Browsing by Subject "cultural influence"
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Item Cultural Influence on Empathy: Cross-Cultural Comparison between Korean and Korean American Adolescents(2014-05-23) Yoon, Hyun HeeThis study investigated differing influence of cultural context on the components of empathy by examining matching ethnic groups of youths growing up immersed in two different cultures, collectivistic Korea and the individualistic United States. Data was collected in Korea (N=416) and in the United States (N=215) for both boys and girls ages 11-17. Participants in both groups completed a measure of empathy that is the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and Triandis' cultural orientation scale. The Korean American group was asked to complete a bicultural identity scale, the Cortes, Rogler, and Malgady Bicultural Scale (CRM-BS), and a demographic questionnaire. As the preliminary process, factor analysis was conducted to validate the factor structure of IRI. The results did not yield an acceptable fit for the IRI for either the Korean or Korean American dataset. Only partial constructs pertaining to each group yielded an admissible internal consistency, and these were used for the next analysis. Empathic Concern and Fantasy factors were retained for the Korean American group. Perspective Taking, Fantasy, and Personal Distress factors were retained for the Korean group. Individuals? internal cultural orientations were used as the predictors of empathy constructs for each group. Individuals who scored high on collectivism also scored high on Empathic Concern, while individuals who scored high on individualism scored low on Empathic Concern in the Korean American group. Additionally, collectivism and horizontal orientation both significantly predicted Fantasy in the Korean American group. Collectivism and horizontal dimension significantly predicted Perspective Taking and Fantasy in the Korean group. Personal Distress was significantly predicted by the horizontal-vertical dimension, but not by the collectivism-individualism. Finally, the Korean American group?s acculturation status, language fluency, subjective identity, and duration of stay in the United States were used as the predictor for Empathic Concern and Fantasy in the Korean American group. Results were not significant for any of those predictors. Findings indicated different features of empathy constructs between the Korean and Korean American group, perhaps supporting a differing influence of cultural attributes. In addition, a notable finding of this study is that collectivism was significant in predicting cognitive and affective empathy positively.Item The Influence of Cultural Schema on L2 Production: Analysis of Native Russian Speakers' English Personal Narratives(2012-10-19) Cunningham, MaryThe present study focuses on 24 personal narratives told by eight highly proficient bilingual L1-Russian, L2-English speakers (NRS) in comparison to 24 personal narratives told by eight native English speakers (NES) in an effort to not only discover any structural differences that may be revealed through statistical analysis, but also to discover evidence of previously documented Russian and American cultural schema in the narratives through qualitative inquiry and narrative analysis. Although much has been written concerning Russian culture, cross-linguistic differences between Russian and English, and Russian English language learners these concepts have never been synthesized and applied to a study of Russian-English bilingual narratives in English in order to discover if the cultural schema and linguistic tendencies from L1 are maintained in the second language. The statistical structural analysis included in this study did not reveal any differences between the NES and NRS narratives. On the other hand qualitative analysis of cultural schemas revealed significant transfer of Russian cultural schema in the Native Russian Speaker participants' L2 narrative production. The Russian speakers were found to maintain their distinctly Russian emotional expression. Influence of cultural schema on L2 production was also visible in the thematic differences between the two sets of stories. The NES responses to each prompt were thematically quite similar, and differed noticeably from the themes of the NRS stories. Similarly, Hofstede's dimensions of national culture also revealed some differences between the two groups. However, theRussian cultural schema proposed by Croft, triplicity, was not found to be moreprominent in the NRS narratives than in the NES ones. In conclusion, the Native Russian Speakers in this study showed significant transfer of their L1 cultural schema when speaking their L2. The findings of this study have revealed the high likelihood of influence and transfer of cultural schema, even when bilingual English language speakers have achieved a very high level of English language mastery. However, this cultural influence on L2 production does not impinge on competence of bilingual speakers when speaking English.