Development of cultural strategies of attention in North American and Japanese children.
Recent studies suggest that North American adults exhibit a focused strategy of attention that emphasizes focal information about objects, whereas Japanese adults exhibit a divided strategy of attention that emphasizes contextual information about objects. The current study investigated whether 4- and 5-, 6- to 8-, and 9- to 13-year-old North American and Japanese children exhibit these divergent attention strategies. Two experiments suggest that those older than 6 years of age exhibit measurable cultural differences in attention, whereas 4- to 6-year-olds do not. We suggest that sociocognitive development and socialization experiences that occur around 5 to 7 years of age may foster the development of cultural strategies of attention.
Duffy
Sean
S
Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Camden Campus, Camden, NJ 08102, USA. seduffy@camden.rutgers.edu
Toriyama
Rie
R
Itakura
Shoji
S
Kitayama
Shinobu
S