Category Norms as a Function of Culture and Age: Comparisons of Item Responses to 105 Categories by American and Chinese Adults (original) (raw)
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Frontiers in Psychology, 2017
The interaction between age and culture can have various implications for cognition as age represents the effect of biological processes whereas culture represents the effect of sustaining experiences. Nevertheless, their interaction has rarely been examined. Thus, based on the fact that Asians are more intuitive in reasoning than Americans, we examined how this cultural difference might interact with age. Young and old participants from the US and Singapore performed a categorization task (living vs. non-living). To measure their reliance on intuition, we manipulated the typicality of targets (animate vs. inanimate). We showed that (1) RTs for inanimate organisms were slower than RTs for animate organisms (atypicality cost), (2) the cost was particularly large for older adults and (3) an age × culture interaction was observed such that cultural differences in the cost (Singaporeans > Americans) was found only among older participants. Further, we demonstrated that the age effect was associated with cognitive function and the culture effect among older adults was associated with cultural values. Finally, a moderated mediation analysis suggests that cognitive function and cultural values interact with each other in order to jointly influence one's cognition.
Journal of Gerontology, 1999
There is evidence that East Asians are biased to process information in a holistic, contextual fashion, whereas Western Europeans process information in an analytic, feature-based style. We argue that these cultural differences in information processing styles are so pervasive that they affect cognitive function at the most basic levels, including the mechanics of cognition. However, as individuals age, it is not always the case that culture effects on cognitive processes magnify, despite many additional years of exposure to the culture. Neurobiological decline in cognitive function that occurs with age is a cognitive universal and can limit the strategies used in late adulthood, resulting in more similarity in cognitive function in late adulthood across cultures than is observed in young adulthood We present a theoretical framework for understanding the impact of aging on cognitive function cross-culturally. The importance of developing culture-invariant measures of processing resources is emphasized and methodological issues associated with the cross-cultural study of aging are addressed
Categorical Organization in Free Recall across Culture and Age
Gerontology, 2006
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.
Cross-cultural differences in memory: The role of culture-based stereotypes about aging
Psychology and Aging, 2000
The extent to which cultural stereotypes about aging contribute to age differences in memory performance is investigated by comparing younger and older Anglophone Canadians to demographically matched Chinese Canadians, who tend to hold more positive views of aging. Four memory tests were administered. In contrast to B. Levy and E. Langer's (1994) findings, younger adults in both cultural groups outperformed their older comparison group on all memory tests. For 2 tests, which made use of visual stimuli resembling ideographic characters in written Chinese, the older Chinese Canadians approached, but did not reach, the performance achieved by their younger counterparts, as well as outperformed the older Anglophone Canadians. However, on the other two tests, which assess memory for complex figures and abstract designs, no differences were observed between the older Chinese and Anglophone Canadians. Path analysis results suggest that this pattern of findings is not easily attributed to a wholly culturally based account of age differences in memory performance. Cultures differ in the way in which aging is viewed. In mainstream North America, old age is generally regarded by both younger and older adults as a period of poor health, loneliness, resistance to change, and declining physical as well as mental abilities (Erber, 1989; Pratt & Norris, 1994; Ryan, 1992). A number of researchers have suggested that such negative agebased stereotypes may have a detrimental impact on cognition and, especially, on memory as people age (
Social representations on aging: structural differences concerning age group and cultural context
Mainly due to the salience of the world population aging phenomenon, aging and old age are consistently gaining relevance in social life and pointing out to the importance of characterizing the social representations about the topic. After identifying the need of systematic structural research at the level of structural status and basic cognitive scheme activation related to the social representations on aging, two controlled survey studies were conducted to assess the roles of age group and cultural context to differentiate representational structures. Gender was also taken into account. Study 1 had a sample of 80 Italian participants balanced by gender and age group (young and mature). Study 2 had a similar design, comparing the results from the young Italian sample to a group of 40 young Brazilians. Instruments were questionnaires with standard basic cognitive schemes tasks and centrality questionnaires. Log-linear analysis and one-way chi square tests were employed for data analysis. Results indicated that both in terms of structural status and scheme activation the age group and cultural context variables are associated to representational differences, while the role of gender was restricted to peripheral modulations. The study sets foundations for further basic and applied research by providing baseline structural characterization.
Aging, cognition, and culture: a neuroscientific perspective
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2002
Behavioral studies have suggested some intriguing differences across cultures in cognitive processes such as attention to context, the use of categorization, stereotypes about aging, and metamemory judgments. Moreover, there is behavioral evidence to suggest that, with age, cultural differences in cognition become less pronounced, likely due to decreased cognitive resources that may result in more similarity across cultures in cognition. The study of the neuroscience of aging, culture and cognition, although in its infancy, potentially provides insight into the contributions of experience and neurobiology to cognitive function. We review initial findings of cross-cultural behavioral aging research in light of cognitive neuroscience of aging research and consider the methodological challenges and benefits of adding a crosscultural dimension to the study of the cognitive neuroscience of aging.
The Aging Semantic Differential (ASD) is the most widely used instrument to measure young people’s attitudes towards older adults. This study translated the ASD to Mandarin and exam- ined its psychometric properties. The Mandarin-ASD contains three latent factors (Personality and Mental Health, Societal Participation, and Physical) that have high internal reliability and reasonable discriminate validity. Social work researchers, practitioners and allied professionals may utilize the ASD- Mandarin instrument to measure young people’s attitudes towards older adults in China. We issue a call for a universal- ASD that can be applied across different cultural contexts.
Gerontology, 2006
Research on cross-cultural cognition relies extensively on pictorial stimuli to address how perceptions of common objects vary across population groups. We add to this understanding by examining naming specificity-the degree of detail elicited for labels of common objects-across Age (Young-Old) and Culture (American-Chinese) groups. Segregating subject-specific responses for four Age-by-Culture groups into multiple levels of specificity, allows for a formal analysis using latent class techniques and the rank-order binomial setup of Rost (1985). Overall, three naming specificity classes were supported. Though Age differences were minor, Cultural differences were not: the Chinese showed far greater variation, naming more items both with high and with low specificity than age-matched American counterparts. Our results differ from prior studies based on familiarity and latency measures, and suggest approximately 27% of commonly-used picture items differed across groups, calling to question their use in cross-group studies.
A Cross-Country Construct Validation of Cognitive Age
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2006
This study tests the universality of the Western-based concept known as cognitive age within Japan. It assesses both the internal and external validity of cognitive age among Japanese seniors and compares the findings to the same measures of cognitive age with a sample of senior respondents from the United States. The study finds that the semantic differential scale has the largest trait variance among all aging concepts studied (average cognitive age, average ideal age, and average least-desired age), while the Likert scale possesses the largest trait variance for average cognitive age. The ratio scale was found to have the lowest trait variance of the three scaling formats evaluated. External construct validation studies revealed a remarkable similarity between Japanese females and males, and contrasts between Japanese and American seniors revealed reasonably good generalizability between countries. Average cognitive age appears to be universal within two culturally disjoint countries (the United States and Japan), yet the efficacy of individual measurement scales varies between them.