Cross-Cultural Research on Cognition




I. Some basics

A. the current state of psychological research
1. most research is conducted on the 30% of individuals who live in Westernized cultures and even then, it mostly concentrates on middle-class white individuals in those cultures

2. true tests of many of our assumptions must incorporate research on people from other ethnicities and other cultures
 

 B. defining culture  
1. some ingredients: language, customs, habits, modes of dress (Cole & Scribner, 1974)

2. a collection of independent variables (Segall, 1984)
3. a Gestalt?
a. cultural syndrome: a pattern of shared attitudes, beliefs, etc., organized around a theme, and identified among those in a particular time and place


4. in any case, culture must be "unpacked" to see what about the culture determines cognition
 

 C. universality vs. relativity of cognitive function
  1. Bovet (1974) studied Algerian and Genevan children and adults on Piagetian tasks
  a. Algerian children had special "difficulty" with conservation of quantity

b. based on physical and behavioral aspects of their culture; e.g., eating practices
 

1. different sized utensils and dishes were used

2. no comparisons of serving sizes

3. practices did not focus on quantity
 

 2. cultural universals
  a. phenomena universal to all 1. e.g., language
  b. process, capacity, or strategy exists; culture would facilitate, hinder, or alter its expression
  3. cultural relativism
  a. phenomena are specific to a culture 1. e.g., forming hierarchically organized categories
  b. certain processes, capacities, and strategies are only relevant to and therefore only found in certain cultures
  D. methodological issues
  1. correlational research rather than true experiments
  a. no random assignment

b. no manipulation of key independent variables

c. no ability to control confounding factors
 

 2. ability versus preference II. Perceptual Processes
A. picture perception 1. cues used to indicate depth in a 2D drawing
  a. superposition, texture gradient, size, height, linear perspective 2. Hudson (1960) studied white and black South Africans
a. schooling influenced the ability to "see" in 3D

b. non-literate workers tended to see pics in 2D

c. not schooling per se, but practice in pictorial literacy

3. Deregowski (1968) studied children and adults in Zambia, Central Africa a. presented the Hudson task vs. a construction task

b. 80% failed on the picture task, but >50% could construct 3D models from 2D pictures

 4. Liddell (1997) studied South African school children
a. asked to describe pictures of African origin

b. less emphasis on interpretation as compared to British children

c. culture may emphasize factual descriptions and this may influence how pictures are viewed

 B. visual illusions 1. Rivers (1905) working with Papuans from New Guinea and Todas from Southern India
  a. noted that they were more prone to the horizontal/vertical illusion but less prone to the Mueller-Lyer illusion than Western samples 2. Segall et al. (1966) studied 2000 people from Africa, the Philippines, and the US
  a. results confirmed Rivers’ observations, though both illusions were present in all cultures to some degree

b. proposed the carpentered-world theory
 

1. interpret the world in ways we’re used to seeing; angles and lines in the M-L illusion mimic those in a carpentered environment (with buildings, etc.) c. argued at the level of perception rather than sensation
III. Memory Processes
A. Free recall
1. Cole et al. (1971) tested recall in the Kpelle people of Liberia and a Southern CA sample
  a. presented nouns in clusterable and nonclusterable lists

b. found no evidence of spontaneous clustering for the Kpelles

 
1. unrelated to age or schooling

2. clusterable lists were easier to recall overall
 

 2. tested alternative hypotheses: did not understand the task, not interested in the task, cues were not strong enough
  a. improvement only when cued for clustering (e.g., tell me all the clothing you remember) 3. suggested no qualitative differences in memory
  a. differences were due to the likelihood of imposing an organization on memory B. Visuo-spatial memory
  1. perhaps verbal memory tasks are less likely to tap into processes relevant to non-Western cultures

2. Kearins (1981) tested Australian Aboriginal children and Australian children of European descent
 

a. presented visual arrays with natural and artifactual objects

b. asked to replace the objects in their original locations

c. recall was better for Aboriginal children in all conditions

d. little evidence for overt rehearsal


3. culture can impose "environmental pressure" to enhance certain cognitive skills

 
a. once established, the skill is more likely to be practiced IV. Categorization
 
A. "put the ones together that go together"
 
1. development from a perceptual basis to a functional one

2. greater consistency and flexibility with age

B. Greenfield et al. (1966) tested Wolof children from Senegal, West Africa
1. 10 familiar objects: 4 red, 4 round, 4 clothing items (some overlap in attributes)
a. 65% chose based on color

b. improved with age (10% @ 6; 30% @ 9; Å 100% @ 15)

2. sets of triplets w/ 2 items of similar shape, color, or function
a. schooling had a significant relationship to success
1. could interpret the pictures better

2. sort based on form or function rather than color

3. color preference decreased with more schooling

C. Sharp & Cole worked with Mayans in Yucatan, Mexico
1. 1st, 3rd, 6th grade and adolescents with < 3 years of school

2. sorted geometric figures differing in color, shape, & number
 

a. consistency of one-dimension sorting inc. w/ schooling

b. as did the ability to reclassify (0 1st graders; < 50% with 3 years of education; 60% of 6th graders)
D. Irwin and colleagues (1970, 1974) tested categorization in Mano rice farmers from central Liberia
1. compared sorting of cards and 8 bowls of rice (differed on type of bowl - large vs. small, and type of rice - polished vs. unpolished) a. unschooled adults were faster with the rice than the cards, but did not resort either one 2. geometric shapes vs. rice were sorted by American undergraduates & Mano farmers
a. results were as expected: familiarity predicted success
E. Hatano et al. (1993) studied biological conceptions of life in Japanese, Israeli, and American K, 2nd, and 4th graders
1. 3 rules were identified: PAP, PA, and all things

2. rule use reflects culture

a. Japanese folklore allows feelings to inanimate objects

b. Israeli traditions group plants separately

c. US television for youngsters is very nature oriented
F. conclusions
1. categorization is a relevant cognitive process cross-culturally

2. differences can be understood in terms of familiarity of materials, context, and instructions

 V. Reasoning
A. formal reasoning: drawing conclusions based on given premises
B. Luria (1976) tested reasoning on syllogisms by Central Asian Soviet farmers (Uzbekistan)
  1. those with no schooling often did not deal with the problem

2. Luria suggested 3 limitations

 
a. difficulty accepting premises that contradicted one’s experience

b. could not treat general premises as general

c. treated premises as independent pieces of information


C. similar results were found by Cole & Scribner (1974) with the Kpelles

 
1. also some distortions of the syllogisms in memory

2. in the US, seen with children generally and with adults on difficult problems

 VI. Effects of schooling and literacy
A. literacy as a tool
1. hypothesized to transform intellectual processes
B. effects of culture on cognition 1. cultures "arrange for the occurrence or non-occurrence" of specific problems and situations for practice (e.g., literacy, memorization)

2. cultures determine the frequency with which problems/practices occur

3. cultures "regulate the level of difficulty"

 C. the confounding of schooling and literacy
1. literate people are most often schooled people

2. are there independent effects?

D. the "context" of school 1. the teacher often already knows the answer  
a. assessing students’ knowledge rather than seeking information


2. decontextualized in terms of content and motivation

 
a. abstract information, often learned for non-intrinsic reasons

b. information is removed from the "here and now"
E. the Vai of Liberia, West Africa 1. Vai script: a writing system used for commercial and personal transactions  
a. 20% of adult males were literate in Vai script   b. other writing systems: 16% in Arabic (used for religious purposes) and 6% in English (official language of the schools and government)


2. Scribner & Cole (1981) interviewed 650 people, 15 or older
a. cognitive tasks: sorting, memory, syllogistic, linguistic

b. seven groups based on literacy & schooling

c. found few effects based on literacy, slightly more on schooling

1. literacy affected knowledge of language

2. schooling affected the ability to provide explanations & justifications for one’s thinking

 d. neither has wide-ranging effects on cognition
1. task-specific, practice effects


VII. Situated cognition

A. cognition in natural settings, practical thought
1. "embedded in the larger purposive activities of daily life"
B. Scribner’s (1984) field study 300 people in blue- and white-collar positions  
1. observed blue collar tasks such as product assembly, inventory, & pricing delivery tickets at a dairy

2. created problems based on the observations

3. e.g., preloaders had to fill orders written in terms of cases ± # units (1 case - 4 quarts = order of 26 quarts)

 
a. found that preloaders almost always chose the most efficient way of filling an order (sometimes adding to or taking from partial cases, etc.)   1. did so with few errors, high cognitive demands   b. more efficient than novice preloaders or a 9th grade control group  
1. optimal solution occurred 72% of the time preloaders, 65% inventory people, 47% clerks, and 25% for 9th graders


4. practical thinking is based on cognitive flexibility
C. Lave et al. (1984) and grocery shoppers
1. studied 25 grocery shoppers from various economic and educational backgrounds

2. decisions are made for 7,000 distinct items with 50 purchased weekly

3. evidence for flexible and adaptive solutions
a. e.g., comparing prices on "high-priced" cheese
1. compared different packages of cheese; saved the mental effort of calculating price per ounce


4. 98% accuracy on in-store arithmetic vs. 59% accuracy on "school-like" tests


D. Carraher et al. (1985) and Brazilian street vendors
1. again context affected accuracy
a. children were 98% accurate with real life problems, 37% correct with abstracted problems


E. even in other settings, the goals and processes involved in cognition may differ as a function of context
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