1. Piaget first studied his own children then extended it to children in the city of Geneva. Critics of his work state that he failed to take into account different cultures and many of the developmental ages for stages occur earlier than he theorized. While studies do find that many of the stages are universal there are some exceptions. For example according to Lonner and Malpass (1994) Australian Aboriginal children develop faster than other children in spatial domain than quantification. This culture does not quantify and their number words only go up till five. In contrast children from some tribes in Africa develop faster than other children in quantification than spatial domain. Thus it is important to note that culture is what values and promotes what is necessary to learn for survival.
https://www.unige.ch/fapse/SSE/teachers/dasen/home/pages/doc/lonnermalpass93.pdf
2. Hello Class,
I believe that when it comes to the definition of intelligence in Western culture there are a few key indicators that people use when deciding intelligence levels. People want to see proper vocabulary being used and a person who is verbally fluent. Another sign is that a person has the ability to problem solve and look ahead. A person who is aware of what is going on in the world and are aware of worldly events displays intelligence by American standards. Culture and understanding how to conduct one 's self is taken more seriously in Asian cultures. The people in the West are more concerned with a person's ability to excel academically where a person who is of African culture focuses more on the ability to do useful daily tasks.
3. Another part of Cognition that this chapter discusses is Attention. I think that it is pretty interesting that our cultures may even determine what we pay attention to. It is very hard for us to take in and absorb what we do not pay attention to, so what we do pay attention to is very important. The differences in what we pay attention to come from our environment. Another very important topic that this chapter discusses is Culture and Categorization. I am sure that we have all noticed that we as people group almost everything that we see into categories. We categorize things that appear to have similarities, and we give those categories certain names based on those similarities. I think categorization is pretty cool, because it is a process that is universal to all humans; we all do it. There are some certain categories that are also universal. One of the main ones is that of primary colors. No matter how we define color or how we describe them, all people agree that red, blue, and yellow are primary colors. I am wondering why that is, because our book does not say why it is that way. It just says that it is.