Children coping with crisis in Papua New Guinea and Australia: A cross-cultural application of an analogue

The extinction period of an instrumental learning paradigm was employed, as by Viney and Clarke (1974), as an experimental analogue of Caplan’s concept of crisis. Data from Papua New Guinea and Australian preschool children indicated that: (1) Papua New Guinea children made more fixed responses, as predicted, but showed fewer “giving up” reactions than Australian children; (2) no differences were found between children from 2 Papua New Guinea subcultures; and (3) in terms of replication of earlier results (a) the negative effect of the loss of social rather than nonsocial sources of need satisfaction in the “crisis” on “giving up” only was fully confirmed, and (b) the positive effects of the availability of social rather than nonsocial stimuli during the “crisis” on fixed responses, frustration, and the more adaptive seeking of new, alternative responses were noted for the children of both cultures but were especially salient within the Papua New Guinea sample.