Cross Cultural Studies

Uta Frith and colleagues are conducting cross-linguistic studies of dyslexia, while Sophie Scott and colleagues are conducting studies into non-verbal expressions of emotion, included cross cultural studies in Britain, Sweden and with the Himba people of Namibia (see below).

The study of emotional perception has the problem that some emotions are very culture specific, while others seem to be shared across all human populations - these common emotions being called 'basic' emotions. To test the degree to which vocal expressions of emotion, we have been working with the Himba people of Namibia. Their culture has been relatively protected from Western influences (e.g. they don't have televisions). We have found that they are good at recognising vocal expressions of emotion recorded from British English speakers.
Cross cultural work brings in problems of language and translation, as well as technical issues of playing people acoustic stimuli without access to electricity.

The Numeracy group has been studying the effects of culture on the early numerical abilities of indigenous Australian children. Their languages(Anindilyakwa and Warlpiri)do not contain counting words and there are no traditional counting practices. Will they still have the same basic numerical concepts as their English-speaking peers?

Witchetty grub hunt: Cooking and eating Witchetty grubs

This page last modified 17 November, 2011 by [ICN Web Team]

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