Research and the young child in India: shifting from alienation to adaptability using an expanded framework

Research and the young child in India: shiftingfrom alienation to adaptability using an expandedframework

Nandita Chaudhary & Punya Pillai

Received: 22 May 2013 /Revised: 13 May 2014 /Accepted: 15 May 2014# Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Lisboa, Portugal and Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht2014

Abstract Conventional psychological research has focused primarily on intrapersonal dimen-sions of human activity, often evading shared knowledge, interpersonal perspective-taking,and collective beliefs. The ideology of individualism and the ‘embryonic fallacy’ are largelyresponsible for the focus on the individual as an isolated entity. Most available methods forassessment are transacted through the temporary separation of a “subject” from a familiarcultural setting. In the case of children, this instantly distances them from known surroundings.When researchers adopt methods created and standardized in a different cultural context, thereis a double alienation; first of the social setting, and the second, more profound (butless evident) distancing is ideological, between the shared reality of the community towhich the child belongs and the culture of origin of the method. This paper providesevidence from research on Indian children to discuss the importance of adaptation tothe context and shared understanding. By identifying three distinct levels of activity,the subjective, inter-subjective, and inter-objective, we bring forward some of theprocesses that often remain hidden in the study of the individual. These levels arethen employed to discuss specific research encounters.

Keywords Subjectivity . Inter-subjectivity . Inter-objectivity . Cultural psychology . Researchmethods . Context-sensitive research

Introduction

The objective of this paper is to examine the use of conventional psychological researchmethods emerging from Western sources with participants from India, a practice that stillpersists with enthusiasm. Collaborative projects attempting to discover the human variationbased on cultural difference have spurred the desire to search for responses from “exotic”locations, at a distance from the technologically advanced nations where most of the methodsare created. While conducting research tasks, several assumptions about the research setting,

Eur J Psychol EducDOI 10.1007/s10212-014-0221-x

N. Chaudhary (*) : P. PillaiLady Irwin College, University of Delhi, Delhi, Indiae-mail: [email protected]

the skills and orientation of the participant, and the larger context of knowledge are ofteninvisible on account of the wide acceptability of the methods in psychology. However, theassumption that methods will carry the same “meaning” for participants in different parts of theworld, with different historical, geographic, ecological, and social features is frequentlymisplaced. This makes the transfer of the procedure to another cultural setting quite problem-atic. By examining specific instances of research with Indian subjects, an attempt will be madeto uncover some of the significant difficulties in such transfers. Some of the elementarychallenges can be on account of experiences of school, literacy levels in the family, householdstructure and neighborhood, physical setting, discourse strategies, language differences, andfamiliarity with dyadic assessment procedures, to name a few. The contention here is not thatcommon methods cannot be used. When comparisons across contexts are intended, and unlesssimilar procedures are used, this becomes impossible. However, while setting-up the research,adequate consideration needs to be given to the content, material, procedure, physical as wellas the social setting in order to allow for the comprehension and comfort in a participant. Somemethods are simply more favorable to cultural transfer, whereas others can be easily misun-derstood. Knowing what will work where, and being speculative rather than sure is alwayshelpful during research.

The importance of being alert to context and setting is certainly not new. Several importantreferences in this regard will include the monumental and now well-accepted works of severaltheorists, Vygotsky, Mead, Bakhtin, Bruner, Valsiner, and Rogoff, to name a few. As a matterof fact, the whole field of cultural psychology has emerged from this turn in the basicorientation of psychology as a discipline away from singularly looking at intra-mentalfunctioning toward placing inter-mental activity, the exchanges between people into center-stage. According to Rogoff (1990),

Different human communities produce variations in specific genetic and social resourcesof new individual members, and these variations are as essential to understanding humandevelopment as are the genetic and social resources that humans have in common(p. 37).

The analysis of interactions is at the heart of several disciplines and within psychology,there have been two distinct approaches, the “factorial and the dialogical” (Grossen 2010 p. 3).The methodological tools used for these two distinct orientations have different assumptionsand approaches to the study of human interactions. The fact that the field and the interactionare deeply linked was recognized very early in the history of the discipline. However, anequally advanced field of taking human interaction and especially the human mind as primarilyintra-mental, also sustains. When we compare cultural settings, it is critical to examine whichmeaning of interaction is adopted since it will impact methodology. In sectors where interna-tional projects are undertaken, often sanctioned by well-respected high-level funding agenciessearching for common grounds for comparisons, the concern for shared meaning is sometimessacrificed for expediency and output. Local meanings and social interpretations based onhabitual practice become even more significant when we are dealing with cultural distances(Trawick 1990).

It is also essential to declare the meaning of culture that is adopted in this essay. Rather thanlooking at culture as a synonym for nationality, we adopt the approach of several scholars whodiscuss culture as shared conceptions through symbolic forms (Geertz 1973) about the rela-tionship between a person and the environment, where we can visualize culture as belongingbetween a person and the environment, a process of meaning-making within a shared reality(Valsiner 2007), as contexts in which people are “embedded” (Rogoff 1990 p. 42).

N. Chaudhary, P. Pillai

Intersubjectivity, interobjectivity, and the research encounter

Any person is a subject unto himself or herself as a psychological being, an “other” to otherpeople and a person for society and social institutions as well as a body in a physical milieu(Gagnier 1991). It is in fact these aspects of the unique reality that constitute a person’ssubjectivity (Hall 2004). Subjectivity or internal reality refers to a person’s understandingof the self and its world that is always constrained, partial, and therefore prone to error(Gagnier 1991).

Intersubjectivity, in one of the definitions, refers to agreement between two perspectives. Ifwe think about it, it is quite realistic to imagine that any two perspectives can never be exactlythe same. In other definitions of intersubjectivity, a variety of possible relationships betweenpeople are considered (Gillespie and Cornish 2009), even accepting complex argumentation,where agreements and disagreements between two perspectives are important for joint activity.In this paper, however, we wish to examine only the process of agreement between twoperspectives in a research setting. Whenever we wish to approach a participant, there is nodenying that the knowledge of the particular phenomenon under study would be differentlyunderstood by the two people (or groups) in temporary contact. Further, in the transaction ofany task, even if it is an interview question, it is essential to ensure that the participant has abasic shared understanding of what is going on. We were saying this beyond the requirementsof any “ethical clearance” or consent forms. The participant and the researcher have to agreeon some basic issues about the encounter. The greater this lack of consonance, the more distantthe research will be from the lives of the participants. Although with “few, sketchy and over-simplified examples” as Scribner attempted (1976, p. 310), we will demonstrate that some-times the participant does not in fact share some of the assumed knowledge base of a researchtask, whether it is the approach, response, understanding, or interpretation of a given stimulus.In Scribner’s research (1976), it was clearly demonstrated that the assumptions of testing forsolutions to problems were simply not in consonance with the ways in which Kpelle adultsresponded to tasks, and their responses had everything to do with the way in which questionswere framed. This deeply compromised the validity of the experiment, a central dilemma inculture and cognition according to Scribner.

The exceptionality of each person’s dispositions and experiences makes each encounteruniquely divergent for any two people, with the degree of shared reality being directlyproportionate to proximity in meanings attributed. Despite this fact, we do need consonanceand convergence in order to advance in everyday lives as well as scientific understanding ofany human phenomenon. Agreement does not discount the function and importance ofdisagreement and dissonance. However, in order to work on the same page for a task, a basicfunctional agreement is critical to meaning-making. We can move forward either by dismissingsubjectivity or by acknowledging it. The reconciliation of different positions is essential todialog; if we did not have some degree of common ground to proceed from, there would beconstant breakdown in conversation and interaction. Not only is intersubjectivity a challenge,complete understanding of the self and its attributes are also quite arduous for any individual,and it is through the mediation of others that knowledge of the self is gradually constructed(Coehlo and Figueiredo 2003). The social presents itself to the baby at the outset onlymediated through the primary caregivers, and not as some sort of collective manifestation ofcultural reality. Yet we see that “even in the personal cry of the newborn infant, we canrecognize the particular cultural stamp of the in-group” (Moghaddam 2010 p. 468). Thesediscussions resonate with Mead’s efforts to conceptualize the self and other (1934). Ratherthan referring to biases and stereotypes, these communication difficulties relate primarily tocultural orientation rather than preference in the face of choice.

Research and the young child in India

The potential tension between perspectives in interactions requires to be minimized if weare to arrive at mutual agreement and the advancement of research. Intersubjectivity is thefundamental difference that exists between the perspectives of one person and another(Rommetveit 1990) that is an important experience for self-knowledge (Husserl 1929/1977).The ontogenetic emergence of the realization of alterity and self is an important accomplish-ment of the human condition. Whatever definition of intersubjectivity we search, the existenceof two or more perspectives interfacing with each other, in joint attention or communication(Habermas 1970) about an object, event, person, or idea, is inevitable. Yet, communication,joint attention, agreement, and accord become quite troublesome for everyday interactions,precisely because knowledge about alterity, or intersubjectivity, can never be fully realized. Inorder to fully grasp the implications of intersubjectivity and interobjectivity, the discipline willbe compelled to abandon its “one-person psychology” for a two-person or three-personpsychology (Coehlo and Figueiredo 2003 p. 196). We need to move toward an understandingof our worlds and minds as shared realities, and not isolated spaces. There is an urgent need torealize that in the analysis of human phenomena, we need to construct a paradigm that includesseveral “levels of analysis” that have causal and interdependent linkages (Sinha 2000 p. 203).

Interobjectivity refers to the understandings that are “shared between and within culturesabout social reality” (Moghaddam 2003 p. 221). People differ on different dimensions: theways in which we view the mind of the other, as well as the ways in which we understand theworld. In the developmental span, the young child begins initially by a single position aboutthe world with a conjoint intersubjectivity and interobjectivity. How people will react to ababy, for instance, is something that differs between communities (Moghaddam 2003).Interobjectivity implies those dimensions of culture that characterize our agreements andthereby also reconstructs intersubjectivity; those collectively constructed opinions that weshare with members of a social group which diverge when other groups are considered.Such shared differences are palpable at all levels of social grouping even between families.The simple task of asking a question is commonly used when one needs information aboutsomething. However, in school discourse, and sometimes in research as well, questions areposed to the participant in order to know what they know. This can often result in incredulityand place an awkward distancing.

As we use the terms intersubjectivity and interobjectivity in this paper, they could beapplied to self-other dynamics as follows, self-other-group (first, second, and third person)dynamics can potentially be characterized at different levels of activity. We can appreciateprocesses at the following levels:

& Level 1—self-structures (self-self), how we construct ourselves, subjectivity& Level 2—inter-individual interactions, intersubjectivity& Level 3—shared beliefs about the world, interobjectivity

This proposal draws from and also appears as an elaboration of the Dialogical Self theoryby Hermans (Chaudhary 2012; Hermans 2012). At each of these levels, the collective framesour thinking directly or indirectly. Who we are is actively defined and negotiated in inter-individual interactions transacted within a vibrant and involved social group. How people viewthemselves and others is influential for the ways in which we interact with each other. Thesetransactions are also happening in the research encounter. Every time a researcher enters thelife of a participant, temporarily, a new frame is created, and how the participant makesmeaning of the researcher’s task is critical for the exchange of information.

Let us take the view a person has of herself, at level 1 as an instance in research. The way inwhich a subject in research understands herself in context, may not match with the intentions


of the researcher. For example, if the intention is to conduct an interview with a woman in avillage related to the care of her children, we are often confronted with a situation where theperson says something like, “why don’t you fill up the answer, you are educated, you know itbetter than I do” as I (first author) discovered in one study (Chaudhary 2008 p. 35). Here twoimportant beliefs are worth marking. Firstly, the woman believes that the (apparently) bettereducated researcher would know a better answer to the question. Secondly, she may not bepracticed at discussing “personal” opinion with outsiders in this manner, and might feelawkward about this interaction. If you insist in this situation, she may call upon a school-going child or an older person in the home to supply the response. In socially densecommunities, seeking exclusive opinion is often misleading.

Sometimes, a young researcher may be questioned about his or her own status. This isespecially true for Indian communities. Most participants are deeply curious about a researcherand often ask questions about marital status, occupation, activity, and other personal details. Thisis especially so in instances where themes of family life, husband-wife relationship and childcareare being investigated, or even when permissions are being sought for work with children. Insuch a situation, if the researcher is considered young and inexperienced, she may become anobject of “advice” instead of information. The ways in which the researcher is viewed by theparticipant, as well as the participant’s personal assessment of the competence of the researcher,continuously negotiate the research process. It becomes obligatory for a researcher seekingparticipation to open herself or himself up to the participants, so that they are able to place theperson within their frame. Silence or withdrawal is always viewed with suspicion. This is yetanother example of how research settings may vary across cultural boundaries.

In an analysis of cultural difference (group-group divergence), researchers from anotherculture often land themselves in difficult situations on account of unfamiliarity with local rules.Although people living in south Asian cultures imagine that this mostly happens with west-erners traveling for the study of their communities, misinterpretation can occur in any situation,local misunderstandings can also take place. Günther (1998) reports how three of his studentswere accosted by security guards in a shopping mall for inexplicable behavior: approachingshoppers without any legitimate reason, asking them strange questions! Sometimes we can alsogo wrong in our assessments of our own community and its conventions.

The content of the questions being asked or tasks being conducted could also evokecriticism from participants, or in the case of child participants, from their parents. Researchqueries may be assessed by them with reference to presumed cultural standards. In a researchon 5–10-year-old children’s understanding of truth (Pillai 2012), participants were presentedwith a statement “All parents love their children”, to which they had to answer “true” or “false”and provide reasons for their answer. This query sometimes invoked disapproval by theparents of the children. The putative universality of parent-child love is an “obligatory truth”in the Indian cultural context, one that reaches near “sacred” status, despite the many violationsin real life, something that can or rather should never be denied. Presenting children with anopportunity to take a possibly contrary view in this regard was seen as a contamination of thepure undiluted quality of parent-child love. This may have been seen as a possible threat totheir children’s views on existing parent-child dynamics by some parents.

Thus, interobjectivity becomes critical to consider when discussion revolves around social-ly diverse groups dependent on power structures like those between majority and minoritygroups (Moghaddam 2003) or between adults and children. Usually, the research situation is,in fact, a context which is essentially unequal. One partner decides the agenda and thesequence as well as the interpretation of the encounter. Particularly in communities that areat a distance from the urban educated researchers, proceeding with research is often criticallydetermined by power dynamics. For instance, it is common knowledge that it is far easier to


access and explore the lives and beliefs of people who are poorer (Chaudhary 2004, 2008).When different cultures are involved, therefore, there will be even more distant and discrepantmeanings. The relative ease and freedom with which international aid research teams enter intocommunities and conduct assessments is sometimes in violation of basic rights to a fairrepresentation of communities. Recently, a research team from England wished to identifyan appropriate developmental assessment tool for Indian children since they wanted to provethat the tribal children in their area of work needed stimulation for optimal development. Theclause of finding developmental delay was a sure winner for the award of grant money, sheresponded when pushed, to answer why the assessments were needed for a health and nutritionprogram. The objectives of the research team were focused in putatively “helping the locals”where they already had ongoing maternal health and nutrition programs. Abels (2008)suggests that it is vital to include research reports on how people in poverty have opened uptheir lives to research understanding, primarily because in her experience, it is so simple to justsit and watch the lives of those who are not protected by wealth and security. As discussedearlier, repeated examples of this can be seen in research that has been conducted by aidagencies across the world. Accessing and assessing life circumstances of poor communities isone of the most widespread tasks in research conducted by international aid agencies.

One way of leveling the distance and discrepancy of meaning between what is asked,expected and acquired in research is by first answering the questions of yourself as a lay personand researcher, and then proceeding to ask the participants. This may work well for culturalinsiders as well as cultural outsiders as researchers, the basic idea being to address one’s ownbiases and expectations before accessing data in the research field. In her study, Pillai (2012)herself answered the 20 statements to assess potential biases and limits in the expectedresponses of participants before approaching the children. This strategy could serve as a meansof tool appraisal as well as self-appraisal. In the same vein, Sharma (2008 p. 77) reports thewords of a mother of a grown up son with autism, “I practiced what it feels like to be autisticmany times in an effort to better understand my son”. The researcher-researched interface hasto probably replicate this sentiment in order to best understand intersubjectivity in research.

Ontological individualism and the embryonic fallacy

Psychological research has been preoccupied with what goes on inside a person’s mind.Ontological individualism is the “idea that the individual exists prior to society and enters intoa voluntary social contract with others in order to secure his self-interest” (Menon 2003 p. 431).The universalization of this principle causes a difficulty, especially when the same idea may notfind acceptance in a cultural setting. But this is not just a matter of culture; American citizens areas much influenced by their cultural conditions as are those who live in cultures with lowinterpersonal distance. The belief in the ideals of individualism is a collective ideology (Bellahet al. 1996). At the outset, let us say that we believe that individual learning takes place as muchby witnessing and participating in everyday cultural practices as they do through intra-mentalactivity. In fact, it is futile to separate the intra-mental and inter-mental activity during theprocess of learning whether it is academic or social. The additional attention to interobjectivity(Moghaddam 2003 p. 225), “the understandings that are shared within and between culturesabout social reality”, is essential since it is not just within the individual, or between individualsthat activity takes place, group level reality also bears critical importance to development.

The “embryonic fallacy” is an assumption that the individual begins experiencing psycho-logical reality from the time of birth, leaving little allowance for the inclusion of any realitiesbeyond and before an individual life. Awareness of a macro-construct such as this would also


inform early conceptualizations of an individual as well as relationships. In the words ofMoghaddam (2010 p. 466), “the source of how individuals perceive others is ‘out there’ in thesocial world”. Thus, taking collective, shared reality into account becomes extremely impor-tant to understand the ways in which people interact with the material and social world. Unlessthese patterns are accounted for and included in research studies, we will be unable to getbeneath the surface in our attempts to understand social and psychological phenomena.

This becomes especially problematic when methods are transported from alien cultures inorder to investigate psychological phenomena. If the specific cultural meanings of interactionsare not taken into account, then serious misunderstandings can result since items may not carrythe same meaning in different settings. As an example, children who are more familiar withmulti-party discourse often find the demands of dyadic testing situations very daunting. Thisoften becomes a reason for feeling strange and isolated during assessment procedures that islikely to result in the inability to participate adequately in a given task. When methods crosscultural boundaries, much consideration has to be placed on the local cultural practices in orderto best achieve an understanding of a people. Mostly, people simply translate items and mayeven “adapt” them a little bit, but ignore other factors like structure of the setting, isolation ofthe individual, material resources, and dyadic discourse that can cause interference.

The psychologist’s fallacy

In the year 1884, William James introduced the notion of the “psychologist’s fallacy”, to referto the propensity of psychologists to become confused between what is in their minds andwhat is in the minds of their subjects. A powerful comment that needs to be an essential stepfor all research studies, to ensure that the researcher is not overridden by his or her own ideasabove and beyond psychological phenomena. In the methodological cycle discussed byBranco and Valsiner (1997), research procedures can be visualized as cyclical, whereasphenomena are out there in the world, our data in any research study are merely a smallportion of that reality, feeding back into it. Although analysis and interpretation is meantfinally to return to the world of experiences, this distinction becomes critical when we addressthe “psychologists’ fallacy”, the tendency we have of assuming that things as we see them arethe things that there are. In all circumstances, researchers must be committed to the phenom-enological position of fidelity to phenomena as it is lived (Wilson 2002).

If we take the instance of learning, it is essential to understand that the learning process is asmuch about intra-personal sense-making as it is about shared processes. Somehow, it hasalways been the intra-psychological processes that have been emphasized, especially in thestudy of children’s development. Research often attempts to study children’s performances onspecific tasks focusing more often on individual rather than on inter-individual processes.These performances have then been linked to specific factors for the purpose of predictingperformance and ultimately enhancing learning. The desire to accelerate learning amongchildren has been an important preoccupation of developmental psychology (Burman 1994).The study of babies in the mid-nineteenth century was motivated by the desire to understandthe origins and specifics of the human mind. The mind of a child was equated during that timewith that of a “primitive” adult, moving particularly toward comparisons, group and individualdifferences, classification, and the establishment of norms in thinking (Burman 1994). Mentaltesting was an important development in the study of the psychology of the individual,resulting in a flourishing testing industry (Haraway 1989). Thus, ontological individualismbecame a central focus of social organization around the child, whether it was school or thehome. The notion of mental age as being an equivalent of chronological age stirred the


enthusiasm for its application in practical settings, especially school, thereby creating amythical version of a normal, ideal child “distilled from the comparative scores of age-graded populations” (Burman 1994 p. 16).

Performationism and predeterminism are two important features of development as it hasbeen conceived. The first assumes that everything that has to be realized during development isalready present at birth, and it is left to the organism only to grow into this, and the latter,visualizes development as pattern that is predetermined (Valsiner and Connolly 2003).Everything that emerges is believed to be predestined in this view. On the other hand,epigenesis is a view wherein an organism’s features are not believed to be present at theoutset, but gradually emerge from the gradual qualitative changes that take place in activeengagement and interaction with the external world toward increasing complexity (Gottlieb2003). For instance, babies are found to have special faculties that are best adapted to theirhabitat at any given time (Oppenheim 1981). In the instance of our own species, infantaltriciality, the long period of dependent existence, and playful activities in childhoodare probably an adaptation to the context and antecedent of later behavior (Valsiner andConnolly 2003).

In an ongoing ethnographic study of three-year-old children, the case of two young girls ina rural setting in India provides us with an important lesson. A young three-year-old child wasthe key participant in the study that aims toward describing the context within which three-year-old children live and learn (Chaudhary 2013). On the first day of the observation, the twosisters spent most of their time grinning at the video camera. In a social setting that wascharacterized by the care of many by many, the rural joint family was a large group of peoplewho lived together. Ashu1 (five) and Reshu (three) were inseparable, playing, sometimesquarrelling, eating, chatting, and engaged in intense imaginative play. By the second day, thenovelty of the camera had worn out. There were several opportunities for the researcher to filmthe girls in near naturalistic circumstances. Ashu and Reshu spent the whole day in thecourtyard, reasonably free of adult supervision except on the first day when the motherthought that she should participate. By the next day, the mother left the researcher to followthe children around on her own. Sometimes, other adults came and went out of curiosity.Setting up a dyadic interface proceeded to be impossible, so the next best option was to allowthe five-year-old companion to stay, but also stay quiet. In the videos of this assessment, it isseen that Reshu appears almost lost without the elder sister, who is her constant companionand playmate. The individual attention makes her repeatedly respond even to simple questionswith an “I don’t know”while looking appealingly at her sister who was instructed to stay quiet.There was no doubt that she was feeling awkward and uncomfortable with a task where herconstant partner was present, but not allowed to interact. This was a wealthy rural family, sothe house was large and spread out. Otherwise, this setting would have been furtherconfounded by the presence of a whole lot of adults and their editorial comments asBhargava (2011) found in her study in rural Rajasthan families. Not only were the adultsconstantly commenting on the children’s performance, they often teased the child for theresponses as well.

The second person approach in psychology

In order to access the intersubjective levels of activity, it is important to explore differentstrategies of approaching a subject or participant in research. One of the ways of doing this is

1 Names changed


to understand the relationship between the researcher and the researched. Taken from gram-mar, the second person approach suggests talking “directly” to someone, accounting for theintersubjective architecture (Rommetveit 1976).

There is no doubt that although we are fairly adept at dealing with others’minds most of thetime, understanding them is a daunting task. This creates what Reddy (2008) calls aninsurmountable “gap” between mind and behavior in scientific study, despite the fact that ineveryday interactions, we are able to move smoothly through most of our associations. Thegaps exist between one mind and another as well as the mind and behavior. How is this first-person information about the self reconciled with the third person information from otherpeople or second hand information with a partner in interaction? This remains a key element inhuman interactions and also in the scientific study of human beings.

In the first and third person approaches to methods of studying other people, the researchemploys either an extension of the self (psychoanalysis, clinical psychology) or an outsideperspective where the other person is an object to be studied through observation andinference. As a viable alternative to these two strategies, Reddy (2008) proposed the secondperson approach. The main premise of this approach is that “others” are experienced in directemotional and social engagement, even in research, thereby seriously closing the gap betweenthe researcher and the subject.

Transacting research in context

In studying children’s understanding of truth, Pillai (2012) found that children’s use of the Hindiword sach was mired in connotations in the local language that were moral, factual and parent-centered all at once. In the words of a five-year-old child, “Whatever makes Mummy happy istruth” (Pillai 2012). It is common to not find the exact translation of words used locally orconstructs understood generally in the language of research writing and theory building(Anandalakshmy et al. 2008). This becomes an additional confounding factor in the transferof methods across languages and cultures. Most studies focus on semantics in such situations.Even when there may be an exact word for a word in two languages, there are bound to bedifferences in the usage. As Misra (2010) suggests you can change reality with a word.

Lillard and Sobel (1999) have suggested that young children engage more easily in mentalstates in a pretense or fantasy situation than when presented with a reality situation. Thisvalidates the importance of structured or “created” research situations to study children’scognitive and social enterprise. Allport’s (1960) classic study on the effect of others onbehavior of research participants suggested that the mere presence of others influencesbehavior. “The principle of social proof states that one means we use to determine what iscorrect is to find out what other people think is correct” (Tomar 2009 p. 15).

Yes-bias in responses

Developmental research has shown that young children often show a yes-bias in yes/no typequeries. Children may find it easier to say yes than to disagree, they may say yes to pleaseadults or obtain their approval and may even say “yes” when they mean “no”. Children oftenprefer to say “true” even when they know and agree that something is not completely true. Apossibility of arbitrating yes-bias like expressions could be through the creation of structuredcontexts for learning where children are encouraged to engage with the processes of argu-mentation and reasoning (Pillai 2012). In this study, there were indications toward a clear yes-bias in children responses to statements regarding whether something was true or false.


Within-culture differences and similarities

In a study on self-other understanding in 3-year-old children in a rural and an urbanIndian setting, Bhargava (2011) found that children’s play with objects demonstrated theirmental representations about the concept of self and others. It must be noted that ruralurban locations are not seen as exclusive and distinct, but at two ends of a continuum,albeit with different ecological and social patterns of existence that were exaggerated inthis study by taking two diverse settings, urban Mumbai and rural Rajasthan. Theirengagement in complex pretend play which also involved active role-taking by childrenor assigning roles to the dolls (rocking the doll in lap, giving the doll a breast-feed,taking the school bag, and wearing the spectacles) illustrated their advanced understandingof not only their own self but also that of people and activities around them. Doll playwas particularly illustrative in this regard as it presented a direct display of a child’smental map about other people. The ways in which rural girls carried the doll around andeven attempted to breast-feed them was a particularly significant instance of this phe-nomenon. There was a difference in the pattern of doll plays in the two locations for thestudy. Urban children engaged in much more pretend play using dolls, rural children werefound to be a bit wary of using it to play as it looked scary and unfamiliar to them.Here, we find that although they were both “Indian” children, the contextual cues withinthe rural and urban settings indicated strong differences in the activities of the children.Culture therefore, should not be conflated with nation, and should remain a description ofthe local, situational context within which the research is transacted, rather than a labellike “Indian culture”.

In Bhargava’s study (2011), activities of children while playing in both the locationshighlighted the priorities of each of the two selected cultural settings. Children in the urbanlocation engaged a lot in imaginative storytelling and play complementing adults’ questionsaddressed to them. These interactions focused on didactic exchanges between adults andchildren. This conversational style of adults is common in helping to prepare children in urbansettings to be a part of formal schooling. Children in the rural setting are more used to sporadic,instructive styles of conversation, despite lower supervision and greater permissiveness towardchildren in general. The directive style was much more evident during the research tasksduring which children were provided with specific objects by the researcher. The content ofchildren’s narratives often displayed their ability to relate story characters and events with thereal life settings. Young children it seems can seamlessly traverse real to imagined contexts,learning from both in a concordant fashion (Bhargava 2011). Regarding the storytelling task inthis study, an interesting feature of the narratives emerged that was common to both contexts.The story in question was told to the adult by the researcher and then the adult caregiver wasasked to narrate the same story to the child. This was done to see how a narrative waspresented to the children, and what details of the story remained intact and which were altered.In this specific narrative, there was one encounter in which the child in the story is rude to itsmother, calling her the equivalent of a “fool”. It was important to note that in almost allinstances, irrespective of location, the adults either omitted or completely transformed thiselement of the story. It was almost as if narrating such an event was tantamount to condoningit. Some adults reversed the situation where it was changed into the mother calling the child“silly”, removing the “silly mother” comment altogether, or changing it into a request withoutthe comment, among others. In this instance, it was highlighted that adults mediate materialsthat the child is exposed to in active ways to fit within the paradigm of socially acceptablebehavior which is an important value in the pan-Indian context, providing evidence of thelayers of activity beyond the individual.


Engaging the young child in research

In line with the Narrative Practices Hypothesis (Hutto 2007), children are believed to achieveunderstanding of self and others by actively engaging with others in story narration. Gallagher(2001) suggests that children develop a sophisticated understanding of others by being a part ofeveryday encounters with different people. Husserl (1929/1977) and Trevarthen (1979) informus that a fundamental difference exists between the perspectives of one person and another andthat this distinction is essential to grasp. Children’s gradual shift from primary intersubjectivity(understanding of another’s intentions) to secondary intersubjectivity (interaction with othersusing the understanding of other’s intentions) makes them develop necessary social skills.

Bhargava (2011) found that in order to sustain the child’s attention during a research task,adults used different patterns of story narration. In rural areas, where the setting was more openand distractible, the short sentence associative talk strategy seemed most effective in engagingthe child. Keeping the child stationary in the rural setting seemed to be a constant challengesince it was perhaps much more exciting for the child to run away to play with others in thestreet. Indian villages are characterized by open and free places for children to roam andexplore, and children were often not found at home when a researcher went for a session.Strategies used by the adults in each of the locations seemed well adapted to the setting.

Research tasks and improvised interactions

It was also found that children in urban and rural contexts selected for the study failed the false-belief task aimed at studying children’s theory-of-mind as was expected since they were only3 years old (Bhargava 2011). This task was used to assess the emergence of thoughts aboutothers at an early age, not to assess the attainment of theory of mind understanding. However,the children were found to display an advanced understanding of self and other while engagingin everyday discourse with several others. A comparative analysis from the predeterminedprocedures, playful activities, and spontaneous interactions display the particular difficulty thatchildren have with standard procedures for testing. Often on account of reasons external to thechild’s thinking, they are unable to grasp the requirements of a task, even when carefuladaptation to the setting is attempted. Adults in the rural setting often commented on the taskas it was proceeding. Field work for children in rural areas is transacted in the home of the childoften while many onlookers are watching. There is no question of finding an isolated, individualspace for the assessment procedure. This makes assessments almost impossible to standardize.

Concluding comments

These were some examples of research findings from Indian studies on children. The particularchallenges of multiparty, socially dense settings require very careful introduction, approach,and data collection as well as interpretation to keep the community and its individuals withinprimary focus along with the research objectives. If research objectives take precedence over areasonable presentation of participants, then the findings of these studies were likely to havebeen different. It would have been quite simple to find the rural children backward in theirdevelopmental expressions, and the urban children somewhat better, but still faring differentlyfrom the expectations of their age mates in other locations. The instance of a child described inthe chapter, who was completely lost during a procedure while her constant companion, theolder sister was allowed to sit beside (for her comfort) but not allowed to speak, is anillustration of the demands of individualized research procedures in a social context that is


characterized by multiparty interactions. Evaluating her as “backward” simply because shewas used to the constant presence of her sibling would be quite unfair.

Overreliance on standardized procedures (even after adaptation) and the absence of considerationto different perspectives involved are likely to lead to poor interpretation (Gillespie and Cornish2009) and a consequent underestimation of children’s potential when the testing procedures arewidely different from the social conditions the child is used to. Adaptations are usually done of thecontent and detail rather than procedure; we need also to consider procedural adaptations. In ourexperience, children often clam up more on account of their unfamiliarity with the social setting ofthe procedure rather than the demands of a task. In order to capture a vivid and authentic picture ofany phenomena, researchers need to ensure that the procedures are in consonance with the socialcontext within which the research is being conducted. This is particularly serious when workingwith children, although adults too can find themselves dumbfounded or misunderstood in research.

While exploring the cultural variation in cognition, Scribner (1976) argues that when adultsin non-technological societies were faced with Piagetian tasks prepared for young children,they often failed to explain the phenomena, while ethnographic study displayed complex andsophisticated conceptual activity. The experiment, she adds, is an unnatural situation (Scribner1976 p. 313). The failure thus, was not one of the participants to understand the phenomenon,but one of the researchers to find an appropriate method of accessing that knowledge. Theinability to recognize that research methods also constitute important cultural patterns, socialframes, and ideological assumptions can lead to serious inadequacies in our interpretations.What are some of the strategies that will assist with more realistic research?

These examples have attempted to demonstrate how the subjective, inter-subjective andinter-objective dynamics and the interactions between and among partners in research canbecome manifested. A researcher needs to be aware of this dialogicality of the researchencounter at every stage of a study, from planning the work to the interpretation of resultsand implications. In these examples, if the focus had been placed only on intra-psychologicaldimensions, without attention to context and convention, the studies would have been quitebereft of meaning and relevance. If we adopt multiple methods, and train ourselves to acceptdata from different disciplines within the same culture (psychology, anthropology, economics,others), we are far more likely to accomplish our task of discovering more about people.

Acknowledgments Some of the research quoted in this chapter has been possible on account of generousresearch grants. The authors would like to thank the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, India; and theIndian Council for Social Science Research, New Delhi, India.

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Nandita Chaudhary, Ph. D. works as Associate Professor at the Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi. Shehas been a Fulbright scholar at the Psychology Department, Clark University, USA, during the years 1993–94. She is the author of “Listening to Culture” (2004, Sage), and co-edited two volumes, “Dynamic processmethodology and the social and developmental sciences” (2009, Springer) and “Constructing researchmethods: Insights from the field” (2008, Sage). Additionally, she has authored several papers in national andinternational journals and books. She is the Associate Editor for “Culture and Psychology” (Sage), Member,Editorial Board, “Fathering”, consulting editor for several other journals like “Psychological Studies”.

Current themes of research:

Nandita has participated in international collaborations in the area of culture, children’s development and familystudies, and continues to supervise several research endeavors and doctoral students. She has also been anadvisor to several national and international agencies during her career.

Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:

Chaudhary, N. (2012). Collisions, confrontations and collaborations of the self in culture: A commentary. In M.B. Ligorio, & M. César (Eds.), The interplay between dialogical learning and dialogical self. Series ed. J.Valsiner, Book series, Advances in Cultural Psychology. (pp. 291-316). Charlotte, NC.: Information Age.

Chaudhary, N. (2012). Father’s role in the Indian family: A story that must be told. In D. Shwalb, B. Shwalb, &M. Lamb (Eds.), The father’s role: Cross-cultural perspectives. (pp. 68 – 94). New York: Routledge.

Chaudhary, N. (2012). Negotiating with autonomy and relatedness: Dialogical processes in everyday lives ofIndians. Chapter 9 (pp. 189 – 184). In H. M. J. Hermans, & T. Gieser (Eds.), Handbook of DialogicalSelf Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Chaudhary, N. (2011). Affective networks: The social terrain of a complex culture. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), Oxfordhandbook of culture and psychology. (pp. 901 – 912). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chaudhary, N. (2011). Rethinking human development research and theory in contemporary Indian society. In G.Misra (Ed.), Contemporary Indian psychology. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Punya Pillai, Ph. D. is Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development and Childhood Studies, LadyIrwin College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India. She has recently completed her doctoratefrom University of Delhi on “Children’s understanding of truth”.

Current themes of research:

Her areas of interest are Cognition, Language and Developmental processes in Culture.

Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:

Tuli, M., Pillai, P., & Chaudhary, N. (2010). Context and processes of infant development: What we do (anddon’t) know about babies. Psychological Foundations, XI(II), 13 – 20.

Chaudhary, N. & Pillai, P. (2009). How infants know minds: A book review. Psychological Studies, 54(2): 163-165


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Research and the young child in India: shifting from alienation to adaptability using an expanded framework