Indigenous Cognition? Review of J.W. Berry, S.H. Irvine, E.B. Hunt (Eds.), Indigenous Cognition: Functioning in Cultural Context

"What is known about the cognitive functions of other peoples that could enable extant psychology to become more comprehensive, to attain a 'universal' cognitive psychology?" This question was the focus of a 1986 NATO workshop held at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) whose working theme was "indigenous cognition and models of information processing." The primary goal of the present volume, which contains 13 papers, is to bring together evidence from "studies of cognition in those populations that have remained well outside industrialised society: the hunting people, the nomads, and the peasants of the contemporary world" (p. 2). The volume begins wtih a general section that includes papers dealing primarily with theoretical concerns in cross-cultural cognitive psychology and continues with four studies among African populations and with three among Native American populations.