Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Cross-cultural variation in cognition is increasingly well-documented, but less research has explored the developmental origins of this variation. In addition, Central & South American cultures are underrepresented in research with both adults mand children, but particularly the latter. This study helps to fill this empirical gap by comparing Mexican and U.S. preschoolers (34–62 months; Mexico N=153; U.S. N=125) across six tasks spanning relational and similarity reasoning (causal Relational Match-To-Sample, Taxonomic-Thematic Triads), visual attention (Picture Free Description; Feature Task), and social cognition (Uniqueness Preference; Symbolic Self-Inflation). We find cross-cultural differences in four of the six tasks, with Mexican children showing greater contextual and relational sensitivity than U.S. children on several measures. In contrast, cRMTS and feature- based recognition do not show reliable country differences, underscoring that cultural contrasts depend on the specific task and developmental process being measured.