We discuss the impact of cultural differences on usability evaluations that are based on the thinking-aloud method (TA). The term ‘cultural differences’ helps distinguish differences in the perception and thinking of Westerners (people from Western Europe and US citizens with European origins) and Easterners (people from China and the countries heavily influenced by its culture). We illustrate ...

In this short paper we describe a robotic setup to study the self-organization of conceptualisation and language. What distinguishes this project from others is that we envision a robot with speci c cognitive capacities, but without resorting to any pre-programmed representations or conceptualisations. The key to this all is self-organization and enculturation. We report preliminary results on ...

As humans, we share most of our biological make-up with our closest primate relatives, yet we stand out not just from them but from all other species with respect to our cultural diversity, our capacity for language, and particularly our cognitive skills. While of prime interest for the field of cognitive science, the still-open question of which factors gave rise to human uniqueness has rarely...

Historical evolution and cross-cultural differences in spatial abilities are analyzed. Spatial abilities have been found to be significantly associated with the complexity of geographical conditions and survival demands. Although impaired spatial cognition is found in cases of, exclusively or predominantly, right hemisphere pathology, it is proposed that this asymmetry may depend on the degree ...

Cognitive Scientists interested in causal cognition increasingly search for evidence from non-Western Educational Industrial Rich Democratic people but find only very few cross-cultural studies that specifically target causal cognition. This article suggests how information about causality can be retrieved from ethnographic monographs, specifically from ethnographies that discuss agency and con...

This paper incorporates aspects of humans’ evolved cognition into a formal model of cultural evolution and scrutinizes their interactions with population-level processes. It is shown how the biased transmission of different kinds of behavior via cultural learning processes influences agents’ consumption behavior. Thereby, the model’s learning dynamics are capable of generating typical Veblenian...

Growing evidence has demonstrated cultural differences in cognitive processes. Whereas individuals living in interdependent social worlds, as illustrated by East Asian cultures, have been shown to have a more holistic cognitive style, those living in independent social environments, as exemplified by Western cultures, have been shown to have a more analytic cognitive style. Recent evidence has ...

this study investigated the cognition of 70 tunisian teachers on the place of culture in english education. it showed that tunisian teachers believe that english textbooks and curricular documents are not specific about the cultural dimension of efl. it also revealed that l2 teachers, whose mother culture is distant from that associated with l2, hold ambivalent attitudes towards culture. they a...

This study investigated the cognition of 70 Tunisian teachers on the place of culture in English education. It showed that Tunisian teachers believe that English textbooks and curricular documents are not specific about the cultural dimension of EFL. It also revealed that L2 teachers, whose mother culture is distant from that associated with L2, hold ambivalent attitudes towards culture. They a...