TY - JOUR
T1 - Cultural and Developmental Influences on Overt Visual Attention to Videos
AU - Kardan, Omid
AU - Shneidman, Laura
AU - Krogh-Jespersen, Sheila
AU - Gaskins, Suzanne
AU - Berman, Marc G.
AU - Woodward, Amanda
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by a TKF Foundation grant, Templeton Grant ID#: 37775 from the John Templeton Foundation (www.templeton.org) and a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant BCS-1632445 to MGB, and an NSF grant BCS-1226113 to AW. We are grateful to Patricia Graf, Patricia Evelin Juárez Ek, and Cornelio Azarias Chay Cano for their assistance in collecting the data. We thank Tobii Pro for supporting this project’s objectives with their eye tracking equipment, solutions and resources.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Author(s).
PY - 2017/12/1
Y1 - 2017/12/1
N2 - Top-down influences on observers' overt attention and how they interact with the features of the visual environment have been extensively investigated, but the cultural and developmental aspects of these modulations have been understudied. In this study we investigated these effects for US and Yucatec Mayan infants, children, and adults. Mayan and US participants viewed videos of two actors performing daily Mayan and US tasks in the foreground and the background while their eyes were tracked. Our region of interest analysis showed that viewers from the US looked significantly less at the foreground activity and spent more time attending to the 'contextual' information (static background) compared to Mayans. To investigate how and what visual features of videos were attended to in a comprehensive manner, we used multivariate methods which showed that visual features are attended to differentially by each culture. Additionally, we found that Mayan and US infants utilize the same eye-movement patterns in which fixation duration and saccade amplitude are altered in response to the visual stimuli independently. However, a bifurcation happens by age 6, at which US participants diverge and engage in eye-movement patterns where fixation durations and saccade amplitudes are altered simultaneously.
AB - Top-down influences on observers' overt attention and how they interact with the features of the visual environment have been extensively investigated, but the cultural and developmental aspects of these modulations have been understudied. In this study we investigated these effects for US and Yucatec Mayan infants, children, and adults. Mayan and US participants viewed videos of two actors performing daily Mayan and US tasks in the foreground and the background while their eyes were tracked. Our region of interest analysis showed that viewers from the US looked significantly less at the foreground activity and spent more time attending to the 'contextual' information (static background) compared to Mayans. To investigate how and what visual features of videos were attended to in a comprehensive manner, we used multivariate methods which showed that visual features are attended to differentially by each culture. Additionally, we found that Mayan and US infants utilize the same eye-movement patterns in which fixation duration and saccade amplitude are altered in response to the visual stimuli independently. However, a bifurcation happens by age 6, at which US participants diverge and engage in eye-movement patterns where fixation durations and saccade amplitudes are altered simultaneously.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85029306544&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85029306544&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-017-11570-w
DO - 10.1038/s41598-017-11570-w
M3 - Article
C2 - 28900172
AN - SCOPUS:85029306544
VL - 7
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
SN - 2045-2322
IS - 1
M1 - 11264
ER -