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. 2021 Feb;83(2):882-898.
doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02117-9.

Cultural differences in performance on Eriksen's flanker task

Angela Gutchess  1 , John Ksander  2 , Peter R Millar  2   3 , Berna A Uzundag  4   5 , Robert Sekuler  2 , Aysecan Boduroglu  5
Affiliations
Free PMC article

Cultural differences in performance on Eriksen's flanker task

Angela Gutchess et al. Atten Percept Psychophys. 2021 Feb.
Free PMC article

Abstract

Eriksen's zoom model of attention implies a trade-off between the breadth and resolution of representations of information. Following this perspective, we used Eriksen's flanker task to investigate culture's influence on attentional allocation and attentional resolution. In Experiment 1, the spatial distance of the flankers was varied to test whether people from Eastern cultures (here, Turks) experienced more interference than people from Western cultures (here, Americans) when flankers were further from the target. In Experiment 2, the contrast of the flankers was varied. The pattern of results shows that congruency of the flankers (Experiment 1) as well as the degree of contrast of the flankers compared with the target (Experiment 2) interact with participants' cultural background to differentially influence accuracy or reaction times. In addition, we used evidence accumulation modeling to jointly consider measures of speed and accuracy. Results indicate that to make decisions in the Eriksen flanker task, Turks both accumulate evidence faster and require more evidence than Americans do. These cultural differences in visual attention and decision-making have implications for a wide variety of cognitive processes.

Keywords: Attention; Cognition; Cross-cultural; Culture; Flanker; Visual interference.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Trial time course and stimuli for Experiment 1. The top panel illustrates the timing of the different trial components, displaying a stimulus for an unflanked control trial. The middle and bottom panels display example stimuli for the different conditions of flanker trials.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Accuracy for Americans and Turks in Experiment 1. The US mean for unflanked controls is marked by a dashed line (--) and Turkish mean for unflanked controls is marked by a dotted line (•••). Error bars represent the standard error of the mean.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Reaction times for Americans and Turks in Experiment 1. The figure displays Tukey box plots, for which the whiskers represent 1.5x the interquartile range. US median reaction time for unflanked controls is marked by a dashed line (--) and Turkish median reaction time for unflanked controls is marked by a dotted line (•••).
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Discrimination (d’) plotted as a function of reaction time for Experiment 1. d’ scores are plotted for each 100 msec bin with at least 50 trials. Notable in the near incompatible condition is that Turks (light) achieve higher d’ scores than Americans (dark).
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
The differences in group mean parameter posterior distributions are displayed in three panels, corresponding to the drift rate (top), threshold (middle), and non-decision time (bottom).
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Example of stimuli presented in Experiment 2. Disclaimer: in this reproduction, figures are not to scale and the luminances do not reproduce the actual luminances presented in the experiment.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Accuracy for Americans and Turks in Experiment 2. The US mean for unflanked controls is marked by a dashed line (--) and Turkish mean for unflanked controls is marked by a dotted line (•••). Error bars represent the standard error of the mean.
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Reaction times for Americans and Turks in Experiment 2. The figure displays Tukey box plots, for which the whiskers represent 1.5x the interquartile range. US median reaction time for unflanked controls is marked by a dashed line (--) and Turkish median reaction time for unflanked controls is marked by a dotted line (•••).
Figure 9.
Figure 9.
Accuracy (d’) plotted as a function of reaction time for Experiment 2. d’ scores are plotted for each 100 msec bin in which there were at least 50 trials.
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