PSYC14H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: East Asian Languages, Proxemics, Collectivism
PSYC14 – Chapter 5
Culture shapes many of the norms that govern our behavior
Ex. distance you stand when talking to someone – within a culture there is usually an
implicitly understood “appropriate” conversation distance that people unconsciously
adopt – this distance varies with culture (Japan – 40 inches, Venezuela – 32 inches, US –
35 inches etc)
The different distances could be the result of a genetic predisposition to prefer either a
closer or farther interpersonal distance – no good evidence to support this idea yet
Another reason for this could be that people of different cultural backgrounds come
into the world with a similar genetic predisposition but interact with different
environments as they grow up and as a result acquire their culture through experience
and socialization
Universal Brains Develop Into Culturally Variable Minds
Starting assumption of cultural psychology is that we are all cultural beings
One thing that allowed us to distinguish ourselves from our primate ancestors was the
fact that we could learn and accumulate cultural information – allowed us to learn and
retain technology and skills to be successful in existing in such diverse environments
Cultural knowledge isn’t something we already had, unlike other animals who are born
with skills hard wired into their brain, we must learn these skills
We all come into this world having the capability of being socialized into multiple
different environments, but ultimately who we are is greatly influenced by the cultural
world in which are raised and socialized into – this effect how we perceive and
understand the world and ourselves.
Sensitive Periods For Cultural Socialization
If humans were evolved as cultural beings, then there would be evidence that our brains
are preprogrammed to learn cultural meaning systems
oa source of evidence for this would be something known as a Sensitive Period:
basically, a period of time in an organism’s development when it is relatively
easy for them to acquire a set of skills, if they miss this time period then it is hard
for them to learn it later
there is a tradeoff between an organism’s ability to learn new behaviors that suit its
new envt and its ability to specialize in behaviors that are effective in specific situations
while most species go through a critical developmental transition from acquiring skills
and then specializing in them, humans have the ability to specialize throughout their
entire life
Sensitive Periods For Learning Acquisition
language ability is a hallmark human characteristic – since it is such an obvious
evolutionary advantage to us, there should be evidence for a sensitive period for
language acquisition
one source of evidence for such a sensitive period is with respect to a persons ability to
discriminate among different sounds – we are capable of producing, recognizing and
using about 150 phonemes (however most languages use about 70 of them)
oas a result of that, most people speaking a certain language are unable to
recognize phonemes not part of their language
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
research suggests that young infants are able to discriminate between all the
phonemes, however when we start to learn a language it is functional to perceive
sounds in categories otherwise we would have a hard time understanding each other
as we are exposed to language, we begin to
categorize sounds in ways that are used by
language and by the first year of life
infants lose the ability to distinguish
between closely related sounds that are
not in their own language
Four-day old infants already begin to show a preference
for the rhythm of their own language over other
languages
The universal human ability of being able to distinguish all possible phonemes gets
narrowed down to the ability to perceive and categorize only the phonemes that are
heard during the critical window of language development – suggest that we are
biologically ready to attend to human speech and this preference for speech
predisposes us to start picking up languages at an early age
Early in life our brains are able to organize themselves in response to language input, as
we get older our brains are not as flexible (which is why its easier for us to learn a
language when we’re younger)
More evidence for the language sensitive period comes from studying bilingual
individual’s brains in fMRI to see which part of their brain is active while they are
listening to different languages
oFor those that learned their second language later in life one part of the brain is
active when they heart their second language and another when they hear their
native language (both in Broca’s area)
oThose that learned the second language earlier in life showed activation in the
same part as the first language regardless of whether they were listening to their
first or second language – provides evidence that early in life, the language
center of the brain is flexible at adjusting itself to various kinds of linguistic input
Forbidden Experiment – not teaching a child any kind of language till they’re 15 and see
what happens (this is ethically not ok but sadly it is the case with many children around
the world)
oIn 1800, in France a 12-year-old boy (known as Aveyron boy) was found who had
lived in the wild for most of his life. When they tried to get a teacher to teach
him language, he was unable to learn and only spoke like two words. He never
developed into a fully functioning adult
oAnother case was a young Californian girl Genie, who was raised in solitude
either attached to a potty chair or confined to a cage like crib until the age of 13.
– despite all the attempts made to rehabilitate her she was not able to master
grammar or syntax, but she did develop a good sized vocabulary
oThese tragic incidents lack scientific methods and so its hard to come to proper
conclusions cause its possible that the trauma the children suffered might have
been the reason for their inability to lean language rather than their lack of
language exposure
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Sensitive Periods For Acquiring Culture
Leaning language is important for being
socialized into a culture
Language and culture are both meaning
systems that we acquire through our social
interactions and depend on each other
Studying the acquisition of culture is so much
harder than studying the acquisition of
language
So what they did was studied immigrants and their
ability to adapt to a new culture after that “sensitive window” for culture was closed –
they studied Hong Kong immigrants moving to Vancouver, Canada. Asked various
question about their identification with Honk Kong and how much they identified with
Canada, their answers were then summarized.
oFound that identification with their Chinese culture was not predicted by any
variables in the study – this might be due to their being recognized as being of
Chinese descent by other Canadians or by them being able to continue to
participate in their Chinese cultural activities
oIdentification with Canadian culture did vary though (shown in table)
oIf they came after the age of 31, results showed that they identified less with the
Canadian culture over time likely due to being unable to learn it
oThese findings are consistent with the existence of a sensitive window for
cultural acquisition that begins to close around age 15
oConducted these kinds of studies with other cultures and found that the more
opportunities there are for immigrants to continue to live and communicate as
they did in their heritage culture, the harder it becomes to fully acquire their
host cultures ways if they arrive at an older age
More research needs to be done on this topic, but it seems that the development of
culture is similar to that of language, there seems to be a sensitive window
Cultural Differences In Psychological Processes Emerge With Age
Because humans are born cultureless and
acquire their culture as they are
socialized, cultural differences in
psychological processes should
become more pronounced with age –
young children from diff cultures
should seem similar because they have been less socialized into
their cultures
With age, people from different cultures diverge in their psychological experiences –
these kinds of developmental patterns showing cultural differences increasing with age
have been identified for many phenomena such as explanation of another’s behavior
optimism, and tendencies to focus on positive aspects of the self
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Culture shapes many of the norms that govern our behavior. The different distances could be the result of a genetic predisposition to prefer either a closer or farther interpersonal distance no good evidence to support this idea yet. Starting assumption of cultural psychology is that we are all cultural beings. Cultural knowledge isn"t something we already had, unlike other animals who are born with skills hard wired into their brain, we must learn these skills. While most species go through a critical developmental transition from acquiring skills and then specializing in them, humans have the ability to specialize throughout their entire life. Four-day old infants already begin to show for the rhythm of their own language over languages. When they tried to get a teacher to teach him language, he was unable to learn and only spoke like two words. Leaning language is important for being socialized into a culture.
