Cultural Diversity and Saccade Similarities: Culture Does Not Explain Saccade Latency Differences between Chinese and Caucasian Participants

Abstract

A central claim of cultural neuroscience is that the culture to which an individual belongs plays a key role in shaping basic cognitive processes and behaviours, including eye movement behaviour. We previously reported a robust difference in saccade behaviour between Chinese and Caucasian participants; Chinese participants are much more likely to execute low latency express saccades, in circumstances in which these are normally discouraged. To assess the extent to which this is the product of culture we compared a group of 70 Chinese overseas students (whose primary cultural exposure was that of mainland China), a group of 45 participants whose parents were Chinese but who themselves were brought up in the UK (whose primary cultural exposure was western European) and a group of 70 Caucasian participants. Results from the Schwartz Value Survey confirmed that the UK-Chinese group were culturally similar to the Caucasian group. However, their patterns of saccade latency were identical to the mainland Chinese group, and different to the Caucasian group. We conclude that at least for the relatively simple reflexive saccade behaviour we have investigated, culture cannot explain the observed differences in behaviour.

Temporal Stability and the Effects of Training on Saccade Latency in “Express Saccade Makers”

“…Horizontal eye movements were recorded binocularly with the same miniaturized head-mounted infrared saccadometer (Ober Consulting Ltd, Poland) used in previous studies[ 12 – 14 ]. This samples infrared reflectance signals at 1KHz, and low-pass filters them at 250 Hz with 12-bit resolution.…”

“…In three separate studies we found that ESMs, defined by the proportion of ES executed in overlap conditions (>30%), make up a sizable proportion of Chinese participant groups (29% [ 12 ]; 22% [ 13 ]; 27%[ 14 ]), allowing us recruit them in larger numbers than previously and to study them in more detail. We confirmed that the phenomenon was the identical to that described in the earlier literature [ 12 , 13 ], and that the reason for the higher numbers of ESMs among Chinese participants was not due to some cultural influence [ 14 ]. We also found that although voluntary saccade performance in ESMs was compromised (we confirmed that they exhibited higher antisaccade error rates than non-ESM participants [ 13 ]) this was not due to a general deficit in oculomotor inhibitory control [ 15 ].…”

A comparison of post-saccadic oscillations in European-Born and China-Born British University Undergraduates

“…Our results provide no information about the cause or basis of these differences. Knox and Wolohan, 2014, suggest a distinction in oculomotor phenotype between Chinese and Caucasian [2], which suggests there could also be structural aspects of the iris which differ between populations that affect PSO. However, Amatya, Gong, and Knox, 2011 suggest any differences between populations may be the result of top-down executive functions [1].…”

“…With the emergence of the field of 'cultural neuroscience' new insights are emerging on the potential influence of cross-cultural factors on a wide range of measures of cognitive and low level behaviours. Whilst it is has been claimed that culture leads to differences in top-down executive functions [1,2], there is relative paucity of work on low level behavioural measures. Previous research has found a number of eye-tracking differences between different cultures.…”

“…For example, effects of culture on the different aspects of visual attention have been observed for fixation duration, number of fixations, and saccades [10,16]. Also, more recently, Knox and Wolohan (2014) suggest a distinction in oculomotor phenotype between Chinese and Caucasian as their British-Chinese participants performed analogously to Chinese participants from China [2]. This, suggests that environmental factors cannot be the critical explanatory factor for the eye movement differences.…”