Gerontology Researcher Graham J. Mcdougall

¶ … gerontology researcher Graham J. McDougall suggested that culture and race have a profound impact upon the way elderly individuals perceive their memory. In his study of the performance of a group of Black and White American men living in community settings upon a battery of memory tests, he discovered that the White study participants had a slight but statistically significantly more positive view of their ability to remember things, despite relatively equal performances of both groups on previously administered memory tests. This greater self-confidence translated apparently into higher scores on the tests administered by the nurse practitioners over the course of the study. McDougall stated that the study highlighted the need for a greater sampling of minority individuals, and individuals of a wide array of cultures in studies of memory and leaning. (McDougall, 2004, 323-331) (But although McDougall's essay ends with a call for greater attention to the role of race in studying the psychology of memory, he does not mean that he is interested so much in physical manifestations of race, as the difference between the group was quite small, and the sampling of 89 Black and 83 White adults with a mean age of 76.52 years relatively narrow. What was significant in his view was the issue of how experiencing a society that negatively impacted one's self-esteem affected different group's perceptions of their ability to remember. Thus culture affects how one remembers events because culture impacts how one's sees one's self and identity as competent or incompetent. McDougall, 2004, 323-331)

Culture also affects memory as well in terms of the meanings attached to different materials, and meaningful materials are more likely to be remembered. In one school study, it was discovered that exercises that are percieved as meaningful are more often remembered by the participants, and have the ability to generate new meanings, which is the core of learning. In other words, if one understands a French lesson, it is easiser to interpret the logic of a French sentence, even if one does not understand the words that are utilized in the unfamilar French prose. (Lutz, Briggs, Cain, 2001, p.1)

To encourage memory in school, imagery techniques and other mnemonic strategies are often used by teachers in the hope that the image or the use of the mnemonic by the student will be more effective than if the student were to use one provided by the instructor. However, several researchers have suggested that the benefit occurs only with meaningful materials, and some researchers have found indications of a negative generation effect when meaningless material are used. (Lutz, Briggs, Cain, 2001, p.1) In short, when a student does not find something meaninful, he or she is likely not to remember it, and what is considered meaningful is by definition culturally contextual.

Just as it is easier to remember words from a language one knows in a meaninful sentence, than to memorize jibberish or a sentence in a language one is unfamilair with, a student who is from a culture that values, for instance, scientific excellence, might remember and place more validation upon science learning gleaned from a school than one who is not, and be more mindful and thus remember his or her science lessons from school better. This does not mean that culture excuses a student from learning -- far from it -- only that teachers need be mindful of the specific values of different student's culture when imparting specific batteries of knowledge.

It is also important to remember that because culture does attach meaningful significance to identity issues such as race and gender, and what is remembered generates meaning, that our culture remains lopsided in its inequitiable treatment of women in prominent fields is. A 1996 survey of major American newspapers revealed that 85% of front page stories were about men. (Cited by Moyer, 1997, 1) When participants in a study were asked to 'remember' on the spot ten prominent people, the figures were mostly Caucasion and male. However, with appropriate cuing, a 1995 study found that instructions intended to activate either a category of famous men or a category of famous women succeeded in altering participants' estimates of how many men's or women's names subsequently appeared on a list presented in the laboratory. (Cited by Moyer, 1997, 1)

Cultural and immeidate personal pressures thus can modify memory. The cultural pattern memory itself, even in the larger context of a potentially biased culture can be changed with outside pressures. Also, more meaning can be conferred onto meaningless objects, such as more meaning given to female personas, which translates into different performance of the same group's memory and recall. However, the effects of aging upon the memoery process are more sobering. For example, "Pezdek (1983) found that only younger adults benefited from the organization of array objects into blocks of phonetically or physically similar items." (Cited in Cherry & Jones 1999, 1)