Marina M. Doucerain

Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Is Prospectively Associated With Early Trajectories of Acculturation Among New International Students

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is a marker of parasympathetic activity hypothesized to index a neurophysiological system supporting social engagement behaviors. Following migration, people must navigate and adapt to a new sociocultural environment. Whether RSA affects this psychological acculturation process is unknown. This longitudinal study investigated whether resting RSA on arrival in the receiving country was related to changes in cultural orientations toward both mainstream and heritage cultural groups during the first 5 months following migration. Sixty new international students provided information on their cultural orientations toward the mainstream and heritage cultural groups shortly after arrival in the new country and 2 and 5 months after the first assessment. Results indicated that both heritage and mainstream orientations increased linearly over time. Furthermore, greater resting RSA at baseline was prospectively associated with larger increases in positive orientation toward the mainstream culture but not the heritage culture, over and above individual differences in extraversion, depression, and anxiety. These data provide longitudinal evidence that higher RSA promotes an approach-oriented stance toward a novel cultural environment.

Second language social networks and communication-related acculturative stress: the role of interconnectedness

Although a substantial amount of cross-cultural psychology research has investigated acculturative stress in general, little attention has been devoted specifically to communication-related acculturative stress (CRAS). In line with the view that cross-cultural adaptation and second language (L2) learning are social and interpersonal phenomena, the present study examines the hypothesis that migrants’ L2 social network size and interconnectedness predict CRAS. The main idea underlying this hypothesis is that L2 social networks play an important role in fostering social and cultural aspects of communicative competence. Specifically, higher interconnectedness may reflect greater access to unmodified natural cultural representations and L2 communication practices, thus fostering communicative competence through observational learning. As such, structural aspects of migrants’ L2 social networks may be protective against acculturative stress arising from chronic communication difficulties. Results from a study of first generation migrant students (N = 100) support this idea by showing that both inclusiveness and density of the participants’ L2 network account for unique variance in CRAS but not in general acculturative stress. These results support the idea that research on cross-cultural adaptation would benefit from disentangling the various facets of acculturative stress and that the structure of migrants’ L2 network matters for language related outcomes. Finally, this study contributes to an emerging body of work that attempts to integrate cultural/cross-cultural research on acculturation and research on intercultural communication and second language learning.

Initial Mainstream Cultural Orientations Predict Early Social Participation in the Mainstream Cultural Group

This work adopts a perspective that construes acculturation as a dynamic intergroup process, and social contact with members of the new community as a key mechanism underlying cultural adaptation. We argue that migrants’ initial self-reported mainstream cultural orientation constitutes an important antecedent of early social participation in the new community. Results from two longitudinal studies of newly arrived international students (N = 98 and N = 60) show that more positive initial mainstream cultural orientations prospectively predict higher social participation, specifically in the mainstream group, over the following months. This relation held after controlling for important alternative predictors, namely, extraversion/shyness, mainstream language proficiency, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a physiological index of social engagement capacity. These studies focus on the very initial stages of the temporal dynamics of acculturation, contribute to bridging research on acculturation and on intergroup relations, and establish a link between cultural orientations, a subjective attitudinal construct, and concrete social engagement behaviors.