Short- and long-term memory and age in a traditional tribe (Dani of Papua) and a modern population (Poland)
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Short- and long-term memory and age in a traditional tribe (Dani of Papua) and a modern population (Poland) Agnieszka Sabiniewicz 1
&
Maciej Karwowski 1 & Corinna E. Löckenhoff 2 & Barbara Borkowska 3 & Piotr Sorokowski 1
Received: 14 June 2019 / Revised: 1 June 2020 / Accepted: 9 June 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The different environmental conditions in which people live might challenge memory in different ways. Moreover, the frequency of usage can be a source of improvement of both short- and long-term memory. The aim of our study was to investigate the effects of environmental differences on short- and long-term memory in a traditional versus a contemporary population (Dani of Papua, n = 62; Polish, n = 134). We found that both short- and long-term memory varied in the two populations, living in totally distinct surroundings. However, there were no age differences between Polish and Dani participants in either short- or long-term memory tasks, indicating that culture was not a significant moderator of the memory differences between populations. The differences in short- and long-term memory between the two populations are consistent with the argument that short-term memory plays a more significant role in contemporary societies because of technical developments, the electronic revolution, and reading ability. The lack of an age difference appears to support the assumption that it is age, not culture, that plays a crucial role in the memory performance. Keywords Aging . Memory . Long-term memory . Short-term memory . Papua
Studies on human memory have shown the crucial role of two basic types of memory: short-term memory (STM) and longterm memory (LTM) (e.g., Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968; Baddeley et al. 1975; Cammarota et al. 2005; Norris 2017; Waugh and Norman 1965). Both types appear to be essential to human cognitive processes and everyday activities. The distinction between STM and LTM has been extensively described in classical works by, for example, Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) and Waugh and Norman (1965). In essence, LTM is described as a system or systems assumed to underpin the capacity to store information over long periods of time (Rumelhart et al. 1972), whereas STM holds small amounts of information over a period of a few seconds and then
* Agnieszka Sabiniewicz [email protected] 1
Institute of Psychology, University of Wroclaw, Dawida 1, 50-527 Wroclaw, Poland
2
Department of Human Development, Cornell University, G60B MVR Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
3
Department of Human Biology, University of Wroclaw, Kuznicza 35, 50-138 Wroclaw, Poland
reproduces it in an untransformed fashion (Baddeley et al. 1975; Swanson et al. 2009). Living in different environmental conditions might challenge cognitive abilities in different ways (e.g., Conant et al. 2003; Reyes-García et al. 2016; Sabiniewicz and Sorokowski 2017). Studies have shown that more frequent usage of a cognitive ability increases that ability. For example, African adolescents living in a culture with a tradi
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