{"id":34448,"date":"2026-08-21T10:31:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T14:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=34448"},"modified":"2026-08-21T09:26:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T13:26:32","slug":"caregivers-are-active-agents-in-their-infants-learning-and-socialization-but-how-they-do-this-differs-across-cultures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2026\/08\/caregivers-are-active-agents-in-their-infants-learning-and-socialization-but-how-they-do-this-differs-across-cultures\/","title":{"rendered":"Caregivers are active agents in their infants\u2019 learning and socialization, but how they do this differs across cultures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Northwestern University<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Developmental scientists deepened a longstanding scientific and cultural partnership with a Wichi community in Argentina\u2019s Chaco rain forest<\/li>\n<li>Examining mother-infant interactions reveals powerful commonalities in how moms and babies engage<\/li>\n<li>But also reveal distinct differences, shifting experts\u2019 view of how early development unfolds<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>EVANSTON, Ill. \u2014 A baby sits on the floor and reaches toward a red ball on a floor and grunts. The mother responds, \u201cDo you see the ball?\u201d She picks it up and holds it in front of baby and says, \u201cDo you want to hold the ball?\u201d\u00a0 The baby shrieks in excitement as the mother hands the ball to the baby.<\/p>\n<p>Parent-infant interactions, often characterized by direct eye contact and \u2018proto\u2019 conversations, have long been thought to be the key to infants sense of their own \u2018agency\u2019: how infants begin to understand the <strong>intentions of people around them<\/strong>, and to influence them. We all recognize episodes of infants\u2019 emerging sense of agency when we see it. Or do we?<\/p>\n<p>Probably not. Most of the existing evidence is drawn exclusively from <strong>middle class, college-educated mothers and infants of European descent<\/strong>. There is scant evidence of how infant development unfolds in other cultural contexts and environments.<\/p>\n<p>Extraordinary new research published in the July\/August issue of the journal Infancy reveals how mothers from two distinct communities foster infants\u2019 sense of agency. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1111\/infa.70104\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pathways to Agency: Cross-Cultural Evidence from Indigenous Wichi and Eurodescendant Caregiver-Infant Interactions<\/a>\u201d was coauthored by developmental scientists Sandra Waxman at Northwestern University, and Migdalia Padilla Col\u00f3n and Andrea Taverna at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cient\u00edticas y T\u00e9cnicas (CONICET), Argentina.<\/p>\n<p>Working within two distinct Argentine communities \u2014 the Indigenous <strong>Wichi in the remote Formosa province<\/strong> and Spanish-speaking European descendants in the urban setting of Rosario \u2014 the research team videorecorded caregiver-infant interactions beginning when infants were 12 months old and continuing until they were 2.5 years old. Twice daily, they documented naturally occurring interactions including free play, meals or snacks, physical movement and activity and engagement with others present.<\/p>\n<p>The sites of these recordings were selected by families in each community, reflecting where each community&#8217;s daily life naturally unfolds. Wichi families chose to host recordings in outdoor settings near their homes, while city dwelling European descendant families chose to host recordings inside their own homes. Then, together with native speakers of each community, the research team identified all episodes of<strong> social interaction<\/strong> between caregivers and infants.<\/p>\n<p>What became evident, from reviewing these interactions, were strong commonalities in the mothers\u2019 role supporting their infants\u2019 developing agency. There were also striking differences.<\/p>\n<p>For example, in the European descendant urban families, interactions typically featured two-way attention between mother and infant, most often involving a toy. The exchanges were primarily coordinated with spoken language. In contrast, Wichi family interactions with infants were communal, including siblings and other members of the community. <strong>Wichi interactions were mostly non-verbal<\/strong>, expressed by hugs and gazes, and sometimes incorporated objects from the natural environment.<\/p>\n<p>The study provides empirical evidence for alternative pathways to infants\u2019 acquisition of agency.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur study shows nature and nurture going hand in hand. We observed infants\u2019 exquisite sensitivity to interactions with their caregivers, and their flexibility in interpreting the patterns of interaction in the communities in which they are raised,\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/psychology.northwestern.edu\/people\/faculty\/core\/profiles\/sandra-waxman.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Waxman<\/a>, Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology and principal investigator of the Infant and Child Development Center at Northwestern.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we\u2019re going to understand how development unfolds, we need to look at how development is shaped in environments other than our own,\u201d Waxman said.<\/p>\n<p>The study would not be possible without the sustained relationship, now lasting over 20 years, between the Wichi community and Taverna\u2019s research team in Argentina.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we see in the Wichi community is that agency is not simply something that develops within the individual child; it is <strong>co-constructed through relationships, shared activities and culturally organized ways of participating in the world<\/strong>,\u201d Col\u00f3n said. \u201cTaking these different ontologies seriously allows us to recognize that there is not a single developmental pathway to agency.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDevelopmental psychology has spent decades studying how the relationship with the other constitutes the child as a subject and enables them to become an active agent in their own development,\u201d Taverna said. \u201cWhat this study shows is that this \u2018otherness\u2019 \u2014 and the culturally situated ways we relate to it \u2014 is not universal: It is deeply embedded in culture. Understanding this is not a minor nuance, it means rethinking one of the foundational questions of our discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr class=\"hidden-xs hidden-sm\" \/>\n<div class=\"featured_image\">\n<div class=\"details\">\n<div class=\"well\">\n<h4>JOURNAL<\/h4>\n<p>Infancy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"well\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Northwestern University Developmental scientists deepened a longstanding scientific and cultural partnership with a Wichi community in Argentina\u2019s Chaco rain forest Examining mother-infant interactions reveals powerful commonalities in how moms and babies engage But also reveal distinct differences, shifting experts\u2019 view of how early development unfolds EVANSTON, Ill. \u2014 A baby sits on the floor and&hellip;&nbsp;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"no","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[789,9],"tags":[880,306,878,877,879],"class_list":["post-34448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-parenting","tag-care-giving","tag-community","tag-development","tag-infants","tag-intentions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34450,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34448\/revisions\/34450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}