https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022117748763

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology2018, Vol. 49(3) 404 –417

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Article

Cultural Differences in Memory for Objects and Backgrounds in Pictures

Brenda Iok Wong1, Shufei Yin2, Lixia Yang1, Juan Li3, and Julia Spaniol1

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to investigate cultural differences in memory for individual objects and backgrounds that have been studied together in one picture. Thirty-six Caucasian Canadians in Toronto and 36 Han Chinese in Beijing were tested with a picture recognition paradigm. At encoding, participants viewed 60 line drawing pictures, each containing an object and a background scene. Participants then recognized these objects and backgrounds in isolation, and were asked to report subjectively whether they allocated their attention toward the objects, backgrounds, or both during encoding. In general, we did not find any cultural difference in memory for the isolated objects. However, Canadian participants showed significantly better memory for backgrounds than Chinese participants. Our supplementary data suggested that this effect appeared primarily among participants who self-reported paying attention to both objects and backgrounds. We speculated that relative to Canadian participants, Chinese participants might be more likely to engage in a holistic processing style and thus spontaneously bind background scenes with their associated focal objects when viewing both elements in pictures, which made it more difficult for them to “unbind” the information and recognize backgrounds in isolation. The results of this study add new insights into cultural differences in memory for individual elements in pictures.

Keywordscultural differences, picture memory, holistic processing, learning, unbinding

Introduction

Previous findings on cross-cultural research suggest that East Asians and Western individuals differ in their information processing styles. In general, East Asians perform better on cognitive tasks that involve context-oriented holistic processing, whereas Western individuals show better performance on tasks that require feature-driven analytic processing (e.g., Duffy, Toriyama, Itakura, & Kitayama, 2009; Goh et al., 2007; Lin, Lin, & Han, 2008; Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001; Park, Nisbett, & Hedden, 1999).

1Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada2Hubei University, Wuhan, China3Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Corresponding Author:Lixia Yang, Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5B 2K3. Email: lixiay@psych.ryerson.ca

748763 JCCXXX10.1177/0022022117748763Journal of Cross-Cultural PsychologyWong et al.research-article2017

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In an eye-tracking study, Chua, Boland, and Nisbett (2005) presented European American and Chinese participants with photographs that each contained an object and a background scene. They found that Americans fixated at the focal objects sooner and longer than Chinese partici-pants, whereas Chinese showed a more balanced fixation toward both the objects and the scenes. In Masuda and Nisbett’s (2006) study, East Asian and American participants viewed pairs of pic-tures sequentially and were then asked to identify any difference (in focal object or contextual background) between the two pictures. East Asian participants were significantly faster in detect-ing changes in contexts, suggesting that they paid more attention to background information than American participants. Goh, Tan, and Park (2009) also found that Americans focused a greater proportion of their eye fixations on objects than backgrounds, whereas Singaporeans alternated their eye movements toward both objects and backgrounds. Furthermore, Americans showed more gaze fixations to objects than Singaporeans when changes were made to the objects of the pictures, which demonstrates greater object processing than Singaporean participants. In addition, cultural differences in picture perception were demonstrated in neuroimaging data. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, Gutchess, Welsh, and Boduroglu (2006) recorded American and East Asian participants’ brain activity while they were viewing objects, background scenes, or both. American participants showed more activation in object processing regions, such as the bilateral middle temporal gyri, when viewing objects than when viewing scenes. This effect was less pronounced in East Asian participants. Taken together, these research findings suggest that Western individuals emphasize processing of focal objects over contextual scenes, whereas East Asians tend to process both objects and backgrounds equally and holistically.

There is evidence that cultural preferences in object and scene perception could affect mem-ory for objects. Masuda and Nisbett (2001) presented American and Japanese participants with animated video clips of underwater scenes. When requested to describe the video clips, Japanese participants provided more descriptions about the background scenes and the relations between the scenes and the focal objects in comparison with Americans. These findings revealed that Japanese were more likely than Americans to pay attention to contextual information and object–background relationships. In a subsequent memory test, Japanese participants were more likely to recognize the objects in these videos when the objects were paired with their original back-ground scenes than when they were paired with novel scenes. The same manipulation did not affect American participants’ memory for the objects. Masuda and Nisbett (2001) replicated these findings in their second experiment in which American and Japanese participants viewed photographs of animals in natural scenes. Their memory for these animals was then tested with their original or new backgrounds. Japanese participants showed poorer memory for the animals than Americans when these animals were presented with new background scenes at recognition, further supporting that East Asians’ memory for objects is more influenced by manipulations of background scenes than Western individuals. Based on these findings, Masuda and Nisbett (2001) suggested that Japanese encoded objects and backgrounds in pictures in one blended rep-resentation, and their memory was impaired when the information was to be recognized in isola-tion. American participants, on the contrary, encoded objects and backgrounds as relatively independent representations; hence, their memory for objects was not affected by the same manipulation as Japanese participants.

In sum, the literature suggests that Western individuals have an attentional bias toward pro-cessing focal objects in pictures, whereas East Asians tend to pay equal attention to process both objects and backgrounds (e.g., Chua et al., 2005). There is also evidence that individuals’ mem-ory for focal objects could be affected by these cultural preferences (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). However, it is still unclear whether these cultural preferences in picture processing could also affect individuals’ memory for background scenes when they are tested in isolation from their associated objects. Given East Asians’ tendency to process objects and backgrounds holistically, their memory for isolated backgrounds may also differ from that in Western individuals. To

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explore this possibility, the purpose of this study was to examine cultural differences in memory for both isolated objects and isolated background scenes that have been studied together.

In this study, Canadian and Chinese participants viewed a series of line drawings. Each pic-ture contained an object and a background scene. Participants were not instructed to pay atten-tion to any part of the pictures, which allowed them to freely allocate their attention according to their own processing preference to encode the objects and backgrounds. Their memory for the individual objects and background scenes was subsequently tested using two separate rec-ognition tasks.

Considering the earlier finding that Western individuals show better memory for objects than East Asians (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001), we expected to observe a similar cultural difference in Canadian and Chinese participants’ memory for objects when they had to recognize objects in isolation from their backgrounds. Our prediction was also based on past findings that Western individuals place more emphasis on object processing than East Asians (e.g., Chua et al., 2005; Goh et al., 2009; Gutchess et al., 2006). Research has shown that the way in which individuals attend to and process pictorial information could affect their subsequent memory for the informa-tion. That is, our memory for pictorial information that has been selectively attended to is better than that for information we have not attended to (e.g., Ballesteros & Mayas, 2015). Given that Western individuals pay more attention to objects than East Asians, we expected to see better object memory in our Canadian participants than our Chinese participants.

A novel aspect of this study is the fact that it examines cultural differences in memory for background scenes that have been studied together with focal objects. Although there is abundant evidence that East Asians have a tendency to attend to and process contextual information (e.g., Chua et al., 2005), there is still a lack of evidence regarding cultural differences in memory for isolated background scenes. We proposed two competing hypotheses for cultural differences in memory for backgrounds. First, given that Western individuals place less emphasis on viewing background scenes than East Asians (e.g., Goh et al., 2009), they may in turn remember fewer scenes than East Asians, as memory is affected by selective attention (e.g., Ballesteros & Mayas, 2015). Alternatively, East Asians’ tendency to bind focal and contextual information together holistically might also work as a disadvantage for them when background scenes were to be recognized in isolation from their associated objects. The tendency for East Asians to bind infor-mation together can be seen in their poorer performance than Western individuals in the Embedded Figures Test, in which the task is to find simple hidden figures from a complex geometric dia-gram (Kühnen et al., 2001). This is because it is more difficult for field dependent (e.g., East Asian) than field independent (e.g., Western) individuals to process focal information in isolation from its context in this test (Witkin & Goodenough, 1981). In addition, Masuda and Nisbett’s (2001) findings also suggest that East Asians tend to remember information holistically in a blended representation, and that their memory for the information would be poorer than that of Western individuals when the learned materials are to be tested without its original context. This effect might be extended to memory for background scenes when recognized independently from their objects. Hence, Chinese participants in the present study might show poorer background memory than Canadian participants.

Method

Participants

We tested 36 Canadian participants (aged 18-28, 10 males) of European descent in Toronto, Canada, and 36 Chinese participants (aged 18-26, 15 males) in Beijing, China. Canadian partici-pants were recruited either from the undergraduate psychology study participant pool at Ryerson University or through campus posters. Undergraduate psychology students received one course

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credit as compensation, whereas participants recruited from the community were paid Can$10. Han Chinese participants were tested at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. They were recruited through posters and online advertisements, and they received RMB 30 per hour as compensation. We excluded participants who (a) were taking medications that might influence their cognitive performance, (b) had severe visual or auditory impairments, (c) had a history of neurological disorders that might lead to cognitive impairments, or (d) indi-cated difficulty seeing the color of the stimuli during encoding. One Canadian and one Chinese participant, not included in the above participant profile, were replaced due to experimenter errors and program malfunctioning, respectively. All study procedures were approved by the Research Ethics Board at Ryerson University and at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, respectively.

Materials

The study stimuli included 90 line drawing pictures adapted from Gutchess and Park (2009, see Figure 1 for examples). Each picture contained an object (e.g., a cow) and a background scene (e.g., a farm), with none of the objects or backgrounds repeated. The majority of objects were in the center of the picture. Given that some pictures contained multiple objects and a few objects were off-centered, the color of the target objects in the encoded pictures was modified from black to green to distinguish these objects from the backgrounds, whereas the background of all pic-tures remained black.

The picture stimuli were divided into three sets of 30. Two sets of pictures were used as to-be-studied stimuli during encoding. At recognition, memory for objects and background scenes from these two sets of encoded pictures was tested, with objects drawn from one set of stimuli and backgrounds drawn from the other set of stimuli. Objects and background scenes from the third stimulus set were used as new lures in the object and background recognition tests, respec-tively. The three stimulus sets were counterbalanced across participants, such that each set was equally likely to serve as studied pictures (to be tested in object recognition test or to be tested in background recognition test) or as new lures. Individual object and background images were either provided by Gutchess and Park (2009) or were extracted from the original picture stimuli.

Procedure

The computerized memory tasks were programmed in E-prime 2.0. The stimuli were presented on 17″ monitors of the PC systems. Participants completed the experiment individually and pro-vided informed consent prior to testing. Canadian and Chinese participants received instructions in English and Mandarin, respectively. All task instructions were translated from English to Mandarin, and then back translated from Mandarin to English by two bilingual researchers.

All participants viewed 60 sequentially presented pictures. Each trial began with a fixation cross presented at the center of the screen for 200 ms, followed by a picture stimulus for 2 s, and ended with a blank screen as an interstimulus interval (ISI) for 800 ms. Participants were instructed to look at each picture as if they were watching television and were not guided to pay attention toward either the objects or backgrounds (see Appendices A and B for task instructions in English and simplified Chinese).

Participants then completed a computerized Corsi block task (Yang et al., 2013; modified from Rowe, Hasher, & Turcotte, 2009), which is a visuospatial working memory test that served as a filler task. Next, they completed two self-paced recognition blocks—an object recognition and a background recognition block—with the order of the two blocks counterbalanced across participants (see Figure 2). Both blocks contained 30 images from the studied pictures and 30

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new images. Participants were not tested on the objects and backgrounds of the same studied picture to rule out the possibility that the appearance of an object (or background) in the first recognition block would prime memory for the background (or object) in the subsequent recogni-tion block. Each block of recognition task started with a fixation cross at the center of the screen for 1,000 ms, followed by a studied or new image. Participants were instructed to press the “z” key on the keyboard if they had seen the image during encoding and the “/” key if it was a new image. In between images, there was an ISI for 800 ms, followed by a fixation cross for 200 ms, before proceeding to the next image.

If participants indicated that they had seen the image earlier, they were asked to rate their confidence in the response based on a 4-point scale by pressing the following number keys at the top of the keyboard: “1” if they remembered the moment they had encountered the object/back-ground (“Remember”); “2” if they felt sure that the object/background was presented, but with-out specific memory (“Know”); “3” if they were pretty sure, but not certain, that they had seen the object/background (“Pretty sure”); and “4” if they were just guessing (“Just guessing”). This confidence-rating component was added later, after we started the data collection; therefore, six Canadian participants did not complete this task.

After the computerized tasks, participants were asked whether they could see the color of the objects during encoding, and none of the participants indicated difficulty seeing the green color. Next, participants completed several paper-and-pencil measures, including the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), the Self-Construal Scale (SCS; Singelis, 1994), and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977). These measures were included to assess participants’ mood during testing, their

Figure 1. Examples of picture stimuli presented at encoding.Note. The focal object of each picture was in green to distinguish it from the background scene.

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independent and interdependent self-construals, and their levels of depressive symptomatology, respectively. Mood and depressive measures were included because research has shown that mood during testing could affect participants’ scope of visual attention which may in turn affect memory for the objects and backgrounds in pictures. Specifically, positive emotions could broaden the scope of visual attention, whereas negative moods could narrow one’s focus (e.g.,

Figure 2. Illustration of the (A) background and (B) object recognition tasks.Note. Participants were asked to indicate whether they had seen the image before by pressing “yes” and “no” keys. If they pressed “yes,” they were asked to indicate their level of confidence using number keys 1 to 4. Each image was followed by a blank screen and a fixation cross.

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Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005). Participants then filled out a background questionnaire. To examine participants’ attention allocation during encoding, they were asked on the background questionnaire to report to which component of the picture (i.e., background, object, or both) they had attended during encoding. Finally, participants were debriefed and compensated.

Statistical Analyses

Memory performance was indexed by corrected recognition scores, which were calculated by subtracting false alarm rates from hit rates. Corrected recognition scores were analyzed using a 2 (culture: Canadians vs. Chinese) × 2 (image type: background vs. object recognition) mixed model ANOVA, with culture as a between-subjects variable and image type as a within-subjects variable. To examine participants’ levels of confidence in their memory, corrected recognition scores for backgrounds and objects were further divided into “Remember,” “Know,” “Pretty sure,” and “Just guessing” responses according to participants’ confidence ratings. These scores were analyzed separately for each confidence type, resulting in four independent 2 (culture) × 2 (image type) mixed model ANOVAs. The significance level for all statistical analyses was set at .05. Significance levels were corrected using the Bonferroni procedure for all post hoc multiple comparisons.

Results

Sample Characteristics

Participants’ demographic characteristics and performance on the Corsi block task and other paper-and-pencil questionnaires are summarized in Table 1. Canadian participants were younger, t(70) = −2.45, p = .017, d = −0.59, and had fewer years of education than Chinese participants, t(70) = −2.33, p = .023, d = −0.55. There was no difference in subjective health ratings between the two groups. Chinese participants showed higher positive affect on the PANAS, t(70) = −2.18, p = .032, d = −0.52, and scored higher on the interdependent subscale of the SCS than their Canadian counterparts, t(70) = 2.02, p = .048, d = 0.47. Despite these differences between the two groups, Pearson’s correlation analyses indicated that none of these variables were associated with participants’ object or background recognition performance (all rs < .21).

Memory for Objects and Backgrounds

The mean corrected recognition scores for objects were 0.48 (SD = 0.20) for Canadians and 0.48 (SD = 0.20) for Chinese participants, whereas the mean corrected recognition scores for back-ground scenes were 0.28 (SD = 0.19) and 0.18 (SD = 0.12) for the two groups, respectively. There was a main effect of image type, F(1, 70) = 128.80, p < .001, ηp

2 = .65, such that participants recognized more objects than backgrounds. There was also an image type by culture interaction, F(1, 70) = 4.56, p = .036, ηp

2 = .06. Canadians outperformed Chinese in background recognition, t(58.23) = 2.51, p = .015, d = 0.61 (the degree of freedom was adjusted due to unequal variances, Levene’s F = 8.96, p = .004), but there was no cultural difference in object recognition.

To further examine whether differences in memory performance were due to response bias, we computed the β response bias measure using the formula provided by Stanislaw and Todorov (1999). β scores were compared across the two cultural groups and memory types using a 2 (cul-ture) × 2 (memory type) mixed model ANOVA. This analysis revealed a main effect of image type, F(70) = 10.86, p = .002, ηp

2 = .13, such that participants were more conservative in their responses to backgrounds than to objects (i.e., more likely to respond “no” to backgrounds than to objects). Neither the main effect of culture, nor the culture by image type interaction, was significant, suggesting that response bias did not differ across groups.

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Confidence Ratings in Memory Responses

For “Remember” responses, participants across the two cultures showed higher corrected recog-nition scores for objects than for backgrounds, F(1, 64) = 116.96, p < .001, ηp

2 = .65. A “Remember” confidence response was defined as the ability to vividly recall the moment partici-pants first saw the image. Thus, our result indicates that a higher proportion of memory for objects was based on vivid recollection than that for backgrounds. Next, there was also a signifi-cant main effect of image type in “Know” responses, F(1, 64) = 8.76, p = .004, ηp

2 = .12, which was qualified by a significant image type by culture interaction, F(1, 64) = 6.10, p = .016, ηp

2 = .09. For “Know” responses, Chinese participants showed lower corrected recognition for back-ground images than Canadian participants, t(64) = 2.32, p = .024, d = −0.57, whereas there was no cultural difference in their corrected recognition for objects. Moreover, Chinese participants showed lower corrected recognition scores for backgrounds than for objects, t(35) = −3.57, p = .001, d = −0.64, primarily driven by higher false alarms for backgrounds than for objects, t(35) = 4.54, p < .001, d = 0.88, but these effects were not shown in Canadians. In contrast to a “Remember” response, a “Know” response indicates a feeling that an image had been seen, with-out any specific memory related to the event. These results suggest that Chinese participants had difficulty distinguishing between seen and new backgrounds due to feelings of familiarity with-out vivid recollections. Finally, there was no difference in recognition scores across culture or image type in “Pretty Sure” and “Just Guessing” responses.

Self-Reported Attention Allocation

We sought to explore further whether participants’ memory for objects and backgrounds was mediated by how they chose to study the pictorial information. We conducted a chi-square analy-sis to probe for a cultural difference in participants’ self-reported attention allocation during encoding. Our analysis revealed no cultural difference in self-reported attention allocation, χ2(2, N = 72) = 2.84, p = .24, suggesting that participants’ perceived attention to objects and

Table 1. Participant Characteristics and Scores on the Corsi-Block and Paper-and-Pencil Questionnaires.

MeasureCanadianM (SD)

ChineseM (SD)

Age* 20.58 (2.77) 21.97 (1.96)Years of Education* 14.31 (2.27) 15.42 (1.75)Health Ratinga 7.72 (1.37) 7.83 (1.34)Corsi Blockb 0.56 (0.19) 0.60 (0.20)PANAS–Positive Affectc,* 25.17 (6.00) 28.56 (7.13)PANAS–Negative Affectc 14.42 (6.21) 13.31 (4.32)SCS–Independentd 4.72 (0.70) 4.50 (0.70)SCS–Interdependentd,* 4.61 (0.77) 4.94 (0.63)CES-De 14.67 (8.18) 11.39 (7.20)

Note. PANAS = Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; SCS = Self-Construal Scale; CES-D = Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale.aHealth rating was self-reported, ranging from 1 (“poor”) to 10 (“excellent”).bCorsi block scores range from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating better visuospatial memory performance.cPANAS scores range from 10 to 50, with higher scores indicating stronger affect.dSCS scores range from 1 to 7, with higher scores indicating stronger values.e CES-D scores range from 0 to 60, and higher scores indicate more depressive symptoms experienced in the past week.*p < .05.

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backgrounds did not differ across cultures. Next, we reanalyzed corrected recognition scores using separate 2 (culture) × 2 (image type) mixed ANOVAs for participants who reported paying attention only to objects and for those who reported paying equal attention to objects and back-grounds during encoding. Only one Canadian participant reported paying attention to only back-grounds during encoding and was therefore removed from the analysis. Table 2 summarizes the sample size and corrected recognition scores for each cultural group under these analyses. Strikingly, the results of the two ANOVAs suggested that the cultural difference in background recognition was related to participants’ attention during encoding (see Figure 3). Specifically, the culture by image type interaction was marginally significant in participants who reported paying attention to both objects and backgrounds, F(1, 21) = 3.33, p = .082, ηp

2 = .14, but not significant in participants who reported paying attention to objects only, F(1, 46) = 1.00, p = .322. Post hoc analysis indicated that Chinese participants showed poorer recognition for backgrounds than Canadian participants when they reported paying attention to both backgrounds and objects, t(21) = −2.82, p = .010, d = −1.28, and such effect was absent among participants who self-reported paying all their attention to objects. These results suggest that cultural difference in memory for background scenes might be moderated by which features participants chose to pay attention to during encoding.

Table 2. Sample Size and Corrected Recognition Scores for Participants Who Only Paid Attention to Objects Versus Participants Who Paid Equal Attention to Objects and Backgrounds During Encoding.

Participant SubgroupsCanadians

M (SD)ChineseM (SD)

Attention to objects n 21 27 Background recognition 0.24 (0.20) 0.19 (0.12) Object recognition 0.49 (0.23) 0.50 (0.18)Attention to both objects and backgrounds n 14 9 Background recognition 0.35 (0.17) 0.17 (0.11) Object recognition 0.49 (0.13) 0.43 (0.27)

Figure 3. Interaction of image type and culture on corrected recognition scores in participants who only paid attention to objects and participants who paid attention to both objects and backgrounds.Note. Error bars represent standard error of the mean.

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Discussion

We investigated cultural differences in memory for individual objects and backgrounds that were studied together during encoding. All participants, regardless of cultural background, showed better memory for objects than for backgrounds. Furthermore, participants were more likely to recognize objects than backgrounds based on vivid recollection, as indicated by differences in “Remember” responses between the two image types. Against our hypothesis, there was no cul-tural difference in memory for objects. However, there was a group difference in their memory for backgrounds. Canadian participants recognized more backgrounds than Chinese participants. Our exploratory analysis also revealed that this cultural difference in memory for backgrounds was likely moderated by how participants allocated their attention during encoding. Specifically, the cultural effect on background recognition appeared primarily in participants who reported paying attention to both objects and backgrounds.

In contrast to the findings of Masuda and Nisbett (2001), there was no cultural difference in recognition for focal objects in the present study. The color of the focal objects in our study might have led participants to prioritize encoding of objects independent of their backgrounds, regard-less of the participants’ cultural backgrounds. This attentional bias to objects might have in turn promoted memory for objects in both cultural groups. In Masuda and Nisbett’s (2001) study, objects were not highlighted, and hence the salience between focal objects and background scenes in their study might be smaller than that in our study. Their manipulation may have pro-moted more balanced processing of objects and contexts among East Asian participants, who generally have a tendency to encode and remember information holistically (e.g., Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005).

Canadian participants in this study recognized more background scenes than Chinese partici-pants. Moreover, Chinese participants, but not Canadian participants, produced fewer correct “Know” responses to backgrounds than to objects. These findings suggest that Chinese’ memory for backgrounds was more vaguely remembered than their Canadian counterparts. These results do not support our hypothesis that Chinese participants would remember more backgrounds because they tend to pay more attention to contextual information than Western individuals (e.g., Chua et al., 2005). On the contrary, the results fit better with Masuda and Nisbett’s (2001) account of cultural differences in pictorial memory. Masuda and Nisbett suggested that East Asians are likely to form a blended representation of focal objects and backgrounds, whereas Western indi-viduals tend to remember pictorial features independently, yet associated, in their memory trace. As a result, East Asians’ memory for individual pictorial features is expected to be poorer than that in Western individuals.

An exploratory supplementary analysis also supported Masuda and Nisbett’s (2001) proposal. Specifically, the cultural effect in background recognition appeared only when we compared Canadian and Chinese participants who self-reported paying equal attention to objects and back-grounds during encoding, but not for those who reported paying attention to objects only. Based on our results, we speculate that when both cultural groups prioritize processing of objects during encoding, neither group encoded background information deeply; hence, both groups showed poor background memory. However, when they attended to encoding both objects and back-ground scenes, Chinese participants may have spontaneously integrated the background with the focal object to form a holistic memory representation as a result of their holistic processing style. This made it more difficult for Chinese to recognize backgrounds in isolation from their associ-ated objects. Canadians, on the contrary, may have studied the objects and backgrounds as sepa-rate elements. Thus, their memory for these isolated backgrounds was better than that of Chinese participants. It should be noted that our analysis of cultural differences in object and background memory based on participants’ attentional allocation was intended to be an exploratory analysis that supplements the interpretation of our main findings. We advise readers to interpret these results with caution due to the relatively small sample size in the participant subgroup who

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reported paying equal attention to both objects and backgrounds and the fact that the interaction effect was marginally significant. Nevertheless, despite the low sample size, cultural differences in background memory in this subgroup yielded a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 1.28), suggesting that these effects are not trivial. We also acknowledge that attention allocation in the current study was based on self-report. Despite these limitations, the finding is consistent with the idea that the way one chooses to encode pictorial information affects subsequent memory. Specifically, binding may be more automatic in East Asians than Western individuals under conditions that facilitate simultaneous processing of focal and contextual information.

Alternatively, one could also argue that the color of the objects might have biased Chinese participants’ attention toward the objects in a greater degree than Canadian participants, and as a result, Chinese participants paid less attention to backgrounds and showed poorer memory for background scenes. During data collection, we tested six Chinese participants (not included in the current study sample) with the same set of pictures, but with black-and-white objects. Their mem-ory performance (corrected recognition scores for backgrounds and objects = .21 and .47, respec-tively) was about the same as that of the full Chinese sample reported in the present study who viewed the pictures with green objects (corrected recognition scores for backgrounds and objects = .18 and .48, respectively). In addition, Amer, Ngo, and Hasher (2016) found that even when East Asian participants were explicitly instructed to only pay attention to and work with focal informa-tion (e.g., pictures), and to ignore distracting information presented on the same screen (e.g., words), they still showed learning of the to-be-ignored information in subsequent tasks. Western participants, on the contrary, were able to just focus on the focal information and ignore the dis-tracters; as a result, they were less likely than East Asians to show memory for the distracting information. That being said, there is no evidence to suggest that the color of the objects would have specifically biased Chinese participants’ attention away from the background scenes.

We speculated from the results of our study that cultural difference in participants’ memory for backgrounds was driven by their culturally preferred processing style, such as for Chinese to bind different features of the pictures together in memory. A binding task, in which participants recognize objects and backgrounds in intact or rearranged combinations (e.g., Naveh-Benjamin, 2000), would show participants’ baseline performance in recognizing complex pictures, allowing direct comparison of recognition under binding and unbinding manipulations. It should be noted that, however, this study was not intended to examine cultural differences in memory binding, but to investigate differences in memory for unbound individual objects and backgrounds. Future studies could incorporate a binding paradigm to further address this research question. Furthermore, it has been found that cultural differences in picture encoding styles were more apparent when participants were given active viewing instructions (e.g., describing a video in as much detail as possible after viewing it) in comparison with when they were asked to view the videos without instructions about the postencoding task (Senzaki, Masuda, & Ishii, 2014). Although we did find a cultural difference in memory for scenes under our passive viewing instruction, future studies could test whether these cultural differences would be magnified under active viewing paradigms. It is also possible that a cultural difference in memory for objects would emerge when we provide participants more guidance on picture encoding.

Conclusion

In this study, we did not find a cultural difference in participants’ memory for objects when these objects were separated from their associated backgrounds. However, we found that Canadian participants recognized more background scenes than Chinese participants, specifically among those who distributed their attention equally to objects and backgrounds. We speculate that this cultural effect was driven by a cultural difference in the binding processes during encoding. Specifically, Chinese participants may be more likely than Canadian participants to process information holistically if they intend to process both objects and backgrounds. The integration

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or binding of backgrounds with focal objects may subsequently impair their memory for isolated backgrounds.

Appendix A

Instructions for Memory Task in English

Encoding. Welcome to the experiment! In this experiment, you will view some line drawing images one after another, each for 2 s. Each image contains a green object against a background scene. Please look at these images as if you are watching television.

Object recognition test. In this task, you will view some line drawing objects one after another. Some of these objects have been presented to you earlier in the first task, whereas other objects are new objects that have not been presented to you before.

If you have seen the object previously, please press the key labeled “Yes” using your left index finger. If you have not seen the object previously, please press the key labeled “No” using your right index finger. The objects will stay on the screen until you have made a response.

Whenever you indicate that you have seen an object earlier, you will be asked to rate your confidence in this response, using the number keys at the top of the keyboard. Respond “1” if you remember the moment that you encountered the picture. Respond “2” if you feel sure that the picture was presented, but you have no specific memory. Respond “3” if you are pretty sure, but not certain, that the picture was old. Respond “4” if you were just guessing.

All the labels will be presented as cues on the screen. Please respond as quickly and accurately as possible.

Background recognition task. In this task, you will view some line drawing scenes one after another. Some of these scenes have been presented to you earlier in the first task, whereas other scenes are new scenes that have not been presented to you before.

If you have seen the scene previously, please press the key labeled “Yes” using your left index finger. If you have not seen the scene previously, please press the key labeled “No” using your right index finger. The scenes will stay on the screen until you have made a response.

Whenever you indicate that you have seen a scene earlier, you will be asked to rate your con-fidence in this response, using the number keys at the top of the keyboard. Respond “1” if you remember the moment that you encountered the picture. Respond “2” if you feel sure that the picture was presented, but you have no specific memory. Respond “3” if you are pretty sure, but not certain, that the picture was old. Respond “4” if you were just guessing.

All the labels will be presented as cues on the screen. Please respond as quickly and accurately as possible.

Appendix B

Instructions for Memory Task in Chinese

Encoding. 欢迎参加本实验！在这个实验中，您将会看到一系列图片。每次呈现一张，每张图片呈现2秒钟。每张图片均包括一个绿色的物体呈现在一个背景上。请像看电视一样观看这些图片。

Object recognition test. 在这个实验中，您将会看到一系列物体图片，每次呈现一张。其中有些物体是您在第一个实验中见到过的，其他的是您没有见过的新物体。

416 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 49(3)

如果呈现的物体是您之前看到过的，请用左手食指按“是”键。如果呈现的物体是您之前没有看到过的，请用右手食指按“否”键。您做出反应以后，物体图片才会消失。

如果图片是您见到过的图片，请您按键盘上方相应的数字键来评定您反应的确性度。如果您记得观看这张图片当时的情境，请按“1”键。如果您知道图片是见过的，但是不能回忆起当时的具体情境，请按“2”键。如果您觉得见过这张图片，但是不太确定，请按“3”键。如果仅仅是猜测，请按“4”键。

屏幕上会提示“是”、“否”键的相应位置及“1”、“2”、“3”、“4”所代表的确性度。请您尽可能快并且准确地做出反应。

Background recognition task. 在这个实验中，您将会看到一系列背景图片，每次呈现一张。其中有些背景是您在第一个任务中见到过的，其他的是您没有见过的新背景。

如果呈现的背景是您之前看到过的，请用左手食指按“是”键。如果呈现的背景是您之前没有看到过的，请用右手食指按“否”键。您做出反应以后，背景图片才会消失。

如果图片是您见到过的图片，请您按键盘上方相应的数字键来评定您反应的确性度。如果您记得观看这张图片当时的情境，请按“1”键。如果您知道图片是见过的，但是不能回忆起当时的具体情境，请按“2”键。如果您觉得见过这张图片，但是不太确定，请按“3”键。如果仅仅是猜测，请按“4”键。

屏幕上会提示“是”、“否”键的相应位置及“1”、“2”、“3”、“4”所代表的确性度。请您尽可能快并且准确地做出反应。

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our research assistants who were involved in the data collection for this project: Vera Chai, Alexandra Decker, and Samantha Kilby-Lechman. We would also like to thank Dr. Lynn Hasher for her constructive comments and suggestions on the earlier version of the article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-cation of this article: This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Grant CCI-102930 to L.Y.) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 30911120494 to J.L.).

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