Memory: Cultural factors
Culture has many effects on our behavior, attitudes, and cognitive processes. Culture plays a role in creating our schema, which, in turn, affects what we remember. However, it also affects how we remember. The following research explores how culture affects the cognitive process of memory.
Bias in psychology
As a field, psychology has traditionally shown a Western bias. Western psychology has developed tests for intelligence, memory, and problem-solving focused on the typical Western white middle-class experience. The application of these tests cross-culturally has often led to negative conclusions about the intelligence of other cultures and working-class people.
Western psychologists believed that memory was a universal process and that everyone worldwide learned and remembered information in the same way. When tests were given to samples made up of people from non-Western cultures, they often did poorly. Why?
Parker and Philp (2004) developed a list of examples of how such tests may be biased. They include:
- Questions about dates and seasons assume that participants are familiar with the Western calendar and the Western concept of seasons
- Questions about previously learned information assume familiarity with certain events, people, or knowledge that may not be highly relevant to the local culture
- Long pieces of prose require a certain level of literacy/fluency in the language of the test.
- Objects used in memory tests may not be familiar to the local culture. People don’t remember them because they don’t know what they are.
Psychologists have tried to overcome this bias by using an emic approach to studying memory in different cultures. An early example of this was done by Cole and Scribner (1974) to see the effect schooling would have on the strategies children used to memorize lists of words.
Cole and Scribner (1974)
Cole & Scribner (1974) studied memory among children in rural Liberia. To overcome the barriers of language and culture, they worked closely with the university-educated local people and observed everyday activities before conducting their experiments.
They studied Liberian children in school and those not attending school. The children were given a free-recall task in which they were shown several objects, one at a time, and then asked to remember them in any order.
Below is the list of 20 objects used in several of Cole and Scribner’s studies. The list shows that the objects appear to fall into four distinct categories. To ensure that the list was not ethnocentric - and thus, foreign to the Liberian participants - the researchers ran a pilot study to ensure that Liberian participants were familiar with the words.
| The word list used in research by Cole and his colleagues | |
Plate Calabash Pot Pan Cup | Cutlass Hoe Knife File Hammer |
Potato Onion Banana Orange Coconut | Trousers Singlet Head tie Shirt Hat |
The researchers found that, unlike the children in school, the children who were not attending school showed no regular increase in memory performance after the age of 9 or 10. These participants remembered approximately ten items on the first trial and recalled only two more after 15 practice trials. By contrast, the Liberian children attending school learned the materials rapidly, much the way schoolchildren of the same age did in the United States.
Schoolchildren in Liberia and the United States used the categorical similarities of items in the list to aid their recall. After the first trial, they clustered their responses; for example, they would recall items of clothing, food, and so on. The non-schooled Liberian participants did very little clustering, indicating that they were not using the categorical structure of the list to help them remember.
In a later trial, the researchers varied the recall task so that the objects were now presented in a meaningful way as part of a story. The unschooled children recalled the objects easily with the support of the story's context.
Memory studies like these invite reflection. Even though the ability to remember is universal, strategies for remembering are not universal. Generally, schooling presents children with specialized information-processing tasks, such as organizing large amounts of information in memory. It is questionable whether such ways of remembering have parallels in traditional societies like the Kpelle children studied by Cole and Scribner. The conclusion is that people learn to remember in ways relevant to their everyday lives, and these do not always mirror the activities that cognitive psychologists use to investigate mental processes.
As a traditional society, Australia's indigenous people historically spent most of their lives in the desert. Their survival depended largely on their ability to store or encode enormous amounts of environmental or visual information. Judith Kearins wanted to see how Indigenous children's spatial memory compared to white Australian children's.
Kearins (1981) had a sample of forty-four Indigenous children (27 boys, 17 girls) and 44 white Australian children (28 boys, 16 girls). Kearins placed 20 objects on a board divided into 20 squares. The children were told to study the board for 30 seconds. Then, the objects were placed in a pile in the center of the board, and the children were asked to place the objects on the board in the same arrangement. The results showed that the Indigenous children correctly relocated more objects than did white Australian children. It appears that their way of life significantly impacts how and what they remember.
Cole and Scriber's study showed that children learn memory strategies through formal education—but education is not only "in school" but also how we are raised by our parents. For more details about this study, see Kearnins (1981). You can also watch this short video of her work.
Thinking about research
1. Why is this study considered a quasi-experiment? What are the limitations of this method?
2. If the children were not raised in the desert, how may the parents have taught them this skill?
3. Do you think that you could develop the same skills that the Indigenous children showed in this study? How would you go about learning this skill?
Teacher only box1. Why is this study considered a "quasi-experiment?" What are the limitations of this method?
The children could not be randomly allocated to conditions. They were separated based on their cultural heritage. The method's limitation is that a cause-and-effect relationship cannot be determined.
2. If the children were not raised in the desert, how may the parents have taught them this skill?
It is most likely that this skill was learned indirectly - through observational learning. However, it could also have been learned through participatory learning - that is, play activities between parent and child where feedback was given to the child to help them improve their skills.
3. Do you think that you could develop the same skills that the indigenous children showed in this study? How would you go about learning this skill?
Some students will argue that they could not learn this skill. The question is why they would not be able to. Answers will vary.
Songlines
Several cultures use music to remember their past. Much like the Kpelle children could remember the objects that Cole and Scribner showed when they were in the context of a story, the griots of Mali and Senegal use the kora, a type of harp, to retell the stories of the local communities in great detail.
Indigenous Australians have songlines that describe the features and directions of travel. These songlines are sung and memorized so that the traveler knows the route to their destination. Songlines have other meanings in Indigenous culture and are not just a memory strategy. Certain Songlines called ‘Dreaming Pathways’ have specific ancestral stories attached to them.
Watch the following video with Colin Jones, a lecturer in Indigenous history.
Question
Discuss the following statement: Ethnocentrism can hinder the development of a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of memory. Without considering cultural diversity, psychological theories of memory may remain incomplete.
Teacher only boxThis question is very much linked to TOK. The following points may be part of your students' discussion:
- Standardized memory tests and experimental designs may reflect Western cultural norms and values, thus failing to capture memory processes accurately in different cultural contexts
- When researchers interpret data through an ethnocentric lens, they might misinterpret cultural differences in memory as cognitive deficits or anomalies
- Ethnocentrism can hinder cross-cultural collaboration and the exchange of ideas among researchers from different cultural backgrounds. A lack of cultural sensitivity can create barriers to meaningful dialogue and the integration of diverse perspectives in psychological research.
- By prioritizing Western perspectives and marginalizing non-Western viewpoints, the field of psychology risks perpetuating cultural biases and inequalities.
- Ethnocentrism can lead to the creation of strategies that are less effective or even inappropriate for non-Western populations.
- Different cultures have unique ways of encoding, storing, and retrieving memories, often influenced by social norms, practices, and environmental factors. Ethnocentrism can cause researchers to overlook these diverse memory practices, resulting in a narrow understanding of memory
Checking for understanding
Why could we consider Cole & Scribner’s study an emic approach?
An emic approach takes culture into consideration when designing materials for a study. An etic approach uses materials designed in the culture of the psychologist.
What were Cole & Scribner’s findings regarding cognition?
The study examined the role of schooling in teaching students "chunking strategies." Children who did not go to school did not learn the list of words by chunking (or categorizing) them in lists. This appears to be a skill that is learned.
Why is Kearins’ study of memory in Aborigines considered a quasi-experiment?
The participants were allocated to groups based on whether they were Aboriges or Australians - and their performance on the task was compared. A true experiment would be able to randomly allocate participants to either condition. There is an independent variable - culture - but this cannot be manipulated by the research. Hence the term "quasi-experiment."
Which of the following is not a result of a Western bias in the study of memory?
Ethnocentrism can hinder cross-cultural collaboration and the exchange of ideas among researchers from different cultural backgrounds. A lack of cultural sensitivity can create barriers to meaningful dialogue and the integration of diverse perspectives in psychological research
What conclusion can be drawn from Kearins' (1981) study about Indigenous children's memory?
The children had developed spatial memory skills as a result of the traditional way of life of the Indigenous people of Australia. Their interaction with nature in their environment helped to shape these skills.
Which of the following is not a characteristic of emic research?
An emic approach applies the findings to the local community being studied; it is not the goal to apply findings globally.
What is one limitation of quasi-experimental research?
The limitation of quasi-experiments is that cause-and-effect relationships cannot be determined due to lack of random allocation and no manipulation of an independent variable.