<p>Interesting study at U of Chicago:</p>
<p><a href=“University of Chicago News”>University of Chicago News;
<p>I also saw that article and sent it to my daughter, as she will be studying in China in the fall. She made a good point that the Chinese people in the study had recently emigrated to the US, so the differences seen could possibly be due to their recently emigrating and adapting to a new culture as opposed to a Chinese vs. Western cultureal difference. It was a very interesting study though.</p>
<p>20 subjects is not necessarily a resounding confirmation but I believe many similar studies have been done–especially with children from Latin cultures. Also, I am sure that Chinese can read other Chinese with ease–but not as convinced that they are particularly good at reading Americans or other Westerners. I say this as the boss of PRC employees. It is very difficult to read the social cues of a foreign culture, period. </p>
<p>This is a random thought, but I wonder if the Chinese and Koreans are seeing increases in Asperger’s and Autism at the same rates that the US sees?</p>
<p>I also found this study to be very interesting and at one level it seems to make a lot of sense. At the same time (and without trying to stereotype) it also occurs to me that this particular study is only focused on spatial/logical abilities of the participants, and how those abilities are related to communication skills; perhaps there are cultural and/or evolutionary/ genetic/ biological factors that have resulted in a significant difference in these abilities. Differences in spatial/logical thinking abilities can directly affect one’s communication skills; but is a difference in just one specific means of communicating, sufficient to conclude that the reason for the differences is whether the participants are from a more individualistic or collectivistic culture? I certainly would expect that there would be significant differences in these two kinds of cultures but this study alone does not seem enough to make such broad conclusions (although I would love to hear more about some of the other similar studies that have been done).</p>
<p>Cheers, re a possible autism/aspergers correlation, it would be interesting to do a similar study among Americans with AS and normal Americans and see if there is a significant difference between these two groups - eg, how an autistic’s ability to understand directions from the director effects their spatial/logical abilities in understanding the placement of the objects (or vice versa). Individuals with high functioning autism or Aspergers often have strong spatial/logical abilities so it seems to me that some autistics with strong abilities in this area may actually do better than the normal person at this task - IF that is the factor that influences the outcome, as opposed to the actual “words” used by the director…</p>
<p>I pulled up the actual article and found that the research was, in my opinion, disappointing. The researchers make sweeping generalizations and conclusions were not worded tentatively. There was no recognition of the study’s limitation. There are other confounding variables - - the Chinese participants were tested in Mandarin and were in a novel environment, only in America for no more than 9 months. Participants in the groups were not matched for IQ. How were these international Chinese students selected to attend UC? In some colleges, international admissions is more competitive than domestic admissions, so there could be a big difference between the cream of the international students and the domestic students.
“Twenty Chinese, native speakers of Mandarin, and 20 non-Asian Americans, native speakers of American English, participated in the experiment. All subjects were University of Chicago students. The Chinese subjects were born and raised in mainland China and had been in the United States from 2 to 9 months. To minimize the confounding of culture with other variables, we matched the Chinese and the American subjects by age (M = 22 years for both groups), gender (half males, half females), year in school, and major of study. For simplicity, we use the term Americans from here on to refer to non-Asian Americans.” </p>
<p>Why were non-Asian Americans excluded? It would seem to me that the inclusion of Asian Americans would be integral to demonstrating that there is a true cultural difference.</p>
<p>From the actual research article: </p>
<p>“The American subjects played the game in English with a female director who was a native English speaker, and the Chinese played the game in Mandarin with a female director who was a native Mandarin speaker. We made sure the instructions in English and in Mandarin were comparable by translating from English to Mandarin and back to English, as is standard procedure with cross-cultural research”</p>
<p>Different languages have different nuances. With such a small sample and the use of two different languages, it is hard to conclude anything.</p>