Abstract
Numerous writers, including Jahoda and Berry, have pointed out that contemporary psychology is largely based on work with American college students, or with white rats; and though young children are often studied, they are mostly drawn from restricted samples of middle class Western cultures. Thus cross-cultural research should be able to provide a much broader perspective on mental functioning, and thereby improve the external validity of our findings. For example, by sampling a wider data base it should help to illumine the nature and development of cognitive abilities such as intelligence. But before proceeding, I intend to define intelligence as “the complexity and efficiency of the higher mental processes of members of any given cultural group”. Specifically, I want to know what genetic constitutional and environmental factors, and what child-rearing practices are chiefly involved in such mental growth.
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Vernon, P.E. (1987). Cognitive and Motivational Differences between Asian and Other Societies. In: Irvine, S.H., Newstead, S.E. (eds) Intelligence and Cognition: Contemporary Frames of Reference. NATO ASI Series, vol 38. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9437-5_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9437-5_9
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