Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, Tilburg University.
Psychol Sci. 2010 Sep;21(9):1259-62. doi: 10.1177/0956797610380698. Epub 2010 Aug 16.
Cultural differences in emotion perception have been reported mainly for facial expressions and to a lesser extent for vocal expressions. However, the way in which the perceiver combines auditory and visual cues may itself be subject to cultural variability. Our study investigated cultural differences between Japanese and Dutch participants in the multisensory perception of emotion. A face and a voice, expressing either congruent or incongruent emotions, were presented on each trial. Participants were instructed to judge the emotion expressed in one of the two sources. The effect of to-be-ignored voice information on facial judgments was larger in Japanese than in Dutch participants, whereas the effect of to-be-ignored face information on vocal judgments was smaller in Japanese than in Dutch participants. This result indicates that Japanese people are more attuned than Dutch people to vocal processing in the multisensory perception of emotion. Our findings provide the first evidence that multisensory integration of affective information is modulated by perceivers' cultural background.
文化差异在情绪感知中已经被报道主要是针对面部表情，在一定程度上也针对声音表情。然而，感知者如何结合听觉和视觉线索本身可能受到文化差异的影响。我们的研究调查了日本和荷兰参与者在情绪的多感官感知中的文化差异。在每一次试验中，呈现一张脸和一个声音，表达一致或不一致的情绪。参与者被指示判断两个来源中的一个所表达的情绪。在被忽略的声音信息对面部判断的影响在日本参与者中比在荷兰参与者中更大，而在被忽略的面部信息对声音判断的影响在日本参与者中比在荷兰参与者中更小。这一结果表明，日本人比荷兰人更善于在情绪的多感官感知中处理声音信息。我们的发现提供了第一个证据，表明情感信息的多感官整合受到感知者文化背景的调节。
