This exploratory cross-sectional study examined fluid cognitive skills and standardized verbal IQ scores in relation to cultural engagement amongst Tohono O'odham children (N = 99; ages 7 to 12 years). Guardians with higher socioeconomic status engaged their children in more cultural activities, and participation in more cultural activities…

The developing views of the purposes of school learning (PSLs) and related achievement among immigrant Chinese preschoolers and their European American (EA) age-mates were examined. Both culture and socioeconomic status (SES) were considered simultaneously, an often neglected research approach to studying Asian children. One hundred and fifty…

Guided by theories of cultural participation, the authors examined mother-child, father-child, and triadic interactive behaviors in 141 Israeli and Palestinian couples and their firstborn child at 5 and 33 months as antecedents of children's social competence. Four parent-child measures (parent sensitivity, child social engagement, parental…

Parent and teacher data for 14,990 children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth were used in multilevel analyses to examine the relationship between ethnicity, children's aggression and emotional problems, and parenting. Using parent and teacher report, relationships between ethnicity and child behavior were present but…

Cultural and age differences in responses to contamination and conceptions of purification were examined in Hindu Indian (N = 125) and American (N = 106) 4- to 5-year-olds and 8-year-olds, who were provided with stories of juice contaminated by contact with a cockroach, a human hair, and a stranger (via sipping). Children who rejected the juice as…

Childhood obesity is increasingly prevalent in Western and non-Western societies. The authors related multiple dimensions of physical self-concept to body composition for 763 Chinese children aged 8 to 15 and compared the results with Western research. Compared with Western research, gender differences favoring boys were generally much smaller for…

Developmental and cultural factors in the use of imagery in learning and retaining specific paired associate tasks were studied in Anglo and Spanish American children. (ST)

Parents sang a song once to their infants and once in a simulated setting. The song's pitch was higher and tempo slower for infant-directed than simulated singing. Listeners of varying child care experience, musical background, and culture were able to identify which version was infant-directed. Listeners who rated parents' emotional engagement…

Suggestions are presented for specific changes in social scientists' approaches to minority group problems. (Author)

The purpose of this study was to examine cultural influences on conceptual orientations of learning in U.S. and Chinese preschoolers. A sample of 188 preschoolers 4-6 years of age provided free-narrative responses to 2 story beginnings about the learning behavior of 2 protagonists, 1 who worked hard and 1 who gave up. Results showed that despite…

Challenges Gentner's (1982) claim that nouns are universally predominant in children's early vocabularies, noting that when a conservative method of counting nouns was used, 9 out of 10 22-month-old monolingual Mandarin-speaking children produced more verbs or action words than nouns or object labels in their naturalistic speech. (MDM)

Compares older adults' text recall and study strategies with those of two groups of young adults. One of the latter groups was enrolled in classes; the other was not. Findings suggest that memory differences between old and young may result as much from cultural factors as from biological deterioration. (Author/RWB)

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate conservation acquisition across subcultural groups. (Author)

Draws on journal articles to discuss how cultural variability can be reconciled with developmental theory and dimensions that matter most for development. Argues that cross-cultural research should be predicated on a model of how culture interacts with forces that guide development and that interpretation of cross-cultural research is severely…

Nisan responds to Turiel, Nucci, and Smetana's (1988) critique by stating that it merely serves to emphasize the difficulty involved in distinguishing between the moral and the conventional without reference to the cultural meaning of the act. (PCB)