Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Child Clinical Neuropsychology Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
PLoS One. 2018 Jun 11;13(6):e0198299. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198299. eCollection 2018.
Culture shapes social cognition in many ways. Yet cultural impact on face tuning remains largely unclear. Here typically developing females and males from the French-speaking part of Switzerland were presented with a set of Arcimboldo-like Face-n-Food images composed of food ingredients and in different degree resembling a face. The outcome had been compared with previous findings obtained in young adults of the South-West Germany. In that study, males exhibit higher thresholds for face tuning on the Face-n-Food task than females. In Swiss participants, no gender differences exist in face tuning. Strikingly, males from the French-speaking part of Switzerland possess higher sensitivity to faces than their German peers, whereas no difference in face tuning occurs between females. The outcome indicates that even relatively subtle cultural differences as well as culture by gender interaction can modulate social cognition. Clarification of the nature of cultural impact on face tuning as well as social cognition at large is of substantial value for understanding a wide range of neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions.
文化以多种方式塑造社会认知。然而，文化对人脸调谐的影响在很大程度上仍不清楚。本研究中，来自瑞士法语区的正常发育的女性和男性被呈现了一组由食物成分组成的类似于阿尔钦博尔多的人脸-食物图像，这些图像在不同程度上类似于人脸。研究结果与之前在德国西南部年轻人中获得的发现进行了比较。在该研究中，男性在人脸-食物任务中对面孔调谐的阈值高于女性。在瑞士参与者中，没有性别对面孔调谐的差异。引人注目的是，瑞士法语区的男性比他们的德国同龄人对面孔的敏感性更高，而女性对面孔调谐没有差异。研究结果表明，即使是相对微妙的文化差异以及性别与文化的相互作用也可以调节社会认知。阐明文化对面孔调谐以及更广泛的社会认知的影响的本质，对于理解广泛的神经精神和神经发育状况具有重要价值。
