Cheery Chen

First and fifth graders in Beijing and Chicago were given a battery of mathematics tests. Whether tested with problems requiring solely computation or with ones requiring application of knowledge about mathematics, American children's performance was consistently inferior to that of Chinese children. Interviews with American children suggested that they like mathematics, believe they are doing well in mathematics, and do not perceive mathematics as a difficult subject. American children's poor performance appears to be attributable, in part, to low motivation for devoting more attention to mathematics. Low standards held by American parents for academic achievement and lower interest in teaching mathematics by American teachers appear to contribute to American children's poor performance. Copyright © 1990, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved.

American, 1,633 Chinese, and 1,247 Japanese eleventh‐grade students, 5 indices of maladjustment included measures of stress, depressed mood, academic anxiety, aggression, and somatic complaints. Asian students reported higher levels of parental expectation and lower levels of parental satisfaction concerning academic achievement than their American peers. Nevertheless, Japanese students reported less stress, depressed mood, aggression, academic anxiety, and fewer somatic complaints than did American students. Chinese students reported less stress, academic anxiety, and aggressive feelings than their American counterparts, but did report higher frequencies of depressed mood and somatic complaints. High academic achievement as assessed by a test of mathematics was generally not associated with psychological maladjustment. The only exception was in the United States, where high achievers indicated more frequent feelings of stress than did low achievers. Copyright © 1994, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved.

This study examined the motivation and mathematics achievement of Asian‐American, Caucasian‐American, and East Asian students. Subjects were 304 Asian‐American, 1,958 Caucasian‐American, 1,475 Chinese, and 1,120 Japanese eleventh graders. Students were given a curriculum‐based mathematics test and a questionnaire. Mathematics scores of the Asian‐American students were higher than those of Caucasian‐American students but lower than those of Chinese and Japanese students. Factors associated with the achievement of Asian‐American and East Asian students included having parents and peers who hold high standards, believing that the road to success is through effort, having positive attitudes about achievement, studying diligently, and facing less interference with their schoolwork from jobs and informal peer interactions. Contrary to the popular belief that Asian‐American students' high achievement necessarily takes a psychological toll, they were found not to report a greater frequency of maladjustive symptoms than Caucasian‐American students. Copyright © 1995, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved.

A decade of heightened emphasis in the United States on mathematics and science education has had little influence on academic achievement or parental attitudes. American elementary school children in 1990 lagged behind their Chinese and Japanese peers to as great a degree as they did in 1980. Comparison of the performance of elementary and secondary school students between 1980 and 1990 reveals a decline from first to eleventh grade in the relative position of American students in mathematics. Parental satisfaction with American students' achievement and education remains high and standards remain low. Innate ability continues to be emphasized by Americans as a basis for achievement. American eleventh graders report more indications of stress than do their Chinese and Japanese counterparts.

Representative samples of 729 American, Chinese, and Japanese 1st graders were given achievement and cognitive tests. Mothers were interviewed. Ten years later, 475 of the students participated in a follow-up study in which they were interviewed and given achievement tests. Results revealed high stability of achievement relationships within all 3 societies. Measures of early cognitive abilities were consistently related to the families' socioeconomic status and exerted their influence on later achievement either through 1st-grade achievement scores or through evaluations made by their mothers. The percentage of variance in achievement scores accounted for by the path models was between 49% and 59% at 1st grade and between 38% and 51% at 11th grade. Despite statistical differences in mean scores on the achievement tests, the associations between early predictors and later achievement were similar in the 3 cultural groups, indicating that differences in mean scores may not be accompanied by differences in interrelationships.

A total of 1151 children from indigenous Quechua-speaking families residing in squatter settlements of the city and in two remote rural environments in Peru was given a battery of 16 tests of academic achievement and cognitive abilities. The former tests assessed reading and mathematics achievement and the latter tapped a broad range of cognitive functions. Children were enrolled in first, second, or third grade or did not attend school. "Younger" children were from 6 to 8 years old, and "older" children were from 9 to 12 years old. Large differences in cognitive functioning were associated with attendance at school, grade in school, age, and urban-rural residence. Gender was found to account for less than 5% of the variance in children's performance on cognitive and academic tasks. Gender effects appeared to decline with increased amount of schooling. This was reflected in interactions involving gender and schooling and in a greater number of significant gender effects for children who did not attend school or were in first grade. The results present a complicated picture of various interactional effects of task, location, age, and schooling on the detected gender differences in cognitive abilities and academic achievement. © 1990 Plenum Publishing Corporation.

This study explores the effect of attending school on children's achievement in reading and mathematics and on a test of general information. The major focus was on the interaction between three variables: children's age [young or old ], location, and the number of years of schooling. A follow-up study was conducted nine years after the original testing. Schooling had a positive effect on children's performance, but the degree of influence depended upon all three of the major variables. Schooling tended to have a greater effect on the achievement scores than on the general information scores. In general, scores were highest among children residing in the city and lowest among children living in the remote jungle areas. After controlling for location, age, and years of education, family variables such as parental education and home quality had a small, but significant influence on children's knowledge of reading, mathematics, and general information. © 1990.

This study reports cross-linguistic differences in forward digit span between 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old American and Chinese children. Several explanations for the remarkable superiority of Chinese children are examined. Hypotheses concerning practice, counting systems, and use of strategies were not supported. Analyses related to pronunciation duration of digits favored the temporally limited store hypothesis. Nonsignificant cross-linguistic differences were found in backward digit span. The results support the notion that forward and backward digit span involve different mechanisms. © 1988.