Abstract
Preferred cognitive strategies can differ between Eastern (e.g., China, Japan, Korea) and Western (e.g., US, Canada, Western Europe) cultures. When viewing and remembering complex scenes, Easterners focus on contextual information whereas Westerners focus on focal objects. Westerners benefit more from a self-referencing memory strategy, in which relating information to the self leads to higher levels of memory performance than relating information to another person (even one known well, such as a mother or a close friend), compared to Easterners. Despite a number of studies demonstrating cultural differences in these processes, little is known about how these cognitive processes change as a result of cultural experiences or learning. In order to address these issues, I examined the effects of acculturative factors and strategy training to identify mechanisms contributing to cultural differences in cognition. Study 1a did so by investigating how acculturative measures relate to memory performance ERP correlates of self- and close other-referencing for Chinese international students at two time points. Results demonstrated that level of effort involved in using self- and close other-related strategies (as measured by the LFP and LPP ERP correlates) varies with acculturation to the United States. Study 1b further examined malleability of cultural effects by investigating how acculturative change over time might relate to EEG time-frequency measures. Results suggest that inhibition of default processing strategies, as evidenced by theta patterns, as a potential mechanism for acculturative variation in self- and close other-referencing strategies. Study 2 explored flexibility of cultural effects on cognition more directly via the piloting of a contextual training paradigm aimed at memory performance for Americans, with a goal of training a strategy to approximate the style of East Asians. Results include promising visual trends for the effectiveness of such a training paradigm.
In an increasingly globalized world, it is vital to understand how cultural interaction could impact patterns of cognition and how existing cultural differences in cognition emerge. By both studying acculturative processes and employing training paradigms longitudinally, the current research projects contribute to the understanding of mechanisms that account for cultural influences on cognition.