Cross-cultural differences on object perception Panagiotis Rentzelas1, Eirini Mavritsaki1,2 & Stephanie Wright1 1Birmingham City University, 2 University of Birmingham Introduction Study Two Study One (Cont.) Behavioural research suggests that cultural membership can shape visual perception and attentional processes; this is being manifested as members of collectivist cultures being more likely to attend the whole of the perceptual field than a salient item in picture perception than participants of an individualist cultural orientation (Nisbet & Masuda, 2003; Nisbett, Peng, Choi & Norenzayan, 2001). Research on cultural differences in visual perception has focused on utilising strong salient objects and investigating saccadic eye movements (Kitayama et al, 2003; Nisbett et al, 2001). Recent research when using the spiking Search over Time and Space (sSoTS) model (Mavritsaki, Heinke, Allen, Deco, & Humphreys, 2011) with reduced saliency, could simulate similar effects in the traditional bottom-up and top-down visual search experiment (Mavritsaki & Rentzelas, 2015) Two test the model’s predictions and to extend the findings we are presenting here two experiments in visual search that test bottom-up and top-down processing differences of members of different cultures. We are testing the processes when using the traditional visual search display and when the target is larger in size than the distractors. Use of stimuli that are culturally neutral Aim To investigate if a similar pattern of results will be obtained if salient object is larger. Methods 10 participants of individualist cultural background and 10 participants of collectivist cultural background Results Similar pattern of results as in Study 1. Fig. 1 Examples of stimuli Reaction times and fixation to stimuli data from eye tracker were obtained. Results Significant difference between the two cultural groups on reaction time in top-down and bottom-up (t(39)= -2.45, p= .01; t(39)= -2.435, p= .01). Fig. 4 Mean reaction time (in milliseconds) identifying salient item for Study 1 and 2. Conclusions Results are consistent with background research suggesting that participants of an individualist cultural background are better on identifying the salient object. Findings relate to recent developments in visual processing modelling where a similar patter of results was obtained when cultural background was treated as a situational factor (Mavritsaki & Rentzelas, 2015). Fig. 2 Mean reaction time (in seconds) identifying salient item Study One Significant difference between the two cultural groups on fixation on salient object (t(39)= 2.51, p= 0.02; groups t(39)= 3.12, p= 0.003). Aim To investigate the differences between members of individualist and collectivist cultures on the bottom-up and top-down cognitive processing in a visual search task. Method 21 participants of independent cultural background and 20 participants of collectivist cultural background. References Kitayama, S., Duffy, S., Kawamura, T., & Larsen, J. (2003). Psychological Science, 14(3), 201-206. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.02432 Mavritsaki, E., & Rentzelas, P. (2015). BMC Neuroscience, 16(Suppl 1), P204. doi:10.1186/1471-2202-16-s1-p204 Mavritsaki, E., Heinke, D., Allen, H., Deco, G., & Humphreys, G. (2011). Psychological Review, 118(1), 3-41. doi:10.1037/a0021868 Nisbett, R.E. and T. Masuda, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2003. 100(19): p. 11163-11170 . Nisbett, R., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Psychological Review, 108(2), 291-310. doi:10.1037//0033-295x.108.2.291 Fig. 3 Mean accuracy of fixation on the salient target SPSP 17th Annual Conference – 19-21 January 20107– San Antonio