A Cross-Cultural Study of Story Memory

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Abstract
This study examines some of the effects of culturally based knowledge on memory for stories about people performing common activities. Monocultural college students in (a) the United States and (b) Mexico read three brief stories about people going on a date, going home from the office for lunch, and starting a new semester of school. There were two versions of each story, consistent with either a U.S. or a Mexican cultural script. A modified recognition memory test for information in the stories occurred at one of three different delay intervals (immediately after reading the stories, 1/24 hour later, or 1 week later). Results showed that, after 1 week, both groups of subjects misremembered the stories from the other culture as being more like their own culture than they in fact were. The findings were consistent with previous monocultural research and argue that any theory of the effects of script-based knowledge on memory must consider the cultural origin of that knowledge. Problems associated with use of the script or schema construct to describe such knowledge were considered.

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