Cultural differences in LTM

Cultural differences in LTM

1. Mary Mullen 1994

   • 700 Caucasian and Asian or Asian-American undergraduates
   • Pps describe their earliest memories (self-report study)
   • Asian and Asian American students' memories happened six months later than the Caucasian students memories
   • The next year Mullen repeated the study with Caucasian Americans and Native Koreans
   • She found an even bigger difference: nearly sixteen months separated the two.

2. Hayne 2002

   • Asian adults first memories were later than Caucasians'
   • 57 months as compared with 42 months
   • But she also found that the Maori adults' memories reached even further back, to 32 months.
   • As children we encode our memory of events as we talk over those events with the adults in our life.
   • The more those adults encourage us to spin an elaborate tale, the more likely we are to remember details about the event later.