Culture modulates the temporal dynamics of global/local processing

Abstract

Cultural differences in the way individuals from Western Caucasian (WC) and East Asian (EA) societies perceive and attend to visual information have been consistently reported in recent years. WC observers favor and perceive most efficiently the salient, local visual information by directing attention to focal objects. In contrast, EA observers show a bias towards global information, by preferentially attending elements in the background. However, the underlying neural mechanisms and the temporal dynamics of this striking cultural contrast have yet to be clarified. The combination of Navon figures, which contain both global and local features, and the measurement of neural adaptation constitute an ideal way to probe this issue. We recorded the electrophysiological signals of WC and EA observers while they actively matched culturally neutral geometric Navon shapes. In each trial, participants sequentially viewed and categorized an adapter shape followed by a target shape, as being either: identical; global congruent; local congruent; and different. We quantified the repetition suppression, a reduction in neural activity in stimulus sensitive regions following stimulus repetition, using a single-trial approach. A robust data-driven spatio-temporal analysis revealed at 80 ms a significant interaction between the culture of the observers and shape adaptation. EA observers showed sensitivity to global congruency on the attentional P1 component, whereas WC observers showed discrimination for global shapes at later stages. Our data revealed an early sensitivity to global and local shape categorization, which is modulated by culture. This neural tuning could underlie more complex behavioral differences observed across human populations.

Cross-cultural and hemispheric laterality effects on the ensemble coding of emotion in facial crowds

“…Studies comparing Westerners and Easterners have provided convergent evidence for the different perceptual and cognitive styles of those populations (e.g., Lao, Vizioli, & Caldara, 2013; Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005; Nisbett et al, 2001). For example, Westerners preferably focus on local information, whereas Easterners tend to show perceptual biases towards global information processing in objects (e.g., Masuda & Nisbett, 2001), scene (e.g., Masuda & Nisbett, 2006), and face perception (e.g., Blais et al, 2008; Caldara, Zhou, & Miellet, 2010).…”

“…For example, Westerners tend to use preferentially high spatial frequency information from foveal vision, whereas Easterners preferentially process contextual information by relying on extra-foveal vision for face recognition (Miellet et al, 2013), change detection of both low-level visual stimuli (e.g., color blocks; Boduroglu, Shah, & Nisbett, 2009), and scene perception (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). The cultural difference in processing styles between Westerners allocating more attention to local and goal-directed objects and Easterners with broader or more holistic processing can emerge as early as 80 milliseconds after the onset of a visual stimulus, suggesting that such cultural difference is deeply ingrained into the early perceptual processing (Kitayama & Murata, 2013; Lao et al, 2013). …”

Normative data for two tests of face matching under ecological conditions

“…recognition tasksmore likely to display speed-accuracy trade-offs. Even highly impaired prosopagnosic individuals can achieve accurate performance at the expense of vastly prolonged RTs, which is why it is common practice to take into account RTs in studies of both healthy and impaired individuals (e.g., Marotta et al, 2002;Tarr, 2003;Behrmann et al, 2005;Biotti et al, 2017;Lao, Vizioli, & Caldara, 2013;White et al, 2017). Indeed, according to many, "the notion of speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) is pedestrian" (Heitz, 2014, p.1; see also Luce, 1986).…”

Cross-cultural effects on ensemble coding of emotion in facial crowds

“…There is growing interest in empirically testing how differences in cultural experiences shape the way we perceive and respond to the visual world (for a review, Han et al, 2012 andKoelkebeck et al, 2017). Studies comparing Westerners and Easterners have provided convergent evidence on the different perceptual and cognitive styles of those populations (e.g., Lao, Vizioli, & Caldara, 2013;Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005;Nisbett et al, 2001). For example, Westerners preferably focus on local information, whereas Easterners tend to show perceptual biases towards global information processing in objects (e.g., Masuda & Nisbett, 2001), scene (e.g., Masuda & Nisbett, 2006), and face perception (e.g., Blais et al, 2008;Caldara, Zhou, & Miellet, 2010).…”

“…For Cross-cultural effects on ensemble coding of emotion 5 example, Westerners tend to use preferentially high spatial frequency information from foveal vision, whereas Easterners preferentially process contextual information by relying on extra-foveal vision for face recognition (Miellet et al, 2013), change detection of both low-level visual stimuli (e.g., color blocks; Boduroglu, Shah, & Nisbett, 2009), and scene perception (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). Such local vs. global contrast between Westerners and Easterners can emerge as early as 80 msec after the onset of a visual stimulus, suggesting that cultural difference is deeply ingrained into the early perceptual processing (Kitayama & Murata, 2013;Lao et al, 2013).…”