Does cultural background influence a viewer's Muller-Lyer illusion?
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Purpose. It has been postulated that East Asians and European Americans visually perceive differently. Namely, object perception of East Asians is hypothesized to be influenced more by the object's context than European Americans. We investigated this question using the Muller-Lyer illusion. Method. Two Muller-Lyer figures were presented side by side. The left one always had its fins vertically oriented (90 deg). The right one had all its fins oriented either inward (30 and 60 deg), vertical (90 deg), or outward (120 and 150 deg). The right figure was either shorter or longer than the left one. Participants decided which was longer, and d' and bias were calculated. Participants. Data were collected at UCLA, with undergraduate participants who were either European Americans (42), East Asian Americans (57), East Asians (32), Hispanic Americans (42), or others (66). Results. A 2 x 2 ANOVA on the d' data only revealed a main effect of the fin orientation of the right figure (p < 0.001), however there was no main effect of culture (p = 0.21). A similar ANOVA on the bias data revealed a main effect of the fin orientation (p < 0.001) as expected, but the main effect of culture was not significant (p = 0.25). Conclusions. The Muller-Lyer illusion caused both a reduction of discrimination sensitivity and a criterion shift. However, we did not find any difference between participants from different cultural backgrounds. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018
Source: Journal of Vision
DOI: 10.1167/18.10.799
Authors: Milena Krstic, Zili Liu
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,850
OpenAlex ID: W2892904254