ABSTRACT
Students and professors of anthropology were asked to interpret two pieces of original ethnographic video, one from central Mexico, the other from the United States. Both students and professors approached the interpretation of the video shot in Mexico in much the same way; they made few judgments and frequent expression of uncertainty. However students made more judgments and more expressions of certainty than the professors when viewing the film shot in the United States. We posit these data suggest a developmental sequence of interpretive skills where the ability to interpret activities perceived as culturally strange develops before the ability to interpret activities perceived as culturally familiar.
