Psychology Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208; email:
Annu Rev Psychol. 2015 Jan 3;66:249-75. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015120. Epub 2014 Sep 17.
The well-respected tradition of research on concepts uses cross-cultural comparisons to explore which aspects of conceptual behavior are universal versus culturally variable. This work continues, but it is being supplemented by intensified efforts to study how conceptual systems and cultural systems interact to modify and support each other. For example, cultural studies within the framework of domain specificity (e.g., folkphysics, folkpsychology, folkbiology) are beginning to query the domains themselves and offer alternative organizing principles (e.g., folksociology, folkecology). Findings highlight the multifaceted nature of both concepts and culture: Individuals adopt distinct conceptual construals in accordance with culturally infused systems such as language and discourse, knowledge and beliefs, and epistemological orientations. This picture complicates questions about cognitive universality or variability, suggesting that researchers may productively adopt a systems-level approach to conceptual organization and cultural epistemologies. Related implications for diversity in cognitive science are discussed.
概念研究的卓越传统采用跨文化比较来探索概念行为的哪些方面是普遍的，哪些是文化变量。这项工作仍在继续，但它也得到了加强，以研究概念系统和文化系统如何相互作用，相互修改和支持。例如，在特定领域（例如民间物理学、民间心理学、民间生物学）框架内的文化研究开始质疑这些领域本身，并提供替代的组织原则（例如，民间社会学、民间生态学）。研究结果突出了概念和文化的多面性：个人根据语言和话语、知识和信仰以及认识论取向等文化注入系统采用独特的概念构建。这种情况使有关认知普遍性或可变性的问题变得复杂，表明研究人员可能会有效地采用系统级方法来进行概念组织和文化认识论。讨论了这对认知科学多样性的相关影响。
