VISUAL MEMORY SKILLS IN JAPANESE AND CAUCASIANS

Two visual memory tasks were administered to 80 subjects, 48 Japanese and 32 Caucasian, 49 female and 31 male. Japanese subjects were divide d into 2 groups, those brought up in Japan with knowledge of kanji and Americans of Japanese ancestry with no kanji experience. The Caucasia n subjects were subdivided into two groups, those who had learned kanj i as adults, and others without knowledge of kanji. The purpose of the experiment was to examine the possible influence of kanji on the find ing that Japanese children and adults score higher than their Caucasia n peers in tests of visual ability. A knowledge of kanji did not appea r to influence the scoring pattern.