Medin Douglas L, Bang Megan
Department of Psychology and School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; and
Educational Psychology, College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Sep 16;111 Suppl 4(Suppl 4):13621-6. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1317510111. Epub 2014 Sep 15.
The main proposition of this paper is that science communication necessarily involves and includes cultural orientations. There is a substantial body of work showing that cultural differences in values and epistemological frameworks are paralleled with cultural differences reflected in artifacts and public representations. One dimension of cultural difference is the psychological distance between humans and the rest of nature. Another is perspective taking and attention to context and relationships. As an example of distance, most (Western) images of ecosystems do not include human beings, and European American discourse tends to position human beings as being apart from nature. Native American discourse, in contrast, tends to describe humans beings as a part of nature. We trace the correspondences between cultural properties of media, focusing on children's books, and cultural differences in biological cognition. Finally, implications for both science communication and science education are outlined.
本文的主要观点是，科学传播必然涉及并包含文化取向。有大量研究表明，价值观和认识论框架方面的文化差异与人工制品及公众表征中所反映的文化差异是并行的。文化差异的一个维度是人类与自然界其他部分之间的心理距离。另一个维度是换位思考以及对背景和关系的关注。作为距离方面的一个例子，大多数（西方）生态系统图像中不包括人类，而欧裔美国人的话语往往将人类置于与自然相分离的位置。相比之下，美洲原住民的话语倾向于将人类描述为自然的一部分。我们追踪了以儿童书籍为重点的媒体文化属性与生物认知方面的文化差异之间的对应关系。最后，概述了对科学传播和科学教育的启示。
