Language Recognition and Brain Science Lecture Series（9）Multiculturalism Enhances Cognitive Transformation Function——Evidence from Sibe People
Topic: Multiculturalism Enhances Cognitive Transformation Function——Evidence from Sibe People
Presenter: Jijia Zhang, distinguished professor of Renmin University of China
Time: 2pm-4pm of Dec 11, 2019
Overview of the Lecture:
A multi-ethnic country is made up of multiple ethnic groups. Individuals are supposed to collaborate with people from other ethnic groups when under ethnic relationships. "Migration to the west" had resulted in the separation of the Sibe people to Xinjiang and Northeast China, embarking on different development paths accordingly. The Sibe people in Xinjiang are in a multi-lingual cultural pattern, not only retaining its own languages and characters, but also absorbing the language and cultural nutrition of the surrounding ethnic groups. Therefore, they are called "the genius of translation". However, those in the northeast, integrating with Han nationalities, have gradually lost their native language and characters so they generally speak in Chinese. The classic cognitive transformation task and joint cognitive transformation task were used to compare the cognitive transformation function of the two ethnic groups in the individual context and the social context, and to explore the influence of multilingual culture on cognitive transformation function. The result reveals that the conversion cost of the Sibe people in Xinjiang is smaller in the individual context. In addition, their joint mechanism is more easily activated in the social context as they have high self-other integration by allocating cognitive resources to characterize the tasks of their peers. The entire study shows that multilingual culture enhances the cognitive transformation function of individuals.
