Matt Jensen writes:
> I'm trying to recall a reference I saw about two months ago, but I can't.
>
> Anyway, it was a cognitive psychology paper about exactly such
> difficulties in understanding logical forms with people in different
> cultures. In brief, some 19th Century eggheads asked some Central Asian
> tribesmen some "simple" logical questions, and the tribesman weren't able
> to give them the answers they expected.
Even really smart modern people of different cultures approach
various "deductive" and "abstract" problems very differently.
The NYTimes had an article on the field last August 8, but sadly,
the article is in their for-pay archive and even the free abstract
seems only reachable through a state-dependent search that generates
a 400-character URL.
The EastBayExpress had a great article Feburary 1 about Kaiping Peng, a
Cal professor specializing in studying these differences -- "cultural
psychology". But sadly, the EastBayExpress website seems to discard
old issues.
Wait! The web provides alternatives!
The NYTimes article that they want to charge $2.50 for can be had
for free many other places, including:
http://www.trinicenter.com/historicalviews/cultureandthoughts.htm
The EastBayExpress article is available in the Google cache, at:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.eastbayexpress.com/archive/020201/cover1_020201.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.eastbayexpress.com/archive/020201/cover2_020201.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.eastbayexpress.com/archive/020201/cover3_020201.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.eastbayexpress.com/archive/020201/cover4_020201.html
Very interesting stuff.
- Gojomo
____________________________
Gordon Mohr - gojomo@usa.net
Personal - http://xavvy.com
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