Cognitive and motivational underpinnings of early helping behavior

Frühes Hilfeverhalten scheint eine einfache Handlung zu sein, es ist jedoch ein komplexes Phänomen. Warum beginnen Säuglinge schon früh in ihrem zweiten Lebensjahr anderen zu helfen, zum Beispiel, wenn diese ein Objekt nicht erreichen können, nach dem sie sich ausstrecken? Wie nehmen sie Situationen wahr in denen andere ein Bedürfnis haben, wie verstehen sie ihre eigene Rolle in diesen Situationen (kognitive Grundlagen) und was motiviert ihre Hilfsbereitschaft in diesen Situationen (motivationale Grundlagen)? In dieser Synopse, bette ich die Forschungsarbeiten meiner Dissertation in einen breiteren empirischen und theoretischen Kontext, ein. Hierzu organisiere ich aktuelle Themen und Forschungsarbeiten entlang vier allgemeiner Faktoren, die das frühe Hilfeverhalten beeinflussen. Diese umfassen sozial-kognitive Funktionen (z. B. das Verständnis über die Hilfsbedürftigkeit anderer und über die eigenen Fähigkeiten, helfen zu können), die Sozialisation im kulturellen Kontext (z. B. die mütterliche Vermittlung alltäglicher Aufgaben), Einflüsse der sozialen Situation (z. B. vorherige Interaktionen mit der bedürftigen Person) und die erwarteten Konsequenzen früher Hilfehandlungen (z. B. Lob und Dank durch die Eltern). Schließlich wende ich mich den biologischen Grundlagen frühen Hilfeverhaltens zu. Einerseits, wieso sich Hilfsbereitschaft evolutionär entwickelt haben könnte und andererseits, wie früher Hilfeverhalten in proximalen biologischen Mechanismen verankert sein könnte. Dies bringt mich zu dem Schluss, dass, auch wenn die Frage nach der Existenz einer frühen, altruistischen Motivation ungelöst bleibt, frühes Hilfeverhalten tief in unserer sozialen Natur verankert ist.Infants’ helping behavior appears to be a simple action, but it is a complex phenomenon. Why do infants spontaneously start to help others at the beginning of their second year of life, for example, when another individual is reaching for an object that she cannot reach? Put differently, how do infants perceive situations and their own role in situations in which another individual is in need for help (cognitive underpinnings) and what motivates them to engage helpfully in these situations (motivational underpinnings)? In this synopsis, I embed the empirical works of my dissertation in a broader empirical and theoretical context. In particular, I will organize recent topics and research about infants’ helping behavior along four general factors that influence infants helping behavior in a certain situation. These comprise socio-cognitive functions (e.g., understanding others’ needs and the own competencies to engage helpfully), the socialization within the cultural context (e.g., maternal scaffolding of chores), influences of the social situation (e.g., recent social interactions with the recipient), and expected consequences of helpful behavior (e.g., praise and thanking by the parents). I will then discuss the biological foundations of infants’ early motivation to help. That is, why helping behavior may have evolved and how early helping behavior may be grounded in proximate biological mechanisms. I will conclude that, although the debate about infants’ altruistic tendencies remains unresolved, early helping behavior is certainly deeply grounded in our social human nature

The proximate regulation of prosocial behaviour: towards a conceptual framework for comparative research

Humans and many other animal species act in ways that benefit others. Such prosocial behaviour has been studied extensively across a range of disciplines over the last decades, but findings to date have led to conflicting conclusions about prosociality across and even within species. Here, we present a conceptual framework to study the proximate regulation of prosocial behaviour in humans, non-human primates and potentially other animals. We build on psychological definitions of prosociality and spell out three key features that need to be in place for behaviour to count as prosocial: benefitting others, intentionality, and voluntariness. We then apply this framework to review observational and experimental studies on sharing behaviour and targeted helping in human children and non-human primates. We show that behaviours that are usually subsumed under the same terminology (e.g. helping) can differ substantially across and within species and that some of them do not fulfil our criteria for prosociality. Our framework allows for precise mapping of prosocial behaviours when retrospectively evaluating studies and offers guidelines for future comparative work

Mitochondrial Control Region and microsatellite analyses on harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) unravel population differentiation in the Baltic Sea and adjacent waters

The population status of the harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) in the Baltic area has been a continuous matter of debate. Here we present the by far most comprehensive genetic population structure assessment to date for this region, both with regard to geographic coverage and sample size: 497 porpoise samples from North Sea, Skagerrak, Kattegat, Belt Sea, and Inner Baltic Sea were sequenced at the mitochondrial Control Region and 305 of these specimens were typed at 15 polymorphic microsatellite loci. Samples were stratified according to sample type (stranding vs. by-caught), sex, and season (breeding vs. non-breeding season). Our data provide ample evidence for a population split between the Skagerrak and the Belt Sea, with a transition zone in the Kattegat area. Among other measures, this was particularly visible in significant frequency shifts of the most abundant mitochondrial haplotypes. A particular haplotype almost absent in the North Sea was the most abundant in Belt Sea and Inner Baltic Sea. Microsatellites yielded a similar pattern (i.e., turnover in occurrence of clusters identified by STRUCTURE). Moreover, a highly significant association between microsatellite assignment and unlinked mitochondrial haplotypes further indicates a split between North Sea and Baltic porpoises. For the Inner Baltic Sea, we consistently recovered a small, but significant separation from the Belt Sea population. Despite recent arguments that separation should exceed a predefined threshold before populations shall be managed separately, we argue in favour of precautionary acknowledging the Inner Baltic porpoises as a separate management unit, which should receive particular attention, as it is threatened by various factors, in particular local fishery measures. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Context-sensitive attention is socialized via a verbal route in the parent-child interaction

The way humans perceive and attend to visual scenes differs profoundly between individuals. This is most compellingly demonstrated for context-sensitivity, the relative attentional focus on focal objects and background elements of a scene, in cross-cultural comparisons. Differences in context-sensitivity have been reported in verbal accounts (e.g. picture descriptions) and in visual attention (e.g., eye-tracking paradigms). The present study investigates (1) if the way parents verbally guide the attention of their children in visual scenes is associated with differences in children’s context-sensitivity and (2) if verbal descriptions of scenes are related to early visual attention (i.e., gaze behavior) in 5-year-old children and their parents. Importantly, the way parents verbally described visual scenes to their children was related to children’s context-sensitivity, when describing these scenes themselves. This is, we found a correlation in the number of references made to the object versus the background as well as the number of relations made between different elements of a scene. Furthermore, verbal descriptions were closely related to visual attention in adults, but not in children. These findings support our hypotheses that context-sensitivity is socialized via a verbal route and that visual attention processes align with acquired narrative structures only later in development, after the preschool years

Visual attention in 5-year-olds from three different cultures

Cognitive processes differ markedly between children from different cultures, with best evidence for attention to visual scenes and the activities of others. Children from urban Western cultures tend to focus on focal objects, whereas children from urban East-Asian cultures rather attend to contextual elements of a visual scene. Regarding the attention to others’ activities, children from subsistence-based farming communities often observe several activities simultaneously, while children from urban Western contexts focus on activities sequentially. Here we assessed 144 5-year-old children from three prototypical cultural contexts (urban Germany, rural Cameroon, urban Japan) to investigate variations in attention across a variety of tasks. Attention to the elements of a visual scene was assessed in an optical illusion task, in picture descriptions and an eye-tracking paradigm. Attention to and learning from others’ activities was assessed in a parallel action task and a rule-based game. Some tasks indicated higher context-sensitive attention in urban Japan, while other findings indicated higher context-sensitive attention in urban Germany. Levels of parallel attention and learning from others’ activities were lower in rural Cameroonian children compared to the urban samples. Across tasks, the visual attention measures were unrelated. These findings substantiate that culture has a profound influence on early cognitive development, already in the preschool years. Furthermore, they raise critical questions about the early origins of cultural specificities in attention and the generalizability of attention phenomena beyond specific tasks and populations

Visual category representations in the infant brain

Preprocessed EEG data, stimulus set, single participant results and codes that associated with the paper "Visual category representations in the infant brain"

Visual category representations in the infant brain

Visual categorization is a human core cognitive capacity1,2 that depends on the development of visual cate-gory representations in the infant brain.3-7 However, the exact nature of infant visual category representa-tions and their relationship to the corresponding adult form remains unknown.8 Our results clarify the nature of visual category representations from electroencephalography (EEG) data in 6-to 8-month-old infants and their developmental trajectory toward adult maturity in the key characteristics of temporal dynamics,2,9 representational format,10-12 and spectral properties.13,14 Temporal dynamics change from slowly emerging, developing representations in infants to quickly emerging, complex representations in adults. Despite those differences, infants and adults already partly share visual category representations. The format of infants' representations is visual features of low to intermediate complexity, whereas adults' representations also encode high-complexity features. Theta band activity contributes to visual category representations in in-fants, and these representations are shifted to the alpha/beta band in adults. Together, we reveal the devel-opmental neural basis of visual categorization in humans, show how information transmission channels change in development, and demonstrate the power of advanced multivariate analysis techniques in infant EEG research for theory building in developmental cognitive science

Mealtime conversations between parents and their 2-year-old children in five cultural contexts

Children all over the world learn language, yet, the contexts in which they do so vary substantially. This variation needs to be systematically quantified to build robust and generalizable theories of language acquisition. We compared communicative interactions between parents and their two-year-old children (N = 99 families) during mealtime across five cultural settings (Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Germany, Japan) and coded the amount of talk and gestures as well as their conversational embedding (interlocutors, function, themes). We found a comparable pattern of communicative interactions across cultural settings, which were modified in ways that are consistent with local norms and values. These results suggest that children encounter similarly structured communicative environments across diverse cultural contexts and will inform theories of language learning