Culture and Perception

1

Culture and Perception

Supplementary Materials

Participants were middle school or high school students at the U.S., Japan, and Argentina. Data were collected by the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the OECD. Participants that we analyzed were 10,867 Argentine (180 7th graders, 461 8th graders, 1,683 9th graders, 6,440 10th graders, 1,991 11th graders, and 112 12th graders), 6,088 Japanese (6,088 10th graders), 5,233 Americans (4 8th graders, 565 9th graders, 3,619 10th graders, 1,040 11th graders, 5 12th graders).

Participantscompleted the Student Questionnaire, in which they reported the frequency in which various materials were used in their reading class. During the last month, how often did you have to read the followingtypes of texts for school (in the classroom or for homework)? 1 = not at all, 2 = once, 3 = two or three times, 4 = many times. There were 8 items: (1) information texts about writers or books, (2) poetry, (3) texts than include diagrams or maps, (4) fictions (e.g., novels, short stories), (5) newspaper reports and magazine articles, (6) instructions or manuals telling you how to make or do something (e.g., how a machine works), (7) texts that include tables or graphs, (8) advertizing material (e.g., advertisements in magazines, posters). We took the mean of the responses to these 7 items (α = .68). There were also questions about specific tasks in the classroom or for homework: (1) find information from a graph, diagram, or table, (2) explain the cause of events in a text, (3) explain the way characters behave in a text, (4) learn about the life of the writer, (5) explain the purpose of a text, (6) memorize a text by heart (e.g., a poem or part of a play), (7) learn about the place of a text in the history of literature, (8) describe the way the information in a table or graph is organized, and (9) explain the connection between different parts of a text (e.g., between a written part and a map), on the same 4-point scale. Because all the items are concerned with expansive linking of the key materials with other materials (with the exception of #6, which was pure memorization of the key materials), we calculated the expansive task scale by taking the mean of the 8 items (α = .79

As expected, American students reported usinga wider variety of reading materials in the classroom more than Japanese students, Musa = 2.61, SD = .56 vs. Mjapan = 2.10, SD = .73, t (10973) = 40.98, p < .001, d = .78. Argentine students also reported using a wider variety of reading materials than did Japanese, Margentine = 2.55, SD = .57, t (9,734.38) = 34.21, p < .001, d = .69. Americans used a wider variety of reading materials than Argentine, t (9,129) = 4.74, p < .001, though the difference was small in an absolute term, d = .10.

Out of the 9 reading tasks, #6 “memorize a text by heart” is an explicitly detail-oriented task. Indeed, Japanese students reported having engaged in the memory task more than American students, Mjapan = 2.23, SD = 1.21 vs. Musa= 1.68, SD = .98, t (10964) = 25.49, p < .001, d = .49. Japanese students had more memorization tasks than Argentine students, Margentine = 2.06, SD = 1.16, t (8,712.27) = 6.82, p < .001, though in an absolute term the difference was small, d = .15.

Argentine students had more memorization tasks than Americans, t (7,674.30) = 16.35, p < .001, d = .37.

However, on all the other 8 tasks that emphasize expansive linking of the target materials with other materials, American students reported having engaged in more often than did Japanese, ts > 15.07, p < .001, ds > .29.

These results indicate that Japanese high school students are exposed to a fewer number of reading materials, engage in the expansive linking tasks less often, and engage in the pure memorization of a short text more than American and Argentine students.

**Supplemental Analysis

B (SE)β t p

Constant5.96 (.057)104.211<.001

Nation .41 (.057).17 7.19<.001

Age .47 (.058).20 8.16<.001

Gender-.11 (.057)-.05-1.99 .047

Education .02 (.058) .01 .40.690

Nation*Age-.03 (.058)-.01-.44.66

Nation*Gender .10 (.057) .041.74.083

Nation*Education .01 (.059) .01 .21.836

Age*Gender .03 (.57) .01 .49.623

Age*Education .07 (.058) .031.11.266

Gender*Education-.07 (.058)-.03-1.15.251

Nation*Age*Gender-.02 (.058)-.01 -.25.800

Nation*Gender*Education .12 (.058) .052.06.040

Age*Gender*Education.05 (.058) .02 .78.436

Nation*Age*Gender*Education -.02 (.058)-.01-.34.738