A Three-Level Approach to Understand Cultural Variability and the Evolution of Human Attention

Abstract

Attention plays a crucial role in cognition and behavior. To explain the cultural variability of attention, we postulated a general hypothesis of cultural adaptation, which assumes that the attentional mechanism co-evolves with objects in our environment. We employed a three-level approach composed of hypothesis-driven experiments, a large-scale database platform gathering results from various parts of the world ("Kokoro World Map"), and corpus-based analyses. This article reports on an attempt to apply this approach using visual search and the Stroop effect as examples. In visual search task, we began with hypothesis-driven experiments on search asymmetry, and is currently expanding to the construction of large-scale databases using online experiments and an ontology database. In the Stroop task, we constructed ontology and corpus-based analyses to formulate concrete hypotheses about the cultural evolution of cognitive control, which were examined by online and laboratory experiments. From these multi-level approaches, we also try to integrate the findings of cognitive science and those of archaeology and anthropology.

Editorial: Integrative Science of Human History: How Can Psychology, Archeology, Anthropology and Biology Work Together

“…This special issue is a collection of articles to illustrate challenges of the project seeking how Psychology, Archeology, Anthropology and Biology, and other related disciplines, can work together to understand the scientific mechanisms of human history.The first three articles are contributions from psychology to integrative human historical science. Ueda et al (2021) propose a three-level approach to understand cultural variability and evolution of human attention, combining hypothesis-driven experiments, large-scale database, and corpus-based analyses. They hypothesize that human attentional mechanism co-evolves with objects in our environment, especially various artifacts.…”

“…The first three articles are contributions from psychology to integrative human historical science. Ueda et al (2021) propose a three-level approach to understand cultural variability and evolution of human attention, combining hypothesis-driven experiments, large-scale database, and corpus-based analyses. They hypothesize that human attentional mechanism co-evolves with objects in our environment, especially various artifacts.…”