Cultural differences in neural function associated with object processing
Authors: Gutchess, Angela H.; Welsh, Robert C.; Boduroğlu, Aysecan; Park, Denise C.
Source: Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, Volume 6, Number 2, June 2006 , pp. 102-109(8)
Publisher: Psychonomic Society Publications
Key:
- Free Content
- New Content
- Subscribed Content
- Free Trial Content
- Free Content
- New Content
- Subscribed Content
- Free Trial Content
Abstract:
Behavioral research suggests that Westerners focus more on objects, whereas East Asians attend more to relationships and contexts. We evaluated the neural basis for these cultural differences in an event-related fMRI study. East Asian and American participants incidentally encoded pictures of (1) a target object alone, (2) a background scene with no discernable target object, and (3) a distinct target object against a meaningful background. Americans, relative to East Asians, activated more regions implicated in object processing, including bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left superior parietal/angular gyrus, and right superior temporal/supramarginal gyrus. In contrast to the cultural differences in object-processing areas, few differences emerged in background-processing regions. These results suggest that cultural experiences subtly direct neural activity, particularly for focal objects, at an early stage of scene encoding.Document Type: Research article
Key:
- Free Content
- New Content
- Subscribed Content
- Free Trial Content
- Free Content
- New Content
- Subscribed Content
- Free Trial Content
Click here for Page Help