The Effects of Ethnicity and Embodied Cognition on the Processing of Affective Concepts by Adolescents

Abstract

Mainland Tibetan classes and schools are products of a multi-ethnic nation and are becoming an important part of the educational system in China. However, experimental research on the cognitive and affective development of adolescents in mainland Tibetan classes and schools is rare. The present study consisted of an experimental exploration of the processing of affective concepts by adolescents in mainland Tibetan schools compared with such processing by Han adolescents in the same city. The study design involved a single mixed experiment. Fifty-one seventh-grade students from mainland Tibetan school and Han school in China were required to conduct the lexical decision task. The results of the experiment showed a main effect of body comportment. Adolescents responded faster in a tongue-out state than in a natural state. Mean reaction times did not differ significantly for the Tibetan and Han adolescents. These results indicate that body comportment (body represents) implicitly could affect the affective concepts processing regardless of ethnicity and, furthermore, that the policy of mainland Tibetan schools has improved multiethnic integration in the school and education system of China.