EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY: UNIVERSALITY AND CULTURAL SPECIFICITY

This dissertation presents three empirical studies that have been carried out to deepen the investigation of both universal and cultural aspects in early forms of mother-infant communication across the first trimester of life, i.e., before, during, and after the 2-month transition indexed by the onset of social smiling. The studies are based on the ecocultural theoretical model of development, which claims that in specific contexts the prevalent cultural model informs parenting strategies (socialization goals, ethnotheories and behaviors) and child development, and they involved a mixed-method approach with a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The representative level of parenting strategies, i.e., socialization goals and ethnotheories, has been investigated in Italian middle class-mothers and West African immigrant mothers when infants were 3 months old. Italian mothers emphasized socialization goals related to psychological autonomy, while West African mothers emphasized socialization goals related to hierarchical relatedness. Immigrant mothers resembled Italian mothers in their ethnotheories of body stimulation concerning the focus on positive emotionality, although they underlined the importance of motor stimulation. Maternal and infant behaviors have been examined during the spontaneous interaction across the first trimester of life in three groups of dyads: Cameroonian autochthonous dyads, Italian middle-class dyads and West African immigrant mothers and their babies living in Italy. The two autochthonous groups of mothers showed the parenting behavioral style (proximal vs. distal) which is adaptive for the two prototypical ecocultural contexts (rural communities vs. middle-class families), while West African immigrant mothers showed interesting elements of change, indicative of the acculturation process. Mother-infant behavioral patterns were organized in different parenting systems according to the cultural group: face-to-face communication and object stimulation for the Italian dyads, motor stimulation for the Cameroonian dyads, both motor stimulation and face-to-face communication for the West African immigrant dyads. Although in all three groups infants showed communicative behaviors related to the second-month transition, these behaviors acted as positive feedback only for Italian and immigrant mothers, who replied to infants with an increase in face-to-face communication.