Effect of culturally shaped experiences on cognitive processing

Research Topic
Effect of culturally shaped experiences on cognitive processing

Lead Researcher
Yeh SU-Ling, Department of psychology, National Taiwan University, Professor

Host Researcher
Yoshiyuki Ueda, Senior Lecturer, Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University

Collaborating Researcher
Jun Saiki, Kyoto University, Ph.D.　

Search asymmetry refers to the phenomenon where searching for one long line among short lines is faster than searching for one short line among long lines (North Americans). However, Japanese did not show this tendency and Taiwanese even exhibited faster search for short among long lines (Ueda et al., 2017; Ueda et al., 2019). The lack of classical search asymmetry might result from the usage of kanjis, which made Japanese and Taiwanese more sensitive to shorter lines while alphabets do the opposite. Here we aim to further examine whether prior exposure to English words and kanjis could affect performances in search task. We hypothesize that if Japanese are asked to perform a kanji search task, and become more sensitive to short lines, Japanese might also show reversed search asymmetry in line search task as Taiwanese. In the same vein, if Taiwanese perform an English word search task before the line search task, they might become more sensitive to longer lines and show the classical search asymmetry pattern.

2020/05/29