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Abstract Identifying abstract relations is essential for commonsense reasoning. Research suggests that even young children can infer relations such as “same” and “different,” but often fail to apply these concepts. Might the process of explaining facilitate the recognition and application of relational concepts? Based on prior work suggesting that explanation can be a powerful tool to promote abstract reasoning, we predicted that children would be more likely to discover and use an abstract relational rule when they were prompted to explain observations instantiating that rule, compared to when they received demonstration alone. Five‐ and 6‐year‐olds were given a modified Relational Match to Sample (RMTS) task, with repeated demonstrations of relational (same) matches by an adult. Half of the children were prompted to explain these matches; the other half reported the match they observed. Children who were prompted to explain showed immediate, stable success, while those only asked to report the outcome of the pedagogical demonstration did not. Findings provide evidence that explanation facilitates early abstraction over and above demonstration alone. 

Outward differences between cultures are very salient, with Western and East Asian cultures as a prominent comparison pair. A large literature describes cross-cultural variation in cognition, but relatively less research has explored the developmental origins of this variation. This study helps to fill the empirical gap by replicating four prominent findings documenting cross-cultural differences in children’s reasoning, visual attention, and social cognition in a cross-sectional sample of 240 3-12-year-olds from the US and China. We observe cross-cultural differences in three of the four tasks and describe the distinct developmental trajectory that each task follows throughout early and middle childhood. 

Outward differences between cultures are very salient, with Western and East Asian cultures as a prominent comparison pair. A large literature describes cross-cultural variation in cognition, but relatively less research has explored the developmental origins of this variation. This study helps to fill the empirical gap by replicating four prominent findings documenting cross-cultural differences in children’s reasoning, visual attention, and social cognition in a cross-sectional sample of 240 3-12-year-olds from the US and China. We observe cross-cultural differences in three of the four tasks and describe the distinct developmental trajectory that each task follows throughout early and middle childhood.