Culture-specific familiarity equally mediates action representations across cultures

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that we need to distinguish between means and end information about actions. It is unclear how these two subtypes of action information relate to each other with theoretical accounts postulating the superiority of end over means information and others linking separate means and end routes of processing to actions of differential meaningfulness. Action meaningfulness or familiarity differs between cultures. In a cross-cultural setting, we investigated how action familiarity influences recognition memory for means and end information. Object directed actions of differential familiarity were presented to Chinese and German participants. Action familiarity modulated the representation of means and end information in both cultures in the same way, although the effects were based on different stimulus sets. Our results suggest that, in the representation of actions in memory, end information is superordinate to means information. This effect is independent of culture whereas action familiarity is not.

Keywords:

• Action
• Familiarity
• Culture
• Memory

We would like to thank our colleagues from Saarbruecken and Beijing for their assistance and the reviewers for their helpful comments.This project was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to the International Research Training Group [1457 “Adaptive Minds”]. The study was partly worked on during a research visit of the first author at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Notes

¹ Following the old-/new-judgment, a confidence question was presented in the upper part of the screen for 2000 ms at the longest. It read “How confident are you?” in Mandarin or German while, at the same time, the numbers “1,” “2,” and “3” were displayed in the lower part of the screen (1 = low confidence, 2 = medium confidence, 3 = high confidence). If, after 2000 ms, participants had not responded to the confidence question, the question disappeared but the numbers remained on the screen for up to another 3000 ms.