ntific community has adopted the individual and social model as alternative and opposite descriptions of human functioning and health conditions [5, 6, 9, 15–17]. Conversely, the biopsychosocial model is often meant as an integration of the two opposing models: individual and social . The individual model claims that disability is a direct consequence of disease, trauma, or other health conditions. Therefore, disability is viewed as “something imposed on top of […] impairments by the way [… disabled people] are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from society” (see p. 4 ). Hence, the disability is a problem of the individual, that is, as an individual’s deviation from the biomedical norms of structure or function that requires medical care treatments provided by health professionals. For this reason, the individual model was also defined as a medical model of disability [6, 9, 17, 19]. In disability studies, all models that define disability as being outside of religious, ethical, or aesthetic norms are encompassed within the individual model [20–22]. Therefore, every time we refer to the individual model, we also mean to include the medical one.
Conversely, from the individual model, the social model portrays disability as a political issue, created by the social environment. Physical barriers or social attitudes are considered the origin of disability, preventing access to virtual and real spaces or making social participation difficult for people with diversity in functioning. Consequently, a disability is not an attribute of an individual, but rather a complex collection of conditions, requiring social actions rather than just medical treatments .
Finally, since 2001, the ICF has used a biopsychosocial—also called interactive —model of human functioning and health which represents an integration of the two conflicting models (medical and social). To achieve this “synthesis” (see p. 28 ), the disability is not a consequence of disease but the outcome of triadic causation of three variables related to human health: health status, environment, and personal factors. In the ICF’s model, these factors are considered dimensions and not determinants of disability, as ‘pathology’ in the individual model [7, 8] or ‘environmental factors’ in the social one .
Until the last century, disability research was conducted predominantly—though not exclusively (e.g. rehabilitation theory, epidemiology, and health and social policy)—within a sociological perspective (see the British approach to disability studies: [2, 24–26]) consistent with the dominant paradigm in the social sciences known as the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM; [27, 28]) or social constructionism . The SSSM argues that procedural or algorithmic features, without content, are innate, while mental organization and categorization are heavily influenced by culture . The human mind is little more than a blank slate [28, 30–32] that incorporates a capacity for culture shaped and transformed by social factors . The SSSM influences disability studies such that disability (with its core concepts of diversity and difference) is regarded as a cultural construction process neglecting any element related to the innate cognitive architecture of humans .
The present research tested whether beliefs about disability models are transmitted culturally. Whether or not the disability models are exclusively a cultural product, they are only the outcome of a learning process. We surveyed the extent of the cultural transmission of the three disability models (individual, social, and biopsychosocial) by comparing the disability-related descriptions and beliefs of parents and their children. Accordingly, the disability models were considered as dependent variables potentially being affected by the child milieu (family value and education). To the extent that the child-related individual differences in disability models were not totally attributable to the child milieu, we hypothesized that children are not completely permeable to social representations of disability because of cognitive co