According to recent cross-cultural studies there exist culturally based differences between visual perception and the related cognitive processes attention, memory. According to current research, East Asians and Westerners percieve and think about the world in very different ways. Westerners are inclined to attend to some focal object a salient object within a perception field that is relatively big in size, fast moving, colourful focusing on and analyzing its attributes.
East Asians on the other hand are more likely to attend to a broad perceptual field, noticing relationships and changes. In this paper we want to describe the recent findings in the field and propose some directions for future research. Ali, N. Human Factors. Bernstein, D. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Berry, J.
Cross-Cultural Psychology: Research and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blakemore, C. Development of the Brain Depends on the Visual Environment. Nature, 10 31 , Boduroglu, A. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40 3 , Bornstein, M. The Influence of Visual Perception on Culture. American Anthropologist, 77 4 , Choi, I. Individual Differences in Analytic versus Holistic Thinking.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33 5 , Deregowski, J. London: Academic Press, Inc. Praha, SPN. Duffy, S. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 3 , Haaken, J.
Signs, 13 2 , Hofstede, G. Journal of International Business Studies, 14 2 , Trans-kom, 1 2 , Kitayama, S. Handbook of cultural psychology. New York: The Guilford Press. Perceiving an object and its context in different cultures: A cultural look at new look. Psychological Science, 14 3 , Brno: Masarykova Univerzita. Adaptive cartography and geographical education. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 1 19 , A perception of the Maps by Czech School Children.
In: T. Kanazawa Eds. Inspektor, J. Geografie, , Liben, L. In: H. Reese Ed. New York: Academic Press. Masuda, T. Journal of personality and social psychology, 81 5 , Nisbett, R. Culture and Point of View. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 19 , Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 10 , Palmer, S. Perceptual Grouping: It's later than you think. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11 3 , Rethinking perceptual organization: The role of uniform connectedness.
When does grouping happen? Acta psychologica, 3 , Peuquet, D. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 84 3 , Robinson, A. The Map as a Communication System. Our findings elucidate cultural differences in responding on an object recognition test. Combs , and Anders provide a host of illustrative examples of cultural challenges that have arisen in criminal cases about conflicts in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
Some African witnesses, particularly from rural areas, find it difficult to date crimes they have witnessed and judge the elapse of time in hours, days, or months, because they do not routinely keep track of dates and times.
In international criminal cases, dates and times are often crucial because the suspect may have a solid alibi for one time but not for another. In a similar vein, witnesses are sometimes unable to estimate other properties, such as distances, the size of objects, or the number of people during an incident Anders, ; Combs, One crucial question, for example, may be what kind of weapon was used by the perpetrator. Another context in which the recognition of objects can play a crucial role is in immigration interviews.
Van Veldhuizen et al. These types of questions are asked because immigration officials think that they can judge the validity of asylum seekers' statements by evaluating their answers.
Putting aside for the moment the more general misconception that people can deduce whether someone is telling the truth based on their story see e.
This is problematic because most immigration officials hail from Western societies, which typically have an individualistic culture Triandis, , whereas asylum seekers often come from African societies Eurostat, , which typically have a collectivistic culture Triandis, Cultural differences are not limited to the way in which people report about the events, they also extend to the perception of objects.
Subsequent research replicated these findings with African groups. The most commonly heard explanation for these differences in visual perception is that people from urban societies are exposed more frequently to rectangular shapes, writing, illustrations, and photographs than people from African rural societies. Similarly, depth perception based on pictures requires acceptance of graphical conventions commonly encountered in illustrations and photographs e.
After all, witnesses typically view an event in real life 3D and are subsequently asked to recognize objects e. In the same vein, in order to verify claims in immigration interviews, asylum seekers may be asked to identify a landmark that they saw in real life 3D , such as the church from their hometown, from a photograph, or a series of photographs 2D. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine cultural differences in the transformation of 3D into 2D representations.
We predicted that participants would be better at recognizing vases from their own continent cf. Additionally, we manipulated whether the object recognition test was 3D vases placed in front of participant or 2D vases shown on photographs. To enable comparisons with previous studies in which 2D to 3D transformations were assessed, we also included a depth perception test and a visuospatial processing test to examine this ability. In addition to basic differences between participant groups in object recognition, depth perception, and visuospatial processing, we also explored potential explanations for differences in performance.
In previous work e. We predicted that African participants from rural backgrounds, those with minimal exposure to screens and those who had only recently arrived in Europe, would perform worse on the depth perception, visuospatial processing, and 2D recognition tests compared with African participants from urban backgrounds, and those with more exposure to screens.
The African participants had been in the Netherlands for Finally, 34 African participants indicated that they had owned at least one screen TV or computer in their home country; 12 indicated that they had not owned a TV or computer. We also tried to match on educational level, but it proved impossible to find European participants with levels of education comparable with the African group. This difference will be addressed in the analyses and Section 4.
This test consists of 11 drawings and 1 photograph—we used only the drawings because the photograph is of poor quality. Drawings 1—6 measure depth perception in the horizontal dimension i.
All six drawings depict a hunting scene in which a man aims a spear at an elephant and an antelope see Figure 1. In Drawings 2 and 3, some of the elements in the illustration overlap. In Drawings 4, 5, and 6, perspective is added in the form of a road that disappears across the horizon. The man in the bottom drawing is depicted small, just above the bird's tail. Drawings 7—11 measure depth perception in the vertical dimension i. All five drawings depict a flying bird, an elephant, and a man see Figure 1.
The bird is always depicted as larger than the elephant, and the elephant is always larger than the man. In Drawings 8 and 9, some of the elements in the illustration overlap, and in Drawings 10 and 11, perspective is added in the form of a road. For each 3D response provided on the depth perception test, the participant scored one point. Participants could score two points per drawing for the horizontal dimension Drawings 1—6 and one point per drawing for the vertical dimension Drawings 7—11 , for a total maximum score of 17 points on the depth perception test.
The participant is shown a 2D pattern of a cube and is instructed to mentally fold the pattern to create the cube see Figure 2. The participant needs to select from four alternatives which cube can be created from the pattern.
Participants scored one point per correct response, for a total maximum score of four points on the visuospatial test. Twenty vases served as stimulus materials in the recognition test. We sculpted, baked, and painted 10 African vases, which were typical Eritrean incense holders see Figure 3 , and we bought 10 European vases, which were typical Dutch Delft Blue pottery see Figure 4.
All vases within each category had different shapes, but were painted in a similar fashion. The data from African participants were collected across a period of 8 weeks and the matched European control participants were tested in the 6 weeks that followed. Each participant was tested individually. At each experimental location, two rooms were used: one for the encoding phase and another for the perceptual tests and recognition phase.
The research with European participants was conducted in Dutch. When possible, the research with African participants was conducted in English. At the start of the session, participants were informed that their participation was completely voluntary and that they could end their participation at any time. Participants were not compensated for their time.
After providing informed consent, participants were told that they would go into another room, where they would see 10 vases on a table.
In the other room, they were shown five African and five European vases. All participants viewed the same 10 vases, placed together in the same configuration on a table. They were instructed to look at the vases carefully. Participants were able to see the vases from all angles.
They were allowed to view the vases for 90 s in total, after which they left the room. In the next room, participants first provided demographic information e. Approximately 15 min after they had encoded the vases, participants were presented with a recognition test. Participants were informed that they would see 20 vases, one by one. All 20 vases 10 old and 10 new were presented sequentially in random order. Participants in each group were randomly assigned to one of two viewing conditions: the vases were either placed before the participant on a table 3D condition or shown on photographs 2D condition.
To account for the fact that we were unable to match participant groups on education, we entered educational level as a covariate in all analyses. Visual inspection of scatterplots for each dependent variable see Figure 5 for an example revealed that the data patterns for the group of African participants with low levels of education none or primary school —which could not be matched to European participants because nearly all of them had higher levels of education—did not diverge from the data patterns for the other participants, rendering the data suitable for analysis of covariance ANCOVA.
Prior to the analyses, we checked all relevant assumptions. Scores on the depth perception test as a function of educational level, displayed separately for each participant group. Scores on the depth perception test ranged from 0 to To examine differences in depth perception scores between African and European participants, we conducted an ANCOVA with educational level as a covariate. Unsurprisingly, participants with a higher level of education performed better on the depth perception test see Figure 5.
Whereas Europeans performed close to ceiling, Africans showed much greater variance in performance see Figure 5. Neither of these trends was statistically significant though, possibly due to a lack of statistical power e. Scores on the visuospatial test ranged from 0 to 4. Again, European participants performed close to ceiling, whereas African participants showed much greater variance in performance on the test. We therefore explored potential explanatory variables. It should be noted again that nonsignificant results may be due to low power.
The proportion of correct responses on the object recognition test i. African and European participants' recognition accuracy for African and European vases on a the 2D test and b the 3D test. Within the African sample, we explored potential explanatory variables for differences in performance. It should again be noted that interpretation of these findings is limited by the fact that our sample included only 12 participants who had not owned a screen in their home country.
To assess the extent to which the recognition accuracy data were driven by true discrimination between old and new vases, as opposed to a tendency to respond liberally or conservatively on the recognition test, we conducted signal detection analysis. African participants were significantly more likely to respond liberally i. After controlling for differences in educational level between the two groups, we still found significant differences between African and European participants in their performance on the depth perception and visuospatial processing tests.
In line with previous findings, European participants achieved higher scores on those tests than African participants. In contrast, we found no significant difference between groups in accuracy on the object recognition test: after controlling for educational level which was positively associated with recognition accuracy , African participants performed just as well as European participants.
Each of these findings will be discussed in turn. These findings have previously been explained by the idea that people from traditional African societies have less exposure to illustrations and photographs depicting 3D objects and scenes than people from modern Western societies e. To explore this potential explanation, we asked African participants whether they originated from a rural or urban background, whether they had owned a TV or computer screen in their home country, and for how long they had been in Europe.
None of these variables were associated with significant differences in performance on the visuospatial processing test. African participants who had come from a village and who had not owned a screen in their home country scored a little, but nonsignificantly, lower on perceiving depth in the pictures than African participants who had come from a city and who had owned a screen.
That hints to the idea that more exposure to rectangular buildings and TV or computer screens may be associated with an increased ability to transform 2D representations to 3D representations.
The interpretation of these findings is limited, however, by the fact that our sample included only 12 African participants who had not owned a screen in their home country. It is further limited by the fact that most African participants in our sample were probably exposed to many screens during the time they had spent in asylum seeker centres located in urban areas in the Netherlands a year on average.
Thus, further research involving participants with more limited exposure to 2D representations is required to make a cleaner comparison. In contrast, African participants did not have more difficulty than European participants in transforming 3D representations vases placed in front of them during the encoding phase to 2D representations photographs of vases presented in the recognition phase on the object recognition test.
African participants did show poorer performance on the 2D recognition test than on the 3D recognition test, but so did European participants. The lack of differences in accuracy between groups suggest that the ability to transform a 3D representation into a 2D representation may tap into a different cognitive skill than the ability to transform a 2D representation into a 3D representation. Whereas previous research has focused on the latter ability, the former is much more likely to be relevant in judicial contexts.
Eyewitnesses encode an event 3D and are subsequently asked to recognize people or objects from photographs 2D , not the other way around.
Similarly, asylum seekers may be asked to recognize landmarks they have seen in real life 3D based on photographs presented to them 2D , not the other way around. This study represents the first step in examining cultural variations in the ability to recognize objects that have been viewed in real life based on photographic representations. Based on Bovet and Vauclair's findings that familiarity with stimulus objects improves recognition performance, we predicted that participants would recognize vases from their own continent better than vases from a different continent.
We found no support for this prediction. In hindsight, our familiarity manipulation may have been too weak. After all, the African participants had been in the Netherlands for a year on average already, and would likely have encountered the typical Delfts Blue pottery style in that period.
0コメント