Abstract: The studies of cross-cultural developmental psychology could contrub-ute much not only in exploring the relationship between environment andheredity in explaining mental development but also to the practice of rear-ing children.Cross-cultural developmental psychology pays great attention tomethodology, otherwise the data obtained would be invalid. The most im-portant issue in methodology would be cross-cultural comparatility. Questi-ons of cultural equivalence permeate cross-cultural methodology. Severa 1necessary conditions for cross-cultural comparabitity were discussed in thispaper. Many studies on cognitive development and socialization of child-ren have been made in recent years. The effects of social-cultural varia-bles of individualism or collectivism on the child's development are beingincreasingly investigated, advocating the indigenisation of psychology andemphasizing on exploring the universality becomes the main trends. Rese-arch approaches of emic and entic have given rise to much controversy,however they are not contrary to each other, they are compensatory bec-ause universality can not be found if one does not study the culturallyspecific, and the specific could not be identified until we know somethingabout universality. As research strategy one might emphasize one approachor another, but both would give contrubitions to cross-cultural develop-mental psychologly.

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