cultural differences and inferences about psychological...

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND INFERENCES ABOUT PSYCHOLOGICALPROCESSES*

MICHAEL COLE 2

Rockefeller University

AND JEROME S. BRUNER

Harvard University

DEFICIT INTERPRETATION

PERHAPS the most prevalent view of thesource of ethnic and social class differencesin intellectual performance is what might be

summed up under the label "the deficit hypothesis."I t can be stated briefly, without risk of gross exag-geration. It rests on the assumption that a com-munity under conditions of poverty (for it is thepoor who are the focus of attention, and a dispro-portionate number of the poor are members ofminority ethnic groups) is a disorganized com-munity, and this disorganization expresses itselfin various forms of deficit. One widely agreed-upon source of deficit is mothering; the child ofpoverty is assumed to lack adequate parental at-tention. Given the illegitimacy rate in the urbanghetto, the most conspicuous "deficit" is a missingfather and, consequently, a missing father model.The mother is away at work or, in any case, lessinvolved with raising her children than she shouldbe by white middle-class standards. There is saidto be less regularity, less mutuality in interactionwith her. There are said to be specialized deficitsin interaction as well—less guidance in goal seekingfrom the parents (Schoggen, 1969), less emphasisupon means and ends in maternal instruction (Hess& Shipman, 196S), or less positive and more nega-tive reinforcement (Bee, Van Egeren, Streissguth,Nyman, & Leckie, 1969; Smilansky, 1968).

More particularly, the deficit hypothesis has beenapplied to the symbolic and linguistic environmentof the growing child. His linguistic community asportrayed in the early work of Basil Bernstein(1961), for example, is characterized by a restrictedcode, dealing more in the stereotype of interactionthan in language that explains and elaborates uponsocial and material events. The games that are

' A version of this article will appear in the 1972National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook onKarly Childhood Education.

- Requests for reprints should be sent to Michael Cole,The Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10021.

played by poor children and to which they areexposed are less strategy bound than those of moreadvantaged children (Eifermann, 1968); theirhomes are said to have a more confused noisebackground, permitting less opportunity for figure-ground formation (Klaus & Gray, 1968); and thecertainty of the environment is sufficiently reducedso that children have difficulty in delaying rein-forcement (Mischel, 1966) or in accepting verbalreinforcement instead of the real article (Zigler &Butterfield, 1968).

The theory of intervention that grew from thisview was the idea of "early stimulation," modeledon a conception of supplying nutriment for thosewith a protein deficiency or avitaminosis. Thenature of the needed early stimulation was neverexplained systematically, save in rare cases (Smi-lansky, 1968), but it variously took the form ofpractice in using abstractions (Blank & Solomon,1969), in having dialogue where the referent objectswere not present, as through the use of telephones(Deutsch, 1967; John & Goldstein, 1964), or inproviding secure mothering by substitution (Cald-well et al., 1970; Klaus & Gray, 1968).

A primary result of these various deficits wasbelieved to .express itself in the lowered test scoresand academic performance among children frompoverty backgrounds. The issue was most oftenleft moot as to whether or not this lowered testperformance was easily reversible, but the standardreference was to a monograph by Bloom (1964)indicating that cognitive performance on a batteryof tests, given to poor and middle-class children,yielded the result that nearly 80% of the variancein intellectual performance was accounted for byage 3.

DIFFERENCE INTERPRETATION

Such data seem to compel the conclusion thatas a consequence of various factors arising fromminority group status (factors affecting motivation,linguistic ability, goal orientation, hereditary pro-

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868 AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST

clivities to learn in certain ways—the particularmix of factors depends on the writer), minoritygroup children suffer intellectual deficits when com-pared with their "more advantaged" peers.

Tn this section, we review a body of data andtheory that controverts this contention, casts doubton the conclusion that a deficit exists in minoritygroup children, and even raises doubts as to whetherany nonsuperficial differences exist among differentcultural groups.

There are two long-standing precedents for theview that different groups (defined in terms of cul-tural, linguistic, and ethnic criteria) do not differintellectually from each other in any importantway.3 First, there is the anthropological "doc-trine of psychic unity" (Kroeber, 1948) which, onthe basis of the "run of total experience," is saidto warrant the assumption of intellectual equalityas a sufficient approximation to the truth. Thisview is compatible with current linguistic anthro-pological theorizing, which concentrates on describ-ing the way in which different cultural/linguisticgroups categorize familiar areas of experience(Tyler, 1970). By this view, different conclusionsabout the world are the result of arbitrary and dif-ferent, but equally logical, ways of cutting up theworld of experience. From this perspective, de-scriptions of the "disorganization" of minoritieswould be highly suspect, this suspicion arising inconnection with questions like, Disorganized fromwhose point of view?

Anthropological critiques of psychological experi-mentation have never carried much weight withpsychologists, nor have anthropologists been veryimpressed with conclusions from psychological tests.We have hypothesized elsewhere (Cole, Gay, Click,& Sharp, 1971) that their mutual indifference stemsin part from a difference in opinion about theinferences that are warranted from testing andexperimentation, and in part because the anthro-pologist relies mainly on data that the psychologistcompletely fails to consider: the mundane sociallife of the people he studies. As we shall see, these

;i It is assumed here that it is permissible to speak ofminority group or poverty group "culture" using as ourcriterion LcVi-Strauss' (1963) definition: "What is called'culture' is a fragment of humanity which, from the pointof view of the research at hand . . . presents significantdiscontinuities in relation to the rest of humanity [p. 29S1."We do not intend to enter into arguments over the existenceor nature of a "culture of poverty," although such an ideaseems implict in the view of most deficit theorists.

issues carry over into our criticism of the "deficit"theory of cultural deprivation.

A second tradition that calls into question cul-turally determined group difference in intelligenceis the linguist's assertion that languages do notdiffer in their degree of development (Greenberg,1963), buttressed by the transformationalist's cau-tion that one cannot attribute to people a cognitivecapacity that is less than is required to produce thecomplex rule-governed activity called language(Chomsky, 1966).

Although Chomskian linguistics has had a pro-found effect on psychological theories of languageand cognitive development in recent years, psycho-logical views of language still are considered hope-lessly inadequate by working linguists. This criti-cism applies not only to psycholinguistic theorybut to the actual description of linguistic perform-ance on which theory is based. Needless to say,the accusation of misunderstanding at the descrip-tive level leads to accusations of absurdity at thetheoretical level.

A third tradition that leads to rejection of thedeficit theory has many sources in recent socialsciences. This view holds that even when attemptshave been made to provide reasonable anthropologi-cal and linguistic foundations, the conclusions aboutcognitive capacity from psychological experimentsare unfounded because the performance producedrepresents a complex interaction of the formal char-acteristics of the experiment and the social/environ-mental context that determines the subject's inter-pretation of the situation in which it occurs. Theneed for "situation-bound" interpretations of ex-periments is emphasized in such diverse sources associology (Goffman, 1964), psychology (Brunswik,1958), and psycholinguistics (Cazden, 1970). Thisis an important issue, which we will return to onceillustrations of the "antideficit" view have beenexplored.

Perhaps the most coherent denial of the deficitposition, coupled with compelling illustrations ofthe resourcefulness of the supposedly deprived andincompetent person, is contained in Labov's attackon the concept of "linguistic deprivation" and itsaccompanying assumption of cognitive incapacity(Labov, 1970).

It is not possible here to review all of Labov'sevidence. Rather, we have abstracted what wetake to be the major points in his attack.

1. An assertion of the functional equality of all

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND INFERENCES 860

languages. This assertion is applied specifically tohis analysis of nonstandard Negro English, whichhas been the object of his study for several years.Labov provided a series of examples where youngblacks who would be assessed as linguistically re-tarded and academically hopeless by standard testprocedures enter conversations in a way that leaveslittle doubt that they can speak perfectly adequatelyand produce very clever arguments in the process.

2. An assertion of the psychologist's ignoranceof language in general and nonstandard dialects inparticular. Labov's particular target is CarlBereiter (Bereiter & Englemann, 1966) whose re-medial teaching technique is partly rationalized interms of the inability of young black children touse language either as an effective tool of communi-cation or thinking. Part of Labov's attack is aimedat misinterpretations of such phrases as "Theymine," which Labov analyzed in terms of rules ofcontraction, but which Bereiter made the mistakeof referring to as a "series of badly connectedwords [Labov, 1970, p. 171]." This "psycholo-gist's deficit" has a clear remedy. It is roughlyequivalent to the anthropological caveat that thepsychologist has to know more about the people hestudies.

3. The inadequacy of present experimentation.More serious criticism of the psychologist's inter-pretation of "language deprivation" and, by exten-sion, his whole concept of "cultural deprivation" iscontained in the following, rather extensive quote:

this and the preceding section are designed to convince thereader that the controlled experiments that have beenoffered in evidence [of Negro lack of competence! are mis-leading. The only thing that is controlled is the superficialform of the stimulus. All children are asked, "What doyou think of capital punishment?" or "Tell me everythingyou can about this." But the speaker's interpretation ofthese requests, and the action he believes is appropriate inresponse is completely uncontrolled. One can view thesetest stimuli as requests for information, commands foraction, or meaningless sequences of words. . . . With humansubjects it is absurd to believe that identical stimuli arcobtained by asking everyone the same question. Since thecrucial intervening variables of interpretation and motiva-tion are uncontrolled, most of the literature on verbaldeprivation tells us nothing of the capacities of children[Labov, 1970, p. 171].

Here Labov is attacking the experimental methodas usually applied to the problem of subculturaldifferences in cognitive capacity. We can abstractseveral assertions from this key passage: (a) For-

mal experimental equivalence of operations doesnot insure de facto equivalence of experimentaltreatments; (b) different subcultural groups arepredisposed to interpret the experimental stimuli(situations) differently; (c) different subculturalgroups are motivated by different concerns relevantto the experimental task; (d) in view of the in-adequacies of experimentation, inferences aboutlack of competence among black children are un-warranted.

These criticisms, when combined with linguisticmisinterpretation, constitute Labov's attack on thedeficit theory of cultural deprivation and representthe rationale underlying his demonstrations ofcompetence where its lack had previously beeninferred.

One example of Labov's approach is to conducta rather standard interview of the type often usedfor assessment of language competence. The situ-ation is designed to be minimally threatening; theinterviewer is a neighborhood figure, and black.Yet, the black 8-year-old interviewee's behavior ismonosyllabic. He is a candidate for the diagnosisof linguistically and culturally deprived.

But this diagnosis is very much situation de-pendent. For at a later time, this same interviewergoes to the boy's apartment, brings one of theboy's friends with him, lies down on the floor, andproduces some potato chips. He then begins talk-ing about clearly taboo subjects in dialect. Underthese circumstances, the mute interviewee becomesan excited participant in the general conversation.

In similar examples, Labov demonstrated power-ful reasoning and debating skills in a school drop-out and nonlogical verbosity in an acceptable,"normal" black who has mastered the forms ofstandard English. Labov's conclusion is that theusual assessment situations, including IQ andreading tests, elicit deliberate, defensive behavioron the part of the child who has realistic expecta-tions that to talk openly is to expose oneself toinsult and harm. As a consequence, such situationscannot measure the child's competence. Labovwent even further to assert that far from beingverbally deprived, the typical ghetto child is

bathed in verbal stimulation from morning to night. Wesee many speech events which depend upon the competitiveexhibition of verbal skills—sounding, singing, toasts, rift-ing, louding—a whole range of activities in which theindividual gains status through the use of language. . . . Wesee no connection between the verbal skill in the speech


events characteristic of the street culture and success inthe school room LLabov, 1970, p. 1631.

Labov is not the only linguist to offer such acritique of current theories of cultural deprivation(see, e.g., Stewart, 1970). However, Labov's criti-cism raises larger issues concerning the logic ofcomparative research designs of which the work incultural/linguistic deprivation is only a part. Itis to this general question that we now turn.

COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE INPSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The major thrusts of Labov's argument, thatsituational factors are important components ofpsychological experiments and that it is difficult ifnot impossible to infer competence directly fromperformance, are not new ideas to psychologists.Indeed, a concern with the relation between psy-chological processes on the one hand and situationalfactors on the other has long been a kind of shadowissue in psychology, surfacing most often in thecontext of comparative research.

It is this question that underlies the oft-beratedquestion, What do IQ tests measure? and hasbeen prominent in attacks on Jensen's (1969) argu-ment that group differences in IQ test performanceare reflective of innate differences in capacity.

Kagan (1969), for example, pointed to the workof Palmer, who regularly delays testing until thechild is relaxed and has established rapport withthe tester. Jensen (1969, p. 100) himself reportedthat significant differences in test performance canbe caused by differential adaptation to the testsituation.

Hertzig, Birch, Thomas, and Mendez (1968)made a direct study of social class/ethnic differ-ences in response to the test situation and demon-strated stable differences in situational responsesthat were correlated with test performance andwere present even when measured IQ was equiv-alent for subgroups chosen from the major com-parison groups.

Concern with the particular content of tests andexperiments as they relate to inferences about cog-nitive capacity occurs within the same context. Thesearch for a "culture-free" IQ test has emphasizedthe use of universally familiar material, and variousinvestigators have found that significant differencesin performance can be related to the content ofthe experimental materials. Price-Williams (1961),

for example, demonstrated earlier acquisition ofconservation concepts in Nigerian children usingtraditional instead of imported stimulus materials,and Gay and Cole (1967) made a similar pointwith respect to Liberian classification behavior andlearning.

Contemporary psychology's awareness of the taskand situation-specific determinants of performanceis reflected in a recent article by Kagan and Kogan(1970). In a section of their paper titled "TheSignificance of Public Performance," they are con-cerned with the fact that "differences in quality ofstyle of public performance, although striking, maybe misleading indices of competence [p. 1322]."

Although such misgivings abound, they have notyet crystallized into a coherent program of researchand theory nor have the implications of acceptingthe need to incorporate an analysis of situations inaddition to traditional experimental manipulationsbeen fully appreciated.

EXTENDED IDEA OF COMPETENCE

Labov and others have argued forcefully that wecannot distinguish on the basis of traditional ex-perimental approaches between the underlying com-petence of those who have had a poor opportunityto participate in a particular culture and those whohave had a good opportunity, between those whohave not had their share of wealth and respect andthose who have. The crux of the argument, whenapplied to the problem of "cultural deprivation," isthat those groups ordinarily diagnosed as culturallydeprived have the same underlying competence asthose in the mainstream of the dominant culture,the differences in performance being accounted forby the situations and contexts in which the com-petence is expressed. To put the matter mostrigorously, one can find a corresponding situationin which the member of the "out culture," thevictim of poverty, can perform on the basis of agiven competence in a fashion equal to or superiorto the standard achieved by a member of thedominant culture.

A prosaic example taken from the work of Gayand Cole (1967) concerns the ability to make esti-mates of volume. The case in question is to esti-mate the number of cups of rice in each of severalbowls. Comparisons of "rice-estimation accuracy"were made among several groups of subjects, in-cluding nonliterate Kpelle rice farmers from NorthCentral Liberia and Yale sophomores. The rice


farmers manifested significantly greater accuracythan the Yale students, the difference increasingwith the amount of rice presented for estimation.[n many other situations, measurement skills arefound to be superior among educated subjects inthe Gay and Cole study. Just as Kpelle superiorityat making rice estimates is clearly not a universalmanifestation of their superior underlying com-petence, the superiority of Yale students in, forexample, distance judgments is no basis for infer-ring that their competence is superior.

We think the existence of demonstrations suchas those presented by Labov has been salutary inforcing closer examination of testing situationsused for comparing the children of poverty withtheir more advantaged peers. And, as the illustra-tion from Gay and Cole suggests, the argumentmay have quite general implications. Obviously,it is not sufficient to use a simple equivalence-of-test procedure to make inferences about the com-petence of the two groups being compared. Infact, a "two-groups" design is almost useless formaking any important inferences in cross-culturalresearch, as Campbell (1961) has suggested. Froma logical view, however, the conclusion of equalcognitive competence in those who are not membersof the prestige culture and those who are itsbeneficiaries is often equally unwarranted. Whileit is very proper to criticize the logic of assumingthat poor performance implies lack of competence,the contention that poor performance is of norelevance to a theory of cognitive development andto a theory of cultural differences in cognitive de-velopment also seems an oversimplification.

Assuming that we can find test situations inwhich comparably good performance can be elicitedfrom the groups being contrasted, there is plainlyan issue having to do with the range and nature ofthe situations in which performance for any twogroups can be found to be equal.

We have noted Labov's conclusion that the usualassessment of linguistic competence in the blackchild elicits deliberate defensive behavior and thathe can respond effectively in familiar nonthreaten-ing surroundings. It may be, however (this pos-sibility is discussed in Bruner, 1970), that he isunable to utilize language of a decentered type,taken out of the context of social interaction, usedin an abstract way to deal with hypothetical pos-sibilities and to spell out hypothetical plans (seealso Gladwin, 1970). If such were the case, we

could not dismiss the question of different kinds oflanguage usage by saying simply that decontextual-ized talk is not part of the natural milieu of theblack child in the urban ghetto. If it should turnout to be the case that mastery of the culture de-pends on one's capacity to perform well on thebasis of competence one has stored up, and toperform well in particular settings and in particularways, then plainly the question of differences inthe way language enters the problem-solving processcannot be dismissed. It has been argued, forexample, by Bernstein (1970) that it is in thenature of the very social life of the urban ghettothat there develops a kind of particularism in whichcommunication usually takes place only along con-crete personal lines. The ghetto child, who bytraining is likely to use an idiosyncratic mode ofcommunication, may become locked into the lifeof his own cultural group, and his migration intoother groups consequently becomes the more diffi-cult. Bernstein made clear in his most recent workthat this is not a question of capacity but, rather,a matter of what he calls "orientation." Never-theless, it may very well be that a ghetto dweller'slanguage training unfits him for taking jobs in thepower- and prestige-endowing pursuits of middle-class culture. If such is the case, then the issue ofrepresentativeness of the situations to which hecan apply his competence becomes something morethan a matter of test procedure.

A major difficulty with this line of speculation isthat at present we have almost no knowledge ofthe day-to-day representativeness of different situ-ations and the behaviors that are seen as appro-priate to them by different cultural groups. Forexample, the idea that language use must be con-sidered outside of social interactions in order toqualify as abstract, as involving "cognition," isalmost certainly a psychologist's fiction. The workof contemporary sociologists and ethnolinguists(Garfinlde, 1967; Hymes, 1966; Schegloff, 1968)seems conclusively to demonstrate the presence ofcomplex contingent thinking in situations that areall too often characterized by psychologists as con-sisting of syncretic, affective interactions. Untilwe have better knowledge of the cognitive compo-nents that are part of social interactions (the sameapplies to many spheres of activity), speculationsabout the role of language in cognition will haveto remain speculations.

Tn fact, it is extraordinarily difficult to know,

872 AMICKICAN PSYCHOLOGIST

save in a most superficial way, on the basis of ourpresent knowledge of society, what is the nature ofsituations that permit control and utilization ofthe resources of a culture by one of its membersand what the cognitive skills are that are demandedof one who would use these resources. It may verywell be that the very definition of a subculturecould be put into the spirit of Levi-Strauss' (1963)definition of a culture:

What is called a subculture is a fragment of a culture;which from the point of view of the research at handpresents significant discontinuities in relation to the restof that culture with respect to access to its major amplify-ing tools.

By an amplifying tool is meant a technologicalfeature, be it soft or hard, that permits control bythe individual of resources, prestige, and deferencewithin the culture. An example of a middle-classcultural amplifier that operates to increase thethought processes of those who employ it is thediscipline loosely referred to as "mathematics." Toemploy mathematical techniques requires the culti-vation of certain skills of reasoning, even certainstyles of deploying one's thought processes. If onewere able to cultivate the strategies and stylesrelevant to the employment of mathematics, thenthat range of technology is open to one's use. Ifone does not cultivate mathematical skills, the re-sult is "functional incompetence," an inability touse this kind of technology. Whether or not com-pensatory techniques can then correct "functionalincompetence" is an important, but unexplored,question.

Any particular aspect of the technology requirescertain skills for its successful use. These skills,as we have already noted, must also be deployablein the range of situations where they are useful.Even if a child could carry out the planning neces-sary for the most technically demanding kind ofactivity, he must not do so if he has been trainedwith the expectancy that the exercise of such a skillwill be punished or will, in any event, lead to someunforeseen difficulty. Consequently, the chancesthat the individual will work tip his capacities forperformance in the given domain are diminished.As a result, although the individual can be shownto have competence in some sphere involving theutilization of the skill, he will not be able to ex-press that competence in the relevant kind ofcontext. In an absolute sense, he is any man's

equal, but in everyday encounters, he is not up tothe task.

The principle cuts both ways with respect tocultural differences. Verbal skills are importantcultural "amplifiers" among Labov's subjects; asmany middle-class school administrators have dis-covered, the ghetto resident skilled in verbal ex-changes is a more than formidable opponent in thebattle for control of school curriculum and re-sources. In like manner, the Harlem youth on thestreet who cannot cope with the verbal battles de-scribed by Labov is failing to express competencein a context relevant to the ghetto.

These considerations impress us with the needto clarify our notion of what the competencies arethat underlie effective performance. There hasbeen an implicit, but very general, tendency inpsychology to speak as if the organism is aninformation-processing machine with a fixed set ofroutines. The number and organization of theseroutines might differ as a function of age, geneticmakeup, or environmental factors, but for anygiven machine, the input to the machine is proc-essed uniformly by the routines (structures, skills)of the organism.

Quite recently, psychologists have started to faceup to the difficulties of assuming "all things areequal" for different groups of people (concern hasfocused on difference in age, but the same logicapplies to any group comparisons). The study ofsituational effects on performance has forced a re-evaluation of traditional theoretical inferences aboutcompetence. This new concern with the inter-pretation of psychological experiments is quite ap-parent in recent attempts to cope with data in-consistent with Piaget's theory of cognitive develop-ment. For example, Flavell and Wohlwill (1969)sought to distinguish between two kinds of com-petence: First, there are "the rules, structures, or'mental operations' embodied in the task and . . .[second, there are] the actual mechanisms requiredfor processing the input and output [p. 98]." Thesecond factor is assumed to be task specific andis the presumed explanation for such facts as the"horizontal decalages" in which the same principleappears for different materials at different ages.The performance progression through various stagesis presumably a reflection of increases in both kindsof competence, since both are assumed to increasewith age.


The same general concern is voiced by Mehlerand Bever (1968). They ask,

How can we decide if a developmental change or behavioraldifference among adults is really due to a difference in astructural rule, to a difference in the form of the expressiveprocesses or a difference in their quantitative capacity[p. 2781?

Their own work traces the expression of particularrules in behavior and the way the effect of know-ing a rule ("having a competence") interacts withdependence on different aspects of the input toproduce "nonlinear trends" in the development ofconservation-like performance.

Broadening psychological theory to include rulesfor applying cognitive skills, as well as statementsabout the skills themselves, seems absolutely neces-sary.

However, the extensions contemplated may wellnot be sufficient to meet all of Labov's objectionsto inferences about "linguistic deprivation." Inboth the position expressed by Flavell and Wohlwilland by Mehler and Bever, "competence" is seenas dependent on situational factors and seems to bea slowly changing process that might well be gov-erned by the same factors that lead to increasesin the power of the structural rules or competence,in the older sense of the word. Yet in Labov'sexample, the problem is considerably more ephem-eral; Labov gives the impression that the sub-jects were engaged in rational problem solving andthat they had complete control over their behavior.He is claiming, in effect, that they are successfullycoping with their problem; it simply is not theproblem the experimenter had in mind, so theexperimenter claims lack of competence as a resultof his own ignorance.

Acceptance of Labov's criticisms, and we thinkthey should be accepted, requires not only a broad-ening of our idea of competence, but a vast enrich-ment of our approach to experimentation.

NECESSITY OF A COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGYOF COGNITION

If we accept the idea that situational factors areoften important determinants of psychological per-formance, and if we also accept the idea that dif-ferent cultural groups are likely to respond differ-ently to any given situation, there seems to be noreasonable alternative to psychological experimenta-tion that bases its inferences on data from com-

parisons of both experimental and situationalvariations.

In short, we are contending that Brunswik's(19S8) call for "representative design" and ananalysis of the "ecological significance" of stimula-tion is a prerequisite to research on ethnic andsocial class differences in particular, and to anyresearch where the groups to be compared arethought to differ with respect to the process underinvestigation prior to application of the experi-mental treatments.

Exhortations to the effect that college sophomoreswith nonsense syllables and white rats in boxes arenot sufficient objects for the development of ageneral psychological theory have produced, thusfar, only minor changes in the behavior of psychol-ogists. The present situations seem to requirea. change.

An illustration from some recent cross-culturalresearch serves as an illustration of one approachthat goes beyond the usual two-group design toexplore the situational nature of psychological per-formance. '^

Cole et al. (1971, p. 4) used the free-recalltechnique to study cultural differences in memory.The initial studies presented subjects with a list of20 words divided into four familiar, easily dis-tinguishable categories. Subjects were read thelist of words and asked to recall them. The pro-cedure was repeated five times for each subject. Awide variety of subject populations was studied inthis way; Liberian rice farmers and school childrenwere the focus of concern, but comparison withgroups in the United States was also made.

Three factors of the Kpelle rice farmers' per-formance were remarkable in these first studies:(a) The number recalled was relatively small (9-11items per list); (b) there was no evidence ofsemantic or other organization of the material;(c) there was little or no increase in the numberrecalled with successive trials.

Better recall, great improvement with trials, andsignificant organization are all characteristic of per-formance of the American groups above the fifthgrade.

A series of standard experimental manipulations(offering incentives, using lists based on functionalrather than semantic classes, showing the objectsto be remembered, extending the number of trials)all failed to make much difference in Kpelle per-formance.


However, when these same to-be-recalled itemswere incorporated into folk stories, when explicitgrouping procedures were introduced, or whenseemingly bizarre cuing procedures were used,Kpelle performance manifested organization, showedvast improvements in terms of amount recalled,and gave a very different picture of underlyingcapacity. Cole et al. (1971) concluded that a setof rather specific skills associated with remember-ing disconnected material out of context underliesthe differences observed in the standard versions ofthe free-recall experiment with which they began.Moreover, they were able to begin the job of pin-pointing these skills, their relevance to traditionalactivities, and the teaching techniques that couldbe expected to bring existing memory skills to bearin the "alien" tasks of the school.

CONCLUSION

The arguments set forth in this study can now bebrought together and generalized in terms of theirbearing on psychological research that is "com-parative" in nature—comparing ages, cultures, sub-cultures, species, or even groups receiving differentexperimental treatments.

The central thesis derives from a reexaminationof the distinction between competence and per-formance. As a rule, one looks for performanceat its best and infers the degree of underlyingcompetence from the observed performance. Withrespect to linguistic competence, for example, asingle given instance of a particular grammaticalform could suffice for inferring that the speakerhad the competence to generate such instances asneeded. By the use of such a methodology, Labovdemonstrated that culturally deprived black chil-dren, tested appropriately for optimum perform-ance, have the same grammatical competence asmiddle-class whites, though it may be expressed indifferent settings. Note that negative evidence ismute with respect to the status of underlyingcapacity—it may require a different situation forits manifestation.

The psychological status of the concept of com-petence (or capacity) is brought deeply into ques-tion when one examines conclusions based onstandard experiments. Competence so defined isboth situation blind and culture blind. If per-formance is treated (as it often is by linguists)only as a shallow expression of deeper competence,then one inevitably loses sight of the ecological

problem of performance. For one of the mostimportant things about any "underlying compe-tence" is the nature of the situations in which itexpresses itself. Herein lies the crux of the prob-lem. One must inquire, first, whether a competenceis expressed in a particular situation and, second,what the significance of that situation is for theperson's ability to cope with life in his own milieu.As we have had occasion to comment elsewhere,when we systematically study the situational deter-minants of performance, we are led to concludethat cultural differences reside more in differencesin the situations to which different cultural groupsapply their skills than to differences in the skillspossessed by the groups in question (Cole et al.,1971, Ch. 7).

The problem is to identify the range of capacitiesreadily manifested in different groups and then toinquire whether the range is adequate to the indi-vidual's needs in various cultural settings. Fromthis point of view, cultural deprivation represents aspecial case of cultural difference that arises whenan individual is faced with demands to perform ina manner inconsistent with his past (cultural) ex-perience. In the present social context of theUnited States, the great power of the middle classhas rendered differences into deficits because middle-class behavior is the yardstick of success.

Our analysis holds at least two clear implicationsof relevance to the classroom teacher charged withthe task of educating children from "disadvantaged"subcultural groups.

First, recognition of the educational difficultiesin terms of a difference rather than a special kindof intellectual disease should change the students'status in the eyes of the teacher. If Pygmalionreally can work in the classroom (Rosenthai &Jacobson, 1968), the effect of this change in atti-tude may of itself produce changes in performance.Such difference in teacher attitude seems to be oneprime candidate for an explanation of the fine per-formance obtained by Kohl (1967) and others withusually recalcitrant students.

Second, the teacher should stop laboring underthe impression that he must create new intellectualstructures and start concentrating on how to getthe child to transfer skills he already possesses tothe task at hand. It is in this context that "rele-vant" study materials become important, although"relevant" should mean something more than a wayto motivate students. Rather, relevant materials


are those to which the child already applies skillsthe teacher seeks to have applied to his own con-tent. It requires more than a casual acquaintancewith one's students to know what those materialsare.

The Soviet psychologist, Lev Vygotskii (1962),took as the motto of his well-known monograph onlanguage and thought an epigraph from FrancisBacon: Neither hand nor mind alone, left to them-selves, amounts to much; instruments and aids arethe means to perfection.4 Psychologists concernedwith comparative research, and comparisons of so-cial and ethnic group differences in particular,must take seriously the study of the way differentgroups organize the relation between their handsand minds; without assuming the superiority of onesystem over another, they must take seriously thedictum that man is a cultural animal. When cul-tures are in competition for resources, as they aretoday, the psychologist's task is to analyze thesource of cultural difference so that those of theminority, the less powerful group, may quickly ac-quire the intellectual instruments necessary forsuccess of the dominant culture, should they sochoose.

4 Nee marnis nisi intellectus sibi permissus multamvalent; instrumentibus et auxilibus res perficit-ur.

REFERENCES

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Acknowledgment

The Committee on Accreditation would like to acknowledge and thank the followingmembers of the Association who contributed to the work of the Committee by servingon visiting teams and participating in other Committee activities during the 1970-71academic year: Irwin Altman, Gordon V. Anderson, James M. Anker, Jack Arbit, Hugh E.Armstrong, Allan Barclay, Joan L. Bardach, David H. Barlow, Seymour H. Baron, RogerBibace, Lloyd J. Borstelmann, Anne E. Bowes, Paul F. Bramwcll, Joseph E. Brewer,Marion Bunch, Albert S. Carlin, John E. Carr, Robert C. Carson, Mary G. Clarke, RichardL. Crager, Anthony Davids, Sanford J. Dean, Francis J. DiVesta, Eugene Ebner, DavidEhrenfrcund, Paul E. Eiserer, Sidney J. Fields, Frank Fletcher, Jr., Marilee Fredericks,Arthur J. Gallese, Sol L. Garfield, Martin R. Gluck, Leonard D. Goodstein, I. Gormezano,J. H. Grosslight, Alfred B. Heilbrun, Joseph S. Hillson, Arthur H. Hitchcock, John L.Holland, Donald P. Hoyt, Marvin A. Iverson, Margaret Ives, Alfred Jacobs, William H.James, Martin Katahn, Carol Kaye, Thomas J. Kiresuk, Irwin J. Knopf, Charles J.Krauskopf, Ruth Lesser, David Levine, Murray Levine, Leon H. Levy, Milton E. Lipetz,Joseph P. Lord, Richard Lundy, Philip A. Marks, Albert R. Marston, Joseph Masling,John McMillan, Malcolm L. Meltzer, Reed Merrill, James C. Miller, Lyle H. Miller,Peter E. Nathan, James Naylor, Merrill E. Noble, Lawrence I. O'Kelly, Wayne A. Owen,Edward H. Parkes, Oscar A. Parsons, C. H. Patterson, Tom W. Patterson, August L.Peastrel, Robert Perloff, Jeanne S. Phillips, Henry Platt, Janet Rafferty, Victor Raimy,Robert Reiff, Marvin Reznikoff, Francis P. Robinson, Gerald Rosenbaum, Alan K.Rosenwald, David L. Russell, Irving J. Saltzman, Irwin Sarason, Phil Schoggen, LeeSechrest, Julius Seeman, Charles R. Shearn, Saul M. Siegel, William Simmons, Jacob O.Sines, George Siskind, Charles D. Spielberger, Arthur L. Sterne, Max Talmadgc, CharlesThomas, William S. Verplanck, Robert Vidulich, Wayne Viney, Robert S. Waldrop, RonaldE. Walker, John G. Watkins, Gerald Weinberger, Morton Wiener, Arthur N. Wiens,Robert W. Wildman, William A. Wilson, Anne Wirt, Robert D. Wirt, Irving Wolf, andMelvin Zax.

HAROLD ABEL, ChairmanALVIN BURSTEINROBERT CALLISJAN DUKERROBERT M. GUIONJAMES G. KELLYKARL E. POTTHARSTDOZIER W. THORNTON

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