Cognitive Tempo in American, Japanese, and Israeli Children

Abstract

SALKIND, NEIL J.; KOJIMA, HIDEO; and ZELNIKER, TAMAR. Cognitive Tempo in American, Japanese, and Israeli Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 1024-1027. Data on the Matching Familiar Figures test (MFF) for over 5,000 American, Japanese, and Israeli children were used to examine cross-cultural differences in cognitive tempo. Factorial analyses of variance revealed significant main effects for age, sex, and nationality as well as age x nationality interactions for both errors and latency. Younger Japanese children made fewer errors than their American or Israeli counterparts and continued to do so until 8 years of age, when their level of accuracy approached that of 10-12-year-old American and Israeli children. The age x nationality interaction for latency revealed peak performance for Japanese children at 8 years of age, while the latency for American and Israeli children continued to increase up until about 10, eventually becoming slower than their Japanese counterparts. All 3 cultural groups tend to be characterized by highly similar developmental trends for both errors and latency, as well as a synchrony within each group between peak latency and asymptotic error scores. There also appears to be a developmental shift present, where these patterns are evidenced in Japanese children 2 years earlier than in American and Israeli children. The results are discussed in light of cultural and task demands.