Shin-ying Lee

Cognitive performance and academic achievement of Japanese, Chinese, and American children.

Chinese, Japanese, and American children at grades 1 and 5 were given a battery of 10 cognitive tasks and tests of achievement in reading and mathematics. Samples consisted of 240 children in each grade in each culture. 2 major purposes of the study were to determine possible differences in cognitive abilities of Japanese, Chinese, and American children and to investigate the possible differential relation of scores on cognitive tasks to reading by children of the 3 cultures. Similarity was found among children of the 3 cultures in level, variability, and structure of cognitive abilities. Chinese children surpassed Japanese and American children in reading scores; both Chinese and Japanese children obtained higher scores in mathematics than the American children. Prediction of achievement scores from the cognitive tasks showed few differential effects among children of the 3 cultures. The results suggest that the high achievement of Chinese and Japanese children cannot be attributed to higher intellectual abilities, but must be related to their experiences at home and at school.

Reading Disabilities: The Case of Chinese, Japanese, and English.

A common hypothesis has considered apparent differences in the incidence of reading disability in Asian and Western languages to be related to orthographic factors. A reading test was constructed in English, Japanese, and Chinese to assess the validity of this proposal. Large samples of fifth-grade children in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States were given the test and a battery of 10 cognitive tasks. Strong evidence was found that reading disabilities exist among Chinese and Japanese as well as among American children. In discriminating between groups of poor and average readers by means of the cognitive tasks, the combined effects of general information and verbal memory proved to be the most powerful predictors in Japan and Taiwan. General information and coding emerged as the most effective predictors for American children. The results cast doubt upon the crucial significance of orthography as the major factor determining the incidence of reading disabilities across cultures.

Digit memory in Chinese and English: Evidence for a temporally limited store*

This paper describes 3 studies comparing short-term memory for digits between native speakers of Chinese and of English. The first study documents, with large samples of kindergarten, first-, and second-grade children, a Chinese advantage in memory for digits. The Chinese subjects, at all grade levels, remembered at least 2 more digits, on average, than did American or Japanese subjects. The second study compared digit memory of 6- and 7-year-old children, Chinese and American, under forward, backward and grouped conditions. The provision of a grouping strategy helped both Chinese and American subjects equally, which fails to support strategy use as the primary explanation of digit memory differences. Further, Chinese children performed more poorly than American children on the backward span. The final study, carried out on Chinese and American university students, investigated differences in pronunciation duration of Chinese and English number words as a possible explanation of span differences. Chinese number words were found to be of significantly shorter pronunciation duration than English number words; and total pronunciation duration for a subject’s maximum span did not differ between Chinese and Americans. These findings provide evidence for a temporally limited store.

Mathematics classrooms in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States.

Observations were conducted in Chinese, Japanese, and American classrooms during mathematics classes. Activities in 20 representative classrooms were observed in each of 2 grades (1 and 5) and in each country. Some observations focused on individual children and others on the teachers. Large cross-cultural differences were found in many variables related to classroom structure and management. These differences paralleled differences in achievement in mathematics among the 3 countries. A number of these variables also were significantly related to average level of mathematics achievement within the American classrooms.

Education of Gifted and Talented Students in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan.

Education of Gifted and Talented Students in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan. Harold W. Stevenson, Shin-Ying Lee, & Chuansheng Chen The stunning success of Chinese and Japanese students in many areas of academic achievement has aroused a great deal of interna- tional interest in all aspects of education in the societies of East Asia. Although there have been many descriptions of their general educational practices, relatively little is known in the West about how these societies respond to students who are especially gifted academically or talented in areas such as the arts, music, or sports. We attempt to provide such information in this report. By reading documents, talking to educational authorities, and visit- ing East Asia, we are able to discuss contemporary educational prac- tices for gifted and talented students in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan. In the course of our investigation, we found answers to ques- tions that are often raised about East Asian education. Can part of the academic success of Chinese and Japanese students be attributed to unusually strong programs of gifted education? Do these programs result in the modification of the regular curricula? What kinds of Harold W. Stevenson is a Professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and a Fellow at the Center for Human Growth and Development, 300 N. Ingalls, 10th Level, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0406. Shin-Ying Lee is an Assistant Research Scientist at the Center for Human Growth and Development. Chuansheng Chen is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California-Irvine. Please address questions to the first author. The preparation of this report was supported by a small grant from the Jacob Javits Center for the Education of Gifted and Talented Students of the US. Department of Education. We wish to thank the individuals who contributed information for this report: Professors Hiroshi Azuma, Kimiyuki Fujino, Keiko Kashiwagi, Shigefumi Nagano, Akio Nakajima, and Toshio Yasuma of Japan; and Lon-An Chen, Jian-Zhen Chu, Min-Huang Hwang, Huei-Jen KO, Chin-Zi Kuo, and Wu-Tien Wu of Taiwan; Jing Qicheng and Zhang Houcan of Mainland China; and many other education officials and teachers. We are indebted to William Londo, who helped us organize the infor- mation, and to Kazuo Kato, who helped us collect the information about Japanese programs. \ourno1 for the Education of the Gifted. Vol. 17, No. 2, 1994, pp. 104-130. Copyright 0 1994, The Association for the Gifted, Reston, Virginia 22091. Downloaded from jeg.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA IRVINE on June 18, 2015

Writing Systems and Acquisition of Reading in American, Chinese, and Japanese First-Graders

As the chapters in this volume indicate, researchers have shown an increasing interest in the relation between orthography, visual information processing, and reading comprehension. These issues are important, for although the study of reading is one of the oldest and most intensely investigated topics in psychology, most research has been conducted with subjects who read an alphabetic language, usually English. Studying similarities and differences in the processes involved in reading non-alphabetic orthographies provides a means of testing the generality of findings in the psychology of reading.

Family Variables and Reading: A Study of Mothers of Poor and Average Readers in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States

others of poor and average readers in Japan, Taiwan and the United States were iterviewed about their child-rearing practices, attitudes, and beliefs, and their childrens current and earlier experiences. Poor readers represented the lowest fifth percentile in reading scores; they were matched by classroom, sex, and age with average readers; i.e., children who obtained reading scores within one standard deviation from the mean. The groups seldom differed significantly according to environmental variables and parent-child interactions. Maternal ratings of cognitive and achievement variables differentiated both the children in the two groups and the mothers themselves. Maternal beliefs and descriptions of how children use time also differed between the two groups. Notable was the absence of significant interactions between country and reading level.