Cultural Differences in Perceptual Selectivity

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Children in India from three different cultural backgrounds—Hindu, Muslim, and U.S. white—were the subjects in a study of perceptual organization under the controlled conditions of perceptual learning. With the use of a scheme of monetary reward and punishment it was found that the Hindu and the Muslim children perceived significantly more often than the Americans those aspects of the figure-ground situation which were previously associated with punishment during perceptual learning. On the other hand, the American children perceived the reward associated aspects significantly more often than the Hindu and the Muslim children. Further, perceptual responses of both the Hindu and the Muslim children were found to be significantly different from the responses of the American children.