A study examining the way American and Chinese students look at photographs that contain an obvious focal point and a complex background revealed distinct differences. The study tracked students' eye movements as they looked at pictures including a tiger in a forest and an airplane with a landscape behind it.
The American students were quicker to look at the focal point and looked at it longer, while the Chinese students made more quick glances around the rest of the picture.
There have been hints of this cultural difference before -- previous studies (1 , 2) have shown that North Americans tend toward the analytical and tend to pay more attention to focal objects, while East Asians tend toward the holistic and tend to pay more attention to context.
The difference also translated to differences in remembering the objects later. The Chinese students remembered the photographs slightly better, but the American students were better at remembering they had seen the focal object before when it was put in front of a new background.
[Via Smalley's Research Watch]
