36 DECOLONIZING EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLIC COGNITION: BEHAVIORAL AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE PERSPECTIVES ON THE MONTREAL MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
Introduction: Decolonizing public history has become a critical focus for museums, particularly in postcolonial societies like Canada. Traditional exhibitions often marginalize Indigenous perspectives, reinforcing colonial schemas and limiting collective cognitive and emotional engagement. Integrating behavioral and cognitive science into museum design offers the potential to reshape public cognition, empathy, and collective memory, with implications for cultural psychiatry and social well-being. By examining exhibitions as structured cognitive environments, this study situates museums at the intersection of education, psychology, and cultural healing. It emphasizes that decolonization is not solely a curatorial act of inclusion but a process of cognitive restructuring and emotional reconciliation that challenges entrenched historical frameworks. Methods: This study examines the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History (Pointe-à-Callière) as a representative case for decolonizing exhibition strategies. The analysis draws on principles from cognitive psychology, behavioral science and embodied cognition to evaluate exhibition design, visitor flow, multisensory engagement, and narrative integration. Qualitative evidence is synthesized from visitor studies, architectural and curatorial documentation, and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks. Special attention is given to the ways in which spatial sequencing, affective cues, and participatory design act as behavioral interventions that foster empathy, reflection, and schema reconstruction. Results: Findings indicate that strategically sequenced exhibitions, multisensory experiences, and co-curated Indigenous narratives effectively engage visitors’ attention, promote schema reconstruction, and stimulate empathy and moral reasoning. Behavioral interventions—such as spatial hierarchy, lighting, and interactive displays—guide cognitive and emotional processing, while narrative coherence enhances moral reflection. Visitors’ engagement with decolonized narratives produces enhanced memory retention, perspective-taking, and reflective understanding of historical trauma. Moreover, the museum's spatial rhythm and emotional allowing visitors to confront difficult histories in a psychologically contained and meaningful way. The museum thus functions as a cognitive-emotional environment that facilitates both individual and collective reappraisal of historical knowledge. Conclusions: Decolonizing exhibitions that integrate behavioral and cognitive science principles can serve as non-clinical interventions for cultural and collective mental health. By promoting cognitive flexibility, empathy, and reflective engagement, museums become active agents in reshaping public cognition and facilitating collective processing of historical trauma. These findings highlight the potential for museums to contribute to social reconciliation, intergroup understanding, and preventive mental health in postcolonial contexts. The study underscores that museum environments, when informed by behavioral and cognitive insights, can operate as laboratories for empathy and cultural transformation, redefining the museum's role as both an educational and therapeutic public space.
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Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction distillée sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Apprise à partir de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Gemma. Le mode candidate est l'union des têtes enseignantes seuillées; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont ni des étiquettes humaines ni des étiquettes directes de modèles de pointe.
Scores Codex et Gemma par catégorie
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,000 | 0,002 |
| Communication savante | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Science ouverte | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule tête enseignante, pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».