Hedden Trey, Ketay Sarah, Aron Arthur, Markus Hazel Rose, Gabrieli John D E
McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2008 Jan;19(1):12-7. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02038.x.
Behavioral research has shown that people from Western cultural contexts perform better on tasks emphasizing independent (absolute) dimensions than on tasks emphasizing interdependent (relative) dimensions, whereas the reverse is true for people from East Asian contexts. We assessed functional magnetic resonance imaging responses during performance of simple visuospatial tasks in which participants made absolute judgments (ignoring visual context) or relative judgments (taking visual context into account). In each group, activation in frontal and parietal brain regions known to be associated with attentional control was greater during culturally nonpreferred judgments than during culturally preferred judgments. Also, within each group, activation differences in these regions correlated strongly with scores on questionnaires measuring individual differences in culture-typical identity. Thus, the cultural background of an individual and the degree to which the individual endorses cultural values moderate activation in brain networks engaged during even simple visual and attentional tasks.
行为研究表明，来自西方文化背景的人在强调独立（绝对）维度的任务上比在强调相互依存（相对）维度的任务上表现更好，而来自东亚文化背景的人则相反。我们评估了在执行简单视觉空间任务期间的功能磁共振成像反应，在这些任务中，参与者进行绝对判断（忽略视觉背景）或相对判断（考虑视觉背景）。在每组中，已知与注意力控制相关的额叶和顶叶脑区在文化上非偏好的判断过程中的激活程度高于文化上偏好的判断过程。此外，在每组中，这些区域的激活差异与测量文化典型身份个体差异的问卷得分密切相关。因此，即使在简单的视觉和注意力任务中，个体的文化背景以及个体认同文化价值观的程度也会调节参与任务的脑网络的激活。
