Three hundred kindergarten, first and second grade children from Beijing, China were given the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts-Revised (BTBC-R) at the end of the school year. Their performance was compared with that of American children from the standardization sample of BTBC-R. This study explores two questions: (1) Will lexical diversity and morphological complexity affect the rate of acquisition of the basic relational concepts between children who speak distinctly different languages? and (2) to what extent do conceptual factors interact with linguistic differences in children’s development of basic relational concepts? Results showed that Chinese children acquired significantly more basic relational concepts than their American peers at both first and second grades did but not at kindergarten. This difference in acquisition is discussed in terms of the characteristics of the two languages. Nonlinguistic factors are discussed in terms of cultural and parental influences on young children’s conceptual development.

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Two hundred first-and second-grade Chinese children's knowledge of basic relational concepts in following directions was assessed on the Applications Booklet of the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts-Revised (BTBC-R, 1986). Chinese children's performance was then compared with that of the standardization sample of the BTBC-R. Results indicated that both the American and Chinese children made significant improvements between the end of first and second grades, yet both American and Chinese children experienced difficulties on items such as following multiplestep directions. American children, but not Chinese children, had difficulties following directions involving the concepts of right and left in combination with other relational concepts, the quantity concept of equal, and comparative and superlative features such as farther and farthest.

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