Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

Transfer of mathematical problem-solving ability was studied among adult unschooled cloth merchants and tailors in West Africa. The purpose was to examine the role of familiarity of problem components and of the overall problem form. Experimental tasks tested arithmetic ability, measurement facts, and ability to solve variations of typical cloth-selling arithmetic problems. Results showed cloth merchants and tailors to be equivalent in basic arithmetic and measurement skills but that cloth merchants were better able to organize these skills to effectively solve price problems with both familiar and unusual materials. Using unfamiliar numerical content interfered with the ability to execute component arithmetic operations for both professional groups.

Some of the findings of the nine-country "Value of Children Study" pertaining to the perceived value of children in providing old-age security to their parents are presented. To what extent this value is attributed by parents to their children and what benefits are expected from children were assessed in the context of socioeconomic development. Specifically, it was found that with development, the old-age security value of the child decreases, which appears to be a key process contributing to lower fertility as well as to the modification of values concerning the place of the child and the care of the aged in society. Thus, the value attributed to the child forms an explanatory link at the individual level between development and declining fertility.

Previous descriptive studies of development of cooperation and competition among United States and Mexican children have sampled a limited age range and relied predominantly on behavioral experimental game measures with a very limited number of response alternatives. In this experiment, open-ended verbal conflict resolution questions were asked of Anglo American, Mexican American, and Mexican children. Content analysis of children's responses indicated that previous conclusions regarding Mexican-United States differences were supported at early childhood age ranges. However, with increasing age, all children responded more to imaginary conflict situations with conflict, so cultural differences diminished with age. Further, on the verbal conflict resolution questions, Mexican American and Anglo American children did not differ, possibly indicating differences in what is assessed by the verbal conflict resolution questions and experimental games.

Three generations of Mexican American adolescents and Anglo Americans rated persons of Mexican descent living in the United States in terms of both positive and negative stereotypes. In general, Anglo American subjects held significantly less favorable stereotypes of Mexican descent persons than any of the three Mexican American groups. However, a significant linear trend for both positive and negative group stereotypes indicated that with each successive generation (first through third), the stereotypes of Mexican Americans approached the less favorable image held by Anglo Americans. Results are discussed in terms of a two-dimensional model that includes the dual effects of Anglo American prejudice and the degree to which Mexican Americans retain an identification with their traditional culture.

The purpose of this project was to develop a Spanish version of the Psychological Screening Inventory for use with Costa Rican adolescents and to assess its psychometric equivalence to the English version and its external validity. In Study 1, norms were generated on 600 male and 600 female high school students who were stratified on age and socioeconomic level and were geographically representative. Comparisons with the PSI English version were made for means, scale reliabilities, scale intercorrelations, and item endorsement frequencies. Study II compared the PSI Spanish version scores of students who did and did not request counseling. The Spanish version showed reasonable psychometric equivalence to the English version and was also shown to possess preliminary external validity. Its potential utility for use with U.S. Spanish-speaking populations is discussed.

Preschool children completed drawings of the outside and inside of the human body. The drawings were scored for cultural, development, and health status features utilizing a scoring system which coded number of components, colors, and style. Japanese children were less likely than American children to add facial features, clothing detail, or to color arms and legs on the outside figure. All children typically drew three components inside the body; Japanese children were more likely to draw hearts and American children to draw brains; girls were more likely to include stomachs than boys. When compared to data from hospitalized preschool children, differences were found in content but not quantity of internal components. Maternal perception of children's vulnerability to change in health status as adults was significantly related to ratio of inside/ outside scores in both Japanese and American subjects.

The impact of ethnic group, disability framework, and responsibility for the disability on evaluation of the physically disabled was examined in Israel. Arab and Jewish students were asked to evaluate a disabled person shown on videotape. Before and after seeing the videotape, subjects were given additional information pertaining to the circumstances in which the person became disabled. The results of the three-way analysis of variance indicated that disability per se was not the sole variable that influenced evaluations of the disabled; the variables of the study superimposed on the disability did affect the evaluations of the disabled. Disability framework, that is, civilian versus military disabled, appears to have the strongest single effect on evaluation of disabled persons. Responsibility for the disability influenced the evaluations in certain identifiable contexts. Ethnic group expressed itself as a general variable and its impact could only be assessed in relation to the other variables.

The work of Wayne Dennis on animism in Hopi Indian children is replicated after 40 years. The results indicate that while little change has taken place in the Hopi child's attribution of life to inanimate objects, there is a substantial decrease in the attribution of consciousness to these same objects. An additional result is that the moral realism of the present day Hopi children has decreased markedly as compared with the original study.

The Stroop Color-word test was administered to two groups of bilinguals to assess the relative influence of interlingual versus intralingual interference. Subjects included 10 native Turkish speakers whose second language was English and 10 native English speakers who spoke Turkish fluently. Each subject was asked to vocalize color names in Turkish and in English, using a control list (XXX), a Turkish list, and an English list of color words written in a contrasting color ink from the meaning of the color word. Intralingual interference was greater than interlingual for American subjects, but Turks experienced both forms of interference almost equally. Overall interference was greater for Americans. Results suggest that interlingual interference may be related to familiarity with a language. Implications for assessing fluency in a second language are discussed.