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Does cultural background predict the spatial distribution of attention?

  • Original Research Article
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Culture and Brain

Abstract

The current study aimed to explore cultural differences in the covert spatial distribution of attention. In particular, we tested whether those born in an East Asian country adopted a different distribution of attention compared to individuals born in a Western country. Previous work suggests that Western individuals tend to distribute attention narrowly and that East Asian individuals distribute attention broadly. However, these studies have used indirect methods to infer spatial attention scale. In particular, they have not measured changes in attention across space, nor have they controlled for differences eye movements patterns, which can differ across cultures. To address this, in the current study, we used an inhibition of return (IOR) paradigm which directly measured changes in attention across space, while controlling for eye movements. The use of the IOR task was a significant advancement, as it allowed for a highly sensitive measure of attention distribution compared to past research. Critically, using this new measure, we failed to observe a cultural difference in the distribution of covert spatial attention. Instead, individuals from East Asian countries and Western countries adopted a similar attention spread. However, we did observe a cultural difference in response speed, whereby Western participants were relatively faster to detect targets in the IOR task. This relationship persisted, even after controlling for individual variation in attention slope, indicating that factors other than attention distribution might account for cultural differences in response speed. Therefore, this study provides robust, converging evidence that group differences in covert spatial attentional distribution do not necessarily drive cultural variation in response speed.

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Notes

  1. Initially, we intended to create our East Asian and Western participant groups for analysis based on self-identified cultural background. To do so, in the demographic survey, we asked participants which ethnic group they most strongly identified with (Caucasian, East Asian, South Asian, Indigenous, or Other). We also asked participants if they identified with any other cultural groups and the strength of their identification with these groups. Inspection of responses to this question suggested that the question was a poor measure of culture, with some participants providing unclear responses. For example, some participants answered that they most strongly identified as being from an East Asian ethnic group, however, when prompted if they identified with another ethnic group later in the survey, they responded that they more strongly identified as Caucasian than East Asian. Furthermore, some participants self-identified equally as having many ethnic associations, making individual’s responses hard to categorise into clear cultural groups. Therefore, we chose to use birth country as the main grouping variable for analysis, as it allowed for a cleaner demarcation of cultural groups compared to self-identified culture. This is consistent with previous research, which has used birth country as the grouping variable for cultural background (e.g. Boduroglu et al. 2009).

  2. A subset of participants did not to respond to some demographic questions. This resulted in smaller participant numbers for the variables age, self-identified culture, and total years of education. Further, apart from the data reported in Table 1, the demographic survey also measured (a) which countries a participant had lived in, as well as for how long they lived in those countries, (b) countries in which the participant completed primary and secondary education, as well as the language spoken at those schools, (c) the degree to which they saw themselves as Australian, compared to their self-reported cultural group (using a 5 point Likert scale; Berry, 2014) and (d) birth country of both of their parents. Variation in responses to these questions were highly variable, and often misinterpreted, and were thus, not included in our final analysis. Furthermore, our original survey asked participants their (a) first language, (b) what languages they were fluent in, and (c) the main language they used now. However, for clarity, we condensed this into one variable, labelled “number of languages spoken” and recorded the number of separate languages participants reported speaking across these three questions

  3. We originally intended to exclude participant data if eye movements were made on more than 20% of target present trials. However, this meant that a high number of data sets were excluded. Therefore, to include as much data as possible, we lowered our accuracy cut off score to 70% (i.e. participants were excluded if they moved their eyes on more than 30% of trials). Nonetheless, both exclusion criteria led to a similar overall pattern of results.

  4. In earlier version of this manuscript, we collected 82 useable data sets for final analyses (32 East Asian, 50 Western). The original analysis included in this manuscript found a marginally significant effect of birth country on attention slope, t (80) = 1.92, p = .058, d = .42. Further, in the original version of the manuscript, when East Asian participants who had been living in Australia for > 5 years were excluded from analyses, the effect of birth country on attention slope was significant, t (75) = 2.14, p = .035, d = .49. However, upon the request of an anonymous reviewer, we collected a further 19 useable data sets, so that there were 50 East Asian, and 50 Western participants in our final sample, and revised manuscript.

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Correspondence to Rebecca K. Lawrence.

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Lawrence, R.K., Edwards, M., Chan, G. et al. Does cultural background predict the spatial distribution of attention?. Cult. Brain 8, 137–165 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-019-00086-x

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