Previous works suggest that North Americans perceive visual information more analytically while East Asians perceive visual information more holistically. However, salient objects are also known to naturally attract human attention. Current studies examined to what extent culture influences visual attention. Study 1 demonstrated that highly salient objects attract passive viewers attention similarly across North American and East Asian cultures. In study 2, however, we revealed that such strong tendency for humans can be influenced by culture when people actively engaged in the observation. When participants were asked to report their observation, Canadian participants predominantly reported information regarding focal objects whereas Japanese participants also reported much information regarding contextual features. Consistently, culturally divergent patterns of eye movements were observed. The current study thus indicates that the active involvement in observation is especially important to understand the influence of culture on visual attention.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:AEU.10048/1789 |
| Date | 06 1900 |
| Creators | Senzaki, Sawa |
| Contributors | Masuda, Takahiko (Psychology), Noels, Kom (Psychology), Nicoladis, Elena (Psychology), Kabata, Kaori (East Asian Studies) |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 456143 bytes, application/pdf |
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