Categorical Organization in Free Recall across Culture and Age

Abstract

participants' native language. In experiment 1, the words were strong category associates, and in experiment 2, the words were weak category associates. Participants recalled all the words they could remember, and the number of words recalled and degree of clustering by category were analyzed. Results: As predicted, cultural differences emerged for the elderly, with East-Asians using categories less than Americans during recall of highly-associated category exemplars (experiment 1). For recall of low-associate exemplars, East-Asians overall categorized less than Americans (experiment 2). Surprisingly, these differences in the use of categories did not lead to cultural differences in the number of words recalled. The expected effects of age were apparent with elderly recalling less than young, but in contrast to previous studies, elderly also categorized less than young. Conclusion: These studies provide support for the notion that cultural differences in categorical organization are larger for elderly adults than young, although culture did not impact the amount recalled. These data suggest that culture and age interact to influence cognition. Key WordsCulture ؒ Aging ؒ Memory ؒ Recall ؒ Categorization ؒ Cognition Abstract Background: Cross-cultural differences in cognition suggest that Westerners use categories more than Easterners, but these differences have only been investigated in young adults. Objective: The contributions of cognitive resource and the extent of cultural exposure are explored for free recall by investigating cross-cultural differences in categorical organization in younger and older adults. Cultural differences in the use of categories should be larger for elderly than young because categorization is a well-practiced strategy for Westerners, but age-related cognitive resource limitations may make the strategy difficult for elderly Easterners to implement. Therefore, we expect that cultural differences in categorization will be magnified in elderly adults relative to younger adults, with Americans categorizing more than Chinese. Methods: Across two studies, 112 young and 112 elderly drawn from two cultures (American and Chinese) encoded words presented in their native language. One word list contained categorically-unrelated words and the other, categorically-related words; both lists were presented in the

Cultural influences on memory

“…Over the past few years, studies have begun to explore the contribution of culture to long-term memory (e.g., Chua et al, 2006;Gutchess et al, 2006b;Masuda and Nisbett, 2001;Wang and Conway, 2004;Wang and Ross, 2005), and a few studies have begun to explore the effects of culture on neural processes that contribute to memory (e.g., Goh et al, 2007;Gutchess et al, 2006a;Hedden et al, 2008). This review will first consider the contribution of different neural systems to long-term memory formation and retrieval, and then consider the ways in which culture might modify these processes.…”

“…The exploration of crosscultural differences in the organization of information by categories versus similarities or relationships shows that Americans exhibit a preference for sorting by categories whereas East Asians prefer to sort by similarities and relationships (Chiu, 1972;Gutchess et al, 2006b;Ji et al, 2004;Unsworth et al, 2005). These preferences affect effortful cognitive processes as well, with Chinese making more errors than Americans when learning rule-based classification (Norenzayan et al, 2002), and American elderly organizing information in memory by categories more than Chinese elderly (Gutchess et al, 2006b). Based on these behavioral differences, neuroimaging studies would be expected to reveal cultural differences in semantic processing regions, such as temporal and inferior frontal regions.…”

Cross-cultural differences in memory specificity

“…Even though some research has begun to probe differences in memory across cultures, the emphasis has largely been on the quantity of different types of information remembered, such as contextual information (Masuda and Nisbett 2001) or number of categorical versus control words recalled (Gutchess et al 2006b). Qualities of memories are particularly important in that they have the potential to shape, as well as reflect, one's experiences in the world.…”

Introduction Back to Nurture: Cross-Cultural Research as a Paradigm for Understanding Bio-Cultural Dynamics of Cognitive Ageing

“…Classically, this distinction is one between crystallized and fluid abilities [9], and within Baltes' theorizing an analogous distinction is drawn between cognitive pragmatics on the one hand and cognitive mechanics on the other. In the papers in this series, crystallized intelligence includes naming ability [10], knowledge of categorical structure [11], and an aspect of social cognition, i.e., perceptions of ageing [12] , while memory and the strategic use of categorical information [13] are examples of fluid ability. While it may be useful to characterize these domains of cognition as fluid or crystallized, Park et al [1] , in contrast to Baltes [14] , have developed their theory around process rather than on this distinction in order to avoid circularity and the inherent difficulty of identifying 'pure' fluid or crystallized tasks.…”