DANCEST 805 Lecture 3:
Document Summary
Some problems arise in assuming all models and theories of cognition apply to all cultures. An important question raised by cross-cultural research is the degree to which practices, beliefs and competences are culturally relative (phenome that are not present in all cultures) or culturally universal (common in human kind) For cross cultural research it is hard to ever randomly assign participants to experimental conditions because people cannot randomly be assigned to a culture. Also the second (control) and third (control over confounds) in experimental designs is hard in cross cultural fields. Examples of studies of cross -cultural cognition: perception (interpretation of sensory stimuli) Landmark studies show cross-cultural psychology directly challenges the assumption that perception is built-in. Hudson showed that schooled africans saw pictures in 3d and nonliterate black and white people saw pictures in 2d. He said not schooling was the reason but informal instruction and habitual exposure.
