Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception

TLDR

Cultural studies show Westerners focus on focal objects while East Asians attend to contextual information, yet the mechanisms behind these perceptual differences remain unclear. This study investigates whether these cultural differences stem from distinct viewing patterns when people observe naturalistic scenes. Eye movements of American and Chinese participants were recorded while they viewed photographs featuring a focal object against a complex background. Americans fixated more quickly and more often on focal objects, whereas Chinese participants made more saccades to the background, indicating that attentional differences may underlie the observed disparities in judgment and memory.

Abstract

In the past decade, cultural differences in perceptual judgment and memory have been observed: Westerners attend more to focal objects, whereas East Asians attend more to contextual information. However, the underlying mechanisms for the apparent differences in cognitive processing styles have not been known. In the present study, we examined the possibility that the cultural differences arise from culturally different viewing patterns when confronted with a naturalistic scene. We measured the eye movements of American and Chinese participants while they viewed photographs with a focal object on a complex background. In fact, the Americans fixated more on focal objects than did the Chinese, and the Americans tended to look at the focal object more quickly. In addition, the Chinese made more saccades to the background than did the Americans. Thus, it appears that differences in judgment and memory may have their origins in differences in what is actually attended as people view a scene.