Seeing the world differently

[mzteris]

Asians, Americans See World Differently
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently.

Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to researchers at the University of Michigan.

The researchers led by Hannah-Faye Chua and Richard Nisbett tracked the eye movements of the students — 25 European Americans and 27 native Chinese — to determine where they were looking in a picture and how long they focused on a particular area.

"They literally are seeing the world differently," said Nisbett, who believes the differences are cultural.

"Asians live in more socially complicated world than we do," he said in a telephone interview. "They have to pay more attention to others than we do. We are individualists. We can be bulls in a china shop, they can't afford it."

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