The influence of culture on children’s immediate and delayed retrieval

Abstract

Culture shapes children’s memories. However, scant attention has been given to the influence of culture on specific memory stages. Thus, we conducted two controlled experiments to examine cultural differences in memory recall at immediate and delayed retrieval phases. In Studies 1 and 2 (n = 217), 7‐ to 10‐year‐old Chinese and Euro‐Canadian children watched a story involving both social‐ and individual‐focused scenarios. Participants then recalled the story immediately afterwards (Study 1) and 5–7 days later (Studies 1 and 2). Findings reveal that Chinese children accurately reported more details from the social‐focused events than did their Euro‐Canadian counterparts in the immediate interview, and this result was replicated after a delay in both studies. Moreover, as expected, within‐country comparisons showed that Euro‐Canadian children had better memory for individual‐ than for social‐focused events in both studies. Chinese children, however, showed better memory for social‐ than for individual‐focused events only in the immediate interview in Study 1; their delayed retrieval was not affected by event focus. These findings reveal that cultural variations in memory are evident in both immediate and delayed retrieval. Implications for future research are discussed.

The Influence of Schematic Knowledge Differences on Memory Recall: How Do Different Cultural Backgrounds Impact Memory Recognition

“…In Carrell's review, it appears that there isn't enough evidence of generalizable content schemata that is culturally specific due to the existence of different cultural group may developed same schemata for certain things [8]. However, Qi and Roberts found the cultural differences when doing memory recognition test that comparing 10-year-old Chinese and Euro-Canadian children's memory recall of stories [9]. Both the Chinese and Euro-Canadian children watched a story involving both social-and individual-focused scenarios.…”