Cognitive Level of Analysis LEARNING OUTCOME: DISCUSS HOW SOCIAL OR CULTURAL FACTORS AFFECT ONE COGNITIVE PROCESS - THE EFFECT OF SCHOOLING ON MEMORY

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?

1960s Many African nations began to include more formal schooling based on Western schooling What problems do you think this might have caused? Based on the Industrial Revolution and social/political changes, it was thought that formal education (as opposed to fundamental education) would take children beyond their communities.

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. 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?