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The present study investigated how Chinese children develop theory of mind (ToM) in a language environment with limited mental state talk that is rich in behavior discourse. In Study 1, 60 mothers shared a wordless storybook with their 3-4-year-olds. The children completed two false-belief tasks and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised at the same time and again 1 year later. Mothers' early behavior clarifications during book-sharing predicted children's later false-belief understanding independent of children's early false-belief scores; children's early verbal ability; maternal education; and mothers' early mental state clarifications, simple mental state mentions, and simple behavior mentions. Using a discussion paradigm, Study 2 experimentally exposed 46 children aged 4 to 5 years to mental state or behavior clarifications or physical features of object talk (control group) through storytelling. Children in the experimental groups showed improvement in false-belief tasks from the pretest to the posttest. These findings indicate that behavior clarifications facilitated Chinese children's mental understanding, suggesting a culture-specific mechanism for ToM development.

This study examined how interparental conflict styles related to Chinese children's overt and relational aggression directly and indirectly through parenting behaviors. Mothers (n = 670) and fathers (n = 570) reported their overt and covert interparental conflict styles and different parenting behaviors. Children's (n = 671) aggression was assessed by peer nominations. Consistent with previous research, coercive control and psychological control showed positive associations with children's overt and relational aggression, which varied by parent-child gender. The significant indirect effects of interparental conflict styles showed that paternal overt conflict was positively related to boys' aggression mediating through paternal coercive control and that maternal covert conflict was positively related to boys' aggression mediating through psychological control. Discussions regarding parent-child gender moderations and implications of the findings in the Chinese cultural context are provided. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

Cultures differ with respect to parenting strategies already during infancy. Distal parenting, i.e., face-to-face context and object stimulation, is prevalent in urban educated middle-class families of Western cultures; proximal parenting, i.e., body contact and body stimulation, is prevalent in rural, low-educated farmer families. Parents from urban educated families in cultures with a more interdependent history use both strategies. Besides these cultural preferences, little is known about the relations between these styles as well as the behavioural systems constituting them. In this study therefore, the relations between the styles and the constituting behaviours were analysed in samples that differ with respect to their preferences of distal and proximal parenting. The hypothesized differences between the samples and the negative relationship between distal and proximal parenting, as well as between the respective behavioural systems can clearly be demonstrated. Furthermore, the impact of the sociodemographic variables with respect to the parenting strategies can be shown. Results were discussed as supporting two alternative parenting strategies that serve different socialization goals. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)

Two experiments were conducted to compare the false belief understanding of children who have no siblings, but have classmates of different ages in kindergarten. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds completed two unexpected location tasks. We found that 4-year-olds with classmates of different ages performed significantly better than those with classmates of the same age. This result was replicated in a larger sample in Experiment 2 in which the children were asked to complete an unexpected location task and an unexpected content task. The findings suggested that the presence of minds with varied ages stimulates the social cognitive understanding of young children, particularly for 4-year-olds. The findings of the present study give a particularly clear view of the effect of classmates of different ages on young children's theory of mind development, extending findings in other research on the advantage of having siblings. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

A longitudinal study and a training study were conducted to show that simply referring to others facilitated theory of mind (ToM) development in Chinese children. In Study 1, 3- to 4-year-old Chinese children (N = 52) were tested on ToM and autobiographical memory (AM). One year later, in the group of children who initially failed the false belief tasks, only those who increased their references to others in AM recall passed the tasks. In Study 2, Chinese preschoolers who were trained to talk about others through storytelling showed improvement in their ToM performance. These findings suggest alternative pathways for ToM development in non-Euro-American context.

Children's socialization environments reflect cultural models of parenting. In particular, Euro-American and Chinese families have been described as following different socialization scripts. The present study assesses parenting behaviors as well as parenting ethnotheories with respect to three-month-old babies in middle-class families in Los Angeles and Beijing. Euro-American parents' behaviors towards their children, as well as their parental ethnotheories are assumed to express the cultural model of autonomy; whereas Chinese parents' socialization strategies are assumed to be shaped by the cultural model of relatedness. The results reveal that Euro-American and Chinese mothers embody different cultural models in their verbal parenting behaviors and verbalized parenting strategies. However, the differences are not consistent and there are no differences with respect to non-verbal parenting behaviors. The results are discussed as illustrating the complexity of cultural models of parenting, where cultural messages are expressed differently in different domains. (Contains 5 tables.)

The current research aimed to investigate gender-related preferences of youths with different sexual orientations and examine the effects of gender role and sexual attraction. In Study 1, participants from China recalled the gender composition of their friends at different times, and data from 216 of them aged 17–24 were analysed. Growth curve models showed that more than half of the friends of heterosexual individuals were same-gender ones and they had an increasingly larger ratio of cross-gender best friends through adolescence, while gay men and lesbians had an increasingly larger ratio of same-gender friends and more than half of them had same-gender best friends. Gay men had a larger ratio of cross-gender friends in primary school than heterosexual men, while lesbians had a larger ratio of same-gender friends at university than heterosexual women. In Study 2, participants from China ranked their preferences for a set of character profiles and reported their gender role, and data from 141 of them aged 16–24 were analysed. Gay men and lesbians preferred same-gender persons to cross-gender ones. Gender role of the participant had an independent effect on preferences to a character with a given gender role. Findings indicated that sexual orientation has a strong impact on the gender composition of youths' friendships, and more attention should be paid to sexual minorities in this field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Previous research shows that the recipient's verbal communication about desires increases young children's sharing behavior. The current study examined how an adult partner's non‐verbal communication through eye gaze influenced sharing behavior in children from different cultures. We presented one hundred forty‐six 3‐ to 5‐year‐old American and Chinese children with a Dictator Game, in which they were asked to distribute resources between themselves and an experimenter. Children were randomly assigned to three conditions, in which the experimenter alternated her gaze between the child and the items that she wanted, or looked randomly around the room, or left when the child made decisions about sharing but claimed to come back later. Results showed that Chinese children shared more than American children did in the alternating‐gaze condition, but not in the other two conditions; furthermore, the experimenter's alternating gaze influenced Chinese children to be more generous, but had no significant effect on American children. This suggests that compared to American children, Chinese children may be more compliant with others’ requests communicated through a subtle cue of eye gaze. The study demonstrates important differences in sharing behaviors between American and Chinese preschoolers, and these differences are consistent with the cultural constructs of individualism and collectivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The critical role of the second year of life in the development of empathy is well accepted by psychologists. However, the developmental trends of the different components of empathy and the potential factors underlying these components during this critical period remain unclear. Eighty-four Chinese toddlers in the second year of life participated in the present study. Empathy-related responses were observed during three simulated procedures performed by each child's primary caregiver, the experimenter and a baby doll. An exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the different components of empathy. The shared representation of the self and others was measured using the Tasks for the Observation of Self-Concept, self/other awareness was measured with a series of mirror tests and inhibitory control was measured using the Cylinder Inhibitory Control Task. The results showed that the empathy of Chinese toddlers contains three factors: sympathy, personal distress and orientation. Potential cognitive factors contribute to the different components of empathy through both independent and joint effects. © 2016 The Authors Infant and Child Development Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We trained Mandarin-speaking Chinese children with poor false belief performance under four conditions. [•] Children trained with sentential complement with communication verbs and false representation performed significantly better on false-belief post-tests than those in control group. [•] Children in the false representation training group did not show concomitant improvements in the sentential complement tests. [•] Explicit false belief understanding can emerge even when children have little competence with sentential complement constructions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Left-behind children, as a large-scale disadvantaged group, encounter an array of risk factors that impede their academic development because of parental migration. The current study aimed at investigating the roles of left-behind cumulative risk and growth mindset on academic adjustment and exploring whether growth mindset moderated the association between left-behind cumulative risk and academic adjustment in left-behind middle school students. A total of 1184 left-behind middle school students (615 males; 12-16 years) participated in the study. Results indicated that left-behind cumulative risk is negatively associated with academic adjustment in middle school students (β = -.199, t(1183) = -7.229, p < .001). Besides, growth mindset has a protective effect on left-behind middle school students' academic adjustment (β = .386, t(1183) = 14.070, p < .001) and a moderating effect on the relationship between left-behind cumulative risk and academic adjustment (β = .394, t(1182) = 4.057, p < .001, ΔR 2  = .012). These findings suggest that family risk factors related to left-behind status affect the academic adjustment of left-behind middle school students in a superposition way, while the positive individual factor of growth mindset could protect the negative impact caused by parental migration., (© 2024 International Union of Psychological Science.)

Culture has an extraordinary influence on human behavior, unparalleled in other species. Some theories propose that humans possess learning mechanisms biologically selected specifically for social learning, which function to promote rapid enculturation. If true, it follows that information acquired via observation of another's activity might be responded to differently, compared with equivalent information acquired through one's own exploration, and that this should be the case in even very young children. To investigate this, we compared children's responses to information acquired either socially or from personal experience. The task we used allowed direct comparison between these alternative information sources, as the information value was equivalent across conditions, which has not been true of previous methods used to tackle similar questions. Across two 18-month- to 5-year-old samples (recruited in the United Kingdom and China), we found that children performed similarly following information acquired from social demonstrations, compared with personal experience. Children's use of the information thus appeared independent of source. Furthermore, children's suboptimal performance showed evidence of a consistent bias driven by motivation for exploration as well as exploitation, which was apparent across both conditions and in both samples. Our results are consistent with the view that apparent peculiarities identified in human social information use could be developmental outcomes of general-purpose learning and motivational biases, as opposed to mechanisms that have been biologically selected specifically for the acquisition of cultural information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to compute and attribute mental states to ourselves and other people. It is currently unclear whether ToM abilities are universal or whether they can be culturally influenced. To address this question, this research explored potential differences in engagement of ToM processes between two different cultures, Western (individualist) and Chinese (collectivist), using a sample of healthy adults. Participants completed a computerised false-belief task, in which they attributed beliefs to either themselves or another person, in a matched design, allowing direct comparison between "Self"- and "Other"-oriented conditions. Results revealed that both native-English speakers and native-Chinese individuals responded significantly faster to self-oriented than other-oriented questions. Results also showed that when a trial required a "perspective-shift," participants from both cultures were slower to shift from Self-to-Other than from Other-to-Self. Results indicate that despite differences in collectivism scores, culture does not influence task performance, with similar results found for both Western and non-Western participants, suggesting core and potentially universal similarities in the ToM mechanism across these two cultures.

This study aimed to explore the development of resource sharing in preschoolers and its relationship with children's theory of mind (ToM) understanding. A total of 74 2- to 4-year-old Chinese children participated in three tasks with toys that could be shared with a puppet (animated by a female experimenter). In each sharing task, the puppet communicated her desire for children's items with a series of progressively more explicit cues. Results showed that 2- and 3-year-olds relied on more explicit communicative cues to share resources with others, whereas 4-year-olds shared more spontaneously. In addition, children's ToM understanding was positively correlated with their sharing behavior independent of their age. Specifically, children who had acquired the ability to understand that people could have different beliefs about the same thing and that people were ignorant if they had not seen the fact shared more spontaneously and shared more items with their playmate than children who had not acquired these two abilities. Findings suggest that preschoolers' sharing behavior is enhanced by their ToM understanding and explicit communicative cues provided by the playmate., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This study explores maternal and paternal parenting practices (authoritative or authoritarian) and parental values and goals for toddlers among Chinese mothers and fathers in Canada and China. The participants included 126 families of 1-year-old toddlers (67 Chinese Canadians and 59 mainland Chinese). The findings revealed that Chinese Canadian parents were more supportive of authoritative practices, and Chinese parents were more likely to support authoritarian practices. Between mothers and fathers, gender differences were found within countries. Interparental agreement for parenting beliefs varied by infant gender and country. For parental values, parents generally endorsed self-confidence as the most important trait for their toddlers. Endorsement of other traits (collectivistic and individualistic) varied in importance. Links among parenting beliefs and desired personality traits for their children were also explored., (Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.)

Food transfer happens regularly in a few nonhuman primates species that are also characterized by remarkable social tolerance. Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana), or golden monkeys, which exhibit high social tolerance in their social relationships are thus of interest to see whether tolerance would extend to food transfer. In this study, branch feeding activity was observed in a semi-captive group of Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys, which consisted of 10 subjects that included a one-male unit (OMU) and an all-male unit (AMU). We recorded 1,275 food interactions over 27 days, and 892 instances of food transfer. The most commonly observed types of food transfer behavior were co-feeding (62.1%) and relaxed claim (22.8%). Of 892 food transfers, 756 (84.8%) took place in the OMU, most of which were among adults (34.7%) and among juveniles (42.1%). The transfer success rate was high in both the cases (87.9% for adults and 78.9% for juveniles). Food transfer in the AMU took place less often than that among adults in the OMU though with similar high transfer success. Food transfer between the OMU and AMU was limited to juvenile males from the OMU and adults from the AMU. These results provide the first evidence of food transfer in golden monkeys and suggest that tolerant social relationships in golden monkeys make transfer possible., ((c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)

The golden monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana) is one of the most endangered primate species due to its dramatically shrinking distribution during the past 400 years. Its populations are restricted to three isolated regions, Qinglin (QL), Sichuan/Gansu (SG), and Shennongjia (SNJ) in China. As with other snub-nosed monkeys in China and Vietnam, the biology and evolution of this species is still poorly known. To assess genetic differentiation and explore the relationships among populations of golden monkeys from different geographic locations, 379 bp of mitochondrial DNA control region (CR) hypervariable segment I (HVI) was studied from 60 individuals. Twelve haplotypes were identified from seven populations within the three regions. Haplotype diversity was high (0.845), whereas nucleotide diversity among all haplotypes was low (0.0331). The most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) among mtDNA haplotypes was estimated to have lived approximately 0.48-0.32 million years ago. None of the haplotypes is shared among any of the three regions. Phylogenetic analysis and AMOVA revealed clear and significant phylogeographic structure between the three regions. However, only SG contained haplotypes of the two main clades, indicating either incomplete random sorting of haplotypes or a complex history with phases of population subdivisions and merging of populations. The phylogeographic structure implies that R. roxellana should be regarded as separate management units (MUs) for each of the three regions. It is likely that recent phylogeographic history has shaped the pattern of genetic differentiation observed in the golden monkey and that its populations have suffered significant demographic fluctuation.