Author: Gabriel Qi
For our February 2020 ANA Listserv Research Digest, we will look at two articles in the
recently published book Clinical Cultural Neuroscience: An Integrative Approach to
Cross-Cultural Neuropsychology, edited by Otto Pedraza. Special thanks to Dr. Daryl Fujii
for recommending the book to the research digest initiative.
The first article is about visual cognition and culture. Goh, Li, Tu and Dallaire-Théroux
(2019) proposed a framework to understand culture-related differences in visual
processing, hypothesizing that “the brain is geared toward veridical representation of
the environment and that the integration of physical and valuative (reward and error)
signals from the environment are paramount to this goal.” The authors reviewed several
streams of evidence in differences of visual processing between Westerners and East
Asians: a) the famous analytic-holistic dichotomy of visual perception and attention; b)
differences in processing facial features and expression; and c) different speed, strategy
and brain activations during number and mathematical processing. They then discussed
how socio-environmental reinforcement learning may have aided the acquisition of
cultural differences. These may include “social feedback which engages the
dopaminergic reward system including the ventral tegmental area and its projection
targets in the frontal, subcortical, and limbic regions (Schultz, 2013; Schultz, Dayan, &
Montague, 1997; Schultz & Dickinson, 2000; also see Mu et al., 2015, for similar
discussion on the neurobiological acquisition of culture)” (pp. 138). To me, this
framework and these findings further suggest careful considerations for cross-cultural
test adaptations even with non-verbal, visuospatial tasks, which intuitively might be
deemed straight-forward and universal.
For the second article of the month, I want to introduce a review by Chou and Booth
(2019) on neurocognitive development of semantics in Chinese- and English-speaking
children with and without autism. They defined semantic organization as “how the
actual representations themselves are organized in occipitotemporal cortex” and
semantic processing as “how these representations are accessed and manipulated by
frontoparietal cortex” (pp. 200). Essentially, they reviewed that the left middle temporal
gyrus (MTG) and the left occipitotemporal cortex are heavily involved in the
organization of semantic knowledge, and these findings were quite consistent between
Chinese- and English-speaking children. Semantic processing, however, seems more
culturally dependent. The processing of word pairs with strong associations produces
greater activation in the left inferior parietal lobule in English or in the left angular gyrus
in Chinese. The authors argued that it may be due to greater engagement of the
mapping from orthography to semantics at word level in Chinese, and greater
phonological processing involved in English reading. For children with autism speaking
either language, both semantic organization and processing are altered.
Food for thought this month:
Is it surprising that visual processing may be impacted by culture? What have your
experience been for cultural differences on visual processing in your clinical
and/or research work?
Here are the links to access the articles this month:
- Publisher website:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/clinical-cultural-neuroscience9780190619305?cc=us&lang=en& - Google Books:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Clinical_Cultural_Neuroscience.html?id=Wiy7D
wAAQBAJ
References:
• Chou, T., & booth, J. (2019). Neurocognitive development of semantics in
Chinese- and English-speaking children with and without autism. Clinical Cultural
Neuroscience: An Integrative Approach to Cross-Cultural Neuropsychology, 200.
UK: Oxford University Press
• Goh, J. O., Li, C. Y., Tu, Y. Z., & dallaire-théroux, C. (2019). Visual cognition and
culture. Clinical Cultural Neuroscience: An Integrative Approach to Cross-Cultural
Neuropsychology, 124. UK: Oxford University Press