The cultural fabric of human causal cognition

Causal cognition emerges early in development and confers an important advantage for survival. But does this mean that it is universal in humans? Our cross-disciplinary review suggests a broad evolutionary basis for core components of causal cognition but also underlines the essential role of culturally transmitted content as being uniquely human. The multiple ways in which both content and the key mechanisms of cultural transmission generate cultural diversity suggest that causal cognition in humans is not only colored by their specific cultural background but also shaped more fundamentally by the very fact that humans are a cultural species.acceptedVersio

The Cultural Constitution of Cognition: Taking the Anthropological Perspective

To what extent is cognition affected by culture? And how might cognitive science profit from an intensified collaboration with anthropology in exploring this issue? In order to answer these questions, we will first give a brief description of different perspectives on cognition, one that prevails in most cognitive sciences – particularly in cognitive psychology – and one in anthropology. Three basic assumptions of cognitive science regarding the separability of content and process, the context-independence of processing, and the culture-independence of processing will then be discussed. We argue that these assumptions need to be questioned and scrutinized cross-culturally. A thorough examination of these issues would profit considerably from collaboration with anthropologists, not only by enabling deeper insight into the cultures under scrutiny, but also by synergistic effects that would allow for a more comprehensive understanding of human cognition

Causal Asymmetry Across Cultures: Assigning Causal Roles in Symmetric Physical Settings

Causal cognition in the physical domain has been treated for a long time as if it were (1) objective and (2) independent of culture. Despite some evidence to the contrary, however, these implicit assumptions have been rarely ever explored systematically. While the pervasive tendency of people to consider one of two equally important entities as more important for bringing about an effect (as reported by White, 2006) meanwhile provides one type of counter-evidence for the first assumption, respective findings remained mute to the second. In order to scrutinize how robust such tendencies are across cultures – and, if not, on which aspects of culture they may depend – we asked German and Tongan participants to assign prime causality in nine symmetric settings. For most settings, strong asymmetries in both cultures were found, but not always in the same direction, depending on the task content and by virtue of the multifaceted character of “culture.” This indicates that causal asymmetries, while indeed being a robust phenomenon across cultures, are also modulated by task-specific properties (such as figure–ground relations), and are subject to cultural influences

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Variability in the Alignment of Number and Space Across Languages and Tasks

While the domains of space and number appear to be linked in human brains and minds, their conceptualization still differs across languages and cultures. For instance, frames of reference for spatial descriptions vary according to task, context, and cultural background, and the features of the mental number line depend on formal education and writing direction. To shed more light on the influence of culture/language and task on such conceptualizations, we conducted a large-scale survey with speakers of five languages that differ in writing systems, preferences for spatial and temporal representations, and/or composition of number words. Here, we report data obtained from tasks on ordered arrangements, including numbers, letters, and written text. Comparing these data across tasks, domains, and languages indicates that, even within a single domain, representations may differ depending on task characteristics, and that the degree of cross-domain alignment varies with domains and culture

Theory, the Final Frontier? A Corpus-Based Analysis of the Role of Theory in Psychological Articles

Contemporary psychology regards itself as an empirical science, at least in most of its subfields. Theory building and development are often considered critical to the sciences, but the extent to which psychology can be cast in this way is under debate. According to those advocating a strong role of theory, studies should be designed to test hypotheses derived from theories (theory-driven) and ideally should yield findings that stimulate hypothesis formation and theory building (theory-generating). The alternative position values empirical findings over theories as the lasting legacy of science. To investigate which role theory actually plays in current research practice, we analyse references to theory in the complete set of 2,046 articles accepted for publication in Frontiers of Psychology in 2015. This sample of articles, while not representative in the strictest sense, covers a broad range of sub-disciplines, both basic and applied, and a broad range of article types, including research articles, reviews, hypothesis & theory, and commentaries. For the titles, keyword lists, and abstracts in this sample, we conducted a text search for terms related to empiricism and theory, assessed the frequency and scope of usage for six theory-related terms, and analyzed their distribution over different article types and subsections of the journal. The results indicate substantially lower frequencies of theoretical than empirical terms, with references to a specific (named) theory in less than 10% of the sample and references to any of even the most frequently mentioned theories in less than 0.5% of the sample. In conclusion, we discuss possible limitations of our study and the prospect of theoretical advancement

Black-White Earnings Over the 1970s and 1980s: Gender Differences in Trends

This paper uses CPS data to analyze gender differences in black-white annual earnings trends over the 1970s and 1980s. We find that in at least two respects black women fared better than men over this period. First, due to decreasing relative annual time inputs for black males, but not black females, black women experienced increases in both annual earnings and estimated wages compared to white women, while black men gained only in terms of wages compared to white men. Second, since the gender earnings gap among whites was narrowing during this time, as black women's wages rose relative to white women's, they also made faster progress relative to white males than did black males. In other important respects, however, the experience of black men and women over the period was similar. First, for both groups, while earnings and wages relative to whites of the same sex rose during the 1970s, they stagnated or declined during the 1980s. Second, in contrast to the 1960s, younger blacks did not fare better than older blacks during the 1970s and 1980s. While in 1971, both unadjusted wage ratios and adjusted earnings ratios were highest within each sex group for labor market entrants, by 1988 these ratios were fairly similar across experience groups.