Monika Abels

• Caregiver-infant interactions
• Caregivers’ ethnotheories
• Social cognition
• Eco-cultural approach

Research interests: My research focuses on the question how eco-cultural factors are reflected in infants’ social environments, what experiences infants are exposed to and how they develop related to this. My research focuses on different aspects of this complex relation. I have studied these aspects in cross-cultural studies involving, among others, Indian, Tanzanian hunter-gatherer, German, Dutch and US-American families: In addition, I have compared families within one country, for example families living in rural and urban areas or with different socio-economic status. I have also explored phenomena that are specific to certain places or groups.

One aspect I am interested in is how caregivers perceive their role and behavior related to the infants and children they interact with. The idea is that caregivers’ values, preferences, and child-rearing choices are related to factors such as their living conditions, occupation, and formal educational experiences. Recent research in this area has explored questions such as why Norwegian mothers let their infants nap outside or what parents think about their mobile phone use in the presence of their children.

Another aspect I am interested in, is how caregivers interact with infants and children. This research is based on direct or video-supported observations of behavior. While early studies I was involved in focused on babies and the frequency with which they experienced behaviors such as body contact or face-to-face interactions, more recently I have become interested in behaviors related to directing and sharing attention. Another behavior that I study is language, in this context mainly language addressed to children. Recent studies on interactions included research on how distracting mobile phones are to caregiver-child interactions and what different types of speech acts (post-)hunter-gatherer children hear related to the type of their interactional partner and livelihood of their group.

Finally, I am interested in how the children in these different contexts develop and experience them. I am mainly interested in children’s social cognition. My research has examined aspects such as triadic interactions, communication development and pro-social behavior. Currently, I am also developing projects related to the development of Theory of Mind and emotion understanding.

Contact information:

e-mail: m.abels@uit.no

Website: https://uit.no/ansatte/m.abels