EAPSI: Investigating how Social Values, Language, and Physical Environment Explain Differences in how People in Japan and the United States Look at Visual Scenes

虽然日本和美国的人都更有可能关注前景中的物体，而不是视觉场景的背景，但一些研究表明，美国人比日本人更关注前景中的物体。这种差异对人们与他人及其周围环境的互动方式产生了深远的影响。造成这种差异的根本原因还没有被探究。可能的解释包括社会价值观(例如，群体凝聚力与自立)、语言背景(例如，英语与日语)或物理环境(例如，日本与美国建筑和道路的结构方式)的差异。该奖项支持探索这些因素如何影响日本人和美国人视觉注意力差异的研究。这项工作将与京都大学视觉科学专家Jun Saiki博士合作进行。为了探索日本人和美国人视觉注意力差异的根本原因，这位研究员将进行一项眼睛跟踪实验。这项实验将测量居住在日本的人在观看视觉场景时的眼球运动。这项实验将评估每个人与个人主义的一致性-集体主义、语言背景，以及他们对日本和美国城市特定物理布局的熟悉程度。从日本参与者那里收集的数据将与来自美国参与者的结果进行比较。通过评估个体在个人主义-集体主义、语言背景和物理环境熟悉度上的得分如何预测注意力的差异，本研究将有助于理解这些大规模文化因素的交互作用如何调节个体的视觉注意偏好。该奖项由东亚和太平洋暑期学院项目资助一名美国研究生的暑期研究，由NSF和日本科学促进会共同资助。

While people both in Japan and the United States are more likely to attend to objects in the foreground than the background of a visual scene, several studies show that people in the United States attend more to objects in the foreground than people in Japan. This difference has profound effects on how people interact with others and their surroundings. The underlying reasons for this difference are unexplored. Possible explanations include differences in social values (e.g. group cohesion vs. self-independence), language background (e.g. English vs. Japanese) or physical environment (e.g. the way buildings and roads are structured in Japan vs. the U.S.). This award supports research to explore how these factors influence differences between the visual attention of people in Japan and the United States. The work will be performed in collaboration with Dr. Jun Saiki, an expert in vision science at Kyoto University.To explore the underlying causes for visual attention differences between people in Japan and the United States, the fellow will conduct an eye-tracking experiment. The experiment will measure the eye movements of people living in Japan as they look at visual scenes. The experiment will assess each individual's alignment towards individualism-collectivism, linguistic background, and their familiarity with particular physical layouts of cities in Japan and the United States. The data collected from participants in Japan will be compared to results from participants in the United States. By assessing how individual scores on measures of individualism-collectivism, language background, and physical environment familiarity predict differences in attention, this research will contribute to the understanding of how the interaction of these large-scale cultural factors modulate the visual attention preferences of individuals. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.