Download Culture Memory

Cognitive Level of
Analysis
L EA R N I N G O U TCO M E : D I S C U S S H OW
S O C I A L O R C U LT U R A L FAC TO RS A F F EC T
O N E C O G N I T I V E P RO C ES S - T H E E F F EC T
O F S C H O O L I N G O N M E M O RY
Lesson objectives
 To understand how
education can have an
effect on memory
 To trace the role of three
studies that explore this.
(Make key study sheets and
work on depth of
evaluation if necessary)
Culture and Education
 What fraction of all coins worth less than a
pound are silver in colour?
 Why might this be a tricky question for someone
not familiar with British coins?
 Would being asked questions like this impede a
student’s mathematical learning?
Culture & Memory
 Most psychological studies have been conducted on Western Culture
and researchers such as Jean Piaget from Switzerland proposed that
cognitive development followed universal laws.
 Therefore, many researchers thought that any form of memory tests
were appropriate to the any culture and yields a reasonable result.
 However, when the memory tests were conducted in different
continent such as in non-western culture countries, participants poorly
performed on the test.
 Hence, there are three studies conducted to overcome this cultural
barrier and the following studies are :



Cole & Scribner (1974)
Kagan et. al (1979)
Rogoff & Waddel (1982)
What is a good education?
 How is education different in different
cultures/countries?
Culture and Education - Bruner
 According to Bruner, children of any culture learn the
basics of culture through schooling and daily interactions
with members of the culture in which they live.
 Cole et al set out to test the stereotype that people from
non-literate cultures have tremendous memories.
 They wanted to investigate whether a cognitive process
such as memory is universal.
Memory Research
 Adults from America found to use CHUNKING when
performing free recall tasks.
 Chunking involves organising information in memory
into related groups. Memory is clustered into related
groups during recall from long-term memory.
 This is a form of mnemonics. Do you know what that
is? Can you think of other examples?
 Based on the
1960s
Industrial Revolution
and social/political
changes, it was
thought that formal
education (as
opposed to
fundamental
education) would take
children beyond their
communities.
Many African nations began to include more formal schooling
based on Western schooling
What problems do you think this might have caused?
Culture and Education
 Performance in many African schools was low.
 In 1963 Michael Cole went with a group to study the
impact on formal education in Liberia.
Culture and Education
 Cole was told that the
Kpelle students
performed poorly
because:



Perceptual problems
meant they could not
identify geometric shapes
They could not classify
They used repition recall,
rather than thinking (to
try to find an answer)
Culture and Memory
 Read through p. 80 / 81 of the textbook
 Complete a key study sheet for the Cole & Scribner study
 Now read through the worksheet ‘Gladwell on Kpelle’ and
complete the questions.
Kagan et. al (1979)
 Similar memory test was conducted on free-recall task
among Mayan children.
 The result was that their performance lagged significantly
behind those of the age mates in the United States.
Rogoff and Waddel (1982)
 Same memory test to Kagan's was conducted on the Mayan Children, however,
the test was changed to make the task meaningful in local terms.
 Researchers constructed a diorama similar to the environment the Mayans were
living.
 The local children watched as the experimenter moved 20 objects to the diorama
 Then the 20 objects were placed back to the group of 60 others remaining on the
table.
 After a few minutes, children were asked to reconstruct the diorama
 The findings was that the Mayan children were slightly superior to that of the
same age in the United States.
Conclusion
 Taking all the studies
conducted such as the
studies presented above, it
concludes that ability to
remember is a universal
intellectual requirement
but the way we process
memory is not universal.
Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
How does culture affect memory? Use the examples here and
show it.
What has been the problem in cross-cultural memory research,
and what have the implications been?
Give some arguments for why it is not advisable to assume that
memory strategies are universal and support it with evidence.
If you were to test memory in another culture, how would you
proceed?
What can be learned from these studies on memory on general
problems in psychological research?