Affective Decision-Making among Preschool Children in Diverse Cultural Contexts

Parental Supervision, Executive Functions, and Emotional-Behavioral Problems in Chinese Immigrant and Italian Nonimmigrant Early Adolescents in Italy

“…Cross-cultural differences may be magnified when comparing youth with a collectivist Chinese background to nonimmigrant Italian youth with an individualistic orientation. For example, previous studies suggest that EFs are differently socialized across Asian and Western samples (e.g., Qu, Shan, Yip, Li, & Zelazo, 2012). In contrast to the traditionally Chinese interdependent family environment, Italian families share a more individualistic cultural background in which autonomy and independence are emphasized, especially in the northern regions of the country (Hofstede, 2001).…”

“…The cultural distance between Chinese and Italian value orientations is relatively large, making the adaptation processes of Chinese immigrant parents and their children of particular interest. Also, given Chinese parents’ expectations of hard work, self-discipline, and obedience, the dimension of self-control has been found to be central among Chinese children (Qu et al, 2012), who tend to exhibit better inhibitory control compared with their North American peers (Lan, Legare, Ponitz, Li, & Morrison, 2011). However, only a handful of studies have investigated parenting practices as well as their associations with executive functioning in Chinese immigrants settling in individualistic cultures, who are exposed to both individualistic and collectivistic value orientations.…”

“…Despite the lack of studies considering the role of distinct EFs in links between parental supervision and emotional and behavioral problems, particularly among Chinese immigrant youth, it was reasonable to expect that in the context of poor parental supervision, early adolescents exhibiting good working memory skills, high levels of inhibitory control, and increased cognitive flexibility would be rated as less problematic by their parents, whereas the opposite pattern was anticipated for youth showing lower levels of performance on the EF tasks. Furthermore, we hypothesized that these associations would be stronger for Chinese immigrant compared with Italian nonimmigrant early adolescents (three-way interactions) because prior evidence suggests a stronger relation between parental supervision and children’s psychological adjustment among Chinese collectivist families in comparison with Western individualistic families (Kawabata et al, 2011; Lansford et al, 2018), as well as an increased emphasis on self-control and flexibility-related abilities for Chinese immigrant early adolescents (Fuligni & Tsai, 2015; Qu et al, 2012; Wang et al, 2007).…”

The developmental origins of risk and time preferences across diverse societies.

“…In addition, previous studies suggest that risk-taking in early life increases in the presence of observers (Gardner & Steinberg, 2005). In the domain of time preferences, Mischel and colleagues, in their development of the Marshmallow test, pioneered a large body of work on delay discounting in children (Mischel, 1961), which generally documents increasing levels of patience with age (Bettinger & Slonim, 2007; Green, Fry, & Myerson, 1994; Qu, Shan, Yip, Li, & Zelazo, 2012; Steinberg et al, 2009). In addition, some work finds that boys are more impatient than girls (Castillo, Ferraro, Jordan, & Petrie, 2011; Qu et al, 2012), and that the socioeconomic environment likely influences time preferences, such that those from affluent backgrounds are more likely to delay gratification (Freire, Gormana, & Wessman, 1980), in line with the adult literature.…”

Want More? Learn Less: Motivation Affects Adolescents Learning from Negative Feedback

“…The superior performance by the children in the current study may be explained by earlier maturation of executive functioning for Chinese children. Several studies have demonstrated that children who are raised in China or are exposed to Chinese culture perform significantly better on measures of cool executive function ( Lewis et al, 2006 ; Sabbagh et al, 2006 ) and hot executive function ( Qu et al, 2012 ) compared to age-matched Western children. Consistently, it has been reported that the 7-repeat allele of the dopamine receptor gene (DRD4) which is linked with poor executive function ( Faraone et al, 2001 ), is relatively rare in Asian people compared with North American people ( Chang et al, 1996 ).…”