I’m studying for my Psychology class and don’t understand how to answer this. Can you help me study?

There are two assignments to be completed first one is about Research Response: Culture and Cognitive Perception and the second one is Linguistic Relativism and Determinism

Question 1

This activity focuses on how culture-specific backgrounds can affect cognitive perceptions. Many cultures emphasize behavioral and verbal respect for the elderly. Other cultures do not generally place an emphasis on respect for the elderly. First, read the article excerpts explaining the research design and results. Next, respond to the questions [3-4 sentences minimum for answers 2 & 3]. The peer-reviewed research article is attached but is not necessary for completing this assignment.

Article excerpts:

Intro – The ability to process faces is crucial in our daily social interactions; deficits in this ability lead to debilitating social consequences as in the case of autism or prosopagnosia. Given the importance of face processing in our social interactions, it is reasonable to assume that social interactions, in turn, influence how we process faces. Indeed, extensive research has established that differences in the quantity of social interactions fine tunes one’s visual processing of faces. For example, an abundance of interaction with own-race individuals and limited experience with other-race individuals lead to better memory for own-race faces relative to other-race faces. However, recent evidence of cross-cultural differences in face scanning has led to the speculation that cultural differences in social practices may also influence how we process faces.

In the Japanese culture, an age hierarchy is well entrenched in everyday social interactions such that deference towards older individuals exists not only at the behavioral level – in the form of bowing and gaze aversion – but also at the linguistic level. In Japan, one must use qualitatively different ways of speaking to individuals from different age groups. Respect for an acquaintance even one year older than oneself requires the use of a polite form of speech. A more polite, honorific, form is used to show respect for even older individuals. Distinct sets of syntactic and semantic rules in the Japanese language specifically dictate how one should use these polite forms when interacting with older individuals. In contrast, a more casual way of speaking (e.g., use of slang, bluntness) is appropriate for close peers, and such speech is, in turn, slightly more casual and direct when speaking to younger individuals. In the Chinese culture, although respect for older individuals is also emphasized, such emphasis on respect appears to be of a relatively lesser degree than in Japan. Respectful speech in the Chinese culture is limited to one linguistic marker (i.e., a casual and polite form of the word ‘‘you’’) that is reserved for senior citizens. In contrast, in North America, such respect is emphasized to an even lesser degree. There exist no established behavioral or linguistic displays of such respect, and disrespect towards the elderly is common. These unique cultural differences in social interactions with different age groups may very well result in differences in processing facial age information.

Study Design – Twenty Asian male adult faces (i.e., 31- to 40-year-olds, M= 34.95, SD= 2.82) were used to create an averaged ‘‘100% Old’’ East Asian male adult face, and twenty Asian male children’s faces (i.e., 11- to 12-year-olds, M= 11.5, SD= .51) were used to create an averaged ‘‘0% Old’’ East Asian male child face. All of the models that were used to create the stimuli were of Chinese descent. The averaged faces were created to control for individual differences in facial growth within a given age group. That is, our averaged male adult face is likely more representative of the male middle-age adult facial age group relative to the individual male adult faces that were used to create the averaged face. Our averaged male child face is likely also more representative of the male pre-adolescent facial age group relative to the individual faces that were used to create the averaged face. The 100% Old (i.e., adult’s face) and 0% Old (i.e., child’s face) average faces were then averaged together in 5% increments to make additional composite faces (i.e., 21 composite faces in total) with varying degrees of old/young facial information that ranged from 100% Old to 0% Old.

Participants: 32 Japanese adults living in Japan

39 Chinese adults living in China

33 Asian-Canadians

Participants were seated about 30 cm away from a 17-inch computer screen on which the stimuli were presented. Participants were presented with randomly ordered trials that each showed two faces belonging to the same stimulus age group. Children face pairs included the 0%– 30% Old faces, young adult face pairs included the 35%–65% Old faces, and middle-age adult face pairs included the 70%–100% Old faces. Within each stimulus age group, each face was paired with every other face four times (i.e., 84 trials per stimulus age group). Participants were asked to indicate which face in each pair was older via a key press. Each trial was preceded by a 500 ms crosshair, followed by a face pair presented for a maximum of 10 seconds or until a response was made. Prior to the age judgment task, Asian-Canadians were also asked to complete a questionnaire that inquired about their ethnic backgrounds and gauged their degree of acculturation into Western society. The procedure described above was part of a larger study that involved additional tasks pertaining to adults’ facial age judgment ability. In addition to making relative age judgments for stimulus faces belonging to the same age group, in 4 control trials, participants also made relative age judgments for the 100% Old average male adult face paired with the 0% Old average male child face. These 100% Old versus 0% Old face trials were interspersed across the child, young adult, and middle-age adult face trials.

Results – There was a significant interaction between stimulus facial age and participant ethnicity. Japanese participants were significantly faster than the Chinese and Asian-Canadians in their age judgments for children’s faces. Japanese and Chinese participants were comparable in the speed of their age judgments for young adult faces, but both groups were significantly faster than the Asian-Canadians. In addition, Japanese participants were fastest in their age judgments for middle-age faces compared to Chinese and Asian-Canadians respectively, followed by the Chinese, then the Asian-Canadians.

Respond to each of the questions below pertaining to the research article above [3-4 sentences minimum for questions 2 & 3].

1. What reasons did researchers give in the introduction as to why they were going to study if perception of age in faces would differ as a function of cultural background?

2. Why would Asian-Canadian participants have slower reaction times to facial age judgments the longer they have spent living in a Western cultural context?

3. Provide an alternative cultural explanation to the results researchers found.

Question 2

Linguistic Relativism and Determinism

This activity requires that you think about a subculture of interest and identify three terms that are used specifically in that subculture.

·Linguistic relativism: the structure of the language one speaks influences how one views the world.

·Linguistic determinism: the language we speak determines the kinds of thoughts and perceptions we are capable of having.

1.Name or identify a subculture that is of interest to you:

2.List and define below three terms that would be used specifically by that subculture.

2A.

2B.

2C.

3.How might having these terms influence the thoughts or perceptions of members of that subculture (linguistic relativism)? Please explain.

4.Do you think members of that subculture would be unable to think about these concepts without having these terms (linguistic determinism)? Please explain.