Sociocultural Affiliation Research Articles

Genetic structure of Indian populations based on fifteen autosomal microsatellite loci.

BackgroundIndian populations endowed with unparalleled genetic complexity have received a great deal of attention from scientists world over. However, the fundamental question over their ancestry, whether they are all genetically similar or do exhibit differences attributable to ethnicity, language, geography or socio-cultural affiliation is still unresolved. In order to decipher their underlying genetic structure, we undertook a study on 3522 individuals belonging to 54 endogamous Indian populations representing all major ethnic, linguistic and geographic groups and assessed the genetic variation using autosomal microsatellite markers.ResultsThe distribution of the most frequent allele was uniform across populations, revealing an underlying genetic similarity. Patterns of allele distribution suggestive of ethnic or geographic propinquity were discernible only in a few of the populations and was not applicable to the entire dataset while a number of the populations exhibited distinct identities evident from the occurrence of unique alleles in them. Genetic substructuring was detected among populations originating from northeastern and southern India reflective of their migrational histories and genetic isolation respectively.ConclusionOur analyses based on autosomal microsatellite markers detected no evidence of general clustering of population groups based on ethnic, linguistic, geographic or socio-cultural affiliations. The existence of substructuring in populations from northeastern and southern India has notable implications for population genetic studies and forensic databases where broad grouping of populations based on such affiliations are frequently employed.

Co-construction of the representations of intelligence between mother and daughter: Developmental and differential approaches

The problematic of this research concerns the question of the co-construction of the representations of intelligence between mother and daughter, according to their age and contrasted socio-cultural environments. Our goal is to show that mothers and their daughters (for whom intelligence is a part of their everyday experiences, through their academic success or failure in particular) develop representations that are close and that the age of the daughters and their socio-cultural affiliation have an effect on the closeness of their representations. 262 subjects — mothers and their daughters aged 8–10 or 13–15 from contrasted socio-cultural environments — took part in this study. The data were gathered by means of a questionnaire. By putting into perspective the mother/daughter representations (their own representations and those that they think the other conveys), we can infer a co-construction of representations of intelligence between mother and daughter. Indeed, the latter develop concordant representations and identify relatively well the representations borne by the other. These concordance effects appear to be more marked between mother and female adolescent, particularly among those from a privileged background. This tends to show that the developmental dimension and the socio-cultural affiliation modulate the co-construction of representations.