Perceptual and mnemonic differences across cultures

Abstract In this chapter, we selectively review the literature investigating how culture affects memory and perception. The chapter tries to capture some of the ways that culture and life experience can shape perception, including adaptive changes that are shaped by the characteristics of one's environment. In its treatment of memory, the chapter focuses on the ways in which culture may influence the amount of specific information that is contained in memory for autobiographical episodes as well as objects, and evaluates potential mechanisms that could account for these effects. The chapter's treatment of perception and culture includes a novel proposal: that cultural biases in preferential processing of particular spatial frequencies, an idea that thus far has primarily been tested in face processing, could account for cultural differences in memory specificity. Finally, we discuss the type of evidence that would be needed to fully evaluate this proposal and theories of cultural influences more generally.