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266  CHAPTER 7

FIGURE 7.16  Technology distractions can affect infants’ emotional development.  Scatterplots of in- fants’ behaviors ( y axis) at different levels of parent cell phone use ( x axis), with each dot representing a mother- infant dyad. Parents who reported using cell phones more had infants who showed less engagement with them during the reunion of the still- face experiment (left panel) and less positive affect (right panel), as shown by the best-fitting line depicting the negative associations. (After S. Myruski et al. 2018. Dev Sci 21: e12610. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

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compromise their infants’ emotional functioning when they frequently attend to their phones rather than their infants’ cues. CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING 7.13 1. List three aspects of parenting related to individual differences in emotional development among infants. 2. Why do you think that cell phone use by parents harms infants’ emotional functioning? Cultural Context of Emotional Development LEARNING OBJECTIVE 7.14  Discuss aspects of cultural context that might affect infants’ emotional development. Cultural lessons around emotions begin in infancy. Infants gradually learn which emotions are acceptable and expected, when emotions should be expressed, and with what level of intensity. In many U.S. households, parents eagerly await and often attempt to elicit smiles and laughs from their infants. The emphasis on positive emotional expression is not universal, however. As one example, Cameroon Nso caregivers—a small, tightknit agricultural com- munity in Africa—prefer quiet and calm infants, and accordingly discourage infant expressiveness including smiling (Keller & Otto, 2009). As a result, Cameroon adults participate in few face-to-face, smiling interactions with their infants, and their infants display less smiling compared to infants in Westernized cultures, such as Germany (Wörmann et al., 2012). Culture and Infant Temperament Cultural expectations further determine the fit between an infant’s tempera- ment and social context. Infants whose temperamental characteristics align with cultural values and practices show better adjustment than do infants without such a fit (Ballantine & Klein, 1990; Wachs, 2006). For example, in some cultural settings it may be advantageous for an infant to be difficult in temperament. Fussy infants were more likely to survive in developing countries with high levels of infant mortality and in communities plagued by drought, perhaps because they signaled to their caregivers when they were distressed and in need of attention (DeVries, 1984; Scheper-Hughes, 1987). Beyond these extreme circumstances, however, views around what makes an infant “difficult” vary across cultures, as revealed in classic stud- ies of the past. In Kenya, where shared caregiving was typical, infants who were unable to adapt to multiple caregivers were considered to be diffi- cult, whereas in communities where a primary caregiver was the norm, the infant’s distress at being handed off to multiple caregivers was expected (Super & Harkness, 1986). ✓ Ta is-LeMo da Child Dev lopment: Context, Cu ture, and Casc des 1E Sinauer Associates/OUP Morales Studio TL1e_07.16 09-07-21 PROPERTY OF OXFORD

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