The ability to understand is within the culture

The East is the East and the West is the West and the cultural differences between the East and the West are only opened when the magnetic resonance scanner (fMRI) is used.

New research on high technology-based brains has demonstrated results from psychological experiments discovered in recent years: culture not only affects language, customs but also affect the way people feel about the world around at the most basic level - such as what people observe and search on the street, or even simply how to recognize a line located in square.

According to researchers, people in Western culture, often consider themselves as independent entities, while observing the landscape, they often focus on observing the object in the middle rather than the surrounding areas. out.

In contrast, East Asian culture emphasizes the interdependence of human relations. When the Eastern people observed a scene, they often turned their attention to the surrounding context as well as the object below the angle: the whole shape, or in other words, they would look at the distance from the surrounding BMW cars parked in the park rather than just training the car.

The brain scanning method provides a surprising perspective on the differences in cognitive abilities between Westerners and Asians.(Photo: BostonGlobe.com)

Dr. Dr. Denise Park is currently working at the University of Texas Brain Center (Dallas), said: "Similar to a video camera, " Americans often look at a small angle while Eastern people often look overarching. Oriental people are definitely looking at the broad context while Westerners observe in a narrow but more detailed context. "

In January, a group of researchers led by Trey Hedden and John Gabrieli at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that the brain activity of East Asians and Americans is deeply affected by eating habits. deep in consciousness , even at the level of a simple task like estimating the length of a line.

Hedden's experiment was done with two tests. In one experiment, participants had to estimate the length of a simple straight line observed - this is a strong American activity. In another experiment, they had to evaluate the length of the line in relation to the size of the surrounding square - an easy task for Asians.

Brain scanning method will assess the level of neural activity based on monitoring the movement of blood flow. The experiment has confirmed that although there is no difference in each task - because the experiment is very simple - but the level of brain activity of each object in each culture is very different, this implies People in each culture always have different levels of brain effort when dealing with the same task.

Americans must connect the attention of many areas of the brain at a deep level as they aim to complete the hammering tasks, such as estimating the size of the line in relation to the square. So do Asians, they have to mobilize the full attention of many areas of the brain when dealing with difficult tasks - such as estimating the length of a line when there are no objects to compare as the surrounding square.

This finding was published in the Journal of Psychological Science, creating a much greater echo than research results nearly a decade ago about East-West cultural differences, which is the basic principle that was previously humans have not been aware of their own cognitive tendencies. Professor Richard E. Nisbett - University of Michigan - writes about this in a 2003 book entitled "Geography of Thought".

In addition, the collected brain scan data has increased the conviction for these findings, Hazel Rose Markus revealed, he is currently a professor of psychology at Stanford University and co-author of the report with Professor Gabrieli. The findings of brain activity can help people realize that cultural differences in perception are normal, "so there are many aspects of the problem that we do not realize," she said.

Some examples of differences have been opened through many experiments:

• In a research study, researchers suggested that each participant choose a pen in five available colors: four red and one green. Oriental people prefer to choose red pens while Westerners often choose green.

(Photo: BostonGlobe.com)

• In an experiment evaluating how children under the age of adolescents (under the age of 18) can solve a tough problem: American children often best handle the games they choose in When children in Asia often solve the best games they have told their mother or have their mother choose to help. Markus said that American children are taught in a cultural environment that promotes thought independence and will be expressed when they are allowed to freely choose to behave. While Asian children think their mothers will understand what they are most interested in from the heart of the mother.

• When asked in detail about the underwater landscape that has recently been seen / watched, Westerners tend to direct their memories to the largest fish while Oriental people direct many memories to the surrounding context. .

(Photo: BostonGlobe.com)

"Literally, the data that the brain receives will suggest the way people talk about the elements of the scene," Park said. "If you are looking for an elephant in the rainforest, Westerners will turn their attention to the elephant and the Eastern people will pay more attention to the rainforest context where the elephant is standing."

Here researchers have hinted at the East and the West with a general idea. The West refers to those who grew up in the US, European countries and Australia. The East refers to East Asia - mainly Japan, the Korean peninsula as well as the rest of the world.

The researchers noted that the differences detected by psychological and brain scans were unclear; not easy to describe but can detect different trends. Just as individuals often change culturally over time, the thinking between gender has many different points.

The next brain research promises to bring more accurate results soon on this issue. According to Professor Gabrieli, the method of brain scanning in their research not only points out differences in brain activity when dealing with tasks related to straight lines and squares, but also brings to the initial answer to the question of how far these differences occur.

Are the Eastern people really observing other Westerners at the cognitive level or just thinking differently? Based on the areas of the brain that worked during the trial, Gabrieli believed that people observed the same thing, but it was possible that the brain actively filtered the different information.

"Culture does not change the way you think, rather, culture controls how you think and explain the world around you."

That may be useful news: "If you change the way you observe the world, you can create a subtle barrier for people to agree on what they observe and talk to each other", according to Gabrieli. "Because it is still in the phase of association, although our research proposes more difficult context to describe the differences, it is difficult to achieve in one One-way soon ".

It seems that the elderly easily perceive the effects of cultural differences, assuming that you are older, "are submerged in the pattern of behavioral and behavioral modalities that nourish you" , Park said. But that does not mean it is impossible to change customs. Some initial studies on psychology suggest that when Eastern people migrate to the West to live and vice versa, mindfulness and awareness practices will begin to change rapidly .

So, perhaps in addition to helping to remove some of the tension between culturally different couples or roommates, how can the human brain - whether in the East or the West - recognize the demands of the real world?

In other words, it implies that mental health professionals in the West will be hard-pressed to help identify Eastern people. According to the researchers, to a large extent, this has become useful for business administration schools when they know about additional cultural gaps for students who will participate in East-West trade later. .

"Understanding the cultural differences in the mind is important because the process of globalization contains many failures of communication," Park said.

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Nam Hy Hoang Phong (transliteration)
Original title: Cultural insights. Author Carey Goldberg.
Original Url: http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/03/03/cultural_insights/
Source: The Boston Globe. Posts posted online March 3, 2008.