Original Research Article

published: 18 May 2011
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00095

Social experience does not abolish cultural diversity in eye
movements
David J. Kelly1*, Rachael E. Jack 2, Sébastien Miellet 2, Emanuele De Luca 2, Kay Foreman2 and Roberto Caldara3*
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, Egham, UK
Department of Psychology and Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
3
Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
1
2

Edited by:
Mutsumi Imai, Keio University, Japan
Reviewed by:
Joan Y. Chiao, Northwestern University,
USA
Taka Masuda, University of Alberta,
Canada*Correspondence:David J. Kelly, Royal Holloway,
University of London, Egham Hill,
Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK.
e-mail: david.kelly@rhul.ac.uk;
Roberto Caldara, Department of
Psychology, University of Fribourg,
Fribourg, Switzerland.
e-mail: roberto.caldara@unifr.ch

Adults from Eastern (e.g., China) and Western (e.g., USA) cultural groups display pronounced
differences in a range of visual processing tasks. For example, the eye movement strategies
used for information extraction during a variety of face processing tasks (e.g., identification andfacial expressions of emotion categorization) differs across cultural groups. Currently, many ofthe differences reported in previous studies have asserted that culture itself is responsible forshaping the way we process visual information, yet this has never been directly investigated.
In the current study, we assessed the relative contribution of genetic and cultural factors by
testing face processing in a population of British Born Chinese adults using face recognitionand expression classification tasks. Contrary to predictions made by the cultural differences
framework, the majority of British Born Chinese adults deployed “Eastern” eye movement
strategies, while approximately 25% of participants displayed “Western” strategies. Furthermore,
the cultural eye movement strategies used by individuals were consistent across recognitionand expression tasks. These findings suggest that “culture” alone cannot straightforwardly
account for diversity in eye movement patterns. Instead a more complex understanding of
how the environment and individual experiences can influence the mechanisms that govern
visual processing is required.
Keywords: culture, eye movements, face processing, individual differences

Introduction
It has long been considered that many aspects of human cognition
are culture invariant. This assumption arises from the fact that theneural substrates underlying cognitive processes are thought to be
principally identical across all people and cultures. However, studies
conducted over the past decade have begun to systematically challenge the notion of cognitive universality, forcing reconsiderationof long standing beliefs about how humans process information,
particularly from their visual world. At the forefront of current
literature is the assertion that culture itself is responsible for shaping
the way we perceive the world.
As reported by Nisbett and Masuda (2003), adults from collectivist societies in East Asian countries (e.g., China, Japan etc.)
process visual information holistically whereas adults from individualist Western countries (e.g., USA, Britain etc.) employ analytical processing strategies, resulting in fundamental differences inthought, behavior, and perception. Adults from Western societies
are inclined to focus on focal objects, make causal attributions andgroup objects based on categorical rules. By contrast, Easterners are
more likely to display interest in context, make situational attributions and group objects according to relationships (see Nisbett andMiyatomo, 2005 for a review). It has been argued by Nisbett andMasuda (2003) that these divergent strategies are deep-rooted andhave originating from numerous factors such as distinct geography, philosophy, and political ideology. In terms of geographicaltopography, conditions in the West favored the pursuit of ventures
such as hunting and fishing that could be performed by individuals

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and consequently promoted autonomy and the attainment of personal objectives. By contrast, conditions in the East favored farming, which demanded the cooperative efforts of many individuals,
especially where arable land was limited, and therefore promotedsocial group interactions and the attainment of collective objectives.
The history of farming and food production can be traced backapproximately 10000 years in both Greece (Montgomery, 2007) andChina (Bray, 1984). Coupled with geographical factors that served
to structure fledgling societies are the socio-political ideologies andphilosophies that are responsible for shaping thought and action.
For example, in ancient Greece, Aristotle focused his explanation of
the world on individual objects: a rock sank in water because it had
the property of “gravity” and wood floated because it had the property of “levity.” However, the Chinese perceived that actions occurredin a field of forces (i.e., the water), allowing them to understandconcepts such as tidal flows and magnetism long before thinkers
in the West. While ecological factors may not be identical today
to those of the ancient world, such factors were pivotal in shaping
social structures that have since been maintained. In short, there isa “causal chain running from social structure to social practice toattention and perception to cognition” (Nisbett and Masuda, 2003).
Culture’s potency for shaping thought and behavior is still
acutely evident when visiting foreign countries today. As observedby Swidler (1986), When we notice cultural differences we recognize that people do not go about their business in the sameways; how they approach life is shaped by their culture. Within
Europe, for example, every individual country has a long and

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Kelly et al.

rich history which has created distinct and varied cultural groups
divided only by relatively arbitrary dividing points (i.e., international borders). Cultural differences are even more marked whencrossing continental boundaries. Indeed, the differences can beso profound that travelers regularly suffer from what is known as“culture shock”; the feeling of surprise, uncertainty, disorientation,etc., which is felt when people need to function in an unfamiliar
cultural environment. While claims of intense cultural diversity are
not controversial, linking cognitive processes to the physical environment could be considered somewhat speculative. However, analternative account of the observed differences has not yet emerged.
Furthermore, in addition to the cultural differences found at the
behavioral level described above, cultural diversity has also beenshown in studies of eye movements.
Adults who have been raised in different cultural backgrounds,
namely Western and East Asian, display dissimilar patterns of fixations during face processing tasks (Blais et al., 2008). Consistent
with a multitude of prior reports (e.g., Yarbus, 1965; Janik et al.,
1978; Groner et al., 1984; Kleinke, 1986; Henderson et al., 2005),
Blais et al. (2008) found that Western Caucasian adults primarily
fixate the eyes and mouth region during face learning, recognition and race categorization tasks. However, East Asian adults did
not display this well documented strategy and instead directed the
majority of their fixations toward the central region of the face,which represents the optimal location for the visual system to process information holistically. These divergent strategies are consistentacross face race categories (Western Caucasian and East Asian),time (i.e., stimulus presentation duration) and are equally reliablestrategies as both populations achieved comparable face recognition and race categorization accuracy. Furthermore, differences inthe distribution of fixations persist across non-human face stimuli(sheep) and non-face objects (greebles) and are thus not stimulus
specific (Kelly et al., 2010). Together, these data show fundamental
differences in visual processing between cultural groups.
Studies using a variety of techniques, such as behavioral (Davies
et al., 1977), response classification (Gosselin and Schyns, 2001)
and computational modeling (Rowley et al., 1998; Viola and Jones,
2004) have revealed that the critical information required to accurately individuate faces is located in the eye region, but not thenose (see also Caldara et al., 2010). Fixations toward the mouth arefunctional during communication with conspecifics as they serve
to facilitate speech comprehension (Reisberg et al., 1987), making
such fixations habitual and likely to account for their occurrence
when viewing static images. Strategies similar to those reported
in Western Caucasian adults have also been observed in rhesus
macaques (Macaca mulatta), emphasizing the biological pertinenceof information contained in the eye region for identity recognition(Dahl et al., 2009) and mouth region for facilitating the comprehension of vocalizations (Ghazanfar et al., 2006). When considering
these findings collectively, it is puzzling that East Asian adults areable to fixate an essentially redundant facial feature (i.e., the centerof the face) in terms of individuation, yet still achieve face recognition accuracy comparable to that of Western Caucasian adults, who
fixate information known to be diagnostic for face identification.
Caldara et al. (2010) recently clarified the apparent underuseof eye region information in East Asian observers by using a gazecontingent moving aperture paradigm. Western Caucasian and

Frontiers in Psychology | Cultural Psychology

Cultural diversity in eye movements

East Asian observers explored faces while their extrafoveal vision
was dynamically restricted by apertures sized 2°, 5°, and 8° ofvisual angle, termed “Spotlights.” Critically, in the most restrictive­conditions (i.e., 2° and 5°), the eyes were not visible when fixations
landed on the center of the face. By contrast, in the most permissive
condition (i.e., 8° of visual angle) the eyes were simultaneously
visible during central fixations. In both the 2° and 5° conditions,
East Asian observers adapted their usual strategy by fixating theeyes in an identical manner to the Western observers. However, inthe 8° condition, when the eyes and mouth were simultaneously
visible from the center of the face, East Asian observers reverted
to their preferred strategy by directed fixations to the center of theface. These results suggest that although East Asian observers relyon the same facial information (i.e., the eyes) as Western observers, they process this information using extrafoveal vision. Whenvision is restricted, East Asian observers are forced to modulate theirpreferred central fixation strategy to one that mirrors the Western
fixation pattern in order to access the eye region.
In the current study we directly explored the impact of culturalenvironment on eye-movement strategies during face learning andrecognition. The studies described above support the notion of environmental or cultural influence, but none have directly tested thishypothesis. To address this shortfall, we identified a population of
British Born Chinese adults. The British Born Chinese populationis genetically Chinese, but were born in a Western country (UK)and have lived their entire lives there. We hypothesized that cultural
influences, rather than genetic heritage, are primarily responsible forshaping eye movement strategies. Thus, we predict that the predominance of exposure to Western culture experienced by the British
Born Chinese will cause them to display the Western, triangularseries of fixations (e.g., Henderson et al., 2005) and not the central
fixation strategy displayed by East Asians in previous studies.

Experiment 1
Methods

Participants

Twenty British Born Chinese (14 females) adults (SD mean = 25.23
years) participated in this study. All participants had been born in the
UK (Scotland), had spent their entire lives in the UK and were living
in Glasgow at the time of testing. We recruited participants througha Chinese Community Development Partnership in Glasgow. All
participants had normal or corrected vision and were paid £6/h fortheir participation. All participants gave written informed consent
and the protocol was approved by the the Department of Psychology
ethical committee.
Materials

We sourced stimuli from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces(KDEF, Lundqvist et al., 1998) database and Asian Face Image
Database (AFID, Bang et al., 2001), which consisted of 56 East Asianand 56 Western Caucasian identities with equal numbers of males
and females. At 390 × 382 pixels in size, each image subtended 15.6°of visual angle horizontally and 15.3° of visual angle vertically, whenviewed at a distance of 70 cm (a natural distance during humaninteraction; Hall, 1966). Thus, each image represented the size ofa real face (approximately 19 cm in height). We cropped all images
around the face to remove clothing and hair and were devoid of

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Kelly et al.

distinctive features (e.g., scarf, jewelry, facial hair etc.). The faces
used were aligned on eye and mouth positions and luminance normalized for all images. We presented images on gray background on
a 19′′ Dell P1130 CRT monitor with a refresh rate of 170 Hz and ascreen resolution of 800 × 600 pixels and used a chin/forehead rest
to maintain a constant viewing distance. We controlled stimulus
presentation using MATLAB™ (The MathWorks, MA, USA).

Cultural diversity in eye movements

Data analyses

We recorded eye movements using an SR Research Desktop-Mount
EyeLink 2K eyetracker with a sampling rate of 1000 Hz and average
gaze position error of approximately 0.25° visual angle, a spatial
resolution of 0.01° visual angle and a linear output over the rangeof the monitor used. Only the dominant eye of each participant
was tracked although viewing was binocular. We used MATLAB™
(R2006a) in conjunction with Psychophysics toolbox (PTB-3) andEyeLink Toolbox extensions (Brainard, 1997; Cornelissen et al.,2002) to execute the experiment. Prior to testing, we performed
calibration using a nine-point fixation procedure as implemented
in the EyeLink API (see EyeLink Manual) followed by validation
with the EyeLink software. We repeated this procedure when necessary and until the optimal calibration criterion was reached. At
the beginning of each trial, participants fixated a dot at the centerof the screen to calculate drift correction. If the drift correction
exceeded 1° of visual angle, we launched a new calibration procedure to insure an optimal recording quality.

The data was analyzed with iMap (Caldara and Miellet, 2011).
Only correct trials were analyzed. Fixation distribution maps wereextracted individually for British Born Chinese participants for eachface race and for the learning and recognition tasks separately. The
fixation maps were computed by summing, across all correct trials(72% total trials), the fixation location coordinates (x, y) acrosstime. Since more than one pixel is processed during a fixation,
we smoothed the resulting fixation distributions with a Gaussian
kernel with a sigma of 10 pixels. Then, the fixation maps of all theobservers were summed together separately for each face condition
to produce group fixation maps.
To produce group fixation maps, we summed the fixation mapsof all the individual observers for each face condition. We thenZ-scored the resulting group fixation maps for learning and recognition phases and for both sets of face stimuli separately. Finally,
we pooled the fixation distributions of observers, using the mean
and SD for Western Caucasian and East Asian faces to normalize
the data separately. To test for any differences in eye movements
across face conditions, we subtracted the values for East Asian faces
from Western Caucasian faces, producing difference maps computed
separately for both learning and recognition conditions. To establish
significance, we used a robust statistical approach correcting for
multiple comparisons in the fixation map space. We applied a twotailed Pixel test (Chauvin et al., 2005; Zcrit > 4.38; p < 0.05) on the difference maps and a one-tailed Pixel test on the group fixation maps.

Procedure

Results

Participants were informed that they would be presented with aseries of faces to learn and subsequently recognize, which would be
conducted during two separate sessions (East Asian and Western
Caucasian) with each face race session containing two blocks. In
each block, observers learned 14 face identities (seven females)
each displaying either neutral, happy or disgusted facial expressions (presented in random order). After a 30-s pause, observers
were presented with a series of 28 faces (14 faces from the learning phase – 14 new faces; seven females), indicating whether eachface was familiar or not. Participants were instructed to respond as
quickly and as accurately as possible by pressing pre-allocated keys
on the keyboard with the index fingers of their left and right hands.
Faces of the two races were presented in separate blocks, with theorder of presentation for same- and other-race blocks counterbalanced across observers. Response buttons were counterbalanced
across participants.
Each trial started with the presentation of a central fixation cross,followed by a series of four crosses presented in each of the four
quadrants of the monitor. This procedure allowed the experimenterto check the accuracy of the previous calibration procedure, thus
validating the calibration between each trial. Finally, a central fixation cross that served as a drift correction measure was displayed,followed by a face presented in a random location on the monitor to prevent anticipatory strategies, all images were presented in
random locations on the computer screen. Faces were displayed
in a white frame for 5-s duration in the learning phase and until
the observer responded in the recognition phase. Each face wassubsequently followed by the six fixation crosses which preceded
the next face stimulus.

Accuracy

Eye-tracking

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A one-way ANOVA conducted on participant’s accuracy (d′) showedthat participant’s recognition accuracy did not differ between
stimulus categories [F(1,19) = 0.76, p = 0.783]. A further one-way
ANOVA revealed no differences in reaction time [F(1,19) = 2.674,
p = 0.102], indicating that participants responded with equal speed
to both sets of faces (see Figure 1).
Number of Fixations

A 2 (Race of Face: East Asian or Western Caucasian) × 2 (Phase:
Learning or Recognition) ANOVA conducted on the number offixations yielded a main effect of Phase only [F(1,19) = 196.021,

Figure 1 | British Born Chinese participant’s recognition accuracy andreaction time for East Asian and Western Caucasian faces.

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Kelly et al.

Cultural diversity in eye movements

p < 0.001, η2p = 0.721] with more fixations made during the learning than recognition phase. Participants made equal numbers offixations for both East Asian and Western Caucasian faces in bothconditions (Number of fixations are show in Table 1).
Eye Movements

The two-tailed Pixel test conducted on the race of face differences
map yielded no significant differences in eye movements across
East Asian and Western Caucasian face conditions. The one-tailed
Pixel test (Zcrit > 3.96; p < 0.05) applied to the group fixation maps
produced large areas of significance with fixations clustered aroundthe nose region and spreading up toward the eyes for learning andrecognition and both face categories (see Figure 2).
Individual participant analysis

Following this initial analyses, we turned our attention to the eye
movement strategies used by individual participants. The groupmaps shown in Figure 2 appear closer to the East Asian strategies reported in previous studies (e.g., Blais et al., 2008), butwith significantly fixated areas falling closer to the eye region.
A visual inspection of each participant’s fixation maps showedthat some individuals employed strategies that looked similar to
those reported in East Asian adults, while others showed strategies
more like those observed in Western Caucasian adults. In orderto robustly and objectively categorize each participant’s fixation
map as being closest to an “Eastern” or “Western” strategy, wedeveloped a data-driven classification procedure. We used theZ-scored East Asian and Western Caucasian group fixation maps
from Blais et al. (2008) as “Eastern” and “Western” templates (seeFigure 3) and subsequently compared every individual’s fixation
Table 1 | Average number of fixations (SD in parentheses) made during
learning and recognition phases for Western Caucasian and East Asianfaces.

map with each of the templates. The purpose of the procedure
was not to definitively categorize individual participants as possessing an “Eastern” or “Western” processing style, but instead tomeasure which template they most closely matched. Critically, thematerials and methods used by Blais et al. (2008) were identical tothe current study making the data templates perfectly suited forcomparison with the British Born Chinese results. Five comparisons were computed separately for each individual participant.
These comprised the learning and recognition phases for eachrace of face (i.e., East Asian and Western Caucasian faces), plus
a comparison with fixation maps collapsed across all phases. We
then computed a correlation coefficient for each comparison todetermine whether each participant’s strategy was closer to thosepreviously observed in Eastern and Western adults. Since correlation coefficients are not additive, they were then Z-normalized(Chung et al., 2005), before performing statistical analyses. We
thus normalized the obtained correlation coefficient by using
Fisher’s transform Z = 0.5 ⋅ log e 1 + r /1 − r . Then, to estimate the average correlation coefficients for template comparisons, an inverseof Fisher’s transform was applied on the mean of Z values (Zmean)using the following formula: raverage = tanh(Zmean), in which tanhstands for the hyperbolic tangent.
The classifying method produced two main findings. First, strategies displayed by individual participants were consistent across alllearning and recognition conditions. Second, the procedure classified 14 eye movement strategies as Eastern and only 6 as Western(see Figure 4; Table 2). We subsequently collapsed data acrossconditions, to produce two values for each individual: a similarity measure with East Asian strategies and a second measure with
Western Caucasian strategies. A paired samples t-test conducted onthese values confirmed that as a group [t(19) = 2.306, p < 0.033],
the British Born Chinese participants’ eye movement strategies
more closely resembled Eastern templates.
Discussion

Western Caucasian	East Asian
Learning

12.45 (2.26)

12.06 (2.60)

Recognition

5.88 (1.97)

5.13 (1.68)

Figure 2 | Group fixation maps. Significantly fixated areas delimited bywhite lines.

Frontiers in Psychology | Cultural Psychology

The typical pattern of eye movements displayed by the British Born
Chinese population was unequivocally more “Eastern” with fixations principally clustered around the center of the face. However,inspection of fixation strategies at the individual level revealed
greater within-group variance than previously reported in Western

Figure 3 | Classifier templates. “Eastern” templates marked by green box.
“Western” template marked by red box.

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Kelly et al.

Cultural diversity in eye movements

Figure 4 | Experiment 1: Individual participant’s fixation maps and results from classification procedure. “Eastern” strategies marked by green boxes.
“Western” strategies marked by red boxes.

Caucasian and East Asian populations (Blais et al., 2008; Kelly et al.,2010). According to our classification procedure, 70% of individual
strategies are Eastern and 30% Western, which renders us unable tofully accept or reject our original hypothesis. Nonetheless, given thevariability of the fixation strategies found within the British Born
Chinese group, it is possible that this reflects the influence of both
cultures upon these biological mechanisms, which presents a more
complex picture than accounts that advocate the governance of asingle, predominant cultural influence.
Numerous studies have tested Asian American participants,
who are analogous to the British Born Chinese population as bothgroups are likely to be able to access multiple cultural perspectives (Hong and Mallorie, 2003). For example, Norenzayan et al.
(2002) examined cultural differences in categorical perception.
Participants were presented with a target object (e.g., a flower) andtwo groups/families, with each containing four unique members.
The task was to decide to which group the target object mostappropriately belonged. Critically, one group/family objectively
possessed more features overall with the target, whereas the othergroup/family shared fewer features. However, all members of thewww.frontiersin.org

group/family shared one common feature that was also foundon the target object. As predicted, European Americans mademore judgments according to the rule (i.e., all objects share acommon feature) while Asian American participants typicallyplaced the target object in the group that bore a greater family resemblance (i.e., more features in general). However, thejudgments of the Asian American participants were distributed
approximately evenly between “Eastern” and “Western” styles ofcategorization, with a slight inclination to categorize according
to family resemblance (i.e., “Eastern” style). Interestingly, thesefindings are line with the current study, which replicates the distribution of “Eastern” and “Western” styles. In both instances, agenetically East Asian population born and raised in a Westernenvironment displayed perceptual strategies that do not entirely
resemble the strategies reported in European/American or East
Asian adults, but represent both cultures, with a leaning toward
East Asian styles. It is notable that other studies that have tested
Asian populations who have temporarily relocated for study,
typically display the same strategies that would be expected ofpeople tested in Eastern countries (Cohen and Gunz, 2002). ThisMay 2011 | Volume 2 | Article 95 | 5

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Cultural diversity in eye movements

Table 2 | Experiment 1: Correlation results from the classification
procedure.
Participant	EA comparison

WC comparison

Classifier result

1

0.81050.8706−0.0601 (WC)20.84060.79040.0502 (EA)

3

0.79700.72890.0681 (EA)

4

0.86530.83550.0298 (EA)

50.88190.9329−0.0510 (WC)60.77810.70600.0721 (EA)

7

0.89770.8037

0.0940 (EA)

80.88530.80910.0762 (EA)

90.90290.86020.0427 (EA)

100.90130.83300.0683 (EA)

110.88770.87390.0138 (EA)

120.87480.82380.0510 (EA)

13

0.82240.78380.0386 (EA)

14

0.83130.8518−0.0205 (WC)15

0.78670.76160.0251 (EA)

16

0.80360.8150−0.0114 (WC)170.73400.71950.0145 (EA)

18

0.86940.9063−0.0369 (WC)19

0.69150.6919−0.0004 (WC)20

0.87100.84200.0290 (EA)

Table 3 | Experiment 2: Correlation results from the classification
procedure.
Participant	EA

WC

Classifier

numbercomparison

comparison

result10.71500.70250.0125 (EA)

2

0.78260.73200.0506 (EA)

4

0.71480.70540.0094 (EA)

6

0.6786

0.67220.0063 (EA)

10

0.57150.50500.0665 (EA)

140.75980.7747−0.0149 (WC)15

0.78900.8162−0.0272 (WC)170.6372

0.58690.0503 (EA)

20

0.75430.63310.1212 (EA)s­ uggests that the cultural perspective one develops throughout
early development is not easily replaced when moving to a different cultural climate.
Hong et al. (2000) demonstrated that priming bicultural adults(Westernized Chinese students living in Hong Kong) with setsof Chinese or American cultural icons is sufficient to produce
corresponding “Eastern” or “Western” attribution judgments.
Furthermore, Oyserman and Lee (2008) have argued that individualism and collectivism do indeed influence judgments, attributions, and cognition. However, they also suggest that broad,cross-national cultural differences are not static, but are instead
dynamically altered by situational primes. In others words, bothstudies support the view that individuals have access to multiple
processing strategies that can be adopted in response to the situational salience of individualism or collectivism.

Frontiers in Psychology | Cultural Psychology

After consideration of the findings, further examination of the
British Born Chinese population yielded information that could
account for the distribution of styles between Eastern and Western.
The vast majority of British Born Chinese participants attended thesame activity/youth center where they engaged in activities such as
Mandarin lessons, calligraphy, and cookery lessons etc. to continue
to engage with Eastern cultural pursuits. In short, the British Born
Chinese population represents a community that actively engages
with its Chinese heritage. Following these reflections, we consideredthat the majority of the British Born Chinese population grew up
in a home environment where Eastern culture was prominent or
at least well represented. In addition to explicit engagement with
Eastern cultural activities, it is clear that this population had also
been exposed to Western culture within their schools and moregeneral in their day-to-day lives outside of the home. Therefore, we
conducted a second experiment in which we explored the consistency of individual’s eye movement strategies across tasks.

Experiment 2
In order to help clarify the results from experiment 1, we conducted a second face processing task: the classification of facial
expressions of emotion. Facial expressions of emotion are central
to human communication and represent the physical manifestation of an individual’s internal emotional state. Following e.g.,
Ekman (1994), it was generally accepted that facial expressions areuniversally produced and interpreted. However, Jack et al. (2009)
recently showed that cultural differences in eye movements also
extend to the categorization of emotionally expressive faces. In
summary, Jack and colleagues reported that Western adults distributed fixations across the entire face allowing them to extract
critical diagnostic information required to facilitate accurate categorical judgments. By contrast, Eastern adults primarily fixatedthe eye region across all facial expressions – a strategy inadequate
to dependably distinguish between certain facial expressions, suchas “fear” and “surprise,” for example. These results question theuniversality of facial expressions, suggesting cultural diversity inthe transmission of facial expression signals. The purpose of experiment 2 was to explore whether individual participants displayed“Eastern” or “Western” expression strategies and more pertinently,
whether each individual’s strategy was consistent across tasks (i.e.,
recognition, experiment 1; and expression tasks).
Participants

We contacted the same 20 British Born Chinese participants who
took part in experiment 1 to enquire as to whether they would be
willing to complete a further experiment. Nine of the 20 British
Born Chinese group returned and participated in experiment 2.
The final sample comprised six females and three males with anaverage age of 24.4 years.
Materials

Stimuli consisted of 56 images displaying six Facial Action Coding
System (FACS)-coded facial expressions of emotion (“Happy,”“Surprise,” “Fear,” “Disgust,” “Anger,” and “Sadness”) plus “Neutral”(Matsumoto and Ekman, 1988). Gender and race (East Asian andWestern Caucasian) of faces was equally distributed across expressions. Images were cropped using Adobe™ Photoshop CS™ and

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aligned the eye and mouth positions using Psychomorph software.
Images (280 × 380 pixels) were viewed on a 800 × 600 pixel whitebackground using a 21′′ Iiyama HM204DTA monitor (refresh rateof 170 Hz) at a distance of 60 cm, and thus subtended 10° (horizontally) × 14° (vertically) of visual angle.
Eye-Tracking

We followed the same procedures as in experiment 1 above.
Procedure

Participants performed a seven-AFC facial expression categorization task using the following categorical labels: “Happy,” “Surprise,”“Fear,” “Disgust,” “Anger,” and “Sadness,” plus “Neutral.” Each participant completed 336 trials (48 trials per expression), divided
into six blocks each containing 56 trials. As in experiment 1, we
presented images in random locations on the monitor and each
image remained visible until participants responded. Participants
provided verbal responses to eliminate eye movements toward
response keys and were recorded by the experimenter. Prior to
testing, we established participants’ familiarity with the categoricallabels by asking each participant to provide correct descriptions
and synonyms of each emotion.
Data analyses

As in experiment 1, we analyzed only correct trials. Similar to Jacket al. (2009), the patterns of fixations displayed by individual British
Born Chinese participants were consistent across all seven facial
expressions. Owing to the lack of variability between fixation maps
for individual expressions and our primary interest being the general strategy used by individual participants for classifying expressions, we collapsed the fixation maps from correct trials (88% total
trials) across expressions for analysis.

Results
Accuracy

A 2 (Race of faces) × 7 (Expression) repeated measures ANOVA
conducted on accuracy revealed a main effect of expression[F(1,6) = 4.227, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.185]. Post hoc Bonferroni ­corrected

Cultural diversity in eye movements

comparisons revealed the following significant differences: Happy
vs. Neutral (p < 0.017), Happy vs. Fear (p < 0.006), and Happy vs.
Anger (p < 0.022). Inspection of the mean accuracy for individual
expressions reveals that these significant differences are due to thenear ceiling accuracy shown for Happy, as opposed to a deficit forother expressions.
As shown in Figure 5, behavioral performance for individual
expressions suggests that British Born Chinese participants do notshare the same deficit for fear and disgust that been previously
reported by Jack et al. (2009). Using the data from Jack et al. (2009),
a one-way ANOVA conducted on mean categorization accuracy
revealed a significant difference between groups of participants[F(2) = 11.282, p < 0.001]. Post hoc Bonferroni corrected comparisons verified that behavioral performance of British Born Chineseparticipants performed significantly more accurately than East
Asian observers [t(62) = 2.232, p < 0.029], and comparably with
Western Caucasian observers [t(62) = 1.390, p = 0.169].
Eye Movements and Number of fixations

We conducted a 2 (Race of Face) × 7(Expression) repeated measures ANOVA on the total number of fixations used by observers tocorrectly categorize each facial expression. Results showed a main
effect of Expression only [F(1,6) = 5.442, p < 0.001] with post hoc
Bonferroni corrected comparisons revealing significant differences
between the following contrasts: Happy (7.81) vs. Anger (11.00),
Happy vs. Sad (11.56), and Surprise (6.87) vs. Sad.
Eye movements: Individual Analysis

Given the findings from experiment 1, we did not perform a group
analysis, but instead analyzed each participant’s data separately.
Using the data from Jack et al. (2009) as “Eastern” and “Western”
templates, we compared each individual British Born Chinese participant’s fixation map (collapsed across expressions) against both
templates using the same procedure as described in experiment 1.
The materials and methods used by Jack et al. (2009) were identicalto the current study again making the templates ideally suited formaking this comparison. The classifying procedure revealed thatseven out of nine British Born Chinese participants more closely
matched the Eastern template (see Table 3 and Figure 6). Then,looking at the consistency of individual participant strategies
across the two experiments, we found that the seven participants
who completed both experiments displayed consistent “Eastern”
or “Western” strategies across tasks. Of these seven participants, six
showed “Eastern” strategies in both tasks and one showed a consistent “Western” strategy.

Discussion

Figure 5 | Expression classification accuracy results from British Born
Chinese, East Asian and Western Caucasian populations (data for East
Asian and Western Caucasian populations taken from Jack et al., 2009).

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Similar to East Asian adults (Jack et al., 2009), the majority of British
Born Chinese participants displayed “Eastern-style” strategies withthe majority of fixations clustered around the eye region. Strikingly,
despite not directing fixations to the bottom half of the face like
Western Caucasian observers, their behavioral performance was
not impaired unlike the East Asian participants in Jack et al. In
their paper, Jack et al. (2009) provided two explanations for the
behavioral deficit displayed by their East Asian participants. First,
they showed that the overuse of the eye region prohibits reliable
discrimination of certain expressions (e.g., fear vs. surprise), as

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Cultural diversity in eye movements

Figure 6 | Experiment 2: Individual participant’s expression fixation maps and results from the classification procedure. “Eastern” strategies marked bygreen boxes. “Western” strategies marked by red boxes.

demonstrated by the use of a model observer built to simulate theperformance of the East Asian group. Second, they argued that
FACS-coded faces may represent expressions that are based onWestern norms and subsequently East Asian participants struggle
to accurately classify certain facial expressions, most notably fearand disgust. The results from the current study are not consistent
with the first of these explanations as the British Born Chineseparticipants performed as competently as Western Caucasian adults
despite deploying the same strategy as East Asian adults. However,the current results are consistent with their second account. As
described above, the British Born Chinese population were born in
the UK and have spent their entire lives there. Consequently, they
are familiar with the transmission of “Western facial expressions”
and might have developed with experience effective representations
allowing them to avoid a significant recognition decoding deficit.

Questionnaires
Although the consistency of strategies across tasks within the British
Born Chinese group suggests that eye movements displayed in
one task might be a good predictor of strategy in a second task,
it is evident that the cultural strategy deployed by an individual
cannot be simply predicted by the organization of society (i.e.,
individualist or collectivistic) in which they reside. We then considered the possibility that each individual’s cultural outlook andbehavior could be dynamically modulated by their environment.
For example, in the case of the British Born Chinese participants,
we reasoned that their life at home with their parents was likely
to be quite “Eastern,” whereas at school or work the environment
will inevitably be more “Western.” In order to formally investigate
this hypothesis, we administered an abbreviated version of the­individualism–­collectivism scale (INDCOL) questionnaire (Hui,1988; see appendices for full copy of the questionnaire).

Frontiers in Psychology | Cultural Psychology

Participants

The 20 British Born Chinese participants tested in experiment 1
all competed questionnaires. In addition, 10 Western Caucasian
adults (5 male, 5 female; mean age = 25.8 years) also competed
the questionnaires for comparison with the British Born Chineseparticipants. The Western Caucasian participants had all spent their
entire lives in European nations and were only informed about
the eye-tracking experiments after completing the questionnaire.
Materials

The INDCOL questionnaire we administered measures the collectivist vs. individualist tendencies of a person in three different social
settings (with parents, friends or others) and a general measure ofindividualist tendencies. The full version of the INDCOL includes
further subscales (spouse, kin, and neighbor) that were not used in
our version as they were deemed less relevant. We also administereda further series of questions pertaining to the proficiency of eachparticipant’s Chinese language skills. We asked whether they wereable to speak, read, and/or write Chinese and if so, how frequently
they did this.

Results
The questionnaire produced a number of significant results. A 2(culture of participant) × 4 (subscale) ANOVA was conducted on
the questionnaire responses, which yielded a significant result ofculture × subscale [F(1,3) = 5.181, p < 0.003]. Post hoc t-test revealed
significant between-group differences for all three collectivist
subscales, but not for individualist scores. Inspection of the t-test
results revealed that the British Born Chinese population’s collectivist tendencies were significantly higher than the European adults
in the family subscale only [t(9) = 3.724, p < 0.005]. By contrast,
the European adults scored higher than the British Born Chinese

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Kelly et al.

population in both the friends [t(9) = −2.777, p < 0.02] and others[t(9) = −3.076, p < 0.01] subscales. Differences between the groups
measured by the individualist subscale did not reach significance,
although it should be noted that the British Born Chinese group
scored higher on this subscale than the European adults. We thendivided the British Born Chinese participants into two groups basedon the results from the eye movement classification procedure. Eye
movement scores were correlated with each of the four INDCOL
subscales. We found a stronger correlation between British Born
Chinese adults with a “Western” eye movement strategy and individualist scores (r = 0.700) than adults with an “Eastern” strategy and (r = 0.213), but this was not significant. We also found astronger correlation between British Born Chinese adults with an“Eastern” strategy compared with adults with a “Western” strategy
and scores on the collectivist “Friends” (r = 0.636 vs. r = 0.036)
and “Others” (r = 0.600 vs. 0.231) subscales, but once again theseresults were not significant.
Finally, we investigated whether Chinese language proficiency
in speaking and writing or any other aspect of their everyday lives
was correlated with the fixation strategy deployed by the British
Born Chinese observers. However, again we failed to identify an
explanatory relationship, with Chinese speakers no more likely todisplay an Eastern strategy than a “Western” strategy (e.g., British
Born Chinese participants with very poor Chinese speaking skills
and no Chinese writing skills deploying an East Asian fixation pattern). As a final point on the INDCOL questionnaire, it is very
important to note that, like most questionnaires, a large sample istypically required in order to generate meaningful results. Thus,
it remains possible that we would have produced clearer resultswith a larger sample.

General Discussion
Contrary to our initial expectations, the eye movement strategies
displayed by the British Born Chinese population in experiment
1 closely resembled Eastern Asian’s fixation maps as reported by
Blais et al. (2008). Furthermore, the strategies used in experiment
2 closely matched those reported in East Asian adults by Jack et al.
(2009). However, inspection of fixation strategies at the individual level revealed that averaging across the population masked
within-group variability, which was not observed previously within
Western Caucasian or East Asian populations. While the majorityof participants used “Eastern” eye movement strategies when completing identity and expression tasks, approximately 25–30% of the
British Born Chinese population employed a “Western” strategy. In
addition, the type of strategy used by each individual (i.e., “Eastern”
or “Western”) was largely consistent across tasks. Despite variability
in eye movement patterns, behavioral performance was comparable across individuals in both tasks. It appears that in terms of eye
movements, there is more than one way to achieve successful facerecognition and expression classification. Although the underlying
reasons for such diversity are not fully apparent, when the resultsfrom the current study are considered collectively with previous
findings, a clearer picture is beginning to emerge.
As described in the introduction, an ever growing body of literature is revealing profound differences in the way people from
Eastern and Western cultures reason and process information in
their visual world (Nisbett and Miyatomo, 2005). At the center of

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Cultural diversity in eye movements

this literature is the notion that culture itself plays a pivotal role inshaping the minds of the individuals it encompasses. Nonetheless,the suggestion that differing societal organization shape could playa role in shaping eye movements and cognitive processing is still
provocative. Yet, the similarities between the observations madein the perceptual literature and those that we have reported here
are difficult to dismiss out of hand. Furthermore, evidence forculturally modulated cortical activation as measured by fMRI is
gradually building, with differences in active brain regions foundfor object processing (Gutchess et al., 2006) arithmetic processing(Tang et al., 2006), self-representation (Zhu et al., 2007), emotion
processing (Chiao et al., 2008) and perceptual judgments (Hedden
et al., 2008). Moreover, a recent study has provided evidence thatthe same gene can produce different behavioral outcomes as afunction of cultural modulation. Kim et al. (2010) studied theserotonin (5-HT) system in Korean and European American
adults, as it is known to be associated with attentional focus andcognitive flexibility. In particular, they explored the role of the
C(-1019)G 5-HTR1A gene, which inhibits 5-HT release. The G
allele of 5-HTR1A is associated with reduced cognitive flexibility
whereas the C allele is not. The authors predicted that individuals(of both cultural groups) homozygous with the G allele would havea reduced ability to adapt cognitively and would therefore display
their cultural mode of reasoning more robustly relative to thosehomozygous with the C allele. The mode of participant’s reasoning was measured by the Analysis-Holism scale (Choi et al., 2007)
and genotyping assessed from saliva or cheek swabs. The author’s
predictions were fully supported, with both Koreans and European
Americans homozygous for the G allele showing strong tendencies
for their culture’s mode of thought (i.e., Holistic for Korean andAnalytical for Americans). By contrast, participants homozygous
for the C allele did lean toward their cultural mode of thinking, but
not to the same extent as the G allele group. This demonstrationof a gene by culture interaction reveals social forces can shape thephenotypic expression (at least of some genes), which ultimately
led to different cognitive processing styles.
Our data also suggest that cultural perceptual differences might
be shaped by the early ontogenetic and social experience. It has
been shown that Western and Eastern mothers are different in
the way they interact with their children while playing (Bornstein
et al., 1990; Fernald and Morikawa, 1993). Western mothers tend
to label toys (e.g., “look at the rabbit”) and focus the attention of
their children toward attributes (e.g., the rabbit is white, has longears etc.), whereas Eastern mothers emphasize the relationship ofobjects within a context (e.g., the rabbit eats carrots, jumps on thegrass, etc.) and rely more on verbs than nouns (Tardif et al., 1997,1999). From the interviews we performed after the experiments,
it is apparent that the British Born Chinese population we havetested was not confronted with a Western culture before attending
compulsory school classes. This observation supports the view thatvery early life experiences are a critical factor in forging cultural
perceptual biases.
An auxiliary finding from experiment 1 is that the British Born
Chinese population did not display any evidence of the “otherrace effect” (ORE). The ORE is a well documented phenomenon
whereby people are typically more accurate at recognizing faces fromtheir own-race relative to faces from other-races (see Hancock and

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Cultural diversity in eye movements

Rhodes, 2008 for a review). The ORE is considered to be a highlyrobust effect, although it is typically stronger in Caucasian relative
to East Asian populations (Meissner and Brigham, 2001). The resultsfrom our study support the commonly help belief that the ORE
arises from a lack of experience or exposure to other-race faces; thisis known as the “contact hypothesis” (Brigham and Malpass, 1985).
Although support for the contact hypothesis has been mixed (seeMeissner and Brigham, 2001 for a review), there is general consensus
that experience with other-race faces facilitates accurate individuation. The British Born Chinese population has been heavily exposed
to both Chinese and Caucasian individuals and confronted with therecognition of faces of both races at the individual level on a dayto-day basis. Therefore, their equal proficiency for face recognition
with both categories of faces is not surprising.
As described above, previous studies have reported that
“Westernized” Asians, who are akin to the British Born Chinese
population, do not display a clear analytical or holistic processing
style, but instead fall in between these two strategies (Norenzayan
et al., 2002). Furthermore, this population is capable of accessing
different processing styles that can be elicited by environmental cuesor primes (Hong et al., 2000). The initial group analysis conductedin the current study revealed a similar ambiguous pattern of results,
similar to those of Norenzayan et al. (2002), but individual participant analysis showed that in fact two distinct strategies existed
within the population. This raises the possibility that when previous
studies have only reported group effects for Asian American participants and found a “middle-ground” processing style; they may have
inadvertently amalgamated two distinct strategies. Although this is
not certain, the results from the current study invite caution whenworking with different cultural groups and highlight the importanceof individual participant analysis, especially when working withparticular populations, such as the British Born Chinese. A second
possibility is that the British Born Chinese population can also accessdifferent processing strategies and could have been inadvertently
primed to behave in a certain way. Although this is speculative,
given the results of Hong et al. (2000), the role of priming should
be considered more fully in future studies.

It is critical to understand the relationship between eye movements and the underlying cognitive processes involved in identity and expression recognition. More importantly, the variancein eye movements reported in the current and previous studies
coupled with near identical behavioral performance betweenand within-populations demonstrates that there is more than one
way to extract the required diagnostic facial information without
detrimentally impacting upon accuracy. Numerous authors havereported that unlike objects, faces are processed holistically (e.g.,
Young et al., 1987; Tanaka and Farah, 1993; Hole, 1994; Le Grandet al., 2004). In other words, rather than processing facial features
independently, the face is perceived and processed as a whole unit
or Gestalt. However, it has also been argued that other-race faces
may be processed more analytically (i.e., by attending to individualfeatures; Tanaka and Farah, 1993). It is critical to note that the eye
movements we report are consistent with the general differences inprocessing strategies as defined in the cultural literature, but they
do not inform us about with holistic or featural face processing.
However, a related study has shown that the divergent cultural eye
movement strategies seen for human faces also extend to sheep faces
and greebles, suggesting that there is no straightforward relationshipbetween eye movements and the underlying cognitive processes
involved in human face processing (Kelly et al., 2010).

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Conflict of Interest Statement: The
authors declare that the research was
conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that
could be construed as a potential conflictof interest.
Received: 21 September 2010; accepted: 29
April 2011; published online: 18 May 2011.
Citation: Kelly DJ, Jack RE, Miellet S,
De Luca E, Foreman K and Caldara R(2011) Social experience does not abolish cultural diversity in eye movements.
Front. Psychology 2:95. doi: 10.3389/
fpsyg.2011.00095
This article was submitted to Frontiers in
Cultural Psychology, a specialty of Frontiersin Psychology.
Copyright © 2011 Kelly, Jack, Miellet,
De Luca, Foreman and Caldara. This is
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