Collaboration at a microscale: Cultural differences in family interactions

Using a holistic, process approach, this article brings attention to cultural differences in the prevalence of fluid synchrony in collaboration, at a microanalytic scale of analysis that is embodied in the processes of everyday life. We build on findings that in a number of Indigenous American communities, fluid and harmonious collaboration is prioritized both in community organization at a scale of years and centuries, and in everyday family interactions and researcher-organized tasks at a scale of days, hours, or minutes. We examined whether this sophisticated fluid collaboration could be seen even at a scale of fractions of seconds. At a microscale of 200-millisecond segments, Guatemalan Mayan triads of mothers and children frequently engaged mutually, in fluid synchrony together, when exploring novel objects. They did so more commonly than did European American mother-child triads, who usually engaged solo or in dyads, with one person left out, or resisted each other. This microanalysis of mutuality in family interactions reveals the role of culture in the foundations of thinking and working together in both Mayan and European American communities, and the fruitfulness of considering developmental processes holistically.