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Rogoff and Waddel

Rogoff and Waddel (1982)

Culture and Memory

  • Found that Mayan children did better in a memory task if they were given one that was meaningful to them in local terms.
  • The researchers constructed a miniature model of a Mayan village, which resembled the children’s own village.
  • The researcher then selected 20 miniature objects from a set of 80 (e.g. animals, furniture, people) and placed them in the model.
  • Then the objects were taken out of the model and replaced among the 60 objects.
  • After a few minutes, the experimenter asked the children to reconstruct the scene they had been shown.
  • Under these conditions, the Mayan children did slightly better than the children from the USA.
  • The study shows that the content and context of a memory task are important and that useful memory strategies are learned in a socio-cultural context.