Research article summary (published 29 Apr 2008):

Culture and context: East Asian American and European American differences in P3 event-related potentials and self-construal.

Full Abstract

Research has demonstrated differences in social and cognitive processes between East Asians and European Americans. Whereas East Asians have been characterized as being more sensitive to situational context and attending more to the perceptual field, European Americans have been characterized as being more focused on the object and being more field independent. The goal of the present experiment was to investigate differences in neural responses to target objects and stimulus context between East Asian Americans and European Americans using a three-stimulus novelty P3 event-related potential design. As hypothesized, European Americans displayed relatively greater target P3 amplitudes, indexing attention to target events, whereas East Asian Americans displayed relatively greater novelty P3 amplitudes, indexing attention to contextually deviant events. Furthermore, the authors found that interdependent self-construal mediated the relationship between culture and the novelty P3. These findings identify a specific pattern of neural activity associated with established cultural differences in contextual sensitivity.

Author information

Author/s: Lewis, Richard S (RS); Goto, Sharon G (SG); Kong, Lauren L (LL);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Pomona College, Claremont, CA 91711, USA. rlewis(-atsign-)pomona.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Journal: Personality and social psychology bulletin (Pers Soc Psychol Bull), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-May; vol 34 (issue 5) : pp 623-34

Dates: Created 2008/04/16; Completed 2008/07/28;

PMID: 18413894, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent Adult Arousal - physiology Asian Americans - psychology Attention - physiology Cerebral Cortex - physiology Cross-Cultural Comparison Cultural Characteristics Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology European Continental Ancestry Group - psychology Event-Related Potentials, P300 - physiology Female

Female Field Dependence-Independence Humans Individuation Internal-External Control Male Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology Personality Inventory Psychomotor Performance - physiology Self Concept Social Identification Students - psychology

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