Monday, April 10, 2006

Culture and Perception: The Role of the Physical Environment

Every time someone asks me about cultural differences in cognition, be it a student, a blog reader, or my mother, I cringe. I mean, sure, I can tell them about the various differences that have been observed in the laboratory, and point them to books like The Geography of Thought, but inevitably, they'll ask what causes the observed differences, and I have to tell them I don't know. No one does, really. The problem is that there hasn't been much experimental work designed to determine what might be causing these differences. Most of the empirical work amounts to demonstrations that the differences do exist. I usually tell people that there are a few possible explanations for the differences. The first possible explanation is that the differences are innate, that is, that something about the differences in the genetic make up of Europeans and East Asians, for example, causes differences in perception, conception, and reasoning. However, there's no evidence whatsoever for innate causes, so we can probably rule this type of explanation out. The second possible explanation is that there are differences in the environments of Europeans and East Asians, and that these differences somehow cause differences in cognition and perception. A third possible explanation is that the cognitive and perceptual differences are due entirely to differences in culture that arose purely by historical accident. And finally, a fourth explanation, along the lines of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, is that language differences cause cognitive and perceptual differences.

The problem, for researchers, with these last three levels of explanations is that they would all interact, and it would be difficult, if not impossible to tease them apart in practice. And of course, there are all sorts of observed differences, which may all have different causes. The best we can do, then, is look to see whether manipulating something from the environment, culture, or language (which, I know, isn't really separate from culture, but neither is the environment) affects a particular cultural difference. This won't tell us where that level fits in the causal chain, but it would at least be positive evidence that it fits in it somewhere. For example, by manipulating an hypothesized effect of culture, like fear of isolation, we can show that one factor resides at the level of culture, or by showing that cultures with different numbers of color terms perceive colors differently, we can show that language has some influence. Having talked about those levels in previous posts, I thought I'd talk a little bit about the potential role of the environment this time. Again, looking at one level doesn't exclude the other levels, because we don't know how the different levels might interact. It just says that that level plays a role. So the purpose of the research I'm going to describe is not to show that perception is the cause of cultural differences in cognition and perception, just that it might be one among many.

One interesting observed difference between Europeans an East Asian (e.g., Japanese and Filipinos) has to do with attention and perception. The difference is usually framed in terms of analytic vs. holistic perception. For example, in one experiment1, Japanese and European American participants were first given a square (which served as the frame) with a line inside it (see the figure below). That square was then removed, and they were given an empty square different in size from the original, and asked to draw a line inside it that was either the same length as the original line (absolute condition) or that had the same length relative to the frame (relative condition).

Figure 1 from Ishii & Kitayama (2003).

The European American participants were significantly more accurate than the Japanese participants in the absolute condition, while the Japanese participants were significantly more accurate than the European American participants in the relative task.

In another experiment2, this one on "change blindness", European American and Japanese participants were presented with moving scenes. In each scene, there were large, "rapidly moving" foreground objects set against a static background scene. In one condition, aspects of the objects in the foreground changed, while in others, aspects of the static background changed. European Americans were significantly better than the Japanese participants at detecting changes to foreground objects, while Japanese participants were better at detecting changes to the background.

These findings, and others, have been used to argue that Europeans tend to focus their attention on objects, independent of context (i.e., to attend and perceive analytically), while East Asians focus on the context (attending and perceiving holistically). But again, they just demonstrate the difference, and weren't designed to assess any causal hypotheses. However, these findings do contain clues. Miyamoto, Nisbett, and Masuda3 noted that in the change blindness experiment, when the participants were shown Japanese scenes, both the European Americans and Japanese noticed more changes to the background than to the foreground objects, and when the scenes were American scenes, participants from both cultures detected more changes in the foreground objects. Might there be some difference in typical scenes to which people from the two different cultures are exposed, then, and might these differences influence the adoption of particular attentional styles?

To answer this question, Miyamoto et al. first gathered photos of scenes from similar contexts (schools, hotels, and post offices) from six cities, three in the U.S. and three in Japan. For each country, one of the cities was a small city (population less than 5,000), one medium-sized (population ~100,000), and one large (population ~8,000,000). Examples of the photos are below. They hypothesized that at each city-size, the Japanese scenes would be more "complex" and "ambiguous" than the American scenes. This, they further hypothesized, would cause the Japanese scenes to prime the holistic, context-focused attentional style observed in East Asian participants in previous experiments, while the American scenes would prime the analytic, object-focused attentional style observed in American participants. To test the first hypothesis, they used two measures of complexity and ambiguity. For the first, they presented participants with 82 photos, 41 of Japanese scenes and 41 of American, and asked them to answer the following four questions about each photo (on a 5-point scale):
  • "How ambiguous is the boundary of each object?"
  • "How many different objects do there seem to be?"
  • "To what degree do there seem to be parts of the scene that are invisible?"
  • "To what degree is the scene either chaotic or organized?"
Answers to these four questions were highly correlated, so they combined them together to form a composite score of "complexity-ambiguity." On this score, the Japanese scenes were rated as significantly more complex/ambiguous than American scenes. Using a computer program designed to detect objects in photographs, they then counted the number of objects (excluding things like leaves) in each scene, and consistent with the ratings, found that the Japanese scenes contained more objects than the American scenes.

Having shown that the Japanese scenes were indeed more complex and ambiguous, Miyamoto et al. conducted another change blindness study to test their second hypothesis. In this study, culturally neutral scenes were presented to both Japanese and European American participants. In each scene, changes occurred either in the background or to foreground objects, as in the previous change blindness experiments. In this experiment, though, participants were primed with either Japanese or American scenes prior to viewing the culturally neutral scenes. Miyamoto et al. predicted that priming them with scenes from Japanese cities would prime holistic attentional focus, and the American scenes would prime analytic attentional focus, regardless of whether the participants were Japanese or American.

As in the previous change-blindness study, Japanese participants in this study perceived more changes to the background, overall, than American participants, though both American and Japanese participants detected about the same number of changes to foreground objects. In essence, Japanese participants detected more changes than American participants. More importantly, when primed with scenes from Japanese cities, both the American and Japanese participants detected more changes to the background than when they were primed with American scenes, and when primed with American scenes, Japanese participants detected more changes to foreground objects than when primed with Japanese scenes. American participants' detection of changes to foreground objects did not differ as a function of the type of priming image.

Overall, then, the data is consistent with the second hypothesis, that the different types of scenes in the two countries contribute to the differences in attentional style between the two cultures. Miyamoto et al. don't really offer any reasons why this might be. Perhaps the greater complexity in the Japanese scenes makes attending to specific objects more difficult, or makes each individual object slightly less salient, thus making it easier and more effective to attend to the overall context. They do, however, make it clear that differences in the complexity and ambiguity of the scenes is not likely to be the only cause of the differences in attention, and that there may be cultural factors that influence what types of scenes predominate in a particular culture, though they don't speculate on what those factors might be. In the final analysis, then, the study doesn't tell us a whole heck of a lot. At least the study provides a step in the right direction though, in that it shows that there are environmental factors at work in shaping cultural styles in attention and perception. So, while the study doesn't add anything to my answer to questions about cultural differences in cognition, it at least lets me feel more confident in telling people that environmental factors are one type of potential cause.

1Ishii, K., & Kitayama, S. (2003). Selective attention to contextual information in Japan. Poster presented at 25th Annual meeting of Cognitive Science Society; Kitayama, S., Duffy, S., Kawamura, T., & Larsen, J.T. (2003). Perceiving an object and its context in different cultures: a cultural look at new look." Psychological Science, 14(3), 201-206.
2Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R.E. (In Press). Culture and change blindness. Cognitive Science.
3Miyamoto, Y., Nisbett, R.E., & Masuda, T. (2006). Culture and the physical environment: Holistic versus analytic perceptual affordances. Psychological Science, 17(2), 113-119.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting article, but I'm a bit puzzled by something you say in the first paragraph:

However, there's no evidence whatsoever for innate causes, so we can probably rule this type of explanation out.

Given that innate causes would normally be mixed up with environmental, cultural and linguistic causes, how can you rule them out? It's obvious that there is a considerable range of genetic diversity within the human species; there is no good a priori reason to assume that this diversity is only skin deep.

Indeed, it can't have always been that way or the human mind couldn't have evolved from our ape ancestors. Whether or not there is genetic variation in minds now and whether or not it is distributed unevenly between ethnic groups, there definitely has been such variation in the past - which makes it even more bizarre to say without evidence that there couldn't possibly be any now.

So have there been studies that attempt to separate genetic causes from cultural, environmental and linguistic causes (including prenatal environment, which shows how difficult this is)? If so, how? If not, how can you "rule out" an explanation that hasn't been seriously examined and has a plausible mechanism?

It seems likely to me that the question hasn't been seriously examined (because it's a political hot potato and/or because of the swarm of confounding variables) and that people reflexively deny it in order not to seem like racists. But there's a big difference between honestly studying statistical differences between ethnic groups and jumping to conclusions about individuals based on prejudice.


Also, it seems kind of misleading to describe a scene consisting largely of human artifacts as the "physical environment", a phrase which (especially when contrasted with culture) implies *nonhuman* physical environment: the Sahara, the Amazon basin, etc. Clearly, many aspects of those scenes are themselves influenced by the people who quite literally designed and built them. Could there be a "when in Rome" effect going on here too, where people exposed to the trappings of a particular culture become primed to imitate it?

Blar said...

Why did Miyamoto et al. leave complexity-ambiguity confounded with country in their priming study? In order to show that the priming effect is due to complexity-ambiguity, and not some other difference between Japanese and American scenes, shouldn't they have primed separate groups of participats with American scenes high in complexity-ambiguity, American scenes low in complexity-ambiguity, Japanese scenes high in complexity-ambiguity, and Japanese scenes low in complexity-ambiguity?

Chris said...

Blar, they primed neutral scenes, and they used both types of primes with people of both nationalities. So I don't see any confound.

Anon, first, it is their physical environment, whether it's man-made or not. Second, the differences between genetic cues and the other three kinds are many. First, you can look directly for genetic differences (look at our DNA). Second, you can look for the sorts of things that come with genetic change (differences showing up early, in a predictable developmental pattern, and so on). Third, if genetic factors were to blame, then you wouldn't be able to manipulate holistic vs. analytic thinking simply by changing something about the physical or social environment. Fourth (and perhaps most importantly), people who are born to East Asian parents don't develop holistic styles if they're born and raised in the U.S. (I don't know of any study looking at European children born and raised in East Asia).

Chris said...

Blar, oops, I read your comment wrong, so I answered it wrong. Sorry about that. The answer is no, they didn't confound complexity with country. The fact that they used small, medium, and large cities helps avoid that (large cities were significantly more complex than medium cities, and medium cities than small cities). New York City (the large U.S. city) was more complex and amgbiguous than the Japanese small and medium cities. They don't report data on the priming of scenes from specific cities, but since each comparison is done relative to the city level, you would predict that the New York scenes would prime more holistic processing than the Japanese medium and small scenes.

Blar said...

Chris, my concern (and desire for another study) might be clearer if we look at their studies in the opposite order from how they presented them. They found, roughly, that priming people with photos of Japan makes them act more like Japanese people in tests of holistic vs. analytic perception, and priming them with photos of America makes them act more like Americans. That's an interesting finding, and it suggests that the physical environment can play some role in holistic vs. analytic perception, but it's not clear what role that is, or what features of the photos made them serve as effective primes. Maybe it's just that photos with Japanese content prime Eastern cognition and photos with American content prime Western cognition. Their hypothesis is that something visual about the physical environment, its complexity-ambiguity, is part of the explanation, and they show in their other study that the two sets of photos do differ in their complexity-ambiguity. The obvious next step, to show that this difference in complexity-ambiguity is causally relevant, is to isolate this variable and see what happens to perception when you prime people with photos that differ in complexity-ambiguity but are otherwise as similar as possible (most importantly, from the same country). They don't take this next step*, which is the concern that I was trying to raise in my previous comment.


* or so it appears from your write-up. Would you be able to send me the original journal article or provide a link? In case you need my email address, it's at hotmail-dot-com under the name "blarghblog". Thanks.

Chris said...

Blar, actually, that's a very good point. I think they try to use the New York data to address it, but it would really require a more controlled study to show that it is the complexity/ambiguity of the scenes that is causing the differences in attentional focus. You can read the penultimate draft of the paper here. I wonder if Nisbett and his colleagues are working on a study like the one you suggest. It would be pretty easy to do.

Todd said...

Pretty interesting stuff. My initial reaction to Nisebett et al.'s research was to raise some of the same concerns that Blar had, specifically that the scenes may not be as comparable we would like them to be (or, maybe that's the point?). In other words, it seems as though the first step would be to use the same setting (American or Asian, or both) and vary the number and location of objects within it to test for significant differences in perception. If such effects are found, then we can feel more confident about this complexity-ambiguity dimension (and its impact upon perception). Then, of course, the next step would be to do the kind of research that Nisbett & colleagues have done to demonstrate that there are indeed systematic differences in American/European versus Asian environments that, in turn, can lead to differences in analytical-holistic perceptions. Besides this quibble, the studies you discussed are quite fascinating. Thanks for posting on this subject...

Anonymous said...

For those interested, here are some references for other studies related to this issue:

Leonard Meyer and David Huron are cognitive musicologists who have explored the way that familiarity with a musical "style" (i.e. set of schemata, which are based on past listening experience--which is often very cultural specific) affects a given listener's cognitive approach to a piece of music. Huron in particular has compared cognitive approaches for listeners of various cultures and musical backgrounds to music of those various cultures. For example, in an upcoming book, Huron relates the study of how Western Classical listeners and Balinese listeners approached Haydn/Mozart/etc. and gamelan music differently.

Meyer's work is older, and largely speculative, as there wasn't much experimental data available at the time. However, many of his hypotheses have been confirmed or extended by recent research in music cognition. His most useful books are Style and Music, Music, The Arts, and Ideas and Emotion and Meaning in Music.

Huron has a forthcoming book, Sweet Anticipation: The Psychology of Musical Expectation, which addresses the role of familiarity and expectation in cognition and schema development.

Also, ScienceBlog.com recently summarized a soon-to-be-published study on the role that geographic landscapes in a particular region affected the look of written language as it developed in that region. Interestingly, written language characters tended to match shapes familiar in the visual landscape more than it matched shapes which were easy to write/paint/carve. This applies not only for ideographic types of writing, but also phonetic-based characters. The link is here: http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/why_are_letters_and_other_human_visual_signs_shaped_the_way_that_they_are_10315.html.

Kris (music theorist with particular interest in musical cognition)

Anonymous said...

Ever thought about the 'Self' being a source of explanation for these cultural differences in perception and cognition?

If we all percieve ourselves differently, i.e either as indepdent people largely detached from context, or as interdepdent people largely attached to context, then does it follow we see our external world largely the same?

Is our external world a distortion, a reflection of our Selves?

Cheryl said...

The problem, for researchers, with these last three levels of explanations is that they would all interact, and it would be difficult, if not impossible to tease them apart in practice.
Learn how to speak French and learn speak Chinese

Anonymous said...

Anothre set of ralph lauren polo in three colors. Ralph

Lauren Polo Shirts
come with a graduation of colors on the chest. The new shiki Cheap polo

shirts logo is on the chest. Comes in all layres and can be worned tucked in or out Wholesale Polo Shirts -50% OFF.
Also comes with sculpted collar and arm cuffs.Flat knit collar, Contrast placket and half

moon, Mothre-of-pearl buttons and tennis tail, Soft double knit piqué,100% cotton ralph lauren

polo shirts. If you lend your embroidrere a sample cheapralph lauren polos that will help you get

the closest match to the original embroidreed design. The artwork you provide will sreve as a

template for your embroidrey set-up but discount ralph lauren polos can't be used to identify some

stitch types, cheap polo shirts Cheap Polo Shirtsgive

precise sizing of embroidreed elements and show thread polo clothing colors.
The cold winter, does not seem too for wedding. Most recently, the cold one after another,

hangzhou air temperature pelter, let many wedding in late November bride is due a single wear

gauze or dress, will feel cold, wear too much and feel very bloated. For the bride, the winter is

the biggest test how wedding in temperature and balance between poise.

Don't be too upset, actually this season only fees cheap Wedding Dresses, marriage can create a different

character "winter wedding", also more memorable.

You can use the glittering and translucent white fairy tale, cheap cell phones
,the artistic conception to dress up oneself's wedding, choose blue, green, white ice cold tonal,

decorous atmosphere to create beautiful, Can borrow snow machine and bubble machine build indoor

romantic atmosphere, snowflake, feathers, Christmas tree,cheap cocktail

dresses
, even is the element such as silver crystal, can add to your winter wedding dreamy

colour, cheap

jewelry
you can even in a pile of snowman YingBinChu lovely, guests, we must take it and will

soon be well.
Wholesale Polo Shirts
Ralph Lauren Polo Shirts
Discount Ralph Lauren Polos

Unknown said...

Dofus Kamas|Prix Moins Cher Dofus Kamas|Kamas par allopass|Dofus kamas audiotel|Dofus kamas par telephone sur Virstock.com

Meilleur prix www.virstock.com dofus kamas stock de dofus kamas

Prix moins cher dofus kamas vente dofus kamas sur www.virstock.com

www.virstock.com/jsp/comments.jsp dofus kamas vente
www.virstock.com