Do Surrounding People's Emotions Affect Judgment of the Central Person's Emotion? Comparing Within Cultural Variation in Holistic Patterns of Emotion Perception in the Multicultural Canadian Society

Previous studies in cultural psychology have suggested that when assessing a target person's emotion, East Asians are more likely to incorporate the background figure's emotion into the judgment of the target's emotion compared to North Americans. The objective of this study was to further examine cultural variation in emotion perception within a culturally diverse population that is representative of Canada's multicultural society. We aimed to see whether East-Asian Canadians tended to keep holistic tendencies of their heritage culture regarding emotion perception. Participants were presented with 60 cartoon images consisting of a central figure and four surrounding figures and were then asked to rate the central figure's emotion; out of the four cartoon figures, two were female and two were male. Each character was prepared with 5 different emotional settings with corresponding facial expressions including: extremely sad, moderately sad, neutral, moderately happy, and extremely happy. Each central figure was surrounded by a group of 4 background figures. As a group, the background figures either displayed a sad, happy, or neutral expression. The participant's task was to judge the intensity of the central figures' happiness or sadness on a 10-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 9 (extremely). For analysis, we divided the participants into three groups: European Canadians (N = 105), East Asian Canadians' (N = 104) and Non-East Asian/Non-European Canadians (N = 161). The breakdown for the Non-East Asian/Non-European Canadian group is as follows: 94 South Asian Canadians, 25 Middle Eastern Canadians, 23 African Canadians, 9 Indigenous Canadians, and 10 Latin/Central/South American Canadians. Results comparing European Canadians and East Asian Canadians demonstrated cultural variation in emotion judgment, indicating that East Asian Canadians were in general more likely than their European Canadian counterparts to be affected by the background figures' emotion. The study highlights important cultural variations in holistic and analytic patterns of emotional attention in the ethnically diverse Canadian society. We discussed future studies which broaden the scope of research to incorporate a variety of diverse cultural backgrounds outside of the Western educational context to fully comprehend cultural variations in context related attentional patterns.

Eye movement analysis with hidden Markov models (EMHMM) with co-clustering

The eye movement analysis with hidden Markov models (EMHMM) method provides quantitative measures of individual differences in eye-movement pattern. However, it is limited to tasks where stimuli have the same feature layout (e.g., faces). Here we proposed to combine EMHMM with the data mining technique co-clustering to discover participant groups with consistent eye-movement patterns across stimuli for tasks involving stimuli with different feature layouts. Through applying this method to eye movements in scene perception, we discovered explorative (switching between the foreground and background information or different regions of interest) and focused (mainly looking at the foreground with less switching) eye-movement patterns among Asian participants. Higher similarity to the explorative pattern predicted better foreground object recognition performance, whereas higher similarity to the focused pattern was associated with better feature integration in the flanker task. These results have important implications for using eye tracking as a window into individual differences in cognitive abilities and styles. Thus, EMHMM with co-clustering provides quantitative assessments on eye-movement patterns across stimuli and tasks. It can be applied to many other real-life visual tasks, making a significant impact on the use of eye tracking to study cognitive behavior across disciplines.

Cultural variations in global and local attention and eye-movement patterns during the perception of complex visual scenes: Comparison of Czech and Taiwanese university students

Previous research on cross-cultural differences in visual attention has been inconclusive. Some studies have suggested the existence of systematic differences in global and local attention and context sensitivity, while others have produced negative or mixed results. The objective in this study was to examine the similarities and differences in holistic and analytic cognitive styles in a sample of Czech and Taiwanese university students. Two cognitive tasks were conducted: a Compound Figures Test and a free-viewing scene perception task which manipulated several focal objects and measured eye-movement patterns. An analysis of the reaction times in the Compound Figures Test showed no clear differences between either sample. An analysis of eye-movement metrics showed certain differences between the samples. While Czechs tended to focus relatively more on the focal objects measured by the number of fixations, the Taiwanese subjects spent more time fixating on the background. The results were consistent for scenes with one or two focal objects. The results of a correlation analysis of both tasks showed that they were unrelated. These results showed certain differences between the samples in visual perception but were not as systematic as the theory of holistic and analytic cognitive styles would suggest. An alternative model of cross-cultural differences in cognition and perception is discussed.

Urbanisation, the arousal system, and covert and overt attentional selection

Urbanisation is growing rapidly. We review evidence that this growth is altering the default information processing style of human beings by impacting both overt and covert processes of attentional selection (i.e. attentional selection with and without eye movements respectively), in ways consistent with reduced attentional engagement and increased exploration. While the factors and systems mediating these effects are likely to be many and various, we focus on one system which may be responsible for mediating effects on both covert and overt attentional selection. Specifically, the neuromodulatory locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system is key to regulating cognitive function in a behaviourally relevant and arousal-dependent manner and therefore well suited to supporting adaptation to the profound socio-ecological changes inherent in urbanisation.

Culture and Decision Making: Influence of Analytic Versus Holistic Thinking Style on Resource Allocation in a Fort Game

People have to make different decisions every day, in which culture affects their strategies. This research examined the role of analytic versus holistic thinking style on resource allocation across cultures. We expected that, analytic thinking style, which refers to a linear view about the world where objects’ properties remain stable and separate, would make people concentrate their resource allocation corresponding to the current demand, whereas holistic thinking style, which refers to a nonlinear view that people perceive change to be a constant phenomenon and the universe to be full of interconnected elements, would encourage people to spread out their resource allocation. In Study 1, Hong Kong Chinese, a representative group of holistic cultures, and European Canadians, a representative group of analytic cultures, completed a resource allocation task (i.e., fort game). The results showed that the allocation pattern of European Canadians was more concentrated than that of Hong Kong Chinese and holistic thoughts predicted a less concentrated allocation pattern. To test causality, thinking styles were manipulated in Study 2, in which mainland Chinese were primed with either holistic thinking style or analytic thinking style. The results showed that the allocation pattern was more concentrated in the analytic condition than that in the holistic condition, which was explained by greater perceived predictability in the analytic condition. Implications of these findings on cross-cultural decision-making research and applied research were discussed.

Influence of encoding instructions and response bias on cross-cultural differences in specific recognition

Prior cross-cultural research has reported cultural variations in memory. One study revealed that Americans remembered images with more perceptual detail than East Asians (Millar et al. in Cult Brain 1(2-4):138-157, 2013). However, in a later study, this expected pattern was not replicated, possibly due to differences in encoding instructions (Paige et al. in Cortex 91:250-261, 2017). The present study sought to examine when cultural variation in memory-related decisions occur and the role of instructions. American and East Asian participants viewed images of objects while making a Purchase decision or an Approach decision and later completed a surprise recognition test. Results revealed Americans had higher hit rates for specific memory, regardless of instruction type, and a less stringent response criterion relative to East Asians. Additionally, a pattern emerged where the Approach decision enhanced hit rates for specific memory relative to the Purchase decision only when administered first; this pattern did not differ across cultures. Results suggest encoding instructions do not magnify cross-cultural differences in memory. Ultimately, cross-cultural differences in response bias, rather than memory sensitivity per se, may account for findings of cultural differences in memory specificity.

One Label or Two? Linguistic Influences on the Similarity Judgment of Objects between English and Japanese Speakers

Recent findings have re-examined the linguistic influence on cognition and perception, while identifying evidence that supports the Whorfian hypothesis. We examine how English and Japanese speakers perceive similarity of pairs of objects, by using two sets of stimuli: one in which two distinct linguistic categories apply to respective object images in English, but only one linguistic category applies in Japanese; and another in which two distinct linguistic categories apply to respective object images in Japanese, but only one applies in English. We conducted four studies and tested different groups of participants in each of them. In Study 1, we asked participants to name the two objects before engaging in the similarity judgment task. Here, we expected a strong linguistic effect. In Study 2, we asked participants to engage in the same task without naming, where we assumed that the condition is close enough to our daily visual information processing where language is not necessarily prompted. We further explored whether the language still influences the similarity perception by asking participants to engage in the same task basing on the visual similarity (Study 3) and the functional similarity (Study 4). The results overall indicated that English and Japanese speakers perceived the two objects to be more similar when they were in the same linguistic categories than when they were in different linguistic categories in their respective languages. Implications for research testing the Whorfian hypothesis and the requirement for methodological development beyond behavioral measures are discussed.

Culture and emotion perception: comparing Canadian and Japanese children's and parents' context sensitivity

Prior research on the perception of facial expressions suggests that East Asians are more likely than North Americans to incorporate the expressions of background figures into their judgment of a central figure's emotion (Masuda et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 94:365-381, 2008b). However, little research has examined this issue in the context of developmental science, especially during joint sessions where parents engage in a task in front of their 7-8-year-old children. In this study, 22 Canadian and 20 Japanese child-parent dyads participated in an emotion judgment task, and were asked to judge a central figure's emotion and explain their reasoning. The results indicated that while early elementary school children did not show culturally dominant reasoning styles, parents displayed culturally dominant modes of attention, serving as models for their children.

Cultural Differences in Spontaneous Trait and Situation Inferences

Previous findings indicated that when people observe someone’s behavior, they spontaneously infer the traits and situations that cause the target person’s behavior. These inference processes are called spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) and spontaneous situation inferences (SSIs). While both patterns of inferences have been observed, no research has examined the extent to which people from different cultural backgrounds produce these inferences when information affords both trait and situation inferences. Based on the theoretical frameworks of social orientations and thinking styles, we hypothesized that European Canadians would be more likely to produce STIs than SSIs because of the individualistic/independent social orientation and the analytic thinking style dominant in North America, whereas Japanese would produce both STIs and SSIs equally because of the collectivistic/interdependent social orientation and the holistic thinking style dominant in East Asia. Employing the savings-in-relearning paradigm, we presented information that affords both STIs and SSIs and examined cultural differences in the extent of both inferences. The results supported our hypotheses. The relationships between culturally dominant styles of thought and the inference processes in impression formation are discussed.