Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2013 Apr 11;8(4):e60703. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0060703. Print 2013.
Research suggests that people in Eastern interdependent cultures process information more holistically and attend more to contextual information than do people in Western independent cultures. The current study examined the effects of culture and age on memory for socially meaningful item-context associations in 71 Canadians of Western European descent (35 young and 36 older) and 72 native Chinese citizens (36 young and 36 older). All participants completed two blocks of context memory tasks. During encoding, participants rated pictures of familiar objects. In one block, objects were rated either for their meaningfulness in the independent living context or their typicality in daily life. In the other block, objects were rated for their meaningfulness in the context of fostering relationships with others or for their typicality in daily life. The encoding in each block was followed by a recognition test in which participants identified pictures and their associated contexts. The results showed that Chinese outperformed Canadians in context memory, though both culture groups showed similar age-related deficits in item and context memory. The results suggest that Chinese are at an advantage in memory for socially meaningful item-context associations, an advantage that continues from young adulthood into old age.
研究表明，与西方独立文化中的人相比，东方相互依存文化中的人更倾向于整体地处理信息，并且更关注上下文信息。本研究考察了文化和年龄对 71 名具有西欧血统的加拿大人（35 名年轻人和 36 名老年人）和 72 名中国本土公民（36 名年轻人和 36 名老年人）的有意义的项目-语境联想记忆的影响。所有参与者都完成了两个语境记忆任务的模块。在编码阶段，参与者对熟悉物体的图片进行评分。在一个模块中，根据它们在独立生活环境中的意义或日常生活中的典型性对物体进行评分。在另一个模块中，根据它们在与他人建立关系的背景下的意义或日常生活中的典型性对物体进行评分。每个模块的编码后，参与者都要对图片及其相关语境进行识别测试。结果表明，中国人在语境记忆方面优于加拿大人，尽管两个文化群体在项目和语境记忆方面都表现出相似的与年龄相关的缺陷。结果表明，中国人在有意义的项目-语境联想记忆方面具有优势，这种优势从青年期持续到老年期。
