Children's Social Worlds in Cultural Context (PDF)

Tiia Tulviste, Ph.D., is a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Tartu, Estonia. In her research on child cognitive and social development, she has paid special attention to the developmental contexts in which children grow. At the beginning of her scientific career, Dr. Tulviste was involved in studies trying to detect the role of schooling in the development of verbal thinking by comparing thinking processes of adults with and without school education in Soviet Central Asia and in West Siberia. During recent decades, she has been interested in the question to what extent changes in developmental context (e.g., return to the Western world in Estonia) reflect changes in cultural meanings and practices of child socialization as well as their effects over time on child development and adjustment. Dr. Tulviste has acted as project leader in several comparative research projects related to child socialization and development dealing with cultures around the Baltic Sea, such as Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Germany, and Sweden, as well as the U.S.A. She has written numerous journal articles and book chapters in this field. She is the former president of Estonian Union of Psychologists and is a member of the editorial board of the European Psychologist, International Journal of Behavioural Development (1998-2002), and Estonian Papers in Applied Linguistics.



Deborah L. Best, Ph.D., is the William L. Poteat Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University, USA, where she previously served as Chair of the Psychology Department and was the first woman to serve as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. She is active in the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology as an Honorary Fellow, President (2000-2002), and Treasurer (1988-1997), and in the Society for Cross-Cultural Research as President (2011-2012). She has served as Associate Editor (1996-2012) and Editor (2012 to present) of the flagship journal of IACCP, Journal of