How Usual Is “Play As You Usually Would”? A Comparison of Naturalistic Mother-Infant Interactions with Videorecorded Play Sessions in Three Cultural Communities

Child Development Research

Bettina Lamm¹  Relindis D. Yovsi¹  Monika Abels²  Zaira Papaligoura³ 

[1] Culture and Development, Institute of Psychology, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany, uni-osnabrueck.de;Department of Communication and Information Sciences, Tilburg School of Humanities, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands, tilburguniversity.edu;School of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, auth.gr

DOI  :  10.1155/2017/7842030

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Hindawi Publishing Corporation

【 摘 要 】

In developmental research, mothers are frequently asked to “play as you usually would.” In this study, maternal behavior towards their three-month-olds in three cultural communities (Nso, Cameroon; Gujarati, India; Athens, Greece) was compared between videorecorded “play” situations and naturalistic observations. If there is consistency, videorecorded “play” episodes can be used as a proxy for daily behavior. Body contact, body stimulation, face-to-face situations, and object stimulation were coded. While individual mothers showed consistent levels of body contact and face-to-face and object stimulation in both situations, there were also high correlations across the different types of behaviors. Only body contact and object stimulation correlate significantly across behavioral frames but not with each other across or within either observational frame. They can therefore be understood as behaviors with some discriminatory power. Mothers generally show a higher frequency of behaviors in the videorecorded play situations than during the everyday observations across all three communities. However, the samples differ in the extent to which three of the four behaviors are seen more in the videorecorded play sessions. A broader and general understanding of mothers’ ethnotheories and daily activities in each community is required in order to interpret videographed “play as you usually would” situations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY