Tanya Macgillivray
Biographic Data
| ID | 230952 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tanya Macgillivray |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tanya |
| FAMILY NAME | Macgillivray |
| SIGNATURE | MACGILLIVRAY T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Simon Fraser University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5937-5144 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Mutual Joy: The Critical Role of Shared Positive Emotions in the Development of Communication
The mutual enjoyment infants and caregivers experience when interacting with each other forms the foundation for human forms of communication, which then makes human languages and thinking possible. We explore the role of emotions and mutually joyful interaction in structuring the relationships in which communication emerges. Understanding communicative development is facilitated by reflecting on the social and emotional cradle infants experience…
Cultural Diversity in Infant Motor Development: A Comparison of Early Locomotor Experience
Most of the research on infant motor development is based on studies with infants and caregivers living in urban and western societies, which is problematic from a scientific and ethical perspective. Both ethnographic descriptions as well as a handful of empirical investigations across diverse cultural contexts indicate there may be significant variability in early motor experience across cultures. To better understand whether differences in earl…
Field Methods for Investigating Onset and Progression of Middle Childhood Physical, Hormonal, Cognitive and Social Development
Child development is biocultural, meaning both genetics and experience with the ecocultural context shape ontogeny. Developmental systems—physical, hormonal, cognitive, social, among others—are dynamic and have points of interrelation with each other and local environments, as well as tradeoffs in their patterning. These articulations challenge our ability to discern the factors influencing our phenotypic outcomes; further, similar outcomes may n…
Construct validity in cross-cultural, developmental research: Challenges and Strategies for Improvement
The recent expansion of cross-cultural research in the social sciences has led to increased discourse on methodological issues involved when studying culturally diverse populations. However, discussions have largely overlooked the challenges of construct validity – ensuring instruments are measuring what they are intended to – in diverse cultural contexts, particularly in developmental research. We contend that cross-cultural developmental resear…
A roadmap to doing culturally grounded developmental science
This paper provides a roadmap for engaging in cross-cultural, developmental research in practical, ethical, and community-engaged ways. To cultivate the flexibility necessary for conducting cross-cultural research, we structure our roadmap as a series of questions that each research program might consider prior to embarking on cross-cultural examinations in developmental science. Within each topic, we focus on the challenges and opportunities inh…
Fatherhood and Child–Father Attachment in Two Small-Scale Societies
Variation in attachment quality was assessed in 92 one- to three-year-olds’ (49 female, 43 male) attachment to their father, within and across two small-scale, subsistence populations: the Tsimane of lowland Bolivia ( n = 29 dyads) and Tannese of Vanuatu ( n = 63 dyads). Overall, the Tsimane and Tannese populations show similarity in the patterning of child–father attachment relative to samples from industrialized societies, with 52% of Tsimane d…
Decentring the Western perspective on knowledge: A reply to commentaries on ‘Building a cooperative child: evidence and lessons cross-culturally’ by Tanya Broesch and Erin Robbins
Decentring the Western perspective on knowledge: a reply to commentaries on ‘Building a cooperative child: evidence and lessons cross-culturally’ by Tanya Broesch and Erin Robbins" published on 20 Nov 2023 by Bristol University Press
Building a cooperative child: Evidence and lessons cross-culturally
Humans cooperate with one another to a degree that is unmatched in any other species on the planet. However, there is enormous variability in cooperative thinking and behaviour within and between cultures. Here, we identify the features of the early social environment that we know to be predictors of positive elements of cooperation and create a roadmap for parents, educators and policymakers to guide them through the process of encouraging coope…
Emotional Development Across Cultures
The biological characteristics of human infants set up a developmental trajectory toward forming emotional attachments with caregivers. The caregiver–infant system sets the stage for later development and learning through these early interactions in a bidirectional manner. This system is common across cultures and social contexts, and therefore we see similar emotion recognition, production, and communication across diverse contexts in the first …
Variation in caregivers' references to their toddlers: Child-directed speech in Vanuatu and Canada
The authors examined similarities and differences in Canadian and ni-Vanuatu caregivers' child-directed speech to their toddlers (N = 35, Mage: 21 months, 20 girls). Speech samples were collected (2013–2016) during free play and analyzed with a focus on describing parents' references to their toddlers. Canadian caregivers referred significantly more to toddlers' tangible characteristics (relative risk, RR = 2.12) and internal states (RR = 2.31), …
The Development of Giving in Forms of Object Exchange: Exploring the Roots of Communication and Morality in Early Interaction around Objects
Giving is an act of great social importance across cultures, with communicative as well as moral dimensions because it is linked to sharing and fairness. We critically evaluate various explanations for how this social process develops in infancy and take a process-relational approach, using naturalistic observations to illustrate forms of interaction involving the exchange of objects and possible developmental trajectories for the emergence of di…
Explaining cross-cultural variation in mirror self-recognition: New insights into the ontogeny of objective self-awareness
Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is considered to be the benchmark of objective self-awareness-the ability to think about oneself. Cross-cultural research showed that there are systematic differences in toddlers' MSR abilities between 18 and 24 months. Understanding whether these differences result from systematic variation in early social experiences will help us understand the processes through which objective self-awareness develops. In this stud…
Opportunities for Interaction: Natural Observations of Children’s Social Behavior in Five Societies
The Life History of Learning Subsistence Skills among Hadza and BaYaka Foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo
Aspects of human life history and cognition, such as our long childhoods and extensive use of teaching, theoretically evolved to facilitate the acquisition of complex tasks. The present paper empirically examines the relationship between subsistence task difficulty and age of acquisition, rates of teaching, and rates of oblique transmission among Hadza and BaYaka foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo. We further examine cross-cultural …
BaYaka Adolescent Boys Nominate Accessible Adult Men as Preferred Spear Hunting Models
Humans are selective social learners. In a cultural landscape with many potential models, learners must balance the cost associated with learning from successful models with learning from accessible ones. Using structured interviews, we investigate the model selection biases of Congolese BaYaka adolescent boys learning to hunt with spears (n = 24; mean age [mage] = 15.79 years; range, 12-20 years). Results from social relations models suggest tha…
Universal norm psychology leads to societal diversity in prosocial behaviour and development
Learning From Others: Selective Requests by 3-Year-Olds of Three Cultures
Humans are unique in their propensity to intentionally instruct and subsequently learn a wide range of information from others. We investigated when and how young children become socially resourceful in using others' expertise, and whether the early propensity to request for help varies across diverse societies. We tested and compared 44 two- to four-year-old children growing up in urban United States and Japan, and rural Canada. Children were fa…
Motherese
Social awareness and early self-recognition
Cultural Variations in Children’s Mirror Self-Recognition
Western children first show signs of mirror self-recognition (MSR) from 18 to 24 months of age, the benchmark index of emerging self-concept. Such signs include self-oriented behaviors while looking at the mirror to touch or remove a mark surreptitiously placed on the child’s face. The authors attempted to replicate this finding across cultures using a simplified version of the classic “mark test.” In Experiment 1, Kenyan children ( N = 82, 18 to…
Fairness in Distributive Justice by 3- and 5-Year-Olds Across Seven Cultures
This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, yo…
The Life History of Learning Subsistence Skills among Hadza and BaYaka Foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo
Aspects of human life history and cognition, such as our long childhoods and extensive use of teaching, theoretically evolved to facilitate the acquisition of complex tasks. The present paper empirically examines the relationship between subsistence task difficulty and age of acquisition, rates of teaching, and rates of oblique transmission among Hadza and BaYaka foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo. We further examine cross-cultural …
Fairness in Distributive Justice by 3- and 5-Year-Olds Across Seven Cultures
This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, yo…
BaYaka Adolescent Boys Nominate Accessible Adult Men as Preferred Spear Hunting Models
Humans are selective social learners. In a cultural landscape with many potential models, learners must balance the cost associated with learning from successful models with learning from accessible ones. Using structured interviews, we investigate the model selection biases of Congolese BaYaka adolescent boys learning to hunt with spears (n = 24; mean age [mage] = 15.79 years; range, 12-20 years). Results from social relations models suggest tha…
Universal norm psychology leads to societal diversity in prosocial behaviour and development
Building a cooperative child: Evidence and lessons cross-culturally
Humans cooperate with one another to a degree that is unmatched in any other species on the planet. However, there is enormous variability in cooperative thinking and behaviour within and between cultures. Here, we identify the features of the early social environment that we know to be predictors of positive elements of cooperation and create a roadmap for parents, educators and policymakers to guide them through the process of encouraging coope…
Opportunities for Interaction: Natural Observations of Children’s Social Behavior in Five Societies
Construct validity in cross-cultural, developmental research: Challenges and Strategies for Improvement
The recent expansion of cross-cultural research in the social sciences has led to increased discourse on methodological issues involved when studying culturally diverse populations. However, discussions have largely overlooked the challenges of construct validity – ensuring instruments are measuring what they are intended to – in diverse cultural contexts, particularly in developmental research. We contend that cross-cultural developmental resear…
Explaining cross-cultural variation in mirror self-recognition: New insights into the ontogeny of objective self-awareness
Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is considered to be the benchmark of objective self-awareness-the ability to think about oneself. Cross-cultural research showed that there are systematic differences in toddlers' MSR abilities between 18 and 24 months. Understanding whether these differences result from systematic variation in early social experiences will help us understand the processes through which objective self-awareness develops. In this stud…
Learning From Others: Selective Requests by 3-Year-Olds of Three Cultures
Humans are unique in their propensity to intentionally instruct and subsequently learn a wide range of information from others. We investigated when and how young children become socially resourceful in using others' expertise, and whether the early propensity to request for help varies across diverse societies. We tested and compared 44 two- to four-year-old children growing up in urban United States and Japan, and rural Canada. Children were fa…
Fairness in Distributive Justice by 3- and 5-Year-Olds Across Seven Cultures
This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, yo…
Cultural Variations in Children’s Mirror Self-Recognition
Western children first show signs of mirror self-recognition (MSR) from 18 to 24 months of age, the benchmark index of emerging self-concept. Such signs include self-oriented behaviors while looking at the mirror to touch or remove a mark surreptitiously placed on the child’s face. The authors attempted to replicate this finding across cultures using a simplified version of the classic “mark test.” In Experiment 1, Kenyan children ( N = 82, 18 to…
Social awareness and early self-recognition
Motherese
Learning From Others: Selective Requests by 3-Year-Olds of Three Cultures
Humans are unique in their propensity to intentionally instruct and subsequently learn a wide range of information from others. We investigated when and how young children become socially resourceful in using others' expertise, and whether the early propensity to request for help varies across diverse societies. We tested and compared 44 two- to four-year-old children growing up in urban United States and Japan, and rural Canada. Children were fa…
Universal norm psychology leads to societal diversity in prosocial behaviour and development
The Development of Giving in Forms of Object Exchange: Exploring the Roots of Communication and Morality in Early Interaction around Objects
Giving is an act of great social importance across cultures, with communicative as well as moral dimensions because it is linked to sharing and fairness. We critically evaluate various explanations for how this social process develops in infancy and take a process-relational approach, using naturalistic observations to illustrate forms of interaction involving the exchange of objects and possible developmental trajectories for the emergence of di…
Explaining cross-cultural variation in mirror self-recognition: New insights into the ontogeny of objective self-awareness
Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is considered to be the benchmark of objective self-awareness-the ability to think about oneself. Cross-cultural research showed that there are systematic differences in toddlers' MSR abilities between 18 and 24 months. Understanding whether these differences result from systematic variation in early social experiences will help us understand the processes through which objective self-awareness develops. In this stud…
Opportunities for Interaction: Natural Observations of Children’s Social Behavior in Five Societies
The Life History of Learning Subsistence Skills among Hadza and BaYaka Foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo
Aspects of human life history and cognition, such as our long childhoods and extensive use of teaching, theoretically evolved to facilitate the acquisition of complex tasks. The present paper empirically examines the relationship between subsistence task difficulty and age of acquisition, rates of teaching, and rates of oblique transmission among Hadza and BaYaka foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo. We further examine cross-cultural …
BaYaka Adolescent Boys Nominate Accessible Adult Men as Preferred Spear Hunting Models
Humans are selective social learners. In a cultural landscape with many potential models, learners must balance the cost associated with learning from successful models with learning from accessible ones. Using structured interviews, we investigate the model selection biases of Congolese BaYaka adolescent boys learning to hunt with spears (n = 24; mean age [mage] = 15.79 years; range, 12-20 years). Results from social relations models suggest tha…
Emotional Development Across Cultures
The biological characteristics of human infants set up a developmental trajectory toward forming emotional attachments with caregivers. The caregiver–infant system sets the stage for later development and learning through these early interactions in a bidirectional manner. This system is common across cultures and social contexts, and therefore we see similar emotion recognition, production, and communication across diverse contexts in the first …
Variation in caregivers' references to their toddlers: Child-directed speech in Vanuatu and Canada
The authors examined similarities and differences in Canadian and ni-Vanuatu caregivers' child-directed speech to their toddlers (N = 35, Mage: 21 months, 20 girls). Speech samples were collected (2013–2016) during free play and analyzed with a focus on describing parents' references to their toddlers. Canadian caregivers referred significantly more to toddlers' tangible characteristics (relative risk, RR = 2.12) and internal states (RR = 2.31), …
A roadmap to doing culturally grounded developmental science
This paper provides a roadmap for engaging in cross-cultural, developmental research in practical, ethical, and community-engaged ways. To cultivate the flexibility necessary for conducting cross-cultural research, we structure our roadmap as a series of questions that each research program might consider prior to embarking on cross-cultural examinations in developmental science. Within each topic, we focus on the challenges and opportunities inh…
Fatherhood and Child–Father Attachment in Two Small-Scale Societies
Variation in attachment quality was assessed in 92 one- to three-year-olds’ (49 female, 43 male) attachment to their father, within and across two small-scale, subsistence populations: the Tsimane of lowland Bolivia ( n = 29 dyads) and Tannese of Vanuatu ( n = 63 dyads). Overall, the Tsimane and Tannese populations show similarity in the patterning of child–father attachment relative to samples from industrialized societies, with 52% of Tsimane d…
Decentring the Western perspective on knowledge: A reply to commentaries on ‘Building a cooperative child: evidence and lessons cross-culturally’ by Tanya Broesch and Erin Robbins
Decentring the Western perspective on knowledge: a reply to commentaries on ‘Building a cooperative child: evidence and lessons cross-culturally’ by Tanya Broesch and Erin Robbins" published on 20 Nov 2023 by Bristol University Press
Building a cooperative child: Evidence and lessons cross-culturally
Humans cooperate with one another to a degree that is unmatched in any other species on the planet. However, there is enormous variability in cooperative thinking and behaviour within and between cultures. Here, we identify the features of the early social environment that we know to be predictors of positive elements of cooperation and create a roadmap for parents, educators and policymakers to guide them through the process of encouraging coope…
Mutual Joy: The Critical Role of Shared Positive Emotions in the Development of Communication
The mutual enjoyment infants and caregivers experience when interacting with each other forms the foundation for human forms of communication, which then makes human languages and thinking possible. We explore the role of emotions and mutually joyful interaction in structuring the relationships in which communication emerges. Understanding communicative development is facilitated by reflecting on the social and emotional cradle infants experience…
Cultural Diversity in Infant Motor Development: A Comparison of Early Locomotor Experience
Most of the research on infant motor development is based on studies with infants and caregivers living in urban and western societies, which is problematic from a scientific and ethical perspective. Both ethnographic descriptions as well as a handful of empirical investigations across diverse cultural contexts indicate there may be significant variability in early motor experience across cultures. To better understand whether differences in earl…
Field Methods for Investigating Onset and Progression of Middle Childhood Physical, Hormonal, Cognitive and Social Development
Child development is biocultural, meaning both genetics and experience with the ecocultural context shape ontogeny. Developmental systems—physical, hormonal, cognitive, social, among others—are dynamic and have points of interrelation with each other and local environments, as well as tradeoffs in their patterning. These articulations challenge our ability to discern the factors influencing our phenotypic outcomes; further, similar outcomes may n…
Construct validity in cross-cultural, developmental research: Challenges and Strategies for Improvement
The recent expansion of cross-cultural research in the social sciences has led to increased discourse on methodological issues involved when studying culturally diverse populations. However, discussions have largely overlooked the challenges of construct validity – ensuring instruments are measuring what they are intended to – in diverse cultural contexts, particularly in developmental research. We contend that cross-cultural developmental resear…
Psychology (17 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (12 works) · Developmental psychology (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (7 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (5 works) · Cognitive psychology (4 works)