Cultural Effects of Human Memory

Abstract

Memory is a process in which the human brain encodes, stores, and extracts the information input from the outside world. At the beginning of memory research, memory was considered culturally universal as a fundamental human cognitive process. With the development of cross-cultural research, memory is also culturally different; people in different cultures show other memory processes. Based on sorting out the influence of culture on memory, this paper summarizes three differences in memory in culture. In terms of memorizing content, westerners are better at remembering the characteristics of specific objects; Orientals are better at remembering background information about objects. And the serial location effect in memory also seems to have a cultural impact. Regarding memorizing development trends, individuals in primitive societies seem to have better memory capacity than civilized societies. Respect for the elderly in eastern cultures seems to slow the decline in memory with age. In terms of autobiographical memory, westerners have earlier memory and tend to remember the contents related to individuals. Easterners have later memory and remember things about relationships and group activities. In a word, memory as a fundamental human cognitive process is also influenced by culture.