: the ability to
contemplate the “self”. During the MSR test procedure, an experimenter surreptitiously
12
places a mark (typically a sticker or lipstick mark) on a child’s forehead, cheek, or nose.
The child is then presented with a mirror and the child’s response to the mirror image is
recorded. Children’s exhibition of self-directed behaviors such as manually investigating
their face while looking in the mirror or removing the mark from their face suggests that
they recognized the face in the mirror as their own. Therefore, it is concluded that they
have already developed a self-concept (Gallup, 1977), or as Lewis (2003) refers to it, an
idea of me (for leaner interpretations of the MSR test, see Heyes, 1994; Loveland, 1986;
Mitchell, 1993; Rochat & Zahavi, 2011). Having developed this idea of “me” marks the
initiation of objective self-awareness which refers to humans’ ability to treat the self as
an object of thought (Duval & Wicklund, 1972; James, 1890/1950; Mead, 1934/1967).
Identifying the developmental mechanisms involved in the formation of the idea of “me”
is critical for our quest to understand the ontogeny of humans’ self-awareness.
There are systematic differences across cultures in the age at which infants start
recognizing themselves in a mirror (Kärtner et al., 2012; Keller et al., 2004). These
findings are typically taken as an indication that the trajectory of self-development is
sensitive to variations in infants’ early experiences (Keller et al., 2004). The specific
behavioral mechanisms involved in shaping the developmental trajectories, however, are
not well understood. As a preliminary step towards understanding these mechanisms,
my main goal in this study was to identify the social-interactional correlates of infants’
performance on the mirror self-recognition (MSR) test (Amsterdam, 1972; Asendorpf et
al., 1996; Gallup, 1970) in a cross-cultural sample of infants recruited from urban
Canada and rural Vanuatu. These regions were selected, in part, due to their distinct
sociocultural orientations which are thought to be related to differences in children’s self-
developmental trajectories (Keller et al., 2004). Despite the fact that cross-cultural
research is an excellent tool to study the variation in developmental processes, it also
brings serious methodological challenges. Currently, we do not have enough empirical
evidence to reject the possibility that the observed differences in MSR passing rates are
not, at least partially, confounded by factors such as compliance norms, mirror
experience, or systematic differences in symbolic development. Thus, another goal of
this study was examine whether cross-cultural differences in MSR rates could be
explained by factors unrelated to self-development.
13
1.2.1. MSR Varies across Sociocultural Contexts
Among infants recruited from Western, urban, middle-class societies, which are
typically classified as cultures of independence (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996), the onset of self-
recognition occurs between 18 and 24 months of age (Amsterdam, 1972; Courage et al.,
2004; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Lewis & Ramsay, 2004; Nielsen et al., 2003). In
Amsterdam’s pioneering study (1972) that was conducted with infants from urban
middle-class American families, none of the infants in the 15- to 17-month-old group
recognized themselves. However, the passing rates increased to 42% in the 18- to 20-
month-old group and to 65% in the 21- to 24-month-old group. In a recent longitudinal
study conducted with infants from middle-class Australian families, Nielsen and his
colleagues (Nielsen et al., 2003) reported that at 18 months, 50% of the infants passed
the MSR test and 88% of the sample became self-recognizers by 24 months. Similarly,
in another longitudinal study conducted with infants urban, middle-class American
families, Lewis and Ramsay (2004) reported that 47% of the infants passed the MSR
test by 18 months and all infants became recognizers by 24 months. These data clearly
indicate that at some point between 18 and 24 months, there is a developmental shift
that enables infants to refer to the reflected image as oneself.
However, participants recruited from these societies are increasingly viewed as
outliers in psychological functioning (Henrich et al. 2004; Kline et al., 2018; Nielsen et
al., 2017). Similarly, it is possible that the emergence of MSR as early as 18 months is
limited to WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic; Henrich et
al., 2010) societies. Cross-cultural research on MSR suggest that infants from the
Majority World1 may be following a different trajectory (Broesch et al., 2011; Kärtner et
al., 2012; Keller et al., 2004; Ross et al., 2016). The first observation of cross-cultural
differences in MSR was made by Keller and colleagues (Keller et al., 2004). Authors
tested 18- to 20-month-old infants from three distinct sociocultural contexts:
Cameroonian farmer families who live a subsistence lifestyle, middle-class Costa Rican
families, and urban Greek families. In this study, only 3% of Cameroonian infants passed
the MSR test in comparison to 68% of Greek infants. Infants from middle-class Costa
Rican families fell in the middle of these two groups with a passing rate of 50%. In
1 A term introduced by Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı (1996). It refers to the so‐called developing countries,
or the non‐Western world, where the majority of the world’s population resides.
14
another study, authors examined 18- to 20-month-old infants from Germany and rural
Cameroon (Keller et al., 2005). Echoing their previous findings, passing rates of infants
from rural Cameroonian farmer families were only 15% compared to 73% of the infants
from urban German families. The authors interpreted the differences in passing rates as
a discrepancy in the trajectory of self-development across cultures.
Other studies replicated this pattern. Kärtner and colleagues (2012) conducted a
comprehensive study where they examined MSR in infants from urban Germany, urban
India, rural India, and rural Cameroon by testing a total of 276 infants from six age
cohorts (16-, 17-, 18-, 19-, 20-, and 21-month cohorts) for 6 consecutive weeks. They
found that even though passing rates increased with age in all four societies, infants
from urban settings (both Germany and India) performed significantly better regardless
of age. For example, when the 18-month cohorts were first assessed, passing rates
were 9% for the rural Cameroonian sample and 11% for the rural Indian sample,
compared to 42% for the German sample and 50% for the urban Indian sample. Most
recently, Ross and colleagues examined MSR in 15 to 18-month-old infants living in
rural Zambia, urban Scotland and urban Turkey. Consistent with previous research,
infants from Scotland and Turkey performed similarly on the MSR test (passing rates
were 47% and 41%, respectively), whereas same-aged Zambian infants passed at a
lower rate (15%). Taken together, this body of evidence suggests that there are
systematic differences in the onset of MSR across cultures (see Priel & Schonen, 1986
for a different result).
1.2.2. Framing the Differences in Developmental Trajectories
Keller and colleagues provide a theoretical framework linking self, society, and
the elements of the socialization process (Keller et al., 2004; Keller et al., 2005; Keller et
al. 2006). Following the steps of the pioneers of cross-cultural psychology (e.g., Whiting,
1963; LeVine, 1977), Keller and colleagues suggest that children’s self-developmental
trajectories are shaped to fit the sociocultural pressures and are mediated through
parenting. Based on this, different environmental challenges (e.g. subsistence activities)
create distinct understandings of psychological competence (Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni,
& Maynard, 2003). In contexts where cooperation is crucial for the group’s survival, such
as the rural subsistence societies (typically categorized as cultures of interdependence),
sustaining harmonious relationships is important for well-being. On the other hand, in
15
urban/industrialized and typically Western societies (typically categorized as cultures of
independence) where individual achievement and competition are important for success,
individuation and self-maximization underlie an individual’s well-being. Therefore,
individuals need to hold different self-construals in order to adapt to these distinct
sociocultural environments (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). These ideal self-construals
manifest in parents’ socialization goals, beliefs about good parenting behaviors, and
parenting/caregiving practices (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996; Keller et al., 2006) which lead to the
socialization of a selfhood that is functional in the society. Within this framework, Keller
and colleagues suggest that early onset of self-recognition is a consequence of
autonomy-supporting socialization practices which are adopted by the parents in
cultures of independence (Keller et al., 2004; Keller et al., 2005). Consistent with Keller’s
ideas, Kärtner and colleagues’ study conducted with participants from two urban
(Germany and India), and two rural (India and Cameroon) societies showed that parents’
socialization goals that favour psychological autonomy in their children predicted
whether infants passed the MSR test while controlling for several confounding factors
including infants’ age and gender (Kärtner et al., 2012).
It is important to note that the framework reviewed above offers a functional
explanation and does not inform us of the proximal mechanisms that shape infants’ self-
developmental trajectories. Keller offers early caregiving practices (i.e., distal and
proximal parenting) as a bridge to this gap. The distal parenting style, which is typically
adopted by parents in cultures of independence, is distinguished by high levels of object
stimulation and face-to-face exchange. The proximal parenting style, which is typically
adopted by parents in cultures of interdependence, is distinguished by high levels of
body contact and body stimulation (Keller et al., 2009). Keller suggests that by adopting
a distal proximal style, WEIRD parents support the development of psychological
autonomy in their infants and prepare them for early onset of objective self-awareness
(Keller et al., 2004). In support of this view, in 2 cross-cultural studies, Keller and
colleagues found that mothers’ use of distal strategies as they interacted with their 3
month-old infants longitudinally predicted infants’ MSR abilities at 18-20 months (Keller
et al., 2004; Keller et al., 2005). These are pioneering studies as they demonstrate a link
between infants’ self-developmental outcomes and their early social experiences.
However, it is not clear precisely how infants’ experiences in dyadic exchanges as early
as 3 months is causally related to the emergence of objective self-awareness. The next
16
step in self-development research should be to better understand the mechanisms of
development. In the section that follows, I review the developmental theories of self-
awareness and discuss why the experiences involved in the formation of objective self-
knowledge are to be found within the kinds of interactions that characterize the second
year of life, rather than early infancy.
1.2.3. Understanding the Developmental Mechanisms
If we want to understand the development of human self-awareness, it would be
useful to differentiate between developmentally more and less complex forms of self-
understanding and seek to identify the changing relationships between infants’
experience in the world and their self-knowledge. There is a rich body of literature
focused on conceptualizing different forms of self-knowledge (e.g., Amsterdam & Levitt,
1980; Duval & Wicklund, 1972; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Neisser, 1988; Rochat,
2003; Rochat, 2015). One distinction that appears among these discussions has
relevance from a developmental perspective: the distinction between subjective and
objective levels of self-awareness (Duval & Wicklund, 1972) or its conceptual
equivalents. Subjective self-awareness, which appears earlier in development, refers to
experiencing oneself as the source of perception and action (Duval & Wicklund, 1972).
Here, self-other distinction is functionally present and can be observed in perception and
action but not yet in thought. The objective level of self-awareness, which appears later
in development, refers to the ability to experience the self as an object of thought (Duval
& Wicklund, 1972; Gallup, 1977; Lewis, 2003; Rochat, 2009, Mead, 1934/1967). The
literature suggests that although there is developmental continuity between the
subjective and objective forms of self-awareness, they develop through different
mechanisms (Amsterdam & Levitt, 1980; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Neisser, 1991;
Rochat, 1997, Rochat, 2015). Infants’ earliest attempts to control their body and their
environment, their mastery of circular reactions, as well as their experience of
contingency during face-to-face exchanges may be serving as mechanisms that support
infants’ sense of subjective self-awareness (Fonagy, Gergely, & Target, 2007; Lewis &
Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Rochat, 1997; Rochat, 2015). The emergence of the objective self,
however, is reliant upon infants’ introduction to more complex exchanges, such as triadic
interactions.
17
When I argue that the proximal developmental antecedents of objective self-
awareness are of triadic nature, I rely on theories that postulate the objective self as a
“looking glass self”, where individuals take a third person perspective towards
themselves (Cooley, 1902/1964; Mead, 1934/1967). Modern psychologists who take this
approach identify a special kind of interactive experience as the antecedent of objective
self-awareness: interactions that involve coordinating perspectives (e.g., Carpendale &
Lewis, 2011; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Martin, Sokol, Elfers, 2008; Mitchell, 1993;
Moore, 2007; Rochat, 2009; Tomasello, 1995). The ability to engage in such interactions
is dependent upon infants’ capacity to form joint attention which appears around 9
months and develops throughout the second year (Trevarthen, 1980; Zahavi & Rochat,
2015). Specifically, two types of interactions are emphasized: joint attention and
imitation. Consider the following triadic exchange. A toddler and a mother are playing a
game of throwing balls to each other. In this game, the toddler functions as both the
actor and the recipient and therefore needs to consider both perspectives in order to
sustain reciprocity. When it is the mother’s turn to throw the ball, the toddler expects the
mother to throw the ball to him or to her. Here, the form of self to be experienced is one
of self as object. Deservingly, triadic interactions have been referred to as the “epistemic
triangle” (Chapman, 1991) and the “fateful triangle of self” (Rochat, 2001). Tomasello
(1999) considers parental imitation a very special case of triadic interactions. Through
imitation, parents reorient their infants’ attention towards themselves, rather than a toy,
so that infants become the object of the dyad’s joint attention. Examples of imitation
during the second year may involve instances of social mirroring games where infants
and partners engage in reciprocally imitative coordinated actions (Mitchell, 1993), and
instances of synchronous imitation where partners simultaneously play in similar ways,
check up on the partner, coordinate their actions with that of the partner, and alternate
roles of imitator and model (Asendorpf et al., 1996). In all these imitation games, the
element of coordinating perspectives appears as infants deliberately match their partner
and watch how they look to others (Müller & Runions, 2003; Barresi & Moore, 1996).
Finally, Piaget (1945/1962, p.85) pointed out that, particularly because their face is not
directly visible to humans, imitating others’ facial movements is essential for infants to
construct a visual representation of their own face. To summarize, episodes of joint
attention and imitation may be functioning as the proximal developmental antecedents of
objective self-awareness.
18
Empirical data to support these hypothesized mechanisms, however, is scarce.
No previous study has examined joint attention in relation to MSR. Yet, we have some
evidence that links imitation to self-developmental milestones in WEIRD samples. Hart
and Fegley (1994) observed that toddlers’ imitation of their mother during a free play
session with toys was associated with earlier MSR onset longitudinally, while their ability
to imitate complex actions with toys was not. Kristen-Antonow and colleagues (Kristen-
Antonow, Sodian, Perst, & Licata, 2015) found that responsiveness to being imitated by
an adult at 12 months was the strongest predictor of infants’ performance on a delayed
visual self-recognition task when they are 4 years old, together with MSR and verbal
intelligence. In addition, Asendorpf and colleagues (1996) observed a significant
relationship between infants’ MSR and their ability to engage in synchronous imitation,
concurrently. Based on the literature I reviewed above, I propose that cross-cultural
differences observed in MSR may be a result of systematic variation in infants’
participation in episodes of imitation and joint attention over the second year of their
lives. In this study, I only examine the concurrent relations between imitation, joint
attention, and MSR as a first step to shedding light on the developmental processes.
1.2.4. Alternative Explanations
Currently, there is not enough empirical evidence to reject the possibility that the
cross-cultural differences in MSR passing rates are not, at least partially, confounded by
factors unrelated to self-development. In this section, I outline three alternative
explanations and suggest that they must be carefully examined before we presume that
cross-cultural differences in MSR passing rates reflect systematic differences in infants’
self-developmental trajectories.
The first alternative explanation involves the procedure’s failure to elicit mark-
directed behavior in infants from the Majority World. In the classic MSR procedure
(Amsterdam, 1972), and in its cross-cultural implementations (e.g., Broesch et al., 2011;
Keller et al., 2004), infants are not prompted to remove the mark or trained in removing
the mark, even though mark-directed behavior is the sole criterion for passing the test.
This seems to work for infants from WEIRD societies, given the average response times
as short as 4.36 seconds (Courage et al., 2004). However, an internal motivation to
remove a mark cannot be assumed to be universal across human populations. For
example, Broesch and colleagues (2011) report that children up to 6-years-old (in rural
19
Kenya) and children up to 4.5-years-old (in rural Fiji) did not self-refer during an MSR
procedure which lasted 30 seconds. Because these were typically-developing children, it
is implausible to conclude they had not developed objective self-awareness by 6 years
of age. Broesch and colleagues suggest that Kenyan and Fijian infants must have
demonstrated a form of compliance by not touching the mark placed on them by an adult
in an unfamiliar context. In support of this claim, they demonstrated that infants’
motivation to remove the mark from their face can be reduced among urban middle-
class American children by manipulating social norms (Rochat, Broesch, & Jayne 2012).
Consistent with this, Kärtner and colleagues (2012) found that, within the rural
Cameroonian sample, infants’ tendency to remove a visible mark from their own body
was related to their MSR performance. Overall, there are grounds to suspect that cross-
cultural differences in the MSR test performance reflect differences in infants’ motivation
to remove the mark.
The second alternative explanation involves potential differences in infants’
understanding of mirror correspondence. Understanding of mirror correspondence is the
ability to use the match between the mirror image and the real world, and is measured
though mirror-mediated behavior (MMB) tests where participants are expected to locate
a desired object outside of their visual field (e.g., toy or food) through the use of a mirror.
Infants from WEIRD samples pass the MMB test before they pass the MSR test
(Bertenthal & Fischer, 1978; Gouin Décarie, Pouliot, & Poulin-Dubois, 1983), and non-
human species who pass the MSR test also pass MMB test but not vice versa
(Anderson, 1986; Medina, Taylor, Hunt, & Gray, 2011; Povinelli, 1989). Based on this
evidence, Gergely (1994) and Mitchell (1993) argued that understanding mirror
correspondence is a necessary condition for self-recognition in a mirror. If that is the
case, infants who have less experience with mirrors may be disadvantaged in the MSR
test. Current evidence is inconclusive. Studies with WEIRD samples show that variability
in mirror experience is not correlated with MSR performance (Courage et al., 2004;
Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Vyt, 2001). However, it is possible that all infants from
WEIRD societies have been exposed to reflective surfaces in minimally required levels.
In contrast to infants growing up in WEIRD societies, infants (and adults) from small-
scale societies may have no exposure to reflective surfaces. Yet, we have very little
evidence from such environments. One cross-cultural study showed that infants without
prior mirror exposure indeed show lower passing rates in the MMB test (Priel & de
20
Schonen, 1986). However, in the same study, MMB performance was not related to
MSR performance. In another study, Kärtner and colleagues (2012) found that mirror
experience did not affect MSR performance in their culturally diverse sample based on
the fact that infants from rural samples did not show a particularly steep learning curve
over six consecutive MSR assessments. Overall, more evidence is needed to reject the
possibility that a lack of previous exposure to mirrors might be contributing to
systematically lower passing rates in rural and small-scale societies.
Finally, a third alternative explanation suggests that cross-cultural differences in
MSR can be best explained by global differences in symbolic development, rather than
differences specific to self-development. According to Perner (1991), around 18 months
of age, infants start to be able process representations at the secondary level, which
means they can hold representations of multiple models at a time. Following Perner,
several MSR researchers considered secondary representations as a prerequisite for
the self-recognition (Gergely, 1994; Parker & Mitchell, 1994). When a child is secretly
marked on their face and shown a mirror, they see a distorted (marked) image of
themselves. In order to identify this as a distorted image, the infant must compare the
image in the mirror to a mental image of their “typical” visual features. In other words,
recognizing oneself in the mirror requires the ability to hold both the existent and the
non-existent models of their face in mind (Perner, 1991). Recently, Nielsen and his
colleagues provided empirical evidence supporting the representational account of the
MSR test (Nielsen, Suddendorf, Slaughter, 2006). To do this, researchers invented a
novel version of the MSR test where toddlers are surreptitiously marked on their clothing
(i.e., knees of the pants) rather than their faces. Toddlers’ performance on the classical
face-recognition test and the knee-recognition test proved comparable. Then, in two
other studies, authors manipulated infants’ knowledge of how their clothing looked. They
found that those infants who had no correct knowledge of their clothing showed lower
levels of knee-recognition compared to those who had been exposed to their new
clothing. These results support the hypothesis that infants pass the MSR test by
comparing two models of self; one being how they look like in the mirror and one being
how they think they should look. Based on this evidence, one possible explanation for
cross-cultural differences in MSR rates may be differences in infants’ ability to use
secondary representations.
21
1.2.5. Summary and Hypotheses
In this study, I examined MSR abilities in 18- to 22-month-old infants recruited
from rural Vanuatu, a society of cultural interdependence, and urban Canada, a society
of cultural independence. Based on Keller’s cultural model of self-development and
based on previous cross-cultural literature, I expected significant differences in the age
of onset between the two societies. Specifically, I expected fewer ni-Vanuatu infants to
pass the MSR test compared to Canadian infants.
My first goal in this study was to identify social-interactional correlates of infants’
performance on the mirror self-recognition (MSR) test. Importantly, associations I
examined were motivated by developmental theories of self-awareness. I observed
social interactions during a 10-minute free play session between mothers and infants (5
minutes with toys and 5 minutes without toys). I operationalized two types of joint
attention: “joint attention to object” where mothers and infants engaged in triadic
interactions with toys and “joint attention to self” where infants themselves (rather than
an object) appeared as the object of the dyad’s joint attention (e.g., where is your
nose?). I operationalized 3 different types of imitation including child’s imitation of the
mother, mother’s imitation of the child and simultaneous imitation. Although I had the
general expectation that joint attention and imitation would be positively associated with
MSR, I did not set specific hypotheses with regards to each type of joint attention and
imitation because there was not enough theoretical or empirical basis to form such
detailed hypotheses. For example, I did not know whether child’s imitation of the mother
or mother’s imitation of the child would be a better predictor of MSR. In order to identify
the candidate predictors of MSR, I examined the associations between MSR, social-
interactional variables, and research site. Based on the postulation that higher MSR
passing rates among infants from WEIRD societies result from social experiences that
scaffold early understanding of self (Keller et al., 2004; Keller et al., 2005), I expected
that the candidate predictors of MSR would be a) positively correlated with MSR within
the entire sample and, b) observed at higher levels among the Canadian dyads.
Informed by the patterns that appeared in the data, I tested a regression model to predict
individual differences in MSR.
Another goal of this study was to test whether cross-cultural differences in MSR
rates could be explained by factors unrelated to self-development. I identified three
22
alternative explanations. First, low MSR rates could be the result of low motivation to
remove the mark during the test. In order to test this possibility, I measured infants’
motivation to show mark-directed behavior through a knee-marking (KM) test (Nielsen &
Dissanayke, 2004; Kärtner et al., 2012) where infants were prompted to remove a mark
from their knees, a part of their body that they could see without the need of a mirror. I
hypothesized that if ni-Vanuatu infants in my sample failed the MSR test because they
were not motivated to remove the mark, then their KM passing rates would also be low,
and that their MSR performance would be associated with their KM performance.
Second, low MSR rates could be the result of ni-Vanuatu infants’ inability to use mirrors’
reflective functions. In order to test this possibility, I measured infants’ understanding of
mirror correspondence using a mirror-mediated behavior (MMB) test (Bertenthal &
Fischer, 1978; Courage et al., 2004) where infants were expected to locate a toy
presented from behind using the reflective features of the mirror. I hypothesized that if
ni-Vanuatu infants in my sample failed the MSR test because they were not able to use
mirror’s reflective features, their MMB passing rates would also be low and that ni-
Vanuatu infants’ MSR performance would be associated with their MMB performance.
Third, low MSR rates could be the result of differences in ni-Vanuatu infants’ trajectory of
symbolic development, specifically a relative delay in using secondary representations. I
measured infants’ ability to use secondary representations using an invisible
displacement (ID) test. The ID test (Piaget, 1937/1954) is an advanced measure of
object permanence which requires the use of secondary representations. It involves
finding an object following a series of invisible displacements and is typically correlated
with MSR within WEIRD samples. I hypothesized that if this hypothesis was true, ID
passing rates would also be low among ni-Vanuatu infants and that ni-Vanuatu infants’
MSR performance would be associated with their ID performance. This study improves
on previous cross-cultural research by testing all three of these alternative explanations
using control measures and adds to the cross-cultural validity of the MSR test.
1.3. Methods
1.3.1. Sociocultural Contexts
Tanna Island in Vanuatu is a small-scale island society that has a subsistence-
based economy and a communal lifestyle and has features thought to be prototypical of
23
a culture of interdependence (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996; Keller et al., 2004). Vancouver in
Canada, a cosmopolitan society that has a free market economy and a highly
specialized, competitive job market, was selected as a prototypical culture of
independence (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996; Keller et al., 2004). Based on the framework I
described above, I expected low passing rates in ni-Vanuatu infants and high passing
rates in Canadian infants.
Tanna.
Tanna Island has a population of approximately 29,000 based on the 2009
census (Vanuatu National Statistics Office, 2009). The island consists of four
geographical regions. Each region is distinct in some ways but also similar in general
lifestyle and livelihood. Our research was conducted in Western Tanna (geographically
central on the island) in five communities consisting of both Kastom and Traditional
neighbouring communities. The communities are each led by a chief who governs
several hamlets consisting of several households. Each community contains a nakamal
which is the community meeting place for spiritual worship, political, social, and cultural
gatherings. Families in this central region do not have access to public amenities (no
provided water or electricity) and travel to the mainland is limited by the rough terrain. It
is about a half of a day’s walk to get to the nearest town (Lenekal town). At the time of
this research, there were many changes happening on the island – particularly after the
devastating cyclone Pam in 2015, with much aid and new foreign interests beginning to
invest in infrastructure. At the time of this study, however, most families in this region
would have had little exposure to Western parenting ideals. The culture of Tanna and
Vanuatu is one of cooperation and kinship. Based on these demographic characteristics,
Tanna island shows the typical characteristics of a society with interdependent or
collectivistic sociocultural orientation (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996; Triandis, 2001). This social
ecology presents similarities to other rural populations where researchers reported lower
levels of MSR compared to Western urban samples (Broesch et al., 2011; Keller et al.,
2004).
Vancouver.
Metro Vancouver is Canada’s third-largest metropolitan area with a population of
approximately 2.5 million. Its population is highly affluent with a median family income of
72,662 CAD (Statistics Canada, 2016) and highly educated with 91.8% of residents
24
having high school level education or higher. The family structure is nuclear with an
average of only 2.5 persons per household (Statistics Canada, 2016). It is also an
ethnically and linguistically diverse city as 46.9% of its residents’ first language is an
immigrant language (Statistics Canada, 2016). Vancouver attracts highly skilled
international workers and the employment market is highly competitive. Based on these
demographics, Vancouver shows the typical characteristics of a society with an
independent or individualistic sociocultural orientation (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996; Triandis,
2001). This social ecology presents similarities to other Western urban populations
where researchers reported higher levels of MSR compared to non-Western rural
samples (Keller et al., 2004; Broesch et al., 2011).
1.3.2. Participants
I recruited 57 mother-toddler dyads —31 in Tanna, Vanuatu, and 26 in
Vancouver Canada. I recruited Canadian dyads from the Metro Vancouver Regional
District in BC, between 2013 and 2016, a) through a database of parents who previously
indicated they were interested in participating in studies at the Culture and Development
Lab at Simon Fraser University (SFU), b) a daycare centre located on SFU campus, or
c) posting flyers at community centres and public libraries.
All parents were mothers except one ni-Vanuatu father who participated with his
infant. I recruited ni-Vanuatu dyads during a one-month research visit to Tanna Island in
2015. After obtaining permission from the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and the local leaders,
I recruited participants following a list of infant birth records from the local hospital and
by word of mouth. I excluded six additional mother-toddler dyads from the database due
to fussiness (n = 4), experimental error (n = 1), and unknown age (n = 1).
The toddlers were, on average, 19.50 months old (range = 17.58 – 22.24, SD =
1.21). The mean age was 19.69 months (SD = 1.31) for Canadian toddlers, 19.34
months (SD = 1.13) for ni-Vanuatu toddlers. There were no significant differences
between the ages, t(1, 55) = 1.07, p = .289. There were 31 girls (n = 13 for Canada, n =
18 for Vanuatu), and 26 boys (n = 13 for Canada, n = 13 for Vanuatu). Gender
distribution was comparable across cultural groups, χ² (1, 57) = .37, p = .543. Mothers
were, on average, 34.64 years old (SD = 4.21). There were no differences between the
two cultural groups in mothers’ self-reported age, t(1, 50) = 1.80, p = .078. In Canada,
25
mothers were highly educated, having spent an average of 18.84 years (SD = 3.36) in
formal education. In Tanna, however, only 69% of the mothers had received formal
education. Among those, the average years of schooling was 6.85 (SD = 1.98).
In Canada, 14 dyads were from English-speaking monolingual families, nine
dyads were from English-speaking bilingual families, and three dyads were from
monolingual families speaking a language other than English (one French-speaking, one
Portuguese-speaking, and one Chinese speaking). The three babies whose primary
languages aren’t English were all used to hearing English outside of their immediate
home environments, such as the daycare setting, and felt comfortable interacting with
the experimenter in English. All three families were currently residing in Canada. The
linguistic variability in the Vancouver sample reflects Vancouver’s cosmopolitan social
structure as described in the sociocultural contexts section above. In Vanuatu, twenty-
seven dyads were from monolingual families who spoke the local dialects of West
Tanna. Three infants were from multilingual families due to mothers from a different
island in Vanuatu being married to partners from Tanna. These infants were
predominantly spoken to in Bislama (the official language of Vanuatu).
1.3.3. Procedure
The experimenter and the dyad met at the testing location where the
experimenter informed the mother about the details of the study and took verbal
consent. The procedure started with a short warm-up session (approximately 5 minutes
or until the child appeared comfortable) during which the experimenter, the infants and
the mothers played with simple wooden blocks and a 12" baby-doll (a black doll in
Vanuatu, a white doll in Canada) and engaged in friendly dialogue. This session also
served as a familiarization for the stimuli that would be used later for testing. After the
warm-up session, the Invisible Displacement (ID) task was administered (see section
1.3.4 for full description of measures). After the ID task, the experimenter performed the
practice session for the MSR task where infants learned to remove a sticker from the
baby doll’s face and their own hands. This was followed by the familiarization phase for
the mirror. The experimenter brought a 40 x 50 cm sturdy wooden framed mirror with a
support stand and allowed the child to explore the mirror for approximately 2 minutes or
until the child lost interest in the mirror. After that, the MMB task, the MSR task, and the
knee marking task were administered in the listed order. During this time, the mother
26
was allowed to stay next to the infant but was asked to stay silent and not to intervene.
Once these tasks were over, the experimental props were removed and the dyad was
left alone for a 10-minute free play session. The free play session began with five
minutes of free play without any toys. Following that, the experimenter entered the room,
delivered the toys (blocks and the baby doll) and left the dyad alone for another five
minutes. The entire procedure took 30 to 40 minutes and was video recorded by two
cameras (front view and left back view) for later coding. After the free play session, the
cameras were stopped and mothers were asked a series of demographic questions
involving mothers’ age, education, and infants’ health history and experience with
mirrors. Figure A.1. and Figure A.2. in Appendix A., Section A.1. illustrate the typical
setting for testing in Vanuatu and in Canada.
In Vancouver, I implemented the procedure in English. Data collection took place
either in the lab located at the SFU campus (n = 8), in participants’ homes (n = 10) or in
a daycare (n = 5). In Tanna, a local female research assistant implemented the
procedure in the local language. The local research assistant was a fluent speaker of
English, and I trained her to conduct the testing independently. The testing was
performed in the toddlers’ mother tongue which could be either one of the local dialects
spoken in West Tanna (n = 28) or Bislama (n = 3). Data collection took place either in
participants’ homes, in an available communal building such as a tent used by the village
as a classroom, or a suitable outdoor space in the village.
The translation of the study procedure was completed in two steps. First, the
procedure was translated from English to Bislama and back translated from Bislama to
English, by two separate local research assistants who were fluent in both languages.
Any inconsistencies were resolved through discussion. Once the procedure in Bislama
reflected the intended study procedure, the procedure was translated from Bislama to
Natuar (one of the local dialects spoken in West Tanna and the first language of the
experimenter) and back by two separate local research assistants. Again,
inconsistencies were resolved through discussion. The translations between Bislama
and Natuar were conducted orally since Natuar is an oral language and the process was
videotaped for documentation purposes.
27
1.3.4. Measures
Invisible displacement (ID) test
The ID test is an advanced measure of object permanence and involves finding
an object following a series of invisible displacements (Piaget, 1937/1954). The ID test
used in this study was the 14th task in Uzgiris and Hunt’s (1975) battery developed to
measure the development of the visual pursuit of slowly moving objects. The materials
used for this task were three fabric covers (25 cm x 25 cm) and a small orange-color ball
that easily fit into the experimenter’s palm (see Appendix A, Section A.1., Figure A.2.).
During the test, the experimenter and the infant sit facing each other and the mother was
asked to place herself behind the infant (the infant could sit on mother’s lap) while
remaining silent. The experimenter placed the three covers in front of the infant, hid the
ball inside her palm, moved her fist sequentially under three covers, withdrew her hand
empty and said: ‘Where did the ball go? Can you find the ball?’ The experimenter waited
15 seconds for infants’ response, and if the child had not located the ball, repeated the
prompt up to two more times. The trial ended when the infant located the ball or when 45
seconds passed. The sequence was repeated three times.
Mirror mediated behaviour (MMB) test
Infants’ understanding of mirror correspondence was measured with an MMB
test which was adapted from previous procedures used by Bertenthal and Fisher (1978)
and Priel and Schonen (1986). The test aimed to measure infants’ capacity to locate
objects seen through the mirror. The materials used in this test were the mirror
previously used in the mirror familiarization phase and a finger puppet in the form of a
bee (see Appendix A, Section A.1, Figure A.4. for a picture of the finger puppet). Infants
sat in front of the mirror and the experimenter placed herself behind the infant. Mothers
were asked to sit slightly away (approximately 1 m.) on the left side of the infant and the
experimenter. The experimenter directed the infants’ attention to the mirror by asking the
child to look at the mirror and by pointing to the mirror. While the infant’s attention was
on the mirror, the experimenter showed the bee from behind the infant, above their right
shoulder. If the infant did not turn his back to locate the toy within 15 seconds, the
experimenter pointed to the mirror and asked the infant to get the puppet by saying:
‘Look, there is a bee. Can you get the bee?’. The experimenter repeated the prompt up
28
to three times waiting 15 seconds after each prompt. The task ended either when infants
located the bee or by the end of a total of 60 seconds.
Mirror self-recognition (MSR) test
I assessed children’s MSR abilities with a procedure adapted from the original
MSR test (Amsterdam, 1972). In Amsterdam’s original procedure, toddlers are secretly
marked on their face, shown the mirror, and expected to remove the mark without
receiving any verbal prompts. However, over the 40 years of research using this
procedure, several modifications have been suggested in order to reduce the potential
for false negatives and ambiguous cases. These suggestions included training infants to
show mark-directed behavior, using verbal prompts for encouraging self-directed
behavior, and using control tests to measure infants’ proneness to show mark-directed
behavior in a clearly visible body part (Asendorpf et al., 1996; Broesch et al., 2011;
Kärtner et al., 2012). Based on these recommendations, I introduced a training phase
where infants learned to remove a sticker from a baby doll and from their hands and I
gave an open prompt to remove the sticker during the testing phase. A control measure
was also implemented and is described in the below section on the knee-marking test.
The materials used for this task were a baby doll (see Figure A.3. in Appendix A,
Section A.1. for a picture) and the standing mirror (see Figure A.1. in Appendix A,
Section A.1., for a picture). I used yellow post-it stickers to mark the infant. Stickers have
been previously used in cross-cultural research to increase the saliency of the mark
(e.g., Broesch et al., 2011). As an exception, five infants who were tested in Vancouver
were marked using a rouge lipstick rather than a sticker. During the training phase (see
details below), these infants learned to clean the mark using a wet wipe instead of
removing the sticker from the doll’s face.
During the training phase, which occurred after the ID task, infants learned to
remove a post-it sticker or rouge lipstick off a doll’s face and from their own hands
through six consecutive trials. The experimenter showed the infant a baby doll that was
marked with a sticker on its forehead and said: “Oh! Look, there is something on baby’s
face. We must take it off. Can you take it off?”. If the infant responded by removing the
sticker within 15 seconds, the experimenter thanked the child and said: “Well done, we
cleaned the baby’s face. It’s all clean now, thank you!”. If the infant did not respond, the
experimenter modeled the behavior herself. This was repeated three times. Next, the
29
experimenter repeated the same procedure by marking the child on their hand three
times.
The testing phase occurred following the MMB task. To mark the child, the
experimenter covered the mirror and distracted the infant by making them giggle with the
bee puppet while she surreptitiously put a sticker on their forehead, above the hairline.
After the child was marked, the experimenter spent at least 15 seconds playing with the
child and the bee to make sure that the child hadn’t felt the marking, which would be
indicated by infants’ mark-directed behavior. The experimenter continued the MSR test
only if the child did not show any mark-directed behavior during this time.
For the testing phase, the experimenter uncovered the mirror and asked the
infant to look in the mirror without giving any further prompts. If the infant did not show
self-directed behavior within 15 seconds, the experimenter pointed to the mirror and
gave the first prompt: “Oh, look, there is something on the face”. This prompt was
repeated once more if the child didn’t show any self-directed behaviors. The next verbal
prompt openly asked the infant to remove the mark: “Look, there is something on the
face. We must take it off. Please take it off”. This last prompt was repeated twice more if
the child didn’t show any self-directed behaviors. By the end of a total of 90 seconds and
five verbal prompts, whether the infant responded or not, the task was deemed over.
Knee-marking test
The knee-marking task was implemented as a control task (only in Vanuatu) for
measuring infants’ motivation to remove a sticker from their own body. After the MSR
test was over, the experimenter visibly put a sticker on infants’ knee and said: “Oh, look,
there is something on the knee”. The experimenter gave the same prompt up to three
times waiting 15 seconds in between the prompts. However, most infants pass the test
by immediately removing the sticker from their knee.
Free Play sessions
Next, the experimenter removed the props and left the room for an initial 5
minutes of free play between the caregiver and her child, without any toys. After 5
minutes, the experimenter returned with the following toys: simple wooden blocks and a
baby doll. The experimenter left the room and the dyad was again left alone for a 5-
minute free play session with toys. After 5 minutes, the experimenter returned and
30
ended the free play session. A trained research assistant watched all the videos,
synchronized the two video angles by merging them into one video and excluded
sections of the video when: a) the infant was out of the camera view, b) no interaction
was possible as a result of the child crying, or c) another external intrusion was
preventing the interaction. Finally, for the no-toy session, we removed the sections
where the mother used an object as a toy (e.g., mother takes out her wallet and offers it
to the child to play with).
I coded three separate social-interactional variables during the free play session:
imitation, joint attention to object, and joint attention to self. Imitation was coded during
both the free play without toys session, and the free play with toys session. Joint
attention to object was coded only during the free play with toys session, while joint
attention to self was coded only during the free play without toys session.
1.3.5. Coding and Reliability
Behavioral tasks
For the ID task, a pass was defined as finding the object by searching along the
path that the hand was observed to take, eventually searching in the last location of the
hand, or searching for the ball directly under the last cover. Finding the ball in one of the
three trials was enough for passing. To establish reliability, 10 cases (22% of the
available data) were coded by an independent coder. Percent agreement between
coders was 100% on the binomial variable of pass/fail.
For the MMB test, infants received a pass code if they turned their back either
immediately after seeing the bee or after receiving a prompt. Infants could have turned
from either side (i.e., clock-wise or counter clock-wise). To establish reliability, 10 cases
(21% of the available data) were coded by an independent coder. Percent agreement
between coders was 100% on the binomial variable of pass/fail.
For the MSR test, the training and the testing phases were coded separately. For
the training phase, the passing criterion was removing the sticker from the doll and from
their hand at least once. For the self-recognition phase, a pass was defined as removing
the sticker, touching the sticker without removing it, or bringing the hand to the forehead
repeatedly while looking in the mirror without showing other indications that would
31
contradict with a pass (e.g., touching the mirror, looking behind the mirror). To establish
reliability, 10 cases (20% of the available cases) were coded by an independent coder.
Percent agreement between coders was 100% on the binomial variable of pass/fail, for
both the training and the test phases.
For the KM test, infants received a pass code if they removed the sticker from
their knees. To establish reliability, 8 cases (24% of the available cases) were coded by
an independent coder. Percent agreement between coders was 100% on the binomial
variable of pass/fail.
Free play interactions
Joint attention
Based on Adamson and colleagues’ operational definition, coordinated joint
attention to an object was defined as a state of engagement during which both the
mother and the infant are actively involved in the same object or event and the infant is
actively and repeatedly acknowledging the mother’s participation (Adamson, Bakeman,
& Deckner, 2004). For example, a joint attention episode could have started with the
infant holding a wooden block out to the mother and gesturing their request for the
blocks to be placed on top of another. This joint attention episode continues as long as
the infant alternates their attention between the mother and the blocks through looking,
turn taking, or gesturing. The joint attention state ends when no clear cues of joint
attention are present for a minimum of 10 seconds and/or when the child ceases the
interaction by cues such as turning their back to the mother/activity at hand or shifting
their attention to a new object/event.
During the free play without toys session, I coded coordinated joint attention to
the self/child. This variable aimed to capture dyadic mother-infant interactions where the
focus of the joint attention was the infant. I operationally defined joint attention to the self
as a state of engagement during which both the mother and the infant are actively
involved in attention directed toward the child’s body or action and the infant is actively
and repeatedly acknowledging the mother’s participation. This is a typical example of
coordinated joint attention on the self: the mother asks her infant to show his/her nose
and the infant responds by pointing to his/her nose. The following are other examples of
this state: the infant shows her mother his dance moves as requested, checks mother’s
32
reaction by keeping eye gaze, and responds coyly; an episode where the child watches
her mother’s fingers point to her legs as per the game’s rules and tucks her leg in when
the song says its time; or an episode where the infant performs a communicative gesture
for asking to be picked up and the mother responds. In all of these cases, the infant (i.e.,
infant’s nose, dance moves, leg, or whole body) became the object of attention for the
dyad and the child was aware of the mother’s attention on herself.
To code the two joint attention variables, I recorded the beginnings and ends of
joint attention states (Bakeman & Adamson, 1984). Trained coders watched the
interaction videos in real time by pausing and re-winding as necessary and identified the
starting and end points of joint attention states. The coding was completed by two
coders. For establishing reliability on joint attention to external object, 11 cases (20% of
the available data) that were randomly selected were coded by both coders
independently. Cohen’s kappa was calculated by using each second as a unit of
analysis; agreement was tallied if the same state was coded at a given second
(Bakeman & Adamson, 1984). The kappa was .84, indicating high reliability. For joint
attention to self, 12 cases (26% of the available data) that were randomly selected were
coded by both coders independently. Again, the unit of analysis was one second.
Cohen’s kappa was .89, indicating high reliability between coders.
Gestural imitation
Gestural imitation was coded with a coding system adapted from that of Hart and
Fegley (1994) who coded for infants’ and children’s imitation during a mother-infant play
session with a set of toys. Gestural imitation was operationally defined as the
reproduction of the partner’s bodily action. During the free play session with toys,
following Hart and Fegley, I coded for two types of imitation: parent imitation and child
imitation. During the free play session without toys, however, I observed that infants and
mothers often engaged in ritualized imitation games where the infant and the mother
were performing a series of gestures synchronously. Therefore, I also coded for
simultaneous imitation during the free play without toys session.
I used an interval coding strategy to code imitation (Bakeman & Gottman, 1997).
The coder assigned one of the following mutually exclusive codes to each 3-second
segment: parent imitation, child imitation, simultaneous imitation (if applicable), and no
imitation. Child imitation code was assigned whenever the child reproduced a novel
33
action performed by the mother. For example, the mother takes a wooden block, places
it on top of another block, looks at her child and pauses. If the child also takes a block
and places it on top of another block, the child’s action is coded as imitation. The novelty
principle posits that each imitation must follow a modeled action and that the imitator’s
further repetitions of the same action independent of the model are not coded. For
instance, if a child continues to play with the blocks by placing them on top of each other
without the mother modeling it, they do not receive further codes of imitation. Parent
imitation was assigned whenever the mother reproduced a novel action performed by
the child (e.g., the child claps, mother joins). Simultaneous imitation code is assigned
whenever the mother and the infant perform actions that mirror each other. For example,
the mother and the infant are rolling their forearms over one another as they sing the
wheels on the bus face to face. If no imitation was observed during the segment, a no-
imitation code was assigned.
The coding of the imitation was completed by two coders. For establishing
reliability, 10 cases for the imitation during the with-toys session (18% of the available
data) and 10 cases for the imitation during the without-toys session (22% of the available
data) that I selected randomly were coded independently by both coders. I calculated
Cohen’s kappa by taking 3-second segments as the unit of analysis. An agreement was
tallied for each 3-second segment that received the same code from both coders. The
kappa was .82, indicating high reliability.
1.4. Results
1.4.1. Differences in MSR Passing Rates
Only 2 out of 29 ni-Vanuatu infants (7%) passed the MSR test compared to 15
out of 22 Canadian infants (68%). A Fisher’s exact test shows that the proportion of
passing infants is significantly different between the two cultural groups (p = .000). The
relative risk value was calculated as 2.92, which suggests that ni-Vanuatu infants were
almost 3 times more likely to fail compared to Canadian infants.
34
1.4.2. Examining Alternative Explanations for Cross-cultural Variability
To examine whether low MSR rates in Vanuatu could be attributed to factors un-
related to self-development, I examined ni-Vanuatu infants’ performance on the three
control measures. The knee-marking (KM) test was used to measure infants’ motivation
to show mark-directed behavior. All ni-Vanuatu infants who received the test (n = 24)
passed by successfully removing the sticker. Two of these infants also passed the MSR
test whereas 22 failed. This suggests that ni-Vanuatu infants’ low passing rates cannot
be attributed to a lack of motivation to remove the mark. The ID test was used in order to
measure infants’ capacity to use secondary representations when searching for hidden
objects. Out of 23 ni-Vanuatu infants who received the test, 19 (83%) passed. This rate
was significantly higher than their performance in the MSR test (p = .000, McNemar
exact test) and comparable to the performance of Canadian infants (p = .189, Fisher’s
exact test for homogeneity) where 14 out of 23 infants passed (61%). Moreover, I did not
find any relationship between infants’ performance on the MSR and ID tests either within
the Vanuatu sample or within the Canadian sample (p = 1.00 for both, Fisher’s exact test
of independence). This suggests that ni-Vanuatu infants’ low passing rates in MSR
cannot be attributed to differences in using secondary representations. The mirror-
mediated behavior (MMB) test was used in order to measure infants’ ability to
understand mirror correspondence. Out of 27 ni-Vanuatu infants who received the test,
13 (48%) passed. This rate was significantly higher compared to their performance on
the MSR test (p = .007, McNemar exact test). In addition, I found no significant
relationship between MMB and MSR performance within the Vanuatu sample (p = .481,
Fisher’s exact test for independence). In other words, those infants who passed the
MMB test were not more likely to pass the MSR test. In Vanuatu, the two infants who
passed the MSR test failed the MMB test and none of the infants who passed MMB test
passed the MSR test. On the other hand, the MMB rates in Vanuatu were still
significantly lower than for the Canadian infants’ (p = .000, Fisher’s exact test for
homogeneity), where all infants who received the MMB test (n = 21) passed. Moreover,
in Canada, all but one infant displayed the passing criteria (i.e., turned their back) before
they received a prompt, with an average reaction time of 3.94 seconds (SD = 2.39).
However in Vanuatu, no infant turned before they received a prompt, which was given
after 10.68 seconds (SD = 9.05), on average. The results on the MMB test suggest that
35
although ni-Vanuatu infants had less expertise in using mirrors’ reflective features, this
does not appear to explain their performance on the MSR test. Figure 1.1 shows ni-
Vanuatu and Canadian infants’ passing rates for the MSR test and the control measures
(data is not available for the KM test in Canada).
Figure 1.1. Comparison of Ni-Vanuatu and Canadian infants’ passing rates for the MSR test and the control measures
1.4.3. Predicting MSR
In this study, I observed a suite of social-interactional behaviors during a 10-
minute free play session between infants and their mothers. In this section, my goal is to
identify which specific social-interactional variables are better predictors of infants’
performance on the MSR test. I expected that the candidate predictors would a) be
positively correlated with MSR within the entire sample, and b) be observed at higher
levels among the Canadian dyads. First, I present the correlations between the social-
interactional variables and MSR. Then, I present analyses comparing the levels at which
these variables are observed among ni-Vanuatu and Canadian dyads. Finally, I present
a logistic regression model predicting MSR performance.
36
Correlations between social interactional variables and MSR
I used point-biserial correlations to calculate the associations between MSR and
the social-interactional variables. The point-biserial correlation coefficient is a special
case of the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient which is employed when one
of the variables is dichotomous and the other is expressed in interval/ratio scale
(Sheskin, 2011). The variables used in these analyses were transformed to frequency
per minute scores representing the amount of joint attention and imitation observed per
minute in order to account for slight differences in the duration of each observation. As
shown in Table 1.1, only maternal imitation observed during the free play session with
toys was significantly correlated with MSR. Infants of mothers who imitated their infants
more frequently were more likely to pass the MSR test.
Table 1.1. Correlations between Social-interactional Variables and the MSR Test
Social-interactional variables rpb P value N
Joint attention to object -.00 .995 41
Joint attention to self .07 .642 49
No-toys maternal imitation .13 .434 41
No-toys child imitation -.05 .754 41
No-toys simultaneous imitation -.01 .959 41
Toys maternal imitation .47 .001 49
Toys child imitation -.03 .845 49
Note. P values < .05 are in boldface.
Comparing joint attention levels between Vanuatu and Canada
I used t-tests to compare the average duration of joint attention observed among
ni-Vanuatu and Canadian dyads. The joint attention variable used in this analysis
represented the duration (in seconds) of joint attention the dyad shared per minute.
Mean duration of joint attention to self was not significantly different between Canada
and Vanuatu t(1, 44) = -.312, p = .756. On average, Canadian dyads spent 6.47 seconds
(SD = 4.74) of every minute directing their joint attention on the infant whereas for ni-
Vanuatu dyads this duration was 6.03 seconds (SD = 4.75). There was also no
37
difference in the duration of joint attention to object during free play with toys session t(1,
53) = -1.09, p = .281. On average, Canadian dyads spent 12.60 seconds (SD = 9.91) of
every minute directing their joint attention to an object or event while for ni-Vanuatu
dyads this duration was 9.88 seconds (SD = 8.67).
Comparing imitation levels between Vanuatu and Canada
I used Fisher’s exact tests to compare the levels of imitation observed among ni-
Vanuatu and Canadian dyads. For each imitation type, I created 2x2 contingency tables.
In these tables, columns represented the total frequency of 3-second segments where
imitation was and was not observed, whereas rows represented research sites (i.e.,
Vanuatu and Canada). This allowed me to compare the proportion of positive
observations (3-second-segments where imitation was observed) at the group level
while accounting for differences in the durations of observations at the individual level.
The contingency tables, as well as detailed information on how the cell sums were
calculated, are provided in the Appendix A, Section A.2. Bonferonni corrections were
applied to account for multiple comparisons within each family of comparisons (i.e.,
comparisons within the no-toys session and the toys session).
During the free play session with toys, Canadian mothers imitated their infants
significantly more than ni-Vanuatu mothers (p = .000). The odds of a Canadian mother
imitating her infant were 3.47 times higher than a ni-Vanuatu mother imitating her infant
at a given observation interval. There were no differences in the level at which Canadian
and ni-Vanuatu infants imitated their mothers (p = .224). During the free play session
without toys, no differences were observed in the level of imitation shown by Canadian
and ni-Vanuatu mothers (p = .049). However, ni-Vanuatu infants imitated their mothers
more than Canadian infants imitated their mothers (p = .000). The odds of a ni-Vanuatu
infant imitating their mother were 2.98 times higher compared to the odds of a Canadian
infant imitating their mother. Finally, during the free play session without toys, Ni-
Vanuatu dyads also showed higher levels of simultaneous imitation (p = .000). The odds
of a ni-Vanuatu dyad engaging simultaneous imitation were 1.76 times higher compared
to a Canadian dyad.
38
Summary of associations
Only maternal imitation during the free play session with toys was positively
correlated with MSR. In addition, only maternal imitation during free play session with
toys was observed at significantly higher levels among Canadian dyads. These findings
pinpoint maternal imitation during the toys session as a potential predictor of MSR.
Results are summarized in Table 1.2. Here, green cells represent significant results. The
first two columns summarize the results of between-culture comparisons of imitation and
joint attention levels. When a variable was observed at higher levels in one of the sites,
the representing cell was depicted in green. The third column summarises the results of
correlation (rpb) analyses. When a social interactional variable was positively correlated
with MSR, the representing cell was shown in green.
Table 1.2. Summarizing the Associations between Site, Social Interactions, and MSR
Social-interactional variables Vanuatu Canada MSR
Joint attention to object
Joint attention to self
No-toys maternal imitation
No-toys child imitation
No-toys simult. imitation
Toys maternal imitation
Toys child imitation
Logistic regression Model Predicting MSR
Guided by the results presented in the previous section, I examined whether
maternal imitation scores observed during the toys session predicted individual
differences in MSR in the entire sample. I used a hierarchical logistic regression model
where toddler’s age and sex were entered in the first step as potential confounding
variables. The maternal imitation variable which was entered in the second step was first
subjected to square root transformations in order reduce skewness and then z-scored.
Maternal imitation significantly predicted MSR, χ²(1, 49) = 9.14, p = .002, with an odds
ratio of 3.00. A re-run of the analysis using a stepwise selection method in which I began
with all seven of the social interactional variables confirmed that maternal imitation
39
observed during the free play session with toys is the only predictor of MSR in this
sample. Table 1.3 presents the regression coefficients, standard errors for regression
coefficients, and odds ratios for the predictors of the final model.
Table 1.3. Regression Model Predicting MSR
Step 1 Step 2
Model significance x2(2, 49) = .211, p = .900 x2(3, 49) = 11.36, p = .010
Social interactional variables
B SE (B) odds B SE (B) odds
Infant age -0.1 0.25 0.91 -0.09 0.29 0.92
Infant sex 0.13 0.6 1.14 -0.26 0.7 0.77
Maternal Imitation 1.1** 0.36 3
** < .01
1.5. Discussion
Results revealed significant differences in the MSR abilities of Canadian and ni-
Vanuatu infants. Only 7% of ni-Vanuatu infants passed the MSR test compared to 68%
of Canadian infants. These findings replicate previous cross-cultural literature where
infants from non-Western rural and small-scale societies pass at significantly lower rates
compared to urban Western samples (Broesch et al., 2011; Keller et al., 2004; Ross et
al. 2016).
The main objective of this study was to identify the social-interactional variables
that were related to passing the MSR test in this sample consisting of ni-Vanuatu and
Canadian infants. Based on relational approaches to objective self-awareness (e.g.,
Mead, 1934/1967; Moore, 2007; Rochat, 2009; Tomasello, 1995), I examined the
concurrent relations between MSR and an array of social-interactional variables: two
types of joint attention (i.e., joint attention to object and joint attention to self) and three
types of imitation (i.e., child’s imitation of the mother, mother’s imitation of the child and
simultaneous imitation). I hypothesized that if any of these variables had a role in
shaping the differences observed in ni-Vanautu and Canadian infants’ MSR abilities,
then that variable a) would be observed at higher levels among Canadian dyads, b)
40
would be correlated with MSR in the entire sample, and c) significantly predict those
infants who pass the MSR test.
The results indicate that mother’s imitation of their infants during the free play
session with toys was the only predictor of MSR. During the free play session with toys,
Canadian mothers imitated their infants significantly more than did ni-Vanuatu mothers
and mothers’ imitation of their infants was positively correlated with infants’ MSR abilities
in the entire sample. In addition, in a logistic regression model, maternal imitation during
the free play session with toys significantly predicted infants’ MSR while controlling for
infants’ age and sex. In other words, the extent to which mothers imitated their infants
best distinguished who passed the MSR test among ni-Vanuatu and Canadian infants.
This study adds the first cross-cultural evidence to the empirical literature that links
imitation to the development of MSR (Kristen-Antonow et al., 2015, Hart & Fegley, 1994)
and provides support for the theoretical positions that view coordination of perspectives
at the heart of objective self-development (Carpendale & Lewis, 2011; Martin et al.,
2008; Mitchell, 1993; Moore, 2007; Rochat, 2009; Tomasello, 1995). Moreover, these
results put a special type of imitation –parents’ imitation of the infant– under the spotlight
of future studies interested in understanding the developmental processes involved in
the construction of objective self-awareness.
These results evoke more questions than they answer. In this study, mothers’
imitation of their infants predicted MSR but infants’ imitation of their mothers did not. This
suggests that the distinction between imitating and being imitated may have theoretical
relevance. Also, in this study, only mother’s imitation during the free play session with
toys predicted MSR, but mother’s imitation during the free play session without toys did
not. This suggests that whether imitation appears in a dyadic or triadic context may have
theoretical relevance as well. Exploring these questions further will help us understand
the details of the mechanisms through which imitation is involved in infants’ acquisition
of objective self-knowledge. Another question that arises is why joint attention was not
linked with MSR. During the joint attention episodes that appeared in the toy-play
session, dyads from both cultures engaged in joint activities such as building a tower.
Their joint attention was considered sustained as long as they demonstrated an
awareness of the other’s perspective via alternating gaze, turn taking, and gesturing.
However, this form of coordination of perspectives was not related to MSR. During the
joint attention episodes that appeared in the dyadic play session, dyads from both
41
cultures engaged in games during which infants’ attention was directed to their own body
(e.g., “Where is your nose?”) or in games during which the dyad’s attention continuously
switched between infant’s and the mother’s body (e.g., a game where the mother points
to either her own leg or the infant’s leg). However, this form of coordination of
perspectives was not related to MSR either. It is possible that such interactions are still
relevant to infants’ self-development. However; the form of self-knowledge that is
acquired in these interactions may not be measured with the MSR test (Moore, Mealiea,
Garon, & Povinelli, 2007). Clearly, more theoretical and empirical work is needed to
understand the causal mechanisms through which infants construct various aspects of
objective self-awareness.
Another goal of this study was to test whether low passing rates among ni-
Vanuatu infants could be attributed to reasons unrelated to self-development such as
low motivation to show mark-directed behavior, difficulty in using secondary
representations, and difficulty in understanding mirror correspondence. I hypothesized
that if ni-Vanuatu infants did not pass the MSR test because they were not motivated to
remove the mark from their face, then they would pass the knee-marking (KM) test at
equally low levels. In addition, among ni-Vanuatu infants, performance in the KM test
would be associated with performance in the MSR test. This was not the case. All infants
who failed the MSR test successfully removed the mark from their knees. Similarly, I
hypothesized that if Vanuatu infants failed the MSR test because they were not able to
use secondary representations, then they would pass the invisible displacement (ID) test
at equally low levels. In addition, among ni-Vanuatu infants, performance in the ID test
would be associated with performance in the MSR test. This was not the case either. Ni-
Vanuatu infants were successful in using secondary representations when it comes to
searching for hidden objects. These findings demonstrate that low passing rates
observed among ni-Vanuatu infants cannot be attributed to a lack of motivation to show
mark-directed behavior or to a difficulty in using secondary representations. As such, this
study provides further support for the cross-cultural validity of the MSR test.
My examination of ni-Vanuatu infants’ understanding of mirror correspondence,
however, revealed inconclusive results. I hypothesized that if low MSR rates could be
attributed to infants’ inability to use the mirror’s reflective function, then we would expect
equally low passing rates in the mirror mediated behavior (MMB) test among ni-Vanuatu
infants. In addition, we would expect a relationship between infants’ performance in the
42
two tests. Contrary to these hypotheses, among ni-Vanuatu infants, MMB passing rates
were significantly higher than MSR passing rates. On the other hand, MMB passing
rates were significantly lower in Vanuatu compared to Canada. Whereas all Canadian
infants who received the MMB test passed, fewer than half (48%) of the ni-Vanuatu
infants did so. In fact, I suspect that the differences may be even more pronounced than
the passing rates reflect. During the MMB test, if infants did not turn on their own within
10 seconds, a prompt asking the infant to get the toy was given by the experimenter.
Whereas all Canadian infants but one turned on their own before receiving the prompt,
none of the ni-Vanuatu infants turned without receiving a prompt. These results suggest
that, similar to Bedouin infants who didn’t have previous exposure to mirrors (Priel &
Schonen, 1986), ni-Vanuatu infants experienced difficulties in using a mirror’s reflective
features. These results do not support, however, the hypothesis that this relative
challenge is responsible for the low passing rates observed among ni-Vanuatu infants
because no relationship was observed between infants’ performance on the MSR test
and the MMB test. More research is needed to provide a definitive answer to the
question of whether there is a causal relationship between an understanding of mirror
correspondence and mirror self-recognition and whether such a relationship could
partially be responsible for cross-cultural differences observed in MSR passing rates.
This study has several limitations. One of these is the lack of variability in MSR
among ni-Vanuatu infants. In order to argue that the predictive value of maternal
imitation that appeared in this sample was more than a description of correlational
patterns, it is imperative to test whether maternal imitation explains within culture
variability in MSR among ni-Vanuatu infants. Another limitation is the cross-sectional
nature of the dataset. Longitudinal replications of these results will be critical in
establishing imitation as a developmental antecedent of self-recognition. Finally, I
observed the social-interactional variables during a short semi-structured free play
session. Although free play situations between infants and caregivers occur in various
cultures (Keller, 2007), the frequency of such interactions may vary. In addition, the free
play session with the set of toys I provided may be particularly unnatural for the ni-
Vanuatu dyads given that the toys provided (i.e., simple wooden blocks and a baby doll)
are rarely found in this context. Future studies should rely on natural observations to
examine the amount of imitation infants typically experience in each culture.
43
Finally, I would like to add that the construction of objective self-awareness in the
infant is a long and multi-faceted process and the predictors of MSR cannot be limited to
imitation. One strong candidate that I did not address in this study is language.
Language is seen as one of the most pervasive mediums for the socialization of self
(Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986; Vygotsky, 1934/1962). Cross-cultural research on language
socialization typically focuses on the content of parents’ conversations with their children
who are active participants in these conversations —namely, children of preschool age
and older (e.g., Wang, 2001). This literature demonstrates that language interactions
shape children’s self-concepts in ways that are compatible with cultural expectations
(Fivush & Nelson, 2004). I suggest that there are reasonable grounds to expect that
systematic differences in parent-child language interactions are present even earlier,
before infants become active participants in these conversations. Future research should
examine the role of language in children’s acquisition of a self-concept.
44
Chapter 2. Study 2. Parental Imitation and Mirror Self-Recognition: Examining Within-Culture Variability
2.1. Abstract
There are significant differences across cultures in the development of mirror
self-recognition (MSR), a classic test of the emergence of a sense of self. While several
explanations exist, the cross-cultural evidence point to differences in early social
experiences as a causal mechanism for the onset of MSR. In this study, I aimed to
examine and disentangle potential mechanisms underlying individual and group
differences by examining MSR in two cultural communities in an urban region of Canada
(self-identified native English and Cantonese speakers). Forty nine parents and their
toddlers participated in a structured free play procedure and infants received a mirror
self-recognition test. Additionally, I examined children’s temperament using the Early
Childhood Behavior Questionnaire. Results revealed that there were no differences in
MSR passing rates between cultural groups. In the entire sample, parents’ imitation of
child’s behavior predicted children’s performance on the MSR test. This research helps
to identify possible mechanisms involved in the emergence of MSR ability and may act
as a springboard for investigating the role of imitation in shaping early self-development.
2.2. Introduction
The mirror self-recognition (MSR) test measures children’s capacity to identify
their reflected image as themselves (Amsterdam, 1972; Gallup, 1970). Children from
Western and urban populations pass the MSR test (e.g., by utilizing their reflection to
remove a mark surreptitiously placed on their face) starting from 18 months of age, with
passing rates gradually increasing over the second year. By 24 months, most toddlers
pass the MSR test and are noted to be “self-recognizers” (Amsterdam, 1972; Courage et
al., 2003; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Nielsen et al., 2003). This ability is an important
social cognitive milestone because it represents the emergence of a self-concept, or an
idea of me (Gallup, 1977; Lewis, 2003). This level of self-understanding is termed
45
objective self-awareness (Duval & Wicklund, 1972; Neisser, 1988) and is different from
earlier forms of self-understanding because, for the first time, young children are moving
from their subjective experience of the world to an ability to take a third-person
perspective towards themselves (Mead, 1934/1967; Rochat, 2009; Tomasello, 1995).
Until recently, mirror self-recognition was considered a robust cognitive milestone
(Amsterdam, 1972; Gallup, 1970; Priel & Schonen, 1986) and individual differences in its
developmental trajectory were largely overlooked. However, recent cross-cultural
research shows significant differences between societies in the age at which young
children demonstrate MSR (Broesch et al., 2011; Kärtner et al., 2012; Keller et al., 2004;
Ross et al., 2016). This cross-cultural research suggests that children living in societies
characterized as rural and non-Western show significantly lower rates of MSR compared
to their age-matched peers from Western and urban societies. For example, only 3% of
rural Cameroonian children between 18 and 20 months self-referred during a MSR test
compared to 68% of urban Greek children (Keller et al., 2004). Similarly, Broesch and
colleagues (2011) found that passing rates were significantly lower in children living in
Fiji, Saint Lucia, Grenada, and Peru (< 33%) compared to children living in North
American cities and towns (>77%). Recently, Ross and colleagues studied MSR in
children living in rural Zambia, urban Scotland, and urban Turkey. Children from
Scotland and Turkey performed similarly on the MSR test (with passing rates of 47%
and 41%, respectively), whereas same-aged Zambian children passed at a significantly
lower rate (15%).
There are several explanations for these cross-cultural findings. One explanation
is concerned with the validity of the MSR test across diverse cultures, suggesting that
the methodological design does not capture the competence of participants in some
societies. One characteristic of the classic MSR test is that it relies on children’s
motivation to remove a mark on their face. However, in some societies, for various
reasons (e.g., compliance to authority, cultural face painting), children may not be
motivated to remove the mark. Evidence for this interpretation comes from a study by
Rochat, Broesch, and Jayne (2012) that examined how children’s motivational states
influence performance in the MSR. In this research, the authors set up a non-verbal
scenario in which they successfully alter children’s motivation to remove the mark by
creating a norm of marked faces or a norm of unmarked faces. Children removed the
mark significantly more often when unmarked faces were the norm, suggesting that
46
children’s failure to remove a mark might be explained by motivational states as
opposed to failures in self-recognition.
Another explanation underscores the fact the MSR task assumes some level of
familiarity with mirrors’ reflective capacity as well as one’s own facial features. Children
from non-Western societies may have less experience with mirrors and other reflective
surfaces, and so have fewer opportunities to see themselves as a reflected image
(Kärtner et al., 2012; Priel & Schonen, 1986). In these cases, failure to pass the MSR
test may not reflect true differences in the emergence of a stable self-concept, but
instead reflect differences in infants’ reactions to the test design. By recruiting from
within the Canadian culture, I aimed to reduce the impact potential differences in
children’s motivation to remove the mark and their familiarity with mirrors.
Finally, the sociocultural perspective posits that differences in MSR passing rates
reflect true differences in self-recognition and that they are a result of differential
socialization of self across cultures. Based on this perspective, self-developmental
trajectories are shaped through parenting practices, which serve to maximize children’s
psychological functioning in a given society (Keller, 2003; Keller, 2007; Kağıtçıbaşı,
1996). Keller and colleagues suggest that early onset of self-recognition is a
consequence of autonomy-supporting socialization goals and practices which are
adopted by the parents in cultures of independence (Keller et al., 2004; Keller et al.,
2005). Consistently, Kärtner and colleagues’ study conducted with participants from two
urban (Germany and India), and two rural (India and Cameroon) societies showed that
parents’ socialization goals that favour psychological autonomy in their children
predicted whether infants passed the MSR test while controlling for several confounding
factors including infants’ age and gender (Kärtner et al., 2012). Moreover, in two cross-
cultural studies, Keller and colleagues found that mothers’ use of autonomy supporting
caregiving strategies (i.e., face-to face exchange and object stimulation) as they
interacted with their 3-month-old infants longitudinally predicted infants’ MSR abilities at
18-20 months (Keller et al., 2004; Keller et al., 2005).
However, it is not clear precisely how infants’ experiences in dyadic exchanges
as early as 3 months is causally related to the emergence of self-recognition abilities.
Developmental theories of self-awareness suggest that the proximal mechanisms
involved in the construction of objective self-awareness are to be found in the second
47
year of life, when children start to interact with others as active social agents (Tomasello,
1995; Rochat, 2009; Müller & Runions, 2003; Moore, 2007). Following 12 months of age,
infants begin to engage in secondary intersubjectivity (Trevarthen, 1980). At this stage,
children view others as intentional agents, monitor other’s attention towards outside
entities, and coordinate their attention with that of their social partner (Tomasello, 1995;
Rochat, 2009). In turn, a whole new set of possibilities for triadic interactions becomes
possible. Rochat (2001) refers to these triadic interactions as the “fateful triangle of self”
(Rochat, 2001) while Chapman (1991) refers to them as the “epistemic triangle”.
Imitation may be seen as a very special case of such triadic interactions where the focal
point of the interaction is the dyad (Tomasello, 1995). Through imitation, parents are
able to reorient their infants’ attention towards themselves, rather than an object.
Moreover in mutually imitative games, the element of coordinating perspectives appears
as infants deliberately match their partner and watch how they look to others (Müller &
Runions, 2003; Barresi & Moore, 1996). Finally, Piaget (1945/1962) pointed out that
particularly because their face is not directly visible to humans, imitating others’ facial
movements is essential for infants to construct a visual representation of their own face.
In support of these hypotheses, Hart and Fegley (1994) observed that children’s
imitation of their mother during a free play session with toys was associated with earlier
MSR onset longitudinally, while their ability to imitate complex actions with toys was not,
underscoring the importance of social experience in acquiring self-knowledge. Along the
same lines, Kristen-Antonow and colleagues (Kristen-Antonow et al., 2015) found that
children’s performance on a delayed visual self-recognition task at 4 years of age was
most strongly predicted by infants’ responsiveness to being imitated by an adult at 12
months, and by MSR and verbal intelligence at 2 years. Both of these studies have been
conducted in Western urban samples. In a recent cross-cultural study, I have found that
maternal imitation of the child that was observed during a short free play session with
toys was the only variable that significantly predicted who passed the MSR test among a
sample of infants recruited from rural Vanuatu and urban Canada. These findings are
promising and suggest that imitation may be playing an important role in the
development of objective self-knowledge. In this study, I examined the associations
between MSR and three distinct types of imitation that typically appear in parent-infant
interactions in a culturally diverse sample recruited from the same socioecological
context.
48
2.3. Current Research
Developmental theories of self-awareness propose that infants develop objective
self-awareness by actively participating in social interactions that underscore the
relations between self and other (Tomasello, 1995; Rochat, 2009; Müller & Runions,
2003; Moore, 2007). Imitation may be key to this process. In this study, I examined the
links between imitation and MSR in an urban Canadian sample. I recruited parents and
their children from two self-identified distinct cultural backgrounds, all living within the
same geographical location. By recruiting participants from the same ecological context,
I aimed to eliminate potential confounding effects of early experiences which might affect
MSR test performance (e.g., experience with mirrors) while maximizing variability in the
characteristics of social interactions. Furthermore, I measured parents’ assessment of
their child’s temperament to explore potential links between temperamental differences
and self-development. Because traditional Chinese culture promotes relatedness over
individuality (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Keller et al., 2007), I expected parents coming
from this cultural background to be less likely to use strategies that promote early
development of self. Parents from traditional Chinese backgrounds have been described
as varying on a number of parenting behaviors and socialization goals such as
authoritarianism (Chuang & Su, 2009), face-to-face interactions and object-stimulation
(Keller et al., 2007), encouragement of children’s self-initiated behaviors, and
cooperation (Liu et al., 2005). With this methodological approach, the results of this
study can shed light on the developmental processes of self-awareness and inform
future investigations of cross-cultural differences in self-recognition.
2.4. Methods
2.4.1. Participants
Forty nine parents with their 16- to 21-month-old children living in the Greater
Vancouver Area of British Columbia, Canada participated in the study. Parents were
recruited from a list of families who agreed to be contacted to participate in studies on
child development. Families came from two self-identified cultural backgrounds: primarily
English-speaking (n = 29) or primarily Cantonese-speaking (n = 20). The toddlers in the
English-speaking group were predominantly exposed to English (97.17% of the time on
average) as indicated by a questionnaire given to parents. Parents in this group reported
49
their children’s ethnic origin as either European or European mixed with another
ethnicity. The toddlers in the Cantonese-speaking group were predominantly exposed to
Cantonese (75.70% of the time on average). Parents in this group reported their
children’s ethnicity as East or South East Asian. I refer to these groups as English-
speaking and Cantonese-speaking throughout.
Children. The average age of participating children was 17.74 months (range =
15.40 – 21.40, SD = 1.41)2. The average age was 17.85 months (SD = 1.18) for
Cantonese-speaking babies, 17.66 months (SD = 1.55) for English-speaking babies, and
no significant differences appeared between the mean ages, t(1, 48) = -.46, p = .649.
Overall, 22 toddlers were girls and 28 were boys, and chi-square analyses showed that
the gender distribution was comparable across cultural groups (English-speaking, 16
girls; Cantonese-speaking, 13 girls), χ² (1, 50) = .22, p = .642.
Caregivers. Forty of the dyads were mother-infant pairs and nine were father-
infant pairs3. Among the nine father-infant pairs, six were from the English-speaking
group and three were from the Cantonese-speaking group. A Fisher’s exact test
indicated that the number of father-infant dyads was comparable between the cultural
groups (p = .720). Because the data extracted from father-infant and mother-infant
dyads were similar, I combined them (see Appendix B, section B.1., for details). The
number of years of formal education achieved by parents in this study was comparable
between the two language groups, chi-square test, χ² (2, 44) = 3.71, p = .156. Overall,
29.5% of the parents had either a high school education or some post-secondary
education, 52.3% had a bachelor’s degree, and 18.2% had graduate level education.
2 A subsample of participants completed the procedure in two separate visits (see the procedure section). For calculating the infant mean age reported here, I used the date at which these participants paid their first visit. The average infant age at MSR test and the mean age comparisons between the cultural groups based on infant age at MSR are presented in Appendix B, Section B.5. 3 The numbers reported here are based on the parent who was paired with the toddler during the free play session. Typically, one parent accompanied the toddler during the entire procedure. However, for a small number of participants, either a different parent was present during the MSR test (n = 2) or a different parent filled out the ECBQ (n = 2). More information on accompanying parents’ gender for different tasks is presented in Appendix B, Section B.3.
50
2.4.2. Procedure
The data was collected at the UBC Centre for Infant Cognition by our
collaborators. A female experimenter greeted the parents and their children in the
laboratory, went over the procedure, and collected written informed consent from
parents. Then, the experimenter directed the participants to the testing area which
consists of a room furnished with a mat on the ground and left them alone for the 10-
minute free play session. The free play session began with five minutes of free play
without any toys. Following that, the experimenter entered the room, delivered a set of
toys (simple wooden blocks and a 12" baby-doll, see Appendix A, Section A.3. for
image) and left the dyad alone for another five minutes. After the free play session, the
experimenter entered the room and administrated the MSR test to the infant while the
mother was present in the room. Finally, participants were invited back to the waiting
area where parents completed the temperament questionnaire (ECBQ, Early Childhood
Behavior Questionnaire). All dyads received a certificate and a small prize (t-shirt, bath
toy, or book). The MSR and free play sessions were video recorded with three cameras,
to capture distinct video angles for later coding.
The English-speaking sample was tested in English by a female research
assistant. The Cantonese-speaking sample was tested in Cantonese by a female
research assistant. The Cantonese-speaking participants received either the English or
the Cantonese version of the temperament questionnaire. A subsample of 13 parent-
infant dyads completed the procedure in two separate visits. The details of the
procedure they went through, and other exceptions to the standard procedure, are
described in Appendix B, Section B.2., Section B.3., and Section B.4. An additional 11
parent-toddler dyads (n = 7 for English-speaking; n = 3 for Cantonese-speaking) were
excluded from the dataset due to fussiness (n = 5), parental interference (n = 4),
experimenter error (n = 1) and inability to complete the pre-test for MSR (n = 1).
2.4.3. Measures
Mirror self-recognition test. I assessed children’s MSR abilities with a
procedure adapted from the original MSR test (Amsterdam, 1972). In Amsterdam’s
procedure, toddlers are secretly marked on their face, shown the mirror, and expected to
remove the mark without receiving any verbal prompt. However, over the past 40 years,
51
several modifications have been suggested to reduce the potential for false negatives
and ambiguous cases. Some of these suggestions involved training children in showing
mark-directed behavior prior to the testing phase (Asendorpf et al., 1996) and using
verbal prompts (e.g., directly asking the child to clean the mark) during the testing phase
(Broesch et al., 2011). Another suggestion involved marking the child on a body part that
is visible without a mirror (e.g., leg or hand) to collect a control measure of children’s
motivation to show self-directed behavior (Kärtner et al., 2012). Based on these
recommendations, I modified Amsterdam’s procedure in three ways. First, I introduced a
training phase where toddlers learned to remove the mark from a stuffed toy dog’s face.
Second, during the testing phase, I gave verbal prompts encouraging toddlers to remove
the mark. Third, following the testing phase, I secretly marked toddlers on their hands to
determine motivation to remove marks from the body. The details of these three phases
of the MSR test are described below. During the test, toddlers sat on their parents’ lap
while parents were asked to stay silent, not to interact with their toddlers, and to close
their eyes immediately before toddlers were shown the mirror reflection, so as not to
influence their child’s behavior in any way.
Training phase. The training was designed to ensure that toddlers were able to
follow the prompt to remove the sticker. The experimenter presented the child with a
stuffed toy dog with three stickers on the dog’s face and asked, “Can I have a sticker?” If
the child did not respond by removing the sticker, the experimenter performed a
demonstration by removing one sticker from the dog’s face and repeated the prompt.
This phase continued until the all three stickers were removed from the dog’s face and
the child removed at least one of the stickers.
Mirror self-recognition phase. During the mirror self-recognition phase, the
experimenter surreptitiously placed a sticker on child’s forehead and presented them
with a mirror. Toddlers were encouraged to look at the mirror for 30 seconds and were
then prompted by asking, “Do you see a sticker?”. If the child did not respond (e.g., not
searching, freezing) within 15 seconds, the experimenter asked, “Can I have a sticker?”.
This phase ended either when the toddler passed the test (i.e., showing mark-directed
behavior) or when 30 seconds passed after the second prompt.
Hand-marking phase. After the training and the MSR test phases were complete,
I removed the mirror and the experimenter placed a sticker on the top of the child’s hand
52
without their knowledge. The goal was to mark the child in a location on their body that
they could easily view without a mirror. This phase ended when the child removed or
gestured toward the sticker or when 30 seconds passed.
Toddler temperament. I measured children’s temperament using the Very Short
Form of the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (ECBQ; Putnam, Gartstein, &
Rothbart, 2006) completed by the parents. For the English-speaking group, I used the
English-language version (Putnam, Gartstein, & Rothbart, 2006). For the Cantonese-
speaking group, I used two translated versions: Chinese and Chinese (Taiwan Usage).
The ECBQ is a widely-used measure of early childhood temperament. While the
standard form contains 201 items and takes about an hour to complete, the Very Short
Form consists of 36 items and takes about 10 minutes to complete. The ECBQ
measures 18 discrete traits embedded within three higher-order factors: Negative Affect
(Discomfort, Fear, Frustration, Motor Activation, Sadness, Perceptual Sensitivity,
Shyness, Soothability), Surgency (Impulsivity, Activity Level, High Intensity Pleasure,
Sociability, Positive Anticipation), and Effortful Control (Inhibitory Control, Attention
Shifting, Low Intensity Pleasure, Cuddliness, and Attentional Focusing) (Putnam,
Gartstein, & Rothbart, 2006). I calculated and assigned each child a score for each of
the three subscales: negative affect, surgency, and effortful control. Each subscale has
12 items that are rated on a 7-point-scale. The Very Short Form was reported to have a
factor structure that matches the standard form, to have adequate internal consistency,
and criterion validity (Putnam et al., 2010). The Cronbach’s alpha measures of internal
consistency were .70 for negative affect, .52 for surgency, and .76 for effortful control.
2.4.4. Coding and Reliability
Mirror self-recognition. One trained coder watched the video recordings and
coded children’s behavior as a categorical “pass” or “fail” during three phases of the
MSR test: training, mirror self-recognition, and hand-marking. For the training phase, a
pass was assigned when the child removed at least one sticker from the stuffed toy
dog’s face. All children retained in the sample passed this phase successfully, showing
that they were all able to remove a sticker when requested. The mirror self-recognition
test phase was coded from the time the mirror was lifted and the child was viewing their
self-reflected image until they either passed the test or 30 seconds had passed from the
53
second prompt to remove the sticker. Children were assigned a pass if they repeatedly
searched with the hands around their forehead while looking in the mirror, or directly
touched or removed the sticker from their forehead. For the hand-marking phase, a pass
was assigned when children removed the sticker from the top of their hands or directly
pointed at the sticker. Again, all children passed this phase, suggesting that they were
motivated to show self-directed behavior. To establish reliability, sixteen videos (31% of
the total) were coded by a second research assistant. For the training and hand-marking
phases, the agreement between the coders was 100% on the binomial variable of
pass/fail. For the testing phase, coders were in agreement 94% of the time on the
binomial variable of pass/fail.
Imitation. A trained research assistant watched the video recorded parent-infant
free play interactions in real time by pausing and re-winding as necessary to identify
imitation behavior. I coded five minutes of free play session without toys and five
minutes of free play session with toys. Using a coding scheme adapted from Hart and
Fegley (1994), three kinds of imitation codes were defined: parent’s imitation of the
child’s behavior, child’s imitation of the parent’s behavior, and simultaneous imitation.
Imitation was defined as the reproduction of the partner’s novel bodily action within a
period of five seconds. To exemplify, the mother may take a wooden block, place it on
top of another block, look at her child and pause. If the child also takes a block and
places it on top of a block (within five seconds of the mother’s action), the child’s action
is coded as imitation. The novelty principle posits that each imitation must follow a
modeled action and that the imitator’s further repetitions of the same action independent
of the model are not coded. For instance, a child who continues to play with the blocks
by placing them on top of each other without the mother modeling it does not receive
further codes of imitation. Note that coordinated imitation was coded only during the free
play without toys session. It occurred whenever the parent and the child were engaged
in coordinated imitative actions (e.g., partners face each other and simultaneously lift
their arms up).
I used an interval coding strategy to code imitation (Bakeman & Gottman, 1997).
The coder assigned one of the following mutually exclusive codes to each 3-second
segment: parent imitation, child imitation, simultaneous imitation (if applicable), and no
imitation. Because the free play sessions varied slightly in the duration, I converted the
frequency scores to rate scores by multiplying the number of segments where imitation
54
was observed with 60 and then dividing it by the total number of segments available. For
establishing inter-rater reliability, I coded a random selection of 10 free play sessions
with toys (20% of the sample) and 10 free play sessions without toys (20% of the
sample). Cohen’s kappa was .89 for the free play with toys context, and .85 for the free
play without toys context, indicating high inter-rater agreement between the two coders.
The final parent imitation, child imitation, and simultaneous imitation scores that
were used in the regression analyses were computed as follows. For parent and child
imitation, I combined the scores across the two free play contexts. Due to elevated
skewness and kurtosis, square root transformations were performed on parent imitation
scores for both contexts and on child imitation for the no-toys session (Tabachnick &
Fidell, 2007). Then, I calculated z scores and summed them across the two free play
contexts. The simultaneous imitation variable was recoded into a binary variable
(present, non-present) since these behaviors were rarely observed.
2.5. Results
2.5.1. Predicting Self-recognizers
Overall, 43% of all children self-referred in the mirror. The passing rate was 41%
among English-speaking children compared to 45% among Cantonese-speaking
children. No association appeared between MSR performance and cultural group, χ² (1,
49) = .06, p = .801. I examined the predictors of self-recognition using a combination of
hierarchical and stepwise logistic regression techniques. In the first step, I entered
potential confounding variables: culture, toddler’s age at the time of MSR test, and
toddler’s sex. In the initial run of the second step, I entered all of the candidate predictor
variables: negative affectivity, effortful control, surgency, parental imitation, child
imitation, and simultaneous imitation. Simultaneous imitation was used as dichotomous
variable since this was observed in very few dyads.
A test of the full model with all predictors against a constant-only model where no
variables are included was not significant, χ² (9, 49) = 14.00, p = .122, indicating that the
predictors, as a set, did not distinguish between children who passed and failed MSR.
Table 2.1 shows regression coefficients, Wald statistics, significance levels for the Wald
statistics, and odds ratios for each of the predictors. An investigation of the individual
55
parameters indicated that only infant age and parental imitation significantly contributed
to the model, χ² (1, 49) = 4.17, p = .041 and χ² (1, 49) = 7.09, p = .008, respectively.
Based on a comparison of the log-likelihood ratios, this complex model with 9
independent variables proved no better fit for the data compared to a simpler model that
included three control variables in the first step and only parental imitation as the sole
predictor in the second step, χ² (5, 49) = 2.57, p > .05. This suggested that the additional
predictor variables in the complex model did not account for the observed variation and
were therefore removed from the model. The simple model consisting of three control
variables and parental imitation as predictor was significant χ² (4, 49) = 12.57, p = .014.
Imitation positively predicted MSR (χ² (1, 49) = 7.64, p = .006) with an odds ratio of 2.37.
Those children whose parents exhibited higher levels of imitation were more likely to be
self-recognizers. The effect of age was also significant (χ² (1, 49) = 3.90, p = .048, β =
2.41); imitation increased with age.
Table 2.1. Logistic Regression with all Potential Predictors in the Model
Potential predictors B Wald p Exp (B)
MSR age 1.08 4.17 .04 2.94
Gender 1.19 1.86 .17 3.28
Culture .96 .95 .33 2.62
Negative Affectivity -.73 1.25 .26 .48
Surgency -.10 .26 .87 .91
Effortful Control -.43 .79 .37 .65
Parental Imitation .92 7.09 .01 2.52
Child Imitation -.01 .01 .97 .99
Sim. imitation .21 .06 .81 .81
(Constant) -18.72 3.44 .06 .00
Note. P values < .05 are in boldface.
2.5.2. Describing the Effects of Culture, Gender and Free play Context on Imitation
I compared imitation levels based on cultural group, free play context, and
infants’ gender using Fisher’s exact tests. For each type of imitation, I created 2x2
contingency tables. These tables contained the total frequency of 3-second segments
56
where imitation was observed and not observed. This approach allowed me to reliably
compare the proportion of 3-second segments where imitation was observed between
cultural groups despite the fact that the total frequency of 3-second segment
observations varied across individual dyads. Bonferonni corrections were applied for
each family to account for multiple comparisons.
Over the 5 minutes of free play session without toys, English-speaking and
Cantonese-speaking dyads exhibited similar levels of parent imitation (p = .26) and child
imitation (p = .41). However, more simultaneous imitation was observed in English-
speaking dyads’ interactions (p = .011). Over the 5 minutes of free play session with toys
as well, English-speaking and Cantonese-speaking dyads exhibited similar levels of
parent imitation (p = .26) and child imitation (p = .41).
The next family of comparisons involved comparisons of imitation levels between
play contexts. These analyses were conducted using the entire sample. Results showed
that more imitation was observed during the toys session for both mothers (p = .009) and
toddlers (p = .000). Neither parent imitation (r = .00, p = .99) nor toddler imitation (r =
.09, p = .53) was correlated across the two contexts. This result may partly be explained
by the coders’ observation that the lack of structured activity posed a challenge for
children to stay focused on the interaction during the no-toys session. Consistent with
our observations, parental imitation during the no-toys session was correlated with
children’s effortful control (r = .36, p = .013), while no such association was observed
during the session with toys (r = .07, p = .629). Overall, these results suggest that the
free play session with toys and the free play session without toys measured distinct
aspects of the dyad’s interactive experience, and that the free play session with toys
elicited higher levels of child imitation in this sample.
Finally, I examined whether parents’ imitation levels varied based on toddlers’
gender. During the no-toys session, we observed parents imitate their girls more than
their boys (p = .013). No differences were observed during the toys session (p = .14).
Child’s imitation did not vary based on gender. During both the free play session with
toys and without toys, boys and girls imitated their parents to the same level (p = .38, p =
1.00).
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2.5.3. Describing the Effects of Culture and Gender on Temperament
Independent samples t-tests showed that Cantonese-speaking and English-
speaking parents judged their children’ surgency levels and effortful control levels
comparably, t(1, 47) = .27, p = .789 and t(1, 47) = -.93, p = .359, respectively. However, I
found a significant difference in negative affectivity, t(1, 47) = -3.56, p = .001.
Cantonese-speaking parents reported higher levels of negative affectivity (M = 3.48, SD
= .64) for their children compared to English-speaking parents (M = 2.79, SD = .66),
consistent with previous work (Chen et al., 1998; Gartstein et al., 2006; Ahadi, Rothbart,
&Ye, 1993).
2.6. Discussion
In this study, I examined imitation and temperament as predictors of self-
recognition ability among Vancouverite toddlers. Participants were recruited from two
different self-identified cultural backgrounds in order to access variability in the
constructs of interest while restricting differences in the ecological context that may
affect the validity of the measurements. However, no differences in MSR performance or
interaction styles appeared between the Cantonese-speaking and English-speaking
participants. The MSR passing rates I observed in this sample (41% among English-
speaking toddlers and 45% among Cantonese-speaking toddlers) are similar to those
reported in other Western urban samples (Amsterdam, 1972; Lewis & Ramsay, 2004;
Nielsen et al., 2003). This suggests that all participants came from a population where
parents encouraged early development of self-awareness in their children, consistent
with the needs of the socioecological context in which they lived (Keller, 2003; Keller et
al., 2004).
Results showed that parents’ imitation of their toddlers during a 10-minute free
play session significantly predicted toddlers’ performance in the MSR task together with
age. These results are consistent with the results of study 1 where maternal imitation
observed during a short free play session with toys explained the remarkable cross-
cultural differences in infants’ MSR abilities among toddlers recruited from Vanuatu and
Canada. These results are also in line with previous studies that showed that toddler’s
imitation of their mothers during a free play session (Hart & Fegley, 1994) and toddler’s
responsiveness to being imitated longitudinally predicted self-recognition ability (Kristen-
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Antonow et al., 2015). Together, these findings indicate that imitation may be an
important mechanism for the development of objective self-awareness. My findings add
to the existing literature by bring another component into play —the distinction between
the imitator and the imitated. In this study, parents’ imitation of their toddlers during a
free play session predicted MSR ability whereas toddlers’ imitation of their parents or
simultaneous imitation by both partners did not. These results suggest that parental
imitation of infants’ actions may have a particular role in supporting the development of
infants’ visual self-representations. However, more work is needed to understand
precisely how parental imitation facilitates the development of self-representations.
I classify the explanations regarding this process into two distinct theoretical
groups. One group of arguments emphasize children’s visual limitations regarding
seeing their own body, especially their face, and point to the importance of the social
other as a means of perceptual outreach (Guillaume, 1926/1971, Piaget, 1945/1962). I
will refer to this camp as the Piagetian framework. Piaget states that during the fifth
stage of sensorimotor development, which precedes the symbolic representation
capacity, children start to systematically and purposefully explore their organs that are
not directly visible to them (e.g., face) through imitation. They find correspondences
between their organs and that of their social partners using successive assimilation and
accommodation strategies, and this process leads to the construction of facial
representations (Piaget, 1945/1962, p. 85). Here, Piaget underscores the role of the
parent as an imitator because infants may need to be scaffolded into these imitative
exchanges. To summarize, from a Piagetian perspective, parents who imitate their
children might be supporting their children’ ability to construct self-representations by
providing perceptual cues on body parts that they cannot see, and by allowing them
opportunities to explore the correspondences between their own organs and those of
others.
The other group of explanations emphasize the tricky ability to step outside of the
first-person experience, following Mead’s proposition that objective self-awareness
involves taking the attitudes of other individuals toward oneself (Mead, 1934/1967).
Researchers who accept the Meadian premise suggest that the ability to think about
oneself objectively first appears within the context of triadic interactions (Moore, 2007;
Müller & Runions, 2003; Rochat, 2009; Tomasello, 1995). During triadic interactions,
caregivers and children alternate their attention between an object and each other,
59
allowing children to be situated at a referential position (Rochat, 2009). In these
episodes, children actively seek to become an object of attention and the social “me”
appears for the first time in the eye of the infant. Note that this perspective does not
require children having access to the mental states of others before their own, but rather
posits that the process leading to the formation of objective knowledge of self is
immersed in our activities with the other. Following Tomasello (1995), I interpret imitation
as a very specific form of joint attention. In imitation, as it is in triadic joint attention
episodes, the object of the dyad’s joint attention stands as “me”. In addition, the
correspondence between the first and the third person perspectives is emphasized by a
match of the visual stimuli with the infant’s kinesthetic feelings. I suggest that this
kinesthetic-visual matching provides ostensibility to the categorical self. In other words,
imitating infants helps them recognize the “me” in the imitator’s actions and to view
themselves from the perspective of the other. Overall, from a Meadian perspective,
parents who imitate their children may be supporting their children’s ability to objectify
themselves by scaffolding children’ grasp of the correspondence between the first and
the third perspective. Currently, we do not have enough data to support either the
Piagetian or the Meadian framework or to argue whether they are two separate
mechanisms that work together. I encourage future researchers to design studies that
would help us identify the mechanisms through which imitation supports the
development of self-recognition.
With respect to the null result on child imitation, this finding is more difficult to
interpret and is inconsistent with Hart and Fegley’s (1994) previous study where child
imitation predicted MSR. This finding also seems to be incompatible with the two
process explanations I reviewed above, namely the Piagetian and the Meadian
perspectives. Piaget does acknowledge the role that imitating parents play as facilitators.
Yet, he also posits that infants’ own imitation of their social partners allows them to
actively explore their own faces and to learn from their mistakes (Piaget, 1945/1962, pp.
44), and thus is critical to constructing self-representations. Similarly, from the Meadian
perspective, one could argue that alternating between the imitator and the imitated roles
would help the infant coordinate their perspective with their social partner, and to
internalize the third person perspective, as Müller and Runions suggest (2003).
It is possible that my coding of infant imitation was not suitable for measuring
these theories’ predictions. Piaget’s explanation underscores imitation as a means of
60
perceptual outreach. It is possible that children’s representations of their face develop
through imitating others’ faces, but not necessarily by imitating other body parts or
actions. This is a distinction that was not captured in my coding scheme. Alternatively,
from a Meadian perspective, one could argue that I failed to measure the interpersonal
aspect of imitation. The coding system I used only coded for reproduction of the
partner’s action, regardless of whether the social partner attended to or acknowledged
being imitated. The same problem was also present for my coding of parental imitation.
Yet, infants may have been more attentive to their parents’ imitation of their actions at
this developmental stage, assuring joint attention every time their parents were imitating.
The mutual attending to the imitative actions was necessarily present for the
“simultaneous imitation” behaviors. However, this type of imitation rarely occurred
among the dyads in this sample. It is possible that the procedure I used in this study was
not suitable (or long enough) to observe these behaviors. I hope that this discussion will
lead future researchers to think more about the mechanisms through which imitation
promotes self-knowledge and encourage them to revise their coding systems
accordingly.
Finally, I could not find any significant relationship between infants’ temperament
and MSR ability. To my knowledge, this is the first study that directly explored this link
although there have been some speculations with regards to the role of temperamental
differences in the onset of MSR. Some suggested that high sociability could be related to
earlier self-recognition through providing infants more opportunities for social interaction
(Asendorph et al., 1996). Whereas others suggested that inhibition may be related to
earlier MSR onset (Lewis, Brooks-Gunn, & Jaskir, 1985). The lack of a significant finding
in the present study may be related to a lack of sensitivity in the measurement. A link
between temperament and MSR could explain some of the variability in MSR across
cultures, and warrants further investigation.
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Chapter 3. Study 3. Child-directed Speech as a Context for the Socialization of Self: A comparison of Canada and Vanuatu
3.1. Abstract
Language interactions are an important context for the socialization and
development of self. In this paper, I examined the referential content of mothers’ child-
directed speech with their 21-month-old toddlers in two distinct sociocultural
environments: urban Canada (a sociocultural context well-suited for independent models
of selfhood) and rural Vanuatu (a sociocultural context well-suited for interdependent
models of selfhood). My results showed that in both Vanuatu and Canada, over half of
all child-directed speech made reference to the child. Interestingly, Canadian mothers
referred significantly more to children’s internal states, whereas ni-Vanuatu mothers
referred significantly more to children’s actions. When referring to internal states,
Canadian mothers referred predominantly to mind-minded internal states (e.g., desire)
whereas ni-Vanuatu mothers predominantly referred to body-minded internal states
(e.g., perception). Moreover, Canadian mothers used more elaborate forms of language
through linking children’s desires and abilities to their acts and perceptions, whereas ni-
Vanuatu mothers did not. Finally, Canadian mothers produced more references to past
events compared to ni-Vanuatu parents, who almost exclusively referred to the present.
This study involves the first cross-cultural examination of the content of child-directed
speech with toddlers. Overall, my results point to striking differences in how Canadian
and ni-Vanuatu mothers represent their toddlers’ selves as they speak to their toddlers. I
discuss the results and their potential implications for children’s early self-developmental
outcomes in the context of cultural ideologies on selfhood.
3.2. Introduction
One of the most pervasive mediums of socialization is language (Schieffelin &
Ochs, 1986; Vygotsky, 1934/1962). Through language interactions, parents help their
62
young children develop the kind of psychological competence that is compatible with
cultural models of self (Fivush & Nelson, 2004). Cross-cultural research on language
socialization typically focuses on the content of parents’ conversations with their children
who are active participants in these conversations —namely, children of preschool age
and older (e.g., Wang, 2001). Yet, there are reasonable grounds to expect that
systematic differences in parent-child language interactions are present even earlier,
before children’s first self-developmental outcomes emerge towards the end of the
second year (Amsterdam, 1972). In this paper, I examined the referential content of
child-directed speech in mothers of toddlers from two distinct sociocultural environments:
urban Canada and rural Vanuatu –a small-scale island society located in the South
Pacific. My main goal was to describe the variation in the ways parents focus on the self
when they speak to their toddlers.
Cultural models of self and others are implicit ideas held by the members of a
cultural group about the psychological traits of a successful member of the society
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Western, urban, post-industrial, and largely middle-class
societies endorse an independent model of self where there are clear boundaries
between self and others. In these societies, well-being is achieved through agentic and
emotional independence (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996). Under this independent model, in order to
live a meaningful life, a person needs to discover, maximize, and openly express her
uniqueness (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). On the other hand, rural, traditional,
subsistence based, or low affluence societies endorse an interdependent model of self
where the boundaries between self and others are more vaguely defined. Well-being is
achieved through agentic and emotional interdependence (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996). In order
to live a meaningful life, a person needs to fit in with her social network, maximize the
group’s success, and live harmoniously (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
These independent and interdependent models of self are reflected in adults’ life
narratives and autobiographical memories (Chandler, Lalonde, & Teucher, 2004;
Leichtman, Wang, & Pillemer, 2003; McAdams, 2001), beliefs about what good
parenting should entail (Harkness et al., 2010; Kärtner et al., 2007), long-term
socialization goals (Hardwood, Schoelmerich, Ventura-Cook, Schulze & Wilson, 1996),
parenting behaviors such as child-directed speech (Hughes, Devine, & Wang, 2018;
Keller et al., 2007) and reminiscing styles (Hayne & MacDonald, 2003; Wang & Fivush,
2005). These models of self eventually shape new generations’ self-representations as
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observed in children’s autobiographical memories and self-descriptions (Wang, 2006;
Wang, Doan, & Song, 2010).
Children’s first self-representations emerge towards the end of their second year
of life and become increasingly abstract, detailed, integrated across time and context,
evaluative, and reflective of societal values governing self-construals (Damon & Hart,
1982; Harter; 1998; Rochat, 2003). Parent-child reminiscing has been identified as an
important context within which children develop their self-representations. Through
encouraging their children to talk about past experiences rather than the present,
parents help their children develop a sense of self that is permanent across time and
context and highlight the kinds of experiences that are significant to the self (Bruner
1987; Fivush & Haden, 1997; Nelson & Fivush, 2004; Welch-Ross, 2001). Moreover,
parents have the advantage to guide both the content and the style of these self-related
conversations and do so based on their cultural ideologies (for a review, see Fivush &
Haden, 2003). For example, Euro-American parents have been found to take a child-
centred, elaborative, and mind-minded approach to reminiscing. They engage in
elaborate conversations with their young children about past experiences as soon as
they are able to participate in such conversations. They scaffold children’s production of
more detailed personal narratives by asking questions about the experience; directing
the conversation’s focus on children’s internal states such as emotions, thoughts, and
preferences; elaborating on the causes and consequences of their internal states; and
provide evaluations of children’s experiences (Hayne & MacDonald, 2003; Leichtman et
al., 2003; Wang & Fivush, 2005; Wang, 2001, 2006). As such, they provide children with
opportunities to construct a sense of self where the individual’s own perspective is
central to the interpretation of the world – an independent model of self. On the other
hand, Asian parents have been found to be more likely to take a mother-centered (in
contrast to child-centered), pragmatic, and moral approach to reminiscing (for a review,
see Fivush & Haden, 2003, Wang, 2013). They focus on extracting information, such as
asking questions, rather than creating detailed narratives; they see parent-child
conversations as teaching opportunities and often make reference to behavioral
expectations. When they talk about past experiences beyond these functions, they are
less likely to focus on children’s internal states and more likely to focus on interpersonal
relations (Wang & Fivush, 2005; Leichtman et al., 2003; Wang, Leichtman, & Davies,
2000). By doing so, parents provide their children with opportunities to construct an
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interdependent sense of self which children will use to construct a socially-oriented
identity (Wang, 2006; Wang, 2013; Wang & Conway, 2004).
These outcomes have indeed been observed in children’s self-descriptions and
the content they provide in autobiographical memories. For example, Wang (2006) found
that, when asked to describe themselves, Euro-American 3-year-olds made more
references to private aspects of their selves (e.g., personal attributes) as opposed to
collective aspects (e.g., group membership) and produced more information on
autobiographical memory reports compared to their Chinese and Chinese immigrant
counterparts. These differences were mediated by parents’ reminiscing style where
maternal elaborations and evaluations contributed to better memory reports regardless
of culture. Similarly, when Wang and colleagues (2010) asked 3-year old children to
describe themselves, they found that Euro-American 3-year-olds provided more trait
self-representations and evaluative self-representations compared to their Chinese
immigrant counterparts. In this study, mothers’ use of internal state language predicted
self-outcomes independent of culture and maternal reminiscing style mediated the
effects of culture (Wang et al., 2010).
The evidence points towards the importance of language interactions for the
development of a self-concept, yet cross-cultural differences in self-developmental
trajectories arise even earlier —as early as 18 months— before infants are active
participants in reminiscing conversations. Cross-cultural research on the development of
mirror self-recognition (MSR) indicates significant variability in the timing of this
developmental milestone (Keller et al., 2005; Keller et al., 2004). We know very little
about whether language interactions before the second year systematically differ across
cultures in a way that could give rise to differences in the emergence of self-recognition
and, potentially, self-concept. Research on the content of child-directed speech in
toddlerhood is scarce and the existing data comes from Euro-American populations.
Consistent with the reminiscing literature I reviewed above, these studies suggest that
parents’ focus on toddlers’ internal states predicts children’s own internal state language
at two years (Dunn, Bretherton, & Munn, 1987). In fact, Euro-American parents refer to
their pre-verbal infants’ internal states during infant-directed speech as early as 3 to 6
months of age (Meins, Fernyhough, Fradley, & Tuckey, 2001; Penman, Cross, Milgrom-
Friedman, & Measres, 1983; Sherrod, Crawley, Peterson, & Bennett, 1978) and do so
more than mothers of Chinese 3-month-olds (Keller et al., 2007). Referring to internal
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states as early as 3 months reflects Euro-American mothers’ mind-mindedness, which is
defined as mothers’ proclivity to treat their infants’ as an individual with a mind, rather
than merely as a creature with needs that must be satisfied (Meins, 1997). This
construct is measured by examining parents’ descriptions of their infants and parents’
reports on whether they attribute meaning to their children’s early vocalizations. These
measures are consistent between 6 months and 3 years of age, correlate with parents’
mental state language during child-directed speech at 3 years, and eventually predict
children’s theory of mind abilities at 5 years (Meins et al., 2002). Recently, Hughes and
colleagues (Hughes, Devine, & Wang, 2018) examined mind-mindedness cross-
culturally and showed that parents of 3 to 4.5 year-old children from UK were
significantly higher in mind-mindedness compared to parents from Hong-Kong, and that
these differences explained the variation in children’s theory of mind skills. These results
are consistent with Harkness and colleagues’ research on parenting ethnotheories
(Harkness & Super, 1996; Harkness et al., 2010), suggesting that US parents are
particularly focused on their children’s needs for cognitive stimulation compared to non-
Western cultures, as well as some Mediterranean European cultures.
In light of the research which suggests that Euro-American parents’ particular
focus on their children’s ability to develop an individual mind is consistent across infancy
and early childhood (Hughes et al., 2018; Harkness et al., 2010; Meins et al., 2002), we
would expect to observe the patterns demonstrated by the cross-cultural reminiscing
research in child-directed speech with toddlers. To my knowledge, I present the first
cross-cultural examination of child-directed speech in toddlerhood, a developmental
stage that is critical for the emergence of self-concept. In this study, my main goal was to
document similarities and differences in the referential content of child-directed speech
of mothers and their 18- to 28-month-old toddlers from two sociocultural environments
that are expected to vary significantly in terms of cultural ideologies: urban Canada and
rural Vanuatu. With this aim, I examined the prevalence and the characteristics of
mothers’ references to their toddlers. I provided detailed analyses of internal state
references to capture different aspects of subjectivity. Finally, I examined the prevalence
to mothers’ reference to past events. Results are discussed within the framework of
socialization of self in relation to others.
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3.3. Methods
3.3.1. Participants
Thirty-five toddlers (n = 16 for Canada, n = 19 for Vanuatu) and their primary
caregivers participated in this study. There were 20 girls (n = 7 for Canada, n = 13 for
Vanuatu), and 15 boys (n = 9 for Canada, n = 6 for Vanuatu). Gender distribution was
comparable across cultural groups, χ² (1, 35) = 2.16, p = .142. The average age of
participating children was 21.31 months (range = 18.23 – 28.43, SD = 2.53). Canadian
infants were significantly younger than ni-Vanuatu children, t(1,33) = 2.81, p = .008. The
average age was 22.31 months (range = 19.10 – 28.43, SD = 1.18) for ni-Vanuatu
toddlers and 20.12 months (range = 18.23 – 22.97, SD = 1.39) for Canadian toddlers.
All Canadian caregivers were mothers. Mothers’ average age was 34.75 years
(SD = 5.15) and they achieved, on average, 19.06 years (SD = 3.51) of formal
education. All families were either English-speaking (n = 12) or bilingual families (n = 4)
and were comfortable interacting in English. Ni-Vanuatu caregivers consisted of 17
mothers, one father, and one adolescent older sibling. Caregivers’ average age was
28.78 years (SD = 7.30), based on self-report; however their self-reported age cannot be
expected to be exact as it is not customary to remember birth dates or ages. Only 26%
of the caregivers (n = 5) had attended formal schooling, and for fewer than 5 years, on
average. All ni-Vanuatu participants came from monolingual families who spoke the local
dialects of Eastern Tanna Island.
A total of nine dyads were excluded from the database. In Vanuatu, three dyads
were excluded due to fussiness and one dyad was excluded because the caregiver was
a preadolescent child. In Canada, two dyads were excluded due to fussiness, and three
dyads were excluded because a significant portion of these interactions was in a non-
English language (one Japanese, one French, and one German), as mothers preferred
to switch from English during the free play interactions. I decided to exclude these
interactions in order to avoid introducing unwarranted translation bias into the data.
These mothers were initially recruited because they reported that they were comfortable
interacting with their children in English.
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3.3.2. Societies
Metro Vancouver is a city with a population of approximately 2.5 million people,
making it the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2016). It is an
affluent city with a median total family income of over 70,000 CAD (Statistics Canada,
2016). Its population is highly educated; 92% of its population has high school level
education or higher. The family structure is nuclear with an average of 2.5 persons per
household (Statistics Canada, 2016). It is also an ethnically and linguistically diverse city
as 47% of its residents’ first language is an immigrant language (Statistics Canada,
2016). Vancouver attracts highly skilled international workers and the employment
market is highly competitive. Based on these demographics, Vancouver shows the
typical characteristics of a society with an independent, individualistic sociocultural
orientation (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996; Triandis, 2001).
Tanna Island is in the Tafea province of the Republic of Vanuatu, located in the
South Pacific. It has a population of 29,000 based on the 2009 census (Vanuatu
National Statistics Office, 2009). Residents on this island live in small communities of
fewer than 100 inhabitants where neighbors consist of extended family members.
Families are reliant on subsistence agriculture and small cash crops for survival. Formal
education is relatively recent and literacy skills in the adult population are low. Birth rates
are high and children participate in the work force by helping their parents in child
rearing and plantation responsibilities. There is very little integration with a market
economy, very little media access (no electricity in the villages at the time of this study),
and as a result, very little influence from Western cultures. Based on these
demographics, Tanna Island shows the typical characteristics of a society with an
interdependent or collectivistic sociocultural orientation (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996; Triandis,
2001).
3.3.3. Procedure
As part of a study on self-development, I video recorded mothers and their
infants during a ten-minute free play session after a series of developmental tasks that
took approximately 20 minutes. The free play session consisted of five minutes of free
play without any toys followed by five minutes of free play with a set of select toys. In this
study, I only examined the free play without toys session, which is representative of
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typical mother-child interactions, as toys are not traditionally used and are rarely found in
this community. During the free play without toys session, I asked mothers to sit on a
soft mat on the floor and play freely with their children as they would do on a regular day.
I recorded the sessions using two video cameras from two different angles (front view
and left back view). In both Canada and Vanuatu, I obtained mothers’ consent verbally.
The procedure was stopped if the child was distressed or fussy.
I collected the Canadian data between 2013 and 2016. I recruited mothers from
the Metro Vancouver region of British Columbia, Canada, through a list of mothers who
previously agreed to participate in studies on child development, as well as through
flyers posted in childcare services at Simon Fraser University (SFU), SFU campus,
public libraries, and community centres. I tested participants either in the laboratory (n =
5), in participants’ homes (n = 7) or in a daycare (n = 4).
I collected the ni-Vanuatu data between 2014 and 2015 during two separate field
trips to Tanna Island. Before starting data collection, I obtained research permits from
the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and then permission to do research in these villages by the
local leaders. I recruited in villages of East Tanna and conducted the study either in
participants’ homes or in a suitable open area in the village. The testing was done in the
local language by a local research assistant who was a native speaker of the local
language and also spoke English fluently. I translated the study procedure from English
to the local language in two steps. First, a local research assistant who is fluent in both
English and Bislama (the official language of Vanuatu) translated the procedure from
English into Bislama in writing. Another local research assistant who was fluent in both
languages back translated from Bislama to English, again in writing, and any
inconsistences were resolved through discussion (back translation). Once the procedure
in Bislama reflected the intended study procedure, another round of translation and back
translation was made from Bislama to local language by two separate local research
assistants who were fluent in both languages. Again, all inconsistencies were resolved
through discussion between translators. This last step of translation and back translation
was conducted orally because the local language is an oral language, and was
videotaped for documentation purposes.
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3.3.4. Transcription and Translation of the Interactions
The transcription of the free play interactions (though videos in Canada, online in
Tanna) began as soon as the researcher left the room, or if the mother-infant pairs
began to interact. The mean duration of transcribed interactions was 4 minutes 44
seconds, and was comparable between societies, t(1, 33) = .55, p = .583. In Canada, I
edited the videos of the free play interactions prior to transcription in order to obtain
uninterrupted interactions. A trained research assistant watched all the videos,
synchronized the two video angles by merging them into one video and excluded the
following parts using the cropping function of the i-Movie program: a) the infant is out of
the camera view, b) no interaction is possible as a result of child crying, or c) another
external intrusion is preventing the interaction. Next, a research assistant watched these
edited videos using Windows Media Player and transcribed mothers’ and infants’ speech
verbatim. A second researcher independently watched all of the videos in order to
review the transcript created by the first research assistant, and recorded all
disagreements. The disagreements were resolved by a third researcher.
The interactions from Tanna were translated into English prior to analysis. An
important disadvantage of working with translated linguistic data is the difficulty of
accurately transferring the meaning between languages (Esposito, 2001; Temple &
Young, 2004). In order to reduce threats to the validity of the data, I worked with only
one interpreter. The source language was the translator’s native language and she was
fluent in the target language (English). As a mother from the same community, she was
knowledgeable in the ways of communication of the group being studied, and she was
blind to the hypotheses of the study. In addition, I translated a subsample of the data
together with a second interpreter (again, a mother from the same community) and
compared the output of the content analysis from both translations as a validity check
(Twinn, 1997). The interactions were translated orally and transcribed directly in English
without being transcribed in the original language since the source language is an oral
language. During the translation process, I worked closely with the translator. The
process was as follows: I paused the video after each utterance (i.e., continuous piece of
speech beginning and ending with a clear pause) and re-played as many times as
necessary to achieve accurate comprehension and translation by the interpreter. The
interpreter listened to the utterance and orally translated it from the local language to
English. The English translation provided was handwritten by me on a notebook.
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Unedited footages were used during this process. Prior to video replay, I selected the
video angle that provided the clearest audio and made exclusion decisions as the
transcription process was taking place based on the identical rules that were used for
the editing of the Canadian videos (see the above paragraph). For example, the
translation was stopped when the child walked away from the testing area and resumed
when the child came back. The lost duration was noted in order to keep track of the total
duration of the interaction. In Vancouver, a trained research assistant typed my
handwritten transcriptions. I compared the typed transcriptions to the original
handwritten ones and confirmed that no mistakes were made.
Finally, to prepare the transcriptions for coding, I removed all nursery rhymes,
song lyrics, and children’s speech content from the transcriptions, leaving only
spontaneous child-directed speech from the mother as data for this project. I excluded
nursery rhymes and lyrics in Vanuatu because their content involved archaic words (i.e.,
words that are no longer in common use) whose translation required linguistic expertise
that was not available. In order to reach consistency, I also excluded nursery rhymes
and song lyrics from the Canadian transcriptions.
In order to establish reliability for the translation of ni-Vanuatu interactions, a
separate local ni-Vanuatu research assistant translated five randomly selected
interactions (26% of the Vanuatu sample) from the local language into English through
the same process described above. Next, I parsed and coded the transcriptions of these
five reliability cases, and compared them to the original dataset. I examined the
consistency of the data with a series of two-way mixed, absolute, single measures ICCs.
The ICCs calculated for the general referential content system varied between .90 and
.98, indicating high consistency (Cicchetti, 1994). The ICCs calculated for the referential
content focused on the child ranged between .84 and .97, indicating high consistency -
except for the elaborate internal state code. I was not able to calculate an ICC statistic
for the elaborate internal state code because this code was observed only once in one of
the translator’s transcriptions based on the five randomly selected interactions. I was
also not able to calculate ICC scores for the referential content system focused on
children’s internal states because the scores that resulted from the two sets of
translations were almost identical, indicating a lack of variability. Finally, I observed only
one instance where past talk appeared in one of the translator’s transcription. Overall,
my analysis of the two sets of translations suggests that the content of the interactions
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could be reliably translated and that a minimal amount of measurement error was
introduced through the translation process.
3.3.5. Parsing the Transcriptions
The unit of analysis for this dataset was chosen as a communication unit (c-unit)
(Loban, 1976). This allowed me to reliably parse the translated ni-Vanuatu transcriptions
given the absence of an expert speaker who could be trained to parse utterances at the
time of translation. Structurally, a c-unit is defined as an independent clause and its
modifiers (Loban, 1976). Semantically, a c-unit is defined as a group of words which
cannot further be divided without the loss of their essential meaning (Loban, 1976). In
this study, I defined c-units in both structural and semantic terms. This approach was
used because single-word utterances or utterances that lack clausal structure were
common in my data. Whenever an utterance qualified for a clause, the utterance was
segmented based on structural definition. Based on this, both of the following utterances
were parsed as one c-unit: “Sit down”; “If you cry, I will leave you”. Whenever an
utterance did not qualify for a clause, the segmentation was made based on the
semantic definition. Based on this, both the one-word phrase “what?” and three-word
phrase “the other game” were parsed as one c-unit. In order to establish reliability with
the researcher who parsed the transcriptions, a trained research assistant independently
parsed nine randomly selected transcriptions (26% of the sample). The percent
agreement between the parsers was 98%.
3.3.6. Coding
I coded mothers’ spontaneous child-directed speech for past talk, general
referential content, referential content focused on the child, and referential content
focused on the child’s internal states. For past talk and general referential content, I
coded all c-units.
Past talk coding identified the c-units where mothers made reference to the past.
For coding the general referential content, I categorized each c-unit under four mutually
exclusive categories: child, mother/dyad, environment, and other. Those c-units that
were categorized under the child category were then coded for referential content
focused on the child. In this coding system, I categorized the targeted c-units under four
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mutually exclusive content categories: action, simple internal state, elaborate internal
state, and objectification. Finally, I selected those c-units that were categorized under
the internal state category (either simple or elaborate) and coded them for referential
content focused on the child’s internal states. In this coding system, I categorized the
targeted c-units under six mutually exclusive categories: four mind-minded categories
(desire, thought/belief, ability/volition, and emotion) and two body-minded categories
(perception and physiological). The details of the coding systems are described below.
General referential content
In this coding system, I coded the c-units exhaustively based on their general
referential content. I categorized each c-unit into one of the four mutually exclusive
referent categories: 1) child, 2) mother/dyad, 3) environment, 4) other/non-determinable.
The referent categories were based on Morikawa, Shand, and Kosawa (1988). A “child”
code was assigned whenever the c-unit was concerned the child. A “mother/dyad” code
was assigned whenever the c-unit concerned the mother or the dyad. An “environment”
code was assigned whenever the c-unit was about an object or a third person. Finally,
the “other/non-determinable” code was assigned whenever the c-unit couldn’t be
categorized under the three other categories confidently or whenever the c-unit didn’t
have a clear referent. Examples for each referential category are presented in Table 3.1.
In order to establish reliability with the researcher who completed the coding, a trained
research assistant independently coded eight randomly selected transcriptions (23% of
the sample). The kappa score was .95.
Table 3.1. Coding of the General Referential Content
Referent category Examples
Child Come back here. Are you hungry? Where is your nose?
Mother or Dyad Mother will sing. I am going now. We will play naronaro.
Environment Daddy is at home. What color is this stripe? The caterpillar is over there.
Other/un-determinable Good job. Okay. This one.
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Referential content focused at the child
This coding system focused on those c-units where the child appeared as the
referential content. In order to identify the attributes that mothers chose to refer to in their
children, I coded the targeted c-units into four mutually exclusive categories: 1) action, 2)
simple internal state, 3) elaborate internal state, and 4) objectification. I assigned the
code “action” whenever the child was invited to perform an action, or the mother was
describing the child’s action. I assigned the code “simple internal state simple” whenever
the c-unit referred to the child’s internal state such as emotions or thoughts. I assigned
the code “internal state elaborate” whenever the c-unit was a complex sentence that
referred to either two separate internal states or one internal state and an action in the
same c-unit. Finally, I assigned the code “objectified” when the child herself, the child’s
body part, or the child’s possession appeared as an object in the sentence. One-word c-
units consisting of the child’s name or the pronoun you were also classified under this
category. Examples for each referential category are presented in Table 3.2. In order to
establish reliability, a second researcher independently coded eight randomly selected
transcriptions (23% of the sample). The kappa score was .92.
Table 3.2. Coding of the Referential Content Focused on the Child
Referent category Example
Action Say hi. Come over here. Sing a song to the baby.
Internal state [simple] Are you dizzy? You want the horse? You are so focused on this task.
Internal state [elaborate] Do you want to sing the alphabet? Can you hop like a bunny? Wanna see mama on the camera?
Objectified Where is Lucy (child’s name)? Is that your tummy? Mom will carry you.
Referential content focused at the child’s internal states
This coding system focused on those c-units where the referent was the child’s
internal states (either simple or elaborate). I identified six different categories of internal
states which I combined under two major categories: mind-minded internal states and
body-minded internal states. Mind-minded internal states involved those c-units where
mothers referred to their child’s mental or psychological processes. I coded four sub-
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categories: desire, thought, ability/volition, and emotion. Body-minded internal states
involved those c-units where mothers referred to their child’s bodily sensations. I coded
two subcategories: perception and physiological. This coding scheme was based on
Bretherton and Beegly (1982). I assigned the “desire” code when the c-unit referred to
the child’s wants and wishes; a “thought/belief” code when the c-unit referred to the
child’s mental activities; an “ability/volition” code when the c-unit referred to the child’s
capacity to perform a certain action; an “emotion” code when the child’s internal state
was an emotion, a feeling, or a mood; a “perceptual” code when a perceptual sense
such as seeing or hearing was referred to; and finally, a “physiological” code whenever
the child’s physiological state such as hunger or sleepiness was referred to. I called the
first four categories (i.e., desire, thought and belief, ability, and emotion) “mind-minded
internal states” in reference to Meins’s concept of mind-minded comments (Meins,
1997), whereas I called the last two categories (i.e., perception and physiology) “body-
minded internal states”. Examples of for each referential category are presented in Table
3.3. The coding was completed by the lead author. In order to establish reliability, a
research assistant trained by the lead author independently coded eight randomly
selected transcriptions (23% of the sample). The kappa score was .97.
Table 3.3. Coding of the Referential Content Focused on the Child’s Internal States
Referent category Referent sub-category Examples
Mind-minded internal states
Desire What do you want? What would you like to play?
Thought/belief Do you know the next verse? Remember that song?
Ability/volition Can you find me the blue card? You gotta sit down please.
Emotion Do you like blue? Don’t worry about it.
Body-minded internal states
Perceptual Do you see the dog coming? Do you hear the airplanes?
Physiological Are you thirsty? You are getting sleepy.
Past talk
In this coding system, we coded c-units exhaustively into two mutually exclusive
categories: 1) past talk, 2) other. We assigned a “past talk” code when the mother used
past tense in the c-unit (e.g., “Were you gentle with the baby?”). We put all other c-units
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into the “other” category. In order to establish reliability, a trained research assistant
independently coded 8 randomly selected transcriptions (23% of the sample). The kappa
score was 1.00, indicating perfect agreement.
3.4. Results
3.4.1. General Referential Content
I compared the general referential content of Ni-Vanuatu and Canadian mothers’
child-directed speech using a one-way between-subjects multivariate analysis of
variance (MANOVA). A MANOVA was performed on four independent variables (child,
mother/dyad, environment, and other/non-determinable) where culture served as the
group factor. There were no univariate or multivariate outliers. Assumptions of
homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices, linearity, and multicollinearity were met. I
observed that the scores for the “mother/dyad” variable were moderately positively
skewed. However, the MANOVA analysis only requires multivariate normality of
sampling distributions, and the univariate F test is considered robust against non-
normality as long as the error term is greater than 20 (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007), a
criterion that was met in our case. Based on the Wilks’ criterion, culture had a significant
effect on the outcomes as a set, F(4, 30) = 3.42, p =.020. The multivariate eta squared
measure, η2 = .313, indicated that approximately 31% of multivariate variance of the
dependent variables is associated with the group factor. Follow-up univariate ANOVAs
indicated that only the “other/non-determinable” variable was significantly different
between Vanuatu and Canada transcriptions, F(1, 33) = 11.37, p = .002, η2 = .27.
Canadian mothers produced twice as many c-units of this category (M = 19.0%, SD =
6.57%) compared to ni-Vanuatu mothers (M = 9.53%, SD = 9.47%).
There were no significant differences in the proportions of mothers’ references to
their children, to themselves or to the dyad, and to the environment (p > .34 for all).
Approximately half of child-directed speech made reference to the child in both Vanuatu
(M = 58. 30%, SD = 25.42%) and Canada (M = 51.31%, SD = 14.63%). The next most
common referent was the environment; approximately 20% of child-directed speech fell
under this category in both Vanuatu (M = 22.60, SD = 18.61%) and Canada (M = 18.15,
SD = 11.76%). The least common referent was the mother or the dyad; this category
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constituted only 9.57% of child directed speech in Vanuatu (SD = 12.34%), and 11.54%
of child-directed speech in Canada (SD = 6.69%).
3.4.2. Referential Content Focused on the Child
I examined whether ni-Vanuatu and Canadian mothers varied in terms of the
attributes they chose to refer to in their children. For this, I compared the distribution of
referential content categories focused on the child (i.e., “action”, “simple internal state”,
“elaborate internal state”, and “objectified”) in ni-Vanuatu and Canadian parents’ child-
directed speech. A MANOVA analysis was performed on three dependent variables:
action, internal state, and objectification, where culture served as the group factor. There
were no univariate or multivariate outliers. Evaluations of assumptions of homogeneity of
variance-covariance matrices, linearity, and multicollinearity were satisfactory. The
scores for the “action” and the “objectification” variables were moderately positively
skewed. However, MANOVA analysis only requires normality of sampling distributions,
and the F test is considered robust against modest non-normality as long as the error
term is greater than 20 (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007), a criterion that was met in our case.
Based on the Wilks’ criterion, culture had a significant effect on the set of outcomes, F(3,
33) = 5.44, p =.004. The observed power was .90 based on the alpha level of .05. The
multivariate eta squared measure, η2 = .345, indicated that approximately 35% of
multivariate variance in dependent variables is associated with the group factor. Follow-
up univariate ANOVAs indicated that the action variable, F(1. 33) = 9.39, p = .004, and
the total internal states variable, F(1, 33) = 5.99, p = .020, were significantly different
between Vanuatu and Canada samples. The difference observed in the objectification
variable did not reach significance F(1, 33) = 3.33, p = .077. In Vanuatu, mothers
referred significantly more to their infants’ actions; 39.47% of all the child-directed
speech referred to children’s actions (SD = 26.98%) compared to 17.5% in Canada (SD
= 10.34). On the other hand, Canadian mothers referred significantly more to their
children’s internal states. Among all child-directed speech, 18.91% referred to children’s
internal states (SD = 9.14) compared to 10.14% in Vanuatu (SD = 11.62%).
The differences in use of internal state references became even more articulated
when I examined them at two levels of complexity: simple and elaborate. As explained in
more detailed under the methods section, a c-unit was coded as simple internal state
when mothers singly referred to one internal state category. For example, the mother
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may have referred to the child’s desire (e.g., “What do you want?”). A c-unit was coded
as elaborate internal state when mothers referred to either two kinds of internal states at
once (e.g., “You want to see mama?”) or when they referred to the child’s internal state
combined with the child’s action (e.g., “Can you jump?”). The use of these categories
was compared using non-parametric tests because the distributions severely violated
the normality assumption. Fourteen out of 19 ni-Vanuatu mothers (74%) referred to their
children’s internal states in simple form, compared to 15 out of 16 Canadian mothers
(94%), which was equally common among ni-Vanuatu and Canadian mothers, χ²(34) =
2.46, p = .117. On average, 9.68% of all the c-units were coded as simple internal state
in ni-Vanuatu mothers’ transcriptions (SD = 11.64%), compared to 5.78% in Canadian
mothers’ transcriptions (SD = 3.56%). A Mann-Whitney U test suggested that the means
of the ranks of the two groups were equal, p = .868.
However, there were remarkable differences in the use of elaborate internal state
forms. Only two out of 19 ni-Vanuatu mothers referred to their children’s internal states
in elaborate form, compared to 15 out of 16 Canadian mothers and this was statistically
significant, χ²(34) = 24.08, p = .000. In addition, Canadian mothers relied more heavily in
this form. In Canada, on average, 13.13% (SD = 8.77%) of all child-directed speech was
in this form compared to only 0.46% in Vanuatu (SD = 1.43%). A Mann-Whitney U test
suggested that the means of the ranks of the two groups were significantly different, p =
.000. Interestingly, Canadian mothers used elaborate internal state forms even more
often than simple internal state forms, t(15) = -3.50, p = .003.
78
Figure 3.1. Percentage distribution of referential content categories focused on the child in ni-Vanuatu and Canadian parents’ child-directed speech
3.4.3. Referential Content Focused on the Child’s Internal States
Next, I examined the internal state categories that mothers have used when they
referred to children’s internal states. In order to analyze to what extent mothers preferred
to refer to mind-minded internal states over body-minded internal states in their children,
I created a ‘mind over body’ variable through subtracting the frequency of c-units that
were coded under the body-minded internal state category from the frequency of c-units
that were coded under the mind-minded category and dividing the result with the total
frequency of c-units that were coded under the internal state category [(#mind-minded –
#body-minded) / (#mind-minded + #body-minded)]. The result is a value between -1 and
+1 where those mothers who have only referred to mind-minded internal states get a
score of +1, those mothers who have only referred to body-minded internal states get a
score of -1, those mothers who have equally referred to both get a score of 0, and others
get scores in between, proportionate to how many more c-units they produced referring
to their children’s mind-minded internal states. The mothers who didn’t refer to their
children’s internal states at all, all of whom were from Vanuatu (n = 5), were not included
in the analyses. A Mann-Whitney U test showed that the means of the ranks of the two
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groups were significantly different, p = .000. Figure 3.2 shows the distribution of the
percentage of c-units that were coded under mind-minded and body-minded categories
among internal state references separately for ni-Vanuatu and Canadian mothers. As
can be seen in the table, ni-Vanuatu mothers predominantly used body-minded internal
state references whereas Canadian mothers predominantly used mind-minded internal
state references.
In Tanna, the most common code was perception (e.g., “See the caterpillar”,
“Listen”). The majority of internal state references fell under this category (M = 76.89%,
SD = 37.29%), followed by the physiological category (e.g., “Is your stomach full?”, “If
you cry, I will leave you”) which constituted 11.61% of all c-units that referred to
children’s internal states (SD = 27.94%). Desire constituted another 8.04% (SD =
18.09%), thought/belief constituted another 1.79% (SD = 6.68%), and finally
ability/volition constituted 1.68% (SD = 6.29%) of all c-units that referred to children’s
internal states. I did not observe any reference to children’s emotions. In Canada, the
most common code was desire (e.g., “What would you like to play?”, “Do you want to
sing the ants?”). Over 40% of the c-units that referred to children’s internal states fell
under this category (M = 42.57, SD = 34.2%) followed by the ability/volition category
(e.g., “How fast can you go?”, “You can look, but don’t touch it”), which constituted 33.
42% of internal state references (SD = 30.91%). Finally, thought/belief constituted 8.03%
(SD = 10.95%), physiological constituted 3.23% (SD = 6.82%), and emotion constituted
2.26% (SD = 5.44%) of all c-units that referred to children’s internal states.
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:
Figure 3.2. Percentage distribution of mind-minded and body-minded internal state references among ni-Vanuatu and Canadian parents’ total internal state references
3.4.4. Past Talk
I examined the extent to which ni-Vanuatu and Canadian mothers referred to
past events in their child-directed speech. Not all mothers in the sample referred to past
events; however past talk appeared in significantly more mothers’ transcriptions in
Canada, χ²(1, 35) = 8.43, p = 004. Nine out of 16 Canadian mothers (56%) referred to at
least one past event compared to only two out of 19 ni-Vanuatu mothers (11%). In
Canada c-units that referred to a past event consisted of 2.49% of all child-directed
speech (SD = 3.65%) on average whereas this rate was only .10% among ni-Vanuatu
mothers (SD = .31). A Mann-Whitney U test showed that the means of the ranks of the
two groups were significantly different, p = .002.
3.5. Discussion
Analysis of general referential content categories revealed that ni-Vanuatu and
Canadian mothers referred equally to their children, to themselves or the dyad, and to
the environment during child-directed speech. In both Vancouver and Tanna, the most
common referent category was the child; more than half of all child-directed speech
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made reference to the child. In other words, in both cultures, mothers organized their
language interactions around their toddlers. This suggests that perhaps the critical
differences lie not in the extent to which mothers’ speech to their children is about them,
but rather in what aspects of the children's self they highlight. I found a significant
difference in the proportion of the c-units that I coded as ‘other/non-determinable’.
Canadian mothers produced more c-units that were coded under this category. It is
unclear what this finding reflects. One possibility is that it reflects Canadian mothers’
verbosity. Canadian mothers produced more c-units per minute compared to ni-Vanuatu
mothers. As such, they may have used more ‘fillers’ –one-word utterances that do not
have a clear referent (e.g., “Okay”). Future research should look more closely at this kind
of sweeping category.
There were significant differences in referential content focused on the child. Ni-
Vanuatu mothers referred significantly more to their infants’ actions; nearly 40% of all the
child-directed speech referred to children’s actions compared to approximately 20% in
Canada. Although I didn’t code for function, I observed that in both cultures, the c-units
that were coded under this category mostly consisted of action requests. Some ni-
Vanuatu interactions almost entirely constituted of action requests. For example, one ni-
Vanuatu mother repeated her request ten times until she received a response, a typical
situation for ni-Vanuatu interactions.
On the other hand, Canadian mothers referred significantly more to their
children’s internal states, such as this continuous excerpt from one mother: “What are
we gonna do now? What do you want to play? Remember that song? Yeah. Do you like
the bee? Do you like baby? Yeah, what does baby do? Baby. Yeah, were you gentle
with baby?”. Overall, by referring to their children’s thoughts, emotions, and preferences,
Canadian mothers draw attention to their children as individuals who have a rich inner
psychological experience. Also, Canadian mothers made references to enduring
personality characteristics in their children (e.g., “You’re so persistent.”). These findings
are consistent with the literature suggesting that Euro-American mothers are high in
mind-mindedness (Meins et al., 2001; Hughes et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2010).
The differences in the use of internal state references became even more
pronounced when I examined them at two levels of complexity: simple and elaborate.
Recall that simple internal state references consisted of phrases that singly referred to
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one internal state (e.g., “Do you see it?”), whereas the elaborate internal state form
consisted of those phrases where the mothers referred to either two kinds of internal
states at once (e.g., ‘You want to see mama?’) or when they referred to the child’s
internal state combined with the child’s action (e.g., Can you jump?). There were no
differences in the level at which ni-Vanuatu and Canadian mothers used the simple form.
However, there were remarkable differences in the use of elaborate internal state forms;
whereas Canadian mothers preferred the elaborate over the simple form, ni-Vanuatu
mothers used it sporadically. To illustrate the differences, I present two excerpts. In both
excerpts, the mothers are encouraging their child to sing and dance, but they do so in
different ways in terms of complexity and elaboration.
Vanuatu mother: “Sing a song. Stand up. Stand up and dance. Stand up and
dance. Stand up and dance. Stand up and dance.”
Canadian mother: “We’re gonna do some songs. Can you clap your hands? Can
you stomp your feet? Good boy! What else do we know? How about the wheels on the
bus? What do the windows do? The windows go up and down.”
The use of high levels of elaborate forms is consistent with the literature
suggesting that Euro-American mothers are highly elaborate (e.g., Wang, 2006;
Leichtman et al., 2003). During reminiscing, highly elaborate mothers scaffold their
children into providing more detailed memory reports and elaborate on the relations
between events and children’s internal states. The common interpretation is that, by
doing so, mothers help their infants reflect on the event in ways that highlight what the
event means to the self (e.g., Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006). I think that my results
resonate with this interpretation. When Canadian mothers used this form, they typically
combined an internal state referring to the child’s desire or ability with a perception (e.g.,
“Wanna see mama on the camera?”) or an action (e.g., “Want to play Pat-a-Cake or
Ring-around-the-Rosie?”). Using such combinations, mothers readily present their
toddlers with the psychological link between their desire or ability and a subjective
experience or an action. As such, they highlight its personal meaning for the child. In
comparison, take this ni-Vanuatu mother who simply says “Ningi?” to her child. In this
phrase, the mother is offering to play a game called ningi. However, she is only referring
to the game itself and avoids presenting a psychological connection between the game
and her child.
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Canadian mothers also used more objectification; however, the differences were
only marginally significant (p = .077). This result may be reflecting the common use of
games where the child or the child’s body part appeared as the object of the dyad’s
attention (i.e., “Where is your nose?”). Some theorists suggested that these games are
important for the emergence of a self-concept (Mitchell, 1993; Tomasello, 1995).
Despite the fact that Canadian mothers referred more to internal states overall,
internal state references were present in both cultures. Differences emerged in the kinds
of internal states mothers focused on. Results suggested that Canadian mothers
consistently chose mind-minded states over body-minded internal states and focused
particularly on desire and ability/volition. This highlights Canadian mothers’ proclivity to
support an independent self in their children. Canadian mothers did not refer to any
internal state indiscriminately. They particularly referred to those internal states where
the child appears as a willful agent who has desires and capabilities/challenges when
acting in the world. On the other hand, ni-Vanuatu mothers predominantly chose body-
minded internal states over mind-minded ones and focused particularly on toddlers’
perceptions. The implications of this preference are less clear. It is possible that frequent
references to body-minded internal states will support bodily self-awareness in toddlers -
speculatively an important skill in Vanuatu.
Finally, I observed low levels of past talk in both cultural groups. My free play
procedure did not elicit much spontaneous past talk for this age group. But even so,
differences were observable; Canadian mothers produced more past talk than ni-
Vanuatu mothers who almost entirely stayed in the present. When Canadian mothers
referred to past events, they referred to recent past events rather than distant ones.
Overall, my results demonstrate that there are striking differences in Canadian
and ni-Vanuatu mothers’ child-directed speech. These differences are consistent with
independent and interdependent cultural ideologies. Mothers from Vancouver were
highly mind-minded and elaborate when they spoke to their toddlers. They often referred
to their toddlers’ internal states with a particular focus on mind-minded internal states
such as desires and abilities. They used elaborate internal state language to emphasize
the subjective value of the experiences or the actions that they referred to in their
toddlers. They also introduced some past talk referring to recent events (e.g., those that
happened earlier during their visit to the lab) and used these instances in order to build a
84
coherent narrative of the child’s experience. In contrast, ni-Vanuatu mothers were low in
mind-mindedness and were often repetitive. They frequently referred to their children’s
activities through repeated action requests and did not build connections between these
activities and their child’s desires or abilities. When they referred to internal states, they
limited their references to body-minded internal states such as perceptions and
physiological experiences. Finally, they refrained almost entirely from past talk and
focused on children’s immediate activities and sensations. However, note that these
results and interpretations do not reflect the quality of the relationship between Ni-
Vanuatu mothers and their toddlers. Though I did not code for responsiveness or
attachment, I have indeed observed that some Ni-Vanuatu dyads were very harmonious
and affectionate. Their interactions were organized around synchronous singing and
dancing, or routine games involving bodily imitation and coordination rather than
conversational interactions. Future research may look into whether elaboration and use
of internal state language is correlated with positive socio-emotional outcomes in ni-
Vanuatu children, as is the case in Euro-American samples (e.g., Laible & Thompson,
2000; Meins et al., 2001).
This study has several limitations. First of all, the ni-Vanuatu interactions were
translated before analysis. In modern cross-linguistic research, it is increasingly
acknowledged that translation is not an objective transmission process; rather it’s is an
interpretative process affected by the interpreter’s subjective experience of the meaning
as well as their skills in recreating the original meaning in the target language (Temple &
Young, 2004; Esposito, 2001; Xian, 2008). It is possible that, at times, the English
translations reflected my interpreter’s interpretation of the socioemotional context.
Whereas I do not see this as a threat to the validity of the data for the purpose of this
study, her linguistic expertise may have posed a larger problem. As a member of the
community, my translator was an expert in the local culture and language. However, she
did not have the same level of expertise in English. Although she spoke English fluently,
English was her second language. Moreover, she was not familiar with the Canadian
culture as someone who has never left her local community. Therefore, at times, she
may have failed to select the best ways to express the original meaning in the target
language. This may have diminished the quality of the ni-Vanuatu transcriptions,
especially when it comes to translating internal state terms. This being said, in this study,
I focused on identifying the presence or absence of basic referent categories; a measure
85
that is relatively immune to translations biases. The best way to conduct this study would
have been to train a native speaker of the language to analyze the data in the original
language. However this option was not available to me because as did not have
proficiency in the local language. To my defence, this compromise allowed me to study
an undocumented oral language that we wouldn’t be able to study otherwise.
Other limitations of the study are as follows. I observed the social-interactional
variables during a short semi-structured free play session. Although free play situations
between infants and caregivers occur in various cultures (Keller, 2007), the frequency
and the organization of such interactions may vary. A designated “play time” may have
been experienced as unnatural among the ni-Vanuatu dyads. Future studies should rely
on natural observations to examine the amount of imitation infants typically experience in
each culture. Another limitation of my study is its focus on the development of
individuality in the child. A task for future should be to take a more emic approach and
try to understand how ni-Vanuatu mothers are using language interactions to promote
the development of an interdependent self in their children. Another limitation was that I
had to work with a small sample size which may have limited my ability to detect
statistical differences. Finally, the cultural comparison maybe confounded by rural/urban
or high/low SES differences. Extending these investigations into urbanized ni-Vanuatu
samples or making comparisons between rural communities with and without a history of
formal schooling may be an important next step for future research.
The cross-cultural differences I observed in the child-directed speech are
consistent with the cross-cultural reminiscing literature which shows that Euro-American
mothers are more likely to use internal state language and elaboration whereas Asian
mothers are more likely to take a pragmatic approach during joint reminiscing episodes.
As such, this study extends the existing literature by demonstrating that the cultural
ideologies can also be traced in mothers’ child-directed speech with children as young
as toddlers. The developmental consequences of these differences can be significant for
infants in the age group I studied. Linguistic reference is defined as a communicative
exchange where one partner directs the other’s attention towards a particular object in
the world (Bruner, 1974; Tomasello, 1999). By frequently referring to their toddlers’
internal states, Canadian mothers may be directing their children’s attention towards
themselves and facilitating the emergence of their conceptual self as an object of
thought. Future research should examine whether mothers’ references to internal states
86
in child-directed speech with toddlers explains the cross-cultural and within culture
differences in the emergence of self-representations. In addition, future research should
look more closely into the use of body-minded internal state references in non-Western
rural societies as these may be fulfilling a special function in the socialization of selfhood
in those cultures.
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General Discussion
The overarching goal of this dissertation was to identify the social-interactive
experiences that were linked to infants’ mirror self-recognition (MSR) ability. In study 1, I
examined how a suite of social-interactive behaviors observed during a 10-minute free
play session correlated with MSR in a sample constituting of urban Canadian and rural
ni-Vanuatu infants and their mothers. This study showed that the extent to which
mothers imitated their infants best distinguished who passed the MSR test among ni-
Vanuatu and Canadian infants. In study 2, I examined whether imitation explained within
culture variability in MSR in a culturally diverse urban Canadian sample. Consistent with
the results of study 1, this study showed that maternal imitation predicted self-
recognition among urban Canadian infants along with age. Together, these two studies
suggest that imitation may be a strategy through which Canadian mothers are
scaffolding objective self-awareness skills in their infants. In study 3, I compared how ni-
Vanuatu and Canadian mothers spoke to their infants during a dyadic free play session.
In this study, I used speech as an alternative measure to describe the similarities and
differences in ways the social interactions are organized in these two cultures. Results
showed that whereas ni-Vanuatu mothers referred significantly more to their toddlers’
actions, Canadian mothers referred significantly more to their toddlers’ internal states.
Moreover, Canadian mothers created a narrative where the infant appeared as an
individual who has desires, capabilities, and challenges when acting in the world. These
differences in speech content may be indicative of a pragmatic context that highlights
infants’ agency and may support early self-awareness alongside maternal imitation.
Together, these three studies help us better understand how early social interactions
may be shaped to support an early acquisition of objective self-awareness within the
Western urban sociocultural context. Below I discuss my results in more detail under
three separate titles. Finally, I make recommendations for future research and describe
how we can build a research program dedicated to understanding the ontogeny of
objective self-awareness.
Maternal Imitation Predicts MSR
In the first paper, I argued that the proximal developmental antecedents of objective self-
awareness should be sought within infants’ social interactive experiences over the
88
second year of life and identified a number of potential predictors. I examined my
hypotheses among a cross-cultural sample consisting of urban Canadian and rural ni-
Vanuatu infants (Study 1) and a culturally diverse urban Canadian sample (Study 2). In
study 1, I observed that Canadian mothers imitated their infants significantly more
compared to ni-Vanuatu mothers during the free play session with toys. In addition,
mothers’ imitation of their infants during this free play session was positively correlated
with MSR in the entire sample. Finally, the regression models pinpointed this maternal
imitation variable as the only predictor of MSR. Similarly, in study 2, parental imitation
predicted urban Canadian infants’ MSR abilities together with infants’ age. Based on
convergent evidence from study 1 and study 2 and based on previous theoretical
(Mitchell, 1993; Moore, 2007; Tomasello, 1995; Tomasello, 1999) and empirical work
(Hart & Fegley, 1994; Kristen-Antonow et al., 2015), I propose that parental imitation
may be scaffolding the development of objective self-awareness during the second year
of life. In order to further examine this possibility, future research should examine the
predictive power of maternal imitation among ni-Vanuatu infants, as well as in various
sociocultural contexts. In addition, longitudinal evidence must be provided in order to
argue that parental imitation is a developmental antecedent of self-recognition.
This is the first study that differentiated between three distinct forms of imitation
(i.e., mother’s imitation of infants, infants’ imitation of mother, and simultaneous
imitation). In both study 1 and study 2, only mothers’ imitation of infants predicted
infants’ MSR ability. This suggests that the identity of the imitator may be important.
Examining this question further will help us understand how precisely imitation facilitates
the development of self-representations. In paper 2, I classified the theoretical
explanations of the mechanisms underlying the effects of imitation into two groups: the
Piagetian approach and the Meadian approach. The Piagetian approach underscores
the importance of perceptual outreach (Guillaume, 1926/1971; Piaget, 1945/1962). On
the other hand, the Meadian approach underscores the tricky ability to step outside of
the first-person experience following Mead’s proposition that objective self-awareness
involves taking the attitudes of other individuals toward oneself (Mead, 1934/1967).
Currently, we do not have enough data to support either framework. I encourage future
researchers to design studies which would help us identify the mechanisms through
which imitation supports the development of self-recognition.
89
Child-directed Speech Varies across Cultures
The role of language has been prominent in theories of socialization of self
(Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986; Vygotsky, 1934/1962). However, its role in the emergence of
a self-concept has not been studied. Research on language socialization typically focus
on the content of parents’ conversations with their children who are active participants in
these conversations; namely, children of preschool age and older (e.g., Wang, 2001). In
paper 3, I presented striking differences in how Canadian and ni-Vanuatu parents
organized their language interactions with their pre-verbal toddlers. During child-directed
speech, Canadian mothers referred significantly more to toddlers’ internal states
whereas ni-Vanuatu mothers referred significantly more to toddlers’ actions. When
referring to internal states, Canadian mothers referred predominantly to mind-minded
internal states (e.g., desire) whereas ni-Vanuatu mothers predominantly referred to
body-minded internal states (e.g., perception). Moreover, Canadian mothers used more
elaborate forms of language though linking children’s desires and abilities to their acts
and perceptions, whereas ni-Vanuatu mothers did not. Finally, Canadian mothers
produced more references to past events compared to ni-Vanuatu parents who almost
exclusively referred to the present. The developmental consequences of these
differences may be significant for MSR development. By frequently referring to their
toddlers as though they were active agents who have desires and
capabilities/challenges, Canadian mothers may be supporting the emergence of a self-
concept in the toddlers. We know little about the processes that would underlie such an
effect. However, based on a perspective of language as activity (i.e., Carpendale &
Lewis, 2004; Chapman, 1987; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986; Vygotsky, 1934/1962,
Wittgenstein, 1958), we can argue that for this age group, the processes underlying the
effects of child-directed speech would occur through the pragmatic aspects of the
language interactions. This interpretation calls for an examination of the relationship
between the referential content of child-directed speech, the social/communicative
behaviors (e.g., joint attention, imitation) occurring within the interactions, and the
development of a self-concept in the child. Overall, this study brings attention to
language interactions as an alternative way to measure how parents are organizing their
interactions with their toddlers in ways that will support their individuality.
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MSR Is a Cross-culturally Valid Measure of Objective Self-awareness
The striking cross-cultural differences in MSR passing rates are typically
interpreted as an indication of underlying differences in self-developmental trajectories.
However, there is evidence to suspect that the way infants from rural traditional societies
respond to the MSR test reflects differences unrelated to their objective self-awareness
ability (Broesch et al., 2011). In this dissertation, I aimed to gather more evidence
towards the cross-cultural validity of the procedure by directly testing alternative
hypotheses. My findings add to the existing evidence supporting the MSR test’s
adequacy to motivate self-directed behavior in non-WEIRD populations –provided that
the suggested modifications (i.e., training and prompting) are ensured. In addition, I
presented the first evidence suggesting that low passing rates in Vanuatu could not be
attributed to global differences in representational capacity. This result has implications
for not only the cross-cultural validity of the test but also the construct validity of the test.
The fact that ni-Vanuatu infants were successful in using secondary representations for
searching for an invisibly displaced object but not for recognizing their mirror image
suggests that the MSR test measures specifically self-related representations.
However, my findings on infants’ understanding of mirror correspondence were
inconclusive. I hypothesized that if low MSR rates could be attributed to infants’ inability
to use a mirror’s reflective function, then we would expect equally low passing rates in
the mirror mediated behavior (MMB) test among ni-Vanuatu infants. In addition, we
would expect a relationship between infants’ performance in the two tests. Results
showed that MMB passing rates were significantly lower in Vanuatu compared to
Canada. These results do not support, however, the hypothesis that this relative
challenge is responsible for the low passing rates observed among ni-Vanuatu infants.
Ni-Vanuatu infants still performed better on the MMB test compared to the MSR test and
no relationship was observed between infants’ performance on the MSR test and the
MMB test. More research is needed to provide a definitive answer to the question of
whether there is a causal relationship between an understanding of mirror
correspondence and mirror self-recognition, and whether such a relationship could
partially be responsible for cross-cultural differences observed in MSR passing rates.
Based on these results, I recommend caution for future researchers who will study MSR
in traditional societies. Measuring mirror correspondence with improved control tests
91
and/or providing ample mirror experience will help in ruling out potential difficulties for
infants who do not have the same mirror experience as infants from WEIRD societies.
The Path Forward
Developmental science is largely based on the study of WEIRD populations. The
handful of studies examining non-WEIRD samples, however, indicate that social
cognitive development varies across cultures (Henrich et al., 2010; Kline et al., 2018;
Nielsen et al., 2017). Consistent with this picture, the limited cross-cultural literature I
reviewed suggests that the well-established 18-month-old shift in MSR ability may not
generalize beyond Western urban populations (Keller et al., 2004; Kärtner et al. 2012;
Broesch et al., 2011). Cross-cultural research can fulfil a significant role in understanding
the ontogeny of objective self-awareness by explaining the mechanisms that lead to the
systematic variation in self-developmental outcomes. I hope that this dissertation will
provide cross-cultural researchers with a theoretical framework and a methodological
toolkit to study the developmental antecedents of MSR across different sociocultural
environments.
I think that the first next step in cross-cultural MSR research is to describe the
developmental trajectory of MSR in diverse populations beyond comparing passing rates
at 18- to 24-months range which is the typical age of onset in WEIRD populations. The
second next step is, naturally, to go beyond describing age norms and trying to
understand how infants’ social experiences shape the development of objective self-
awareness within different sociocultural contexts. As a first step towards this goal, I have
designed a new project. Over the summer of 2018, I traveled to Vanuatu and collected
similar data, this time by recruiting 60 18- to 36-month-old ni-Vanuatu infants and their
mothers. This new dataset offers a wide range of variability in MSR abilities, as well as in
imitation levels, which will allow me to test whether imitation and child-directed speech
explain variability in MSR among ni-Vanuatu children.
Finally, I would like to point to the importance of not only moving beyond the
WEIRD populations but also beyond WEIRD tests. Recently, there have been valuable
attempts create measures that capture distinct domains of objective self-knowledge
(e.g., Moore et al., 2007; Ross et al., 2017). Expending our capacity to measure different
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aspects of self-awareness across domains and across development (Rochat, 2003) will
allow us to understand the full scope of self-development in infancy.
93
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Appendix A. Supplementary Material on Study 1
Section A.1. Pictures of Testing Materials
Figure A.1. Picture illustrating the typical setting of testing in Vanuatu. This picture was taken during the “familiarization with the mirror” phase. Note: Participants’ faces have been blurred. Participants gave consent to be videotaped/photographed and granted permission to the researcher for the use of images in educational/academic settings.
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Figure A.2. Picture illustrating the typical setting of testing in the laboratory in Canada. This picture was taken during the Invisible Displacements test. Note: Participants’ faces have been blurred. Participants gave consent to be videotaped/photographed and granted permission to the researcher for the use of images in educational/academic settings.
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Figure A.3. The toys used during the free play session with toys for Study 1 and Study 2
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Figure A.4. The finger puppet used during the MMB test for Study 1
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Section A.2. Information on contingency tables used to compare imitation levels between cultures
I used contingency tables to compare imitation levels between cultures. When
comparing joint attention levels, I used a rate score representing the duration (in
seconds) of joint attention dyads shared per minute, in order to deal with slight
differences in total duration of observation that was available for each dyad. However,
for imitation, contingency tables were deemed as a more suitable strategy due to the
nature of the data. The coding system for imitation produced count data. The values
obtained from each dyad represented the total number of 3-second segments where a
certain type of imitation behavior was observed. Each free play session (typically 5
minutes) was divided into 3-second segments (typically 100 segments). Each 3-second
segment received either an absent code, or one of the imitation codes (i.e. child
imitation, mother imitation, simultaneous imitation). For example, if a dyad’s free play
session lasted for four minutes and 57 seconds, they had 99 3-second segments. If,
during this duration, the mother imitated their infant twice, and the child imitated their
mother once, the counts were distributed as follows: 97 (no imitation), 2 (maternal
imitation), 1(child imitation). In the 2x2 contingency tables, columns represented the total
frequency of 3-second segments where a certain imitation was observed (and was not
observed) whereas rows represented research sites (i.e., Vanuatu and Canada). In other
words, each cell represented the total number 3-second segments where the target code
was observed among all the dyads from either Canada or Vanuatu. Using Fisher’s exact
tests, I compared the proportion of each type of imitation was observed in Canada and
Vanuatu. Table A.1. depicts the distribution of maternal imitation codes observed during
the free play session with toys. Table A.2. depicts the distribution of child imitation codes
observed during the free play session with toys. Table A.3. depicts the distribution of
maternal imitation codes observed during the free play session without toys. Table A.4.
depicts the distribution of child imitation codes observed during the free play session
without toys. Finally, Table A.5. depicts the distribution of simultaneous imitation codes
observed during the free play session without toys.
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Table A.1. Comparing maternal imitation during the free play session with toys
Maternal imitation (# of 3-sec segments)
Other (# of 3-sec segments)
Canada 37 2399 Vanuatu 11 2473
Table A.2. Comparing child imitation during the free play session with toys
Child imitation (# of 3-sec segments)
Other (# of 3-sec segments)
Canada 60 2376 Vanuatu 76 2408
Table A.3. Comparing maternal imitation during the free play session without toys
Mother imitation (# of 3-sec segments)
Other (# of 3-sec segments)
Canada 25 1675 Vanuatu 13 1771
Table A.4. Comparing child imitation during the free play session without toys
Child imitation (# of 3-sec segments)
Other (# of 3-sec segments)
Canada 12 1688 Vanuatu 37 1747
Table A.5. Comparing simultaneous imitation during the free play session without toys
Simultaneous imitation (# of 3-sec segments)
Other (# of 3-sec segments)
Canada 134 1566 Vanuatu 234 1550
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Appendix B. Supplementary Material on Study 2
Section B.1. Comparing mother-infant and father-infant dyads
I compared weather mothers and fathers imitated their toddlers to the same
extent, using Fisher’s exact tests. No significant differences were found (p = .48). I
examined whether children’ ECBQ scores varied between mother and father-reports
using independent samples t-tests. Results showed that fathers and mothers evaluated
their children’ temperamental characteristics similarly for negative affectivity, surgency,
and effortful control, t(1, 47) = .12, p = .903, t(1, 47) = .88, p = .385, and t(1, 47) = -.14, p
= .889, respectively.
Section B.2. Procedural differences with regards to the number of visits
Typically, children were tested in one single visit (n = 37). The details of the
standard procedure are described in the methods section. However, a subsample of the
English-speaking toddlers completed the testing in two visits (n = 13). These participants
were already scheduled to take the MSR test as part of a study related to prosocial
development. So they were called in the lab to participate only in the free play session
and complete the ECBQ questionnaire before their originally scheduled visit. In their next
visit to the lab, toddlers played a game related to sharing food treats with a stuffed
animal before participating in the MSR task. The free play session and later MSR task
were administered by the same female experimenter, and the MSR procedure was the
same for both groups of children (single visit, two visits). Average time between the two
visits was 2.28 months (SD = .66). A Fisher’s exact test showed that there was no
significant association between receiving the MSR test on a separate visit and MSR
performance (p = .211).
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Section B.3. Procedural differences with regards to parents’ gender
Typically, either the mother or the father was paired with the infant during testing.
However, for a small number of dyads (n = 4), participating parent varied between tasks.
In 2 cases, mothers were present during the first visit (they participated in free play and
filled out the ECBQ) whereas fathers were present during the second visit when children
received the MSR test. In one case where the procedure was completed in a single visit,
the mother was present during both the MSR test and the free play session but the
ECBQ was completed by the father. Finally, in one other case, the father was present
during both the MSR test and the free play session but the ECBQ was completed by the
mother. Overall, nine children were paired with their fathers during the free play session
as opposed to 42 children who were paired with their mothers. Eleven children received
the MSR test in the presence of their fathers as opposed to 40 children who received the
test in the presence of their mothers. Finally, nine children’s ECBQ questionnaires were
filled out by their fathers as opposed to 41 children whose questionnaire was filled out by
their mothers.
Section B.4. Procedural differences with regards to the identity of the experimenter
Typically, Cantonese-speaking participants were tested by one Cantonese-
speaking research assistant and English-speaking participants were tested by one
English-speaking research assistant. However, as exception, two dyads among the
Cantonese-speaking group were tested in English by the English-speaking
experimenter. These two dyads were initially classified in the English-speaking group
based on prior information provided by the parents and therefore scheduled to be tested
by an English-speaking experimenter. However, they were later moved to the
Cantonese-speaking group due to changes in daily language exposure within the family.
In addition, a third female research assistant who was fluent in both languages tested
two of the Cantonese-speaking dyads in Cantonese and two of the English-speaking
dyads in English. A Fisher’s exact test confirmed that there was no significant
relationship between the identity of the experimenter and the passing rates, suggesting
that no experimenter effect is present (p = .240).
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Section B.5. Differences in children’s mean age due to procedural differences
Because 13 children completed the procedure in two separate visits, their ages
varied between the visits. In the methods section, I reported the average toddler age
based on the age at which toddlers gave their first visit to the lab for participating in the
free play session. No differences were present in this age between cultural groups, t(1,
49) = -.66, p = .39. However, when the comparison was made based on the age at
which children received the MSR test, I found a significant difference between the
cultural groups. A t-test comparing children’s mean ages at the time of MSR indicated
that English-speaking toddlers were significantly older than the Cantonese-speaking
toddlers, t(1, 49) = 2.42, p = .02). While the Cantonese-speaking toddlers were 17.93
months (range = 16.53 – 21.4, SD = 1.21), English-speaking toddlers were 18.65
months (range = 17.23 – 19.93, SD = .77); 2 weeks older than the Cantonese-speaking
children.