Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception

Abstract

In the past decade, cultural differences in perceptual judgment and memory have been observed: Westerners attend more to focal objects, whereas East Asians attend more to contextual information. However, the underlying mechanisms for the apparent differences in cognitive processing styles have not been known. In the present study, we examined the possibility that the cultural differences arise from culturally different viewing patterns when confronted with a naturalistic scene. We measured the eye movements of American and Chinese participants while they viewed photographs with a focal object on a complex background. In fact, the Americans fixated more on focal objects than did the Chinese, and the Americans tended to look at the focal object more quickly. In addition, the Chinese made more saccades to the background than did the Americans. Thus, it appears that differences in judgment and memory may have their origins in differences in what is actually attended as people view a scene.attention ͉ culture ͉ memory ͉ eye-tracking ͉ visual cognition

Cultural differences in neural function associated with object processing

“…Westerners perform better than East Asians at copying the absolute length of a line, regardless of frame size, whereas East Asians are more accurate than Westerners at reproducing the size of a line relative to its frame (Kitayama, Duffy, Kawamura, & Larsen, 2003). In addition, Americans recognize previously seen objects in changed contexts better than do Asians, due to their increased focus on object information without regard to context (Chua, Boland, & Nisbett, 2005;Masuda & Nisbett, 2001).…”

“…Recent reports of cross-cultural differences in attention that occur within short time windows converge with our finding of cultural differences early in the processing stream. Relative to East Asians, Americans make more fixations to objects within the first 300 msec of picture presentation (Chua et al, 2005), whereas Asians attend to a larger spatial region than do Americans during encoding displays presented for a mere 150 msec (Boduroǧlu, Shah, & Nisbett, 2005). The finding of low-level encoding differences across cultures could also explain the absence of cultural differences in medial temporal regions.…”

Generalization versus contextualization in automatic evaluation revisited: A meta-analysis of successful and failed replications.

“…A final question addressed in the current meta-analysis concerns sample characteristics, particularly the cultural background of the participants. Drawing on evidence that individuals from East Asian cultures tend to pay more attention to contextual information than individuals from Western cultures (e.g., Chua, Boland, & Nisbett, 2005;Masuda & Nisbett, 2001), Gawronski et al (2010) speculated that East Asians may show enhanced attention to the context of both initial attitudinal and subsequent counterattitudinal information. In contrast, Westerners may be more likely to show the default pattern hypothesized by our representational theory, such that they pay attention to the context only during the encoding of expectancy-violating counterattitudinal information, but not during the encoding of initial attitudinal information.…”

“…Based on Gawronski et al's (2010) findings regarding the role of attentional processes, Ye and Gawronski (in press) discussed two potential patterns of cultural differences in contextual renewal. First, drawing on evidence that individuals from East Asian cultures tend to pay more attention to contextual information than individuals from Western cultures (e.g., Chua et al, 2005;Masuda & Nisbett, 2001), one could argue that East Asians are less likely than Westerners to show ABC renewal while showing similar levels of ABA renewal. Second, drawing on evidence that individuals from East Asian cultures tend to have a higher tolerance for inconsistency than individuals from Western cultures (e.g., Choi & Nisbett, 2000;Peng & Nisbett, 1999), one could argue that East Asians are less likely than Westerners to show either type of renewal effect.…”

Cognitive cladistics and cultural override in Hominid spatial cognition

“…First, adult cognitive strategies diverge according to expertise and culture in some quite fundamental domains such as color (1), number (2,3), or spatial cognition (4)(5)(6). Language seems to play an important role in this divergent specialization of the intellect.…”