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This article examines the parent intervention program evaluated by Weber et al. (2017) and argues that there are scientific and ethical problems with such intervention efforts in applied developmental science. Scientifically, these programs rely on data from a small and narrow sample of the world's population; assume the existence of fixed developmental pathways; and pit scientific knowledge against indigenous knowledge. The authors question the critical role of talk as solely providing the rich cognitive stimulation important to school success, and the critical role of primary caregivers as teachers of children's verbal competency. Ethically, these programs do not sufficiently explore how an intervention in one aspect of child care will affect the community's culturally organized patterns of child care. [This commentary is a response to Weber, Fernald, & Diop (2017); see EJ1153152.]

This study conceptualizes a cultural model of parenting. It is argued that cultural models are expressed in the degree of familism, which informs socialization goals that are embodied in parenting ethnotheories. Three cultural models were differentiated a priori: independent, interdependent, and autonomous-related. Samples were recruited that were expected to represent these cultural models: German, Euro-American, and Greek middle-class women representing the independent cultural model; Cameroonian Nso and Gujarati farming women representing the interdependent cultural model; and urban Indian, urban Chinese, urban Mexican, and urban Costa Rican women representing the autonomous-related model. These a priori classifications were confirmed with data that addressed different levels of the cultural models of parenting. The authors further confirmed that socialization goals mediate between broader sociocultural orientations (familism) and parenting ethnotheories concerning beliefs about good parenting. The data reveal that the model of autonomous relatedness needs further theoretical and empirical refinement. Problems with empirical studies comparing participants with very different lifestyles are discussed. © 2006 Sage Publications.

In the present analysis, we test the dual systems model of adolescent risk taking in a cross-national sample of over 5,200 individuals aged 10 through 30 (M = 17.05 years, SD = 5.91) from 11 countries. We examine whether reward seeking and self-regulation make independent, additive, or interactive contributions to risk taking, and ask whether these relations differ as a function of age and culture. To compare across cultures, we conduct 2 sets of analyses: 1 comparing individuals from Asian and Western countries, and 1 comparing individuals from low- and high-GDP countries. Results indicate that reward seeking and self-regulation have largely independent associations with risk taking and that the influences of each variable on risk taking are not unique to adolescence, but that their link to risk taking varies across cultures.

Conventional psychological research has focused primarily on intrapersonal dimensions of human activity, often evading shared knowledge, interpersonal perspective-taking, and collective beliefs. The ideology of individualism and the 'embryonic fallacy' are largely responsible for the focus on the individual as an isolated entity. Most available methods for assessment are transacted through the temporary separation of a "subject" from a familiar cultural setting. In the case of children, this instantly distances them from known surroundings. When researchers adopt methods created and standardized in a different cultural context, there is a double alienation; first of the social setting, and the second, more profound (but less evident) distancing is ideological, between the shared reality of the community to which the child belongs and the culture of origin of the method. This paper provides evidence from research on Indian children to discuss the importance of adaptation to the context and shared understanding. By identifying three distinct levels of activity, the subjective, inter-subjective, and inter-objective, we bring forward some of the processes that often remain hidden in the study of the individual. These levels are then employed to discuss specific research encounters.