ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2008) — People from
different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same
visual perceptual tasks, MIT researchers and colleagues report in the
first brain imaging study of its kind.
Psychological research has established that American culture, which
values the individual, emphasizes the independence of objects from
their contexts, while East Asian societies emphasize the collective and
the contextual interdependence of objects. Behavioral studies have
shown that these cultural differences can influence memory and even
perception. But are they reflected in brain activity patterns?
To find out, a team led by John Gabrieli, a professor at the
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, asked 10 East Asians
recently arrived in the United States and 10 Americans to make quick
perceptual judgments while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) scanner–a technology that maps blood flow changes in the brain
that correspond to mental operations.
Subjects were shown a sequence of stimuli consisting of lines within
squares and were asked to compare each stimulus with the previous one.
In some trials, they judged whether the lines were the same length
regardless of the surrounding squares (an absolute judgment of
individual objects independent of context). In other trials, they
decided whether the lines were in the same proportion to the squares,
regardless of absolute size (a relative judgment of interdependent
objects).
In previous behavioral studies of similar tasks, Americans were more
accurate on absolute judgments, and East Asians on relative judgments.
In the current study, the tasks were easy enough that there were no
differences in performance between the two groups.
However, the two groups showed different patterns of brain
activation when performing these tasks. Americans, when making relative
judgments that are typically harder for them, activated brain regions
involved in attention-demanding mental tasks. They showed much less
activation of these regions when making the more culturally familiar
absolute judgments. East Asians showed the opposite tendency, engaging
the brain’s attention system more for absolute judgments than for
relative judgments.
The results are reported in the January issue of Psychological
Science. Gabrieli’s colleagues on the work were Trey Hedden, lead
author of the paper and a research scientist at McGovern; Sarah Ketay
and Arthur Aron of State University of New York at Stony Brook; and
Hazel Rose Markus of Stanford University.
“We were surprised at the magnitude of the difference between the
two cultural groups, and also at how widespread the engagement of the
brain’s attention system became when making judgments outside the
cultural comfort zone,” says Hedden.
The researchers went on to show that the effect was greater in those
individuals who identified more closely with their culture. They used
questionnaires of preferences and values in social relations, such as
whether an individual is responsible for the failure of a family
member, to gauge cultural identification. Within both groups, stronger
identification with their respective cultures was associated with a
stronger culture-specific pattern of brain-activation.
How do these differences come about? “Everyone uses the same
attention machinery for more difficult cognitive tasks, but they are
trained to use it in different ways, and it’s the culture that does the
training,” Gabrieli says. “It’s fascinating that the way in which the
brain responds to these simple drawings reflects, in a predictable way,
how the individual thinks about independent or interdependent social
relationships.”
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and supported by the McGovern Institute.
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