Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception

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.

Fig. 1.

Sample pictures presented in the study. Thirty-six pictures with a single foregrounded object (animals or nonliving entities) on realistic backgrounds were presented to participants.

Fig. 2.

Mean accuracy rates from the object-recognition phase (22 Americans and 24 Chinese). Data shown refer to correct recognition of old objects, when the old objects were presented in old backgrounds, compared with when old objects were presented in new backgrounds. Object refers to the single foregrounded animal or nonliving entity on the picture; background refers to the rest of the realistic, complex spatial area on the visual scene.

Fig. 3.

Eye movement data. (A) Number of fixations to object or background by culture (21 Americans and 24 Chinese). Each picture was presented for 3 s. (B) Onset time to object by culture. Time was measured from onset of each picture to first fixation to object, comparing Americans and Chinese. (C) Average fixation times to object and background as a function of culture. All figures represent mean scores over 36 trials and SEM.

Fig. 4.

Proportion of fixations to object or background, across the 3-s time course of a trial. Data points are sampled every 10 ms for 0-1,500 ms, and every 50 ms for 1,500-3,000 ms, averaging over all 36 trials. The sum of percentages at each time point may not total 100% because, at times, participants were in the process of making a saccade, thus they were in between fixations. The graph illustrates distinct eye tracking patterns of Americans and Chinese during the 3-s period. Cultural differences begin by 420 ms after onset, when an interaction of culture and region was observed, with the Chinese, but not the Americans continuing to fixate the background more than the focal object. Averaging the data from 420 to 1,100 ms, Americans were fixating focal objects at a greater proportion than backgrounds, compared with Chinese. Averaging the data from 1,100 to 3,000 ms, Chinese were fixating more often to the backgrounds and less to the objects, compared with Americans.