Cognitive Level of Analysis

Session 9: Culture and Memory

Discuss how cultural factors affect one cognitive process

Today’s learning outcome

What are the three principles of the CLOA?

Quick Recap

What are the three principles of the CLOA?

1. Human beings are information processors and mental processes guide behaviour

2. The mind can be studied scientifically

3. Cognitive processes are influenced by social and cultural factors

Quick Recap

What is culture?Wang and Ross

(2007) said that culture is..

1.A system (values, schemas, artifacts)

2.A process (rituals, daily routines and practices)

Culture and Memory

According to Wang and Ross (2007)

Culture affects how people remember, why they remember, when they remember, what they remember and whether they find it necessary to remember at all.

Culture and Memory

We will focus on two effects culture has on memory:

1. Cultural demands and context determine memory

2. Differences in expression of emotions across cultures affects memory

1. Cultural demands and context determine memory

Aim:to investigate whether people’s memory for a

story is affected by previous knowledge (schemas) and the extent to which memory is reconstructive

ProcedureAsked British participants to hear a story and

reproduce it after a short time and then repeatedly over a period of months or years. Story was an unfamiliar Native American legend called “The War of the Ghosts”

The War of the Ghosts (Bartlett, 1932)

War of the Ghosts According to Bartlett (1932) your recall will

show a westernised interpretation of this American Indian folk tale thus illustrating your subjective memory construction rather than accurate objective recall of events. We fit information into our all ready existing schema.

How might this idea be applied to eyewitness testimony of criminal occurrences?

Results Participants remembered the gist of the story

but they changed unfamiliar elements to make sense of the story by using terms more familiar to their own cultural expectations (e.g. Seal hunting changed to fishing)

Story remained a coherent whole although it was changed

Story became noticeably shorter for each reconstruction

Bartlett (1932) War of the Ghosts

ConclusionBartlett concluded that remembering is an

active process. Memories are not copies of experience but rather ‘reconstructions’ that rely on schemas.

Our schemas can be affected by our culture and the world that we live in

Bartlett (1932)

The results of the study support schema theory but it was performed in a laboratory and can be criticised for having lack of ecological validity

Participants did not receive standardised instructions and some of the memory distortions may be due to the participants’ guessing (demand characteristics)

In spite of its methodological limitations this study is one of the most important in the study of memory

Evaluation of Bartlett (1932)

Culture and Memory When researchers conduct cross cultural

memory research with participants from Western and non-Western cultures they often use tasks developed in psychology laboratories such as free recall of lists of unrelated words

People from Western cultures generally perform better in these tasks.

Why do you think this is?

Culture and Memory It has been suggested that people from Western

cultures may perform better because such tasks seem meaningless to non-Western people

Western people may be more accustomed to memorising facts due to the

activities they perform during Western schooling

Argue culture and memory are enmeshed skills Remembering is an activity which is determined

by demands of social and cultural context in which it takes place

Remembering may be a means of achieving an important social or cultural goal

For example, the Itamul elders in New Guinea have an extraordinary memory for lines of descent and history

This kind of knowledge is important to them as it can resolve property disputes with conflicting clans

Misty and Rogoff (1994)

Swazi Herdsman and Memory

Bartlett (1932) claimed that Swazi herdsman have spectacular memory when in comes to their cattle.

Since their culture revolved around possession and care for their cattle, they had an extraordinary memory to recognize and care for their cows.

Another more culture and memory example….

Roger and Waddel (1982)

Compared the memory of Mayan kids to kids from the USA.

Made a model of a Mayan village.

Made 80 little plastic figurines of things you would find in the village.

The Mayans vs. USA…Memory showdown!!!!

Roger and Waddel (1982) They then put 20 of the

figures in the model village and let the kids look at it.

Then they took out the 20 figures and put them back with the other 60.

Asked the kids to recreate the village with the 20 figures in it.

Who did better?

…the Mayans!

Roger and Waddel (1982)

Why?

Maybe because their culture (and schemas) were more suited towards memorising their own village.

In addition, the mistakes made by the Mayan children tended to be adding items that were not in the original panorama, instead of the American children who made mistakes by leaving out certain items that were in the original.

Roger and Waddel (1982) continued This could perhaps be a reflection of each group's respective

society and culture. I.E maybe reflects that in American society, the importance of

accuracy is stressed . Mistakes often come with some penalty. So, it makes sense that the U.S. children were more hesitant to include a certain item that they were not sure belonged in the panorama.  

Conversely, the Mayan culture probably stresses accuracy and correctness of answers less, which would explain why the children over-compensated and put more items in the panorama than were originally there. Perhaps their society and culture embraces risk taking more than our own and has less of a penalty for wrong answers.

Another finding in this experiment was that roughly a third of the U.S. children used rehearsal as a strategy for memorization, while only one in thirty Mayan children used rehearsal. This could also reflect on how we, as Americans, stress rehearsal and practice to remember something, maybe more than Mayan culture.

2. Differences in expression of emotions across cultures affects memory

Korea vs. USA: Who is more emotional?

Rime et al (1992)found: 20% of Koreans never

shared their emotional experiences.

Compared to only 5% in the US

They hypothesised that suppression of emotional experiences can lead to memory impairment.

Richards & Gross (1999)Aim: Investigate whether the

regulation of emotion will affect memory.

Procedure: 53 subjects were split into

2 groups One group was told to

suppress their emotion while watching a film about and argument between two parents with the presence of a little girl.

The other group was merely asked to watch the film.

Richards & Gross (1999) Results

The group that was suppressing their emotion throughout the film (regulation of emotion) had poor recall.

They did a natural observation and compared the memory of those who regulate and freely express their emotions.

Those who express their emotions have better memory.

Why did suppressing their emotion zap their memory?

The “Cognitive Cost” of regulating emotions took up the capacity for memory encoding.

Those who express their emotions have better memory.

This finding suggests that cultures who may suppress emotions may have worse memories. (link back to Rime et al)

Evaluation of Richards and Gross (1999)

Ecological validity was low in the experiment, because it was in lab conditions.

Their methodology not scientific i.e. merely told participants to suppress emotions- this does not necessarily mean that they did

Make a big assumption that regulating emotion took up the capacity of memory encoding.

Richard and Gross study on emotion and memory will have NO relevance to culture and memory unless you relate it to differences in emotional expression between cultures!

Richards and Gross must be presented alongside Rime’s findings!

Exam tip...

Conclusions....

The implication of many cross cultural memory studies is that although the ability to remember is universal, specific forms of remembering are not universal but are rather context bound

It has been found that most psychological research has been done in Western countries – more specifically on male university students in the United States.

For example, Smith and Bond (1998) observed that in textbooks and found that approximately 10% of the world’s population was being accurately represented.

In order for one’s research to be truly representative of humans all around the globe, it is necessary to conduct research on people of various nationalities and cultures to fully understand how culture affects behavior.

In the past, there have been biased conclusions to cross cultural research that have assumed that people of other cultures are better in general, due to having results of a particular memory task. This is an issue however, as the research was not embedded or contextualised for all participants, which means they were unable to fully understand and participate properly in the research.

This issue needs to be addressed to truly understand effects of culture on memory

Unrepresentative research