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My Students Wouldn't Recognised Me


If you met me in Iwakuni, next to the famous kintaikyou bridge shown in the background, would you recognise me? Of course not if you don't know me from Adam.

My Japanese students might not recognise me either, because even though they know me, they store intormation contextually, complete with the context in which it originally appeared: their classroom in Yamaguchi University as opposed to Kitaikyou Bridge in Iwakuni City.

Masuda and Nisbette (2001) demonstrated that Japanese were more likely than Americans to forget target objects (fish and animals) if the background in which they were presented were changed. This difference may also be produced by a tendency for Japanese to store information visually, as opposed to linguistically, in accordance with the theory in this burogu, but I have no data to support this assertion.

Image adapted from the generously licenced 錦帯橋 by Chicatan for a lecture on Masuda and Nisbett's tremendously interesting research (Nisbett, 2004; 増田, 2010; リチャード・E・ニスベット, 2004).

Bibliography
Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically versus analytically: comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of personality and social psychology, 81(5), 922. Retrieved from psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/81/5/922/
Nisbett, R. (2004). The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why. Free Press.
増田貴彦. (2010). ボスだけを見る欧米人 みんなの顔まで見る日本人. 講談社.リチャード・E・ニスベット. (2004). 木を見る西洋人 森を見る東洋人思考の違いはいかにして生まれるか. ダイヤモンド社.


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