Japanese and Canadian Children's Beliefs About Child and Adult Knowledge: A Case for Developmental Equifinality?

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2016 Sep 16

PMID 27632387

Authors

Stanka A Fitneva

Elizabeth Pile Ho

Misako Hatayama

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Children do not know everything that adults know, nor do adults know everything that children know. The present research examined the universality of beliefs about child and adult knowledge and their development with 4- and 7-year-old Canadian and Japanese children (N = 96). In both countries, all children were able to identify adult-specific knowledge and only older children displayed beliefs about child-specific knowledge. However, Japanese and Canadian children differed in whether they used their own knowledge in deciding whether a person who knew an item was a child or an adult. In addition, parental and child beliefs were related in Japan but not in Canada. These findings indicate that children growing up in different cultures may take different paths in developing beliefs about age-related knowledge. Implications for theories of socio-cognitive development and learning are discussed.

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