A large body of research has demonstrated cross-cultural differences in visual attention, especially between members of North American societies (e.g., Canada, United States) and East Asian societies (e.g., China, Japan, Korea). Despite an increasing number of studies suggesting an emergence of cross-cultural differences in early childhood, relatively little is known about how these culturally divergent patterns of attention are acquired and maintained. It has been largely assumed that socialization practices, especially parent-child interactions, contribute to the acquisition of cross-cultural differences in attention. By focusing on maternal narratives during the shared reading activity, this study examined the socialization contexts in which mothers direct their infants' attention in the United States (n = 50 dyads) and Japan (n = 53 dyads). Mothers in the United States and Japan read a picture book to their 6- to 18-month-old infants in the lab, and maternal narratives were coded to identify attention to focal objects and social interactions. Infants' sustained attention was also measured during shared reading. The findings demonstrated that during the shared reading activity, U.S. mothers were relatively more likely to focus on the focal objects than the background, whereas Japanese mothers were more likely to refer to the social interactions between focal objects and the background. Infants' age and gender were not related to maternal narratives, and infants' sustained attention was similar across cultures. Findings suggest significant cross-cultural differences in mother-infant interactions, which may act as scaffolds for infants to internalize their parents' cognitive styles.

Languages differ in the ways speakers express the number of objects in a set. The English language, but not Japanese, requires grammatical differentiation of nouns for singular and plural forms (e.g., cat versus cats). The present study investigated whether this grammatical difference constrains the development of preschool children's attention to sets of 'one' versus 'more than one' using the card matching task in the U.S. and Japan. The task required the use of singular-plural information to match. Overall, 3- to 5-year-old children completed the task better than chance; however, language-specific patterns of development emerged. While English-speaking children did not show age-related differences in their attention to singular vs. plural sets, Japanese-speaking 4- and 5-year-olds performed significantly better than 3-year-olds. The results extend previous findings and provide insights for a multifaceted relation among age-related and linguistic specific factors on developmental pathways of children's attention to singular and plural sets of objects.

People make trait inferences immediately when observing others' behaviours. Previous studies reported that this spontaneous trait inference (STI) occurs more strongly from negative behaviours than from positive behaviours. However, what is responsible for this negativity bias in STI is unclear. In this study, two experiments investigated the effects of valence (an event's affective positivity or negativity) and frequency (how frequently the behaviour is observed in everyday life) on the occurrence of STI using an adapted version of a savings-in-relearning paradigm. Experiment 1 revealed that only valence affected the frequent occurrence of STI. In addition, the instructions to suppress impression formation or to focus attention on an actor's face made no difference to the results. In Experiment 2, the negativity bias in STIs was shown a week after exposure to the behavioural stimuli. These results suggest that the negativity bias in STIs occurs robustly, and the negative valence of observed behaviour is mostly responsible for the negativity bias in STI. The importance of immediate categorization of negative stimuli is discussed in terms of ecological priority.

Previous findings indicated that when people observe someone's behavior, they spontaneously infer the traits and situations that cause the target person's behavior. These inference processes are called spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) and spontaneous situation inferences (SSIs). While both patterns of inferences have been observed, no research has examined the extent to which people from different cultural backgrounds produce these inferences when information affords both trait and situation inferences. Based on the theoretical frameworks of social orientations and thinking styles, we hypothesized that European Canadians would be more likely to produce STIs than SSIs because of the individualistic/independent social orientation and the analytic thinking style dominant in North America, whereas Japanese would produce both STIs and SSIs equally because of the collectivistic/interdependent social orientation and the holistic thinking style dominant in East Asia. Employing the savings-in-relearning paradigm, we presented information that affords both STIs and SSIs and examined cultural differences in the extent of both inferences. The results supported our hypotheses. The relationships between culturally dominant styles of thought and the inference processes in impression formation are discussed.

Culture shapes how we interpret behavior, symbols, customs, and more. Its operation is largely implicit, unnoticed until we encounter other cultures. Therefore deep cultural differences should be most evident in automatic processes for interpreting events, including behavior. In two studies, we compared American and Japanese undergraduates' spontaneous (unintended and unconscious) trait inferences (STIs) from behavior descriptions. Both groups made STIs but Japanese made fewer. More important, estimates of the controlled (C) and automatic (A) components of their recall performance showed no differences on C, but A was greater for Americans. Thus westerners' greater reliance on traits, in intentional and spontaneous impressions, may reflect cultural differences in automatic processes for making and recalling meaning. The advantages of locating cultural differences in automatic processes are discussed. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Prior research has indicated that spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) occur more easily among fifth graders than among adults, although STIs generally develop only among Westerners. However, no prior studies on STI include Asian children. This study explored the development of STIs among Japanese fifth graders, seventh graders, and undergraduates. Experiments 1 and 2 used a relearning paradigm, and participants' recollections of photo-trait pairs after being presented with congruent behaviours were compared with those after being presented with incongruent behaviours. If participants showed better recollection after being presented with congruent behaviour descriptions (saving effects), this indicated that they had made STIs from the behaviour. The results showed that STIs occur among Japanese children and adults, although their occurrence was associated with a trait valence factor. STIs occurred to a small extent from positive-trait-implying descriptions only among fifth and seventh graders, not undergraduates. In contrast, STIs occurred clearly from negative-trait-implying descriptions in all age groups. The results of Experiment 3, which used a trait-rating task that required less storage capacity of long-term memory, confirmed that fifth and seventh graders, as well as adults, made spontaneous inferences of specific traits implied from behavioural descriptions and not a wide positivenegative framework. The developmental model of STIs depending on trait valence and culture is discussed.

本稿は, 我が国の2010～2011年における, 児童・青年を対象とした発達の研究を概観したものである。自己, 対人認知, 対人関係, 適応と精神的健康, 非常事態への対応, の5つの領域に分けレビューを行った。自己に関する研究では, 自己と社会の接点における研究が多くなされており, 特に自己価値・自己肯定感や自己制御を, 学業や学校内の社会的文脈で捉えたものが多かった。対人認知については, 道徳性の発達に関する研究が中心であり, 特に共感性や罪悪感の発達を, いじめや攻撃性などの問題行動との関連から検討したものが多く見られた。対人関係に関する研究は, 児童期後期以降における排他性や攻撃性などのネガティブな側面を扱ったものが見られた。またソーシャルスキルトレーニングに関しては, 集団でのスキルの共有および介入効果の長期的維持に焦点が当てられていた。適応と精神的健康については, いじめやレジリエンスを扱った研究が目立った。非常事態への対応に関しては, 犯罪・災害場面に対する子どもの認知や反応, および防犯・防災教育に関する研究を概観した。最後に, 全体的な研究動向をまとめ, 児童・青年を対象とした発達研究に関する今後の課題について論じた。

People tend to spontaneously make trait inferences from exposure to others' behaviors without the intention to do so. In the present study, two experiments investigated the occurrence of spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) among Japanese 5th graders, 7th graders, and undergraduates using a relearning paradigm. Participants' recollections of portrait-trait pairs after being presented with congruent behaviors were compared with their recollections after incongruent behaviors. If participants showed better recollections after being presented with congruent behavior descriptions, this indicated that they spontaneously inferred the actor's trait from the behavior. The results suggested that 5th and 7th graders as well as undergraduates showed STIs from behavior descriptions that implied negative traits, although they showed few STIs from descriptions that implied positive traits. It was assumed that STIs are developed by 10-11 years of age at the latest, and that the processes of STIs from negative and positive descriptions might differ.

幼児期から児童期にかけて,危険回避行動と向社会的行動のジレンマ場面において子どもがとる方略にどのような発達過程が見られるのかについて,実験的に検討した。幼児(5〜6歳児)と児童(1・2年生)計85名を対象として,見知らぬ人(ストレンジャー)から助けを求められる場面を提示し,子どもの選択する行動を調べた。その結果,いずれの年齢群においても危険回避を優先させることが示された。ただし,この時期の子どもは,自らの欲求を優先させる傾向があることに加えて,危険認知がまだ十分でないことから,子ども自身とストレンジャーの欲求の方向性が一致している場合は,見知らぬ人について行くと回答しやすいことが明らかになった。また特に幼児においては,他者の認知におけるポジティビティ・バイアスが,ストレンジャーに「ついて行く」「道を教える」という判断と関連していることが示唆された。行動範囲が変わり,危険回避を取り巻く状況が変化する幼児期から児童期への接続期において,子どもに対しどのような安全教育がなされるべきかという観点から考察された。

幼児が, (性格)特性・動機・行動の因果関係や, 特性は特定場面を越えて一貫した行動の原因となるということを理解しているかどうかについて検討した。具体的には, 3, 4, 5, 6歳児の4群を対象に, 動機・行動・結果からなる物語を提示し, 動機情報を用いて行為者の特性をラベリングし他場面における行動予測をすることができるかどうかを調べた。また, 動機・行動・結果の順に提示するか, 行動・結果・動機の順に提示するかということが, それらの推論過程に影響を及ぼすかどうかについても調べた。その結果, 特性のラベリングにおける動機情報の使用から, 特性・動機・行動の因果関係は3・4歳から理解し始めているが, 5歳からより確実に理解できるようになることが示唆された。そして行動予測における動機情報の使用と〔物語の動機-特性のラベリング-他場面における行動予測〕の回答の一貫性から, 特性は特定場面を越えて一貫した行動の原因となることは, 5歳から理解し始めているが, 6歳からより複雑な場面においても理解できるようになることが示唆された。このような発達過程が見出されたのに加えて, 幼児における特性推論過程には新近効果が見られることが推測された。