Cross Cultural Studies of Memory

 Questions and Answers

1) How does culture affect memory? Use the examples here and show it.

·       2) What has been the problem in cross-cultural memory research, and what have the implications 
been?

·    3) Give some arguments for why it is not advisable to assume that memory strategies are universal 
and support it with evidence.

·      4)  If you were to test memory in another culture, how would you proceed?

·   5)  What can be learned from these studies on memory on general problems in psychological 
research?

1)     Culture affects memory in the way of schooling vs. non-schooling, or more commonly, Western vs. Non western society. Also the different kinds of ways they remember things or vital to their ability to remember things. School children can remember easier than non-school because they have leaned techniques to remember whereas the non-school just tries to remember everything without any kind of help way to remember things.

2)     The problem with this cross-cultural memory research is that westerners have more schooling than those of nonwestern and therefore remember in different ways, no necessarily better ways. Their research in Guatemala show that the children can remember things that are more familiar to them, like a diagram of a town and the different things in the town but when having to remember just a list, its harder for them because that format is not their normal way of life.

3)     Memory strategies are NOT universal because you learn them from school or from people. Schooled children learn like this but non-schooled, like the children in Liberia, learn a different kind of strategy, not one that’s helpful which, say, just a list of random words.

4)     To test memory in a different culture I would first study this culture to find out how much schooling, if any, they have and what their normal settings would be; a city, a village, alone… Then set up an experiment with conditions similar to what they would be used to, so if they were highly schooled, then a list of words, or if not then a diagram or picture.

)     Cultural biased tests are often a failure because of all the different ways that people can view memory problems and solve them and in all the different ways it would need to be used. These differences play a vital role in testing memory and each culture must have a different kind of test to make sure there is no bias in the experiments.