Observational data concerning children’s compliance were collected from samples of 2-year-olds in PR China and Canada. Information on child-rearing attitudes was obtained from mothers. It was found that Chinese toddlers had higher scores on voluntary committed compliance than their Canadian counterparts. In contrast, Canadian toddlers had higher scores on externally imposed or situational compliance and overt protest than Chinese toddlers. Girls displayed more committed compliance than boys in both samples. Maternal warmth and induction were positively associated with committed compliance in Chinese toddlers, and maternal induction was positively associated with situational compliance in Canadian toddlers. Maternal punishment orientation was negatively associated with committed compliance and positively associated with situational control in Chinese toddlers, but not in Canadian toddlers. The results might indicate specific cultural “meanings” of different forms of child compliance.

The purpose of the study was to examine contributions of sociable and prosocial dimensions of social competence in childhood to the prediction of educational attainment and socioemotional adjustment in early adulthood in urban China. A sample of children at 12 years of age participated in the original study, and was followed up seven years later when they graduated from high school. Sociability and prosocial orientation in childhood were assessed by peer evaluations. Data concerning youth adjustment were collected from self-reports of the participants and their parents. The results indicated that sociability and prosocial orientation had differential signi cance for later adjustment in different areas. Whereas prosocial orientation made unique contributions to the prediction of educational achievement, sociability in the early years was a signi cant and reliable predictor of later socioemotional adjustment.

The authors report a series of efforts to validate a U.S. adult social self-efficacy inventory, the Perceived Social Self-Efficacy scale (PSSE), in Chinese populations. They argue that the construct underlying the PSSE scale constitutes an important component of Chinese adult social self-efficacy, which was confirmed in focus group discussions. The original English PSSE items were back translated into Chinese and were adapted to suit Chinese language and culture. Two validation studies were then conducted with Chinese undergraduate students. Results consistently showed that the Chinese PSSE scale had a single-factor structure, high reliabilities, excellent construct validity, and acceptable criterion validity. Implications for counseling research and practice in Chinese contexts are discussed.

No abstract

It is currently unclear whether a person's own face has greater capacity in absorbing his/her attention than faces of others. With two visual distractor tasks, the present study assessed the extent to which a person's own face attracts his/her attention, by measuring face distractor elicited distortion of saccade trajectories. Experiment 1 showed that upright faces induced stronger distortion of saccade trajectories than inverted ones. This face inversion effect, however, was not stronger for the participant's own face than for unfamiliar other's faces. By manipulating fixation stimulus offset and using peripheral onset target, Experiment 2 further demonstrated that these observations were not contingent on saccade latency. Together, these findings suggest that a person's own face is not more salient or attention-absorbing than unfamiliar other's faces.