Cultural differences in memory and logical reasoning

The focus of this study was to manipulate factors to determine whether mental representations of logical problems differed by culture. The cultural differences hypothesis suggests that Anglo students would be more likely to have a linear representation (e.g. arranging objects that differ in a "line" mentally) whereas Hispanic and Native American students would have a nonlinear (pivot) organization. The results indicated that Hispanic children solved questions better if they appeared in a pivotal format, whereas, Native American and Anglo children performed better if the stimuli were presented in a linear method. With grade level, Hispanic children shifted to the linear format and Anglo and Native American children improved upon the pivot presentation. This suggests that there may be differences in mental representations of objects for Hispanic children that is influenced by acculturation