1. 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)= , 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), doi: /
Mavritsaki, E., & Rentzelas, P. (2015). BMC Neuroscience, 16(Suppl 1), P204. doi: / s1-p204
Mavritsaki, E., Heinke, D., Allen, H., Deco, G., & Humphreys, G. (2011). Psychological Review, 118(1), doi: /a
Nisbett, R.E. and T. Masuda, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, (19): p .
Nisbett, R., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Psychological Review, 108(2), doi: // x
Fig. 3 Mean accuracy of fixation on the salient target
SPSP 17th Annual Conference – January 20107– San Antonio