Individual Differences in Cognitive Constructs: A Comparison Between American and Chinese Culture Groups

Cognition and Cognitive Reserve

Cognition is a mental process that provides the ability to think, know, and learn. Though cognitive skills are necessary to do daily tasks and activities, cognitive aging causes changes in various cognitive functions. Cognitive abilities that are preserved and strengthened by experience can be kept as a reserve and utilized when necessary. The concept of reserving cognition was found when people with Alzheimer's disease had differences in clinical manifestations and cognitive functions. The cognitive reserve builds resilience against cognitive decline and improves the quality of life. Also, several lines of studies have found that the plasticity between neurons has a significant impact on cognitive reserve and acts against cognitive decline. To extend the findings, the present study provides a comprehensive understanding of cognitive reserve and the variables that are involved in maintaining cognition. The study also considers reading as one of the cognitive proxies that develops and maintains cognitive reserve.

Do subtle cultural differences sculpt face pareidolia?

Face tuning to non-face images such as shadows or grilled toasts is termed face pareidolia. Face-pareidolia images represent a valuable tool for investigation of social cognition in mental disorders. Here we examined (i) whether, and, if so, how face pareidolia is affected by subtle cultural differences; and (ii) whether this impact is modulated by gender. With this purpose in mind, females and males from Northern Italy were administered a set of Face-n-Thing images, photographs of objects such as houses or waves to a varying degree resembling a face. Participants were presented with pareidolia images with canonical upright orientation and display inversion that heavily affects face pareidolia. In a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm, beholders had to indicate whether each image resembled a face. The outcome was compared with the findings obtained in the Southwest of Germany. With upright orientation, neither cultural background nor gender affected face pareidolia. As expected, display inversion generally mired face pareidolia. Yet, while display inversion led to a drastic reduction of face impression in German males as compared to females, in Italians, no gender differences were found. In a nutshell, subtle cultural differences do not sculpt face pareidolia, but instead affect face impression in a gender-specific way under unusual viewing conditions. Clarification of the origins of these effects requires tailored brain imaging work. Implications for transcultural psychiatry, in particular, for schizophrenia research, are highlighted and discussed.