Does cultural background predict the spatial distribution of attention?
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Does cultural background predict the spatial distribution of attention? Rebecca K. Lawrence1 · Mark Edwards1 · Gordon W.C. Chan1 · Jolene A. Cox1 · Stephanie C. Goodhew1 Accepted: 12 August 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
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. Keywords Visual attention · Spatial attention · Attentional scale · Inhibition of return · Cultural differences · East Asian · Western
* Rebecca K. Lawrence [email protected] 1
The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
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Humans use visual attention to filter visual information, triaging certain stimuli for enhanced processing at the expense of others (Carrasco 2011; Desimone and Duncan 1995; Posner 1980; Posner and Cohen 1984). Although there are many elements of visual attention, including spatial attention, object attention, and featural attention (Carrasco 2011), here, we are interested in individual differences in one aspect of visual attention: covert spatial attentional distribution (e.g. Lawrence et al. 2018). For example, spatial attention resources can be narrowed to focus on a small region of the visual field. Alternatively, they can be expanded to cover more of the visual field. This is an im
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