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

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.

A mobile device for measuring sensorimotor timing in synchronized tapping.

This paper describes the design of a mobile device for examining sensorimotor timing. Control software installed in this device has facilities for storing time series data of interstimulus onset intervals, intertap onset intervals, and response duration in a comma-delimited file of ASCII text format as well as for running an experiment on synchronization tapping. The device provides a highly convenient way to allow collecting such timing data even in real situations like a kindergarten or a day care center for elderly people, given its mobile property and ease of use.