Children in Asian cultures say yes to yes—no questions: Common and cultural differences between Vietnamese and Japanese children

Abstract

We investigated whether children's response tendency toward yes-no questions concerning objects is a common phenomenon regardless of languages and cultures. Vietnamese and Japanese 2- to 5-year-old (N = 108) were investigated. We also examined whether familiarity with the questioning issue has any effect on Asian children's yes bias. As the result, Asian children showed a yes bias to yes-no questions. The children's response tendency changes dramatically with their age: Vietnamese and Japanese 2- and 3-year-olds showed a yes bias, but 5-year-olds did not. However, Asian 4-year-olds also showed a yes bias only in the familiar condition. Also, Asian children showed a stronger yes bias in the familiar condition than the unfamiliar condition. These two findings in Asian children were different from the previous finding investigated North American children (Fritzley & Lee, 2003). Moreover, there was a within-Asian cross-cultural difference. Japanese children showed different response tendencies, which were rarely observed in Vietnamese children. Japanese 2-year-olds and some 3-year-olds showed a "no answer" response: they tended not to respond to an interviewer's questions. Japanese 4- and 5-year-olds also showed an "I don't know" response when they were asked about unfamiliar objects. Japanese children tended to avoid a binary decision. We discussed the cross-cultural differences.

Do young and old preschoolers exhibit response bias due to different mechanisms? Investigating children’s response time

“…We also found that the 6-year-olds in this study exhibited a nay-saying bias to unfamiliar objects, as did Japanese 5-year-olds in Okanda and Itakura's (2008) study, but Okanda and Itakura (2010b) and Okanda and colleagues (2011) did not find such biases in Japanese 5-and 6-year-olds. These inconsistent results within a country suggest that in addition to cultural factors (Okanda & Itakura, 2010b), other factors such as the social relationship between a questioner and a respondent might influence response biases in older preschoolers.…”

“…In addition, unlike the children in Okanda and Itakura's (2008) study, the children in this study did not produce a large number of ''I don't know'' and ''no answer'' responses; however, it might be premature to draw conclusions without testing Asian children with incomprehensible questions.…”

“…We followed the procedure developed by Fritzley and Lee (2003), and objects and questions were identical to those used by Okanda and Itakura (2008) (see Appendix for list of questions). The familiar objects were a blue cup, a red apple, and a picture book, and the unfamiliar objects were a white plastic coffee filter, a shoehorn, and a CPU.…”

“…The familiar objects were a blue cup, a red apple, and a picture book, and the unfamiliar objects were a white plastic coffee filter, a shoehorn, and a CPU. Object familiarity was verified by Okanda and Itakura (2008); the familiar objects were well known to the children, whereas the unfamiliar objects were not.…”

Japanese Children's Difficulty With False Belief Understanding: Is It Real or Apparent?

“…Gardiner, Harris, Ohmoto, and Hamazaki (1988) reported that a number of Japanese preschool children fell silent during developmental psychological experiments in which they were told some stories and then asked to answer questions about the protagonist's emotions. Also, Okanda and Itakura (2008) found that Japanese children may have stronger response biases than Western and Vietnamese children when asked questions by an interviewer. For example, Japanese preschool children are more likely to answer "yes" when given yes-no questions, and, sometimes, not to respond to the interviewer's questions.…”