Two groups of children aged 6 and 8 years were given three tasks requiring graphical representations of solid geometric forms. These tasks were drawing from life models, copying from photographs, and copying from line drawings of these objects. Performance was assessed on the basis of level of approximation to correct perspective. Older children used more perspective features than younger children in their drawings. At all ages, the drawings from life were most difficult. Results on the two copying tasks were not consistent. Drawings made by copying photographs were either as advanced as or poorer than copies of line drawings. The results are explained in terms of the difficulties exhibited by young children in translating the three-dimensional scene to a two-dimensional picture plane and strategies adopted by them to cope with these problems.

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Development of three component skills in reading Chinese was examined in primary school children in Hong Kong. Feature analysis skills, syntax knowledge, and semantic analysis skills were found to differ in their contribution to reading proficiency at different grades. Visual processing skill was not at all a good predictor for reading proficiency, but the phonological access skill was important in predicting children's reading proficiency before grade three. It was an ineffective predictor beyond grade three. Skill in semantic analysis, on the other hand, was insignificant as a predictor at younger grades but it became an important predictor after grade two. Syntax knowledge was an important predictor of reading proficiency in the first grade and remained a significant predictor of reading proficiency right up to grade six. The present data support the idea that some preliminary component processes of reading may become automatic with increasing experience in reading and that this automatization of component processes will leave more resource capacity for higher‐order analyses. Chinese reading shares much in common with English reading in terms of the component processes involved at different stages of reading proficiency.

The paper explores the Chinese conceptualisation of intelligence and points out how Western techniques of measurement of intellectual functions arefarfrom satisfactory. Two studies are presented. Both studies used the relevance rating technique to investigate the notion of intelligence held by two groups which differed in terms of culture and race (Australian and Taiwanese students, Study 1) and also in terms of educational experience (traditional Chinese and English schooling systems) but of the same culture (Study 2). In both studies items selected from two well-known intelligence tests were rated for their relevance to measuring intelligence as well as in terms of their difficulty level. Study 1 showed that three factors—non-reasoning ability, verbal reasoning ability and rote memory—constituted the concept of intelligence. In Study 2 as well, subjects of both groups shared a common structure of intelligence. The implications of using Western intelligence tests for non-Western groups are discussed.

The study investigates everyday parental practices involved in the transmission of cultural values and extends current literature on parenting in Chinese families. Children aged 6, 8, and 10 years from 240 Beijing families, and both their parents, were asked about ways in which expectations of child responsibility are transmitted through routine requests, reasoning, and negotiation about household work, an area in which Western parents are known to use such practices. Use of a range of parental requests and reasons was reported. Few child age or gender differences were found for reasons related to child responsibility. Child-initiated negotiation was reported as rare and unacceptable, its use restricted to tagging the relative importance of different spheres of child responsibility.