Cultural Differences in Visual Search for Geometric Figures.
While some studies suggest cultural differences in visual processing, others do not, possibly because the complexity of their tasks draws upon high-level factors that could obscure such effects. To control for this, we examined cultural differences in visual search for geometric figures, a relatively simple task for which the underlying mechanisms are reasonably well known. We replicated earlier results showing that North Americans had a reliable search asymmetry for line length: Search for long among short lines was faster than vice versa. In contrast, Japanese participants showed no asymmetry. This difference did not appear to be affected by stimulus density. Other kinds of stimuli resulted in other patterns of asymmetry differences, suggesting that these are not due to factors such as analytic/holistic processing but are based instead on the target-detection process. In particular, our results indicate that at least some cultural differences reflect different ways of processing early-level features, possibly in response to environmental factors.
Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University.
Yoshiyuki
Y
Ueda
Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University.
Lei
L
Chen
Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University.
Jonathon
J
Kopecky
Departments of Psychology and Computer Science, University of British Columbia.
Emily S
ES
Cramer
Departments of Psychology and Computer Science, University of British Columbia.
Ronald A
RA
Rensink
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
David E
DE
Meyer
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
Shinobu
S
Kitayama
Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University.
Jun
J
Saiki
D001955:British Columbia; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception
Cognitive processing; Cultural differences; Search asymmetry; Visual attention; Visual search