Culture and attention: Recent empirical findings and new directions in cultural psychology

Over the past 3 decades, cultural psychologists have empirically investigated the influence of cultural meaning systems on human psychology. Under the rubric of holistic versus analytic thought, researchers have demonstrated that there are substantial cultural variations in social cognition, and that such variations are observable even in so‐called fundamental psychological processes, such as attention. The aim of this paper is to review 3 major themes in culture and attention: (1) culture and attention to nonsocial scenes, (2) culture and attention to social scenes, and (3) culture and aesthetics. The paper also discusses 4 major strands of research that could be considered important candidates to further advance the understanding of culture and attention: (1) research on “culture ? human psychological processes,” where we investigate how culture influences modes of attention; (2) research on “human psychology ? cultural processes,” where we investigate how those who hold a specific mode of attention create cultural products and tangible representations of culturally shared meanings; (3) research on cultural neuroscience, where we investigate underlying mechanisms and processes of specific modes of attention; and (4) research on cultural transmission processes, where we investigate how specific modes of attention is taught by adults and internalized by children.     

文化视域下文化神经科学学科主张与检讨

文化神经科学是在宏大的文化背景下来全面深入考察个体的"心理、行为与脑认知机制"之间规律的一门学科。文化神经科学所倡导的神经-文化交互作用模型表明该学科以融合视野引领心理学研究范式的变革成为可能。同时,从文化学视野来审视,亦折射出其在文化学层面的短板,即人文精神与文化意蕴在"文化"名义下日渐式微。     

Target Article with Commentaries: Developmental niche construction

Niche construction is the modification of components of the environment through an organism's activities. Humans modify their environments mainly through ontogenetic and cultural processes, and it is this reliance on learning, plasticity and culture that lends human niche construction a special potency. In this paper we aim to facilitate discussion between researchers interested in niche construction and those interested in human cognitive development by highlighting some of the related processes. We discuss the transmission of culturally relevant information, how the human mind is a symbol‐generating and artefact‐devising system, and how these processes are bi‐directional, with infants and children both being directed, and directing, their own development. We reflect on these in the light of four approaches: natural pedagogy, activity theory, distributed cognition and situated learning. Throughout, we highlight pertinent examples in non‐humans that parallel or further explicate the processes discussed. Finally we offer three future directions; two involving the use of new techniques in the realms of neuroscience and modelling, and the third suggesting exploration of changes in the effects of niche construction across the lifespan.     

The Emerging (Social) Neuroscience of SES

Social scientists have long been interested in understanding how socioeconomic status (SES) affects the way people think, feel, and behave. Neuroscience has provided new tools (fMRI, EEG, and ERP) to allow us to answer these questions, demonstrating, for example, that lower SES is linked to stronger mirror neural responses, greater mentalizing, enhanced vigilance to threat, and lesser likelihood to spontaneously infer traits based on limited information. The present paper (i) reviews evidence that SES affects neural responses involved in a wide range of psychological processes, (ii) highlights the value of neural methods in investigations of SES, (iii) discusses cultural neuroscience as a potential framework to understand why SES has the effects it does on the brain, (iv) considers previous developmental neuroscience findings regarding SES and attention in light of cultural neuroscience, and (v) discusses future challenges, opportunities, and questions for this emerging field.     

心理学研究中人的命运与文化的命运

目的:通过追踪文化研究历史,探究对当今文化心理学研究的启示意义。方法:整理和回顾心理学史上关于文化的研究及文献,并对各阶段的文化研究进行评述。结果:文化在心理学史上经历了坎坷多桀的命运,文化在各阶段的不同遭遇与研究者们对人的本质的认识密切相关。结论:对人的本质的正确理解是当今文化心理学健康发展的前提。     

Interrelated and interdependent

The possibilities for building and nourishing connections among the social, cultural, neuroscientific, biological, and cognitive sciences in the service of understanding children and their development are tremendously exciting. Crossing, and integrating across, disciplinary boundaries, especially those disciplines relating to biology/neuroscience, society/culture, cognition, emotion, perception, and motor function has greatly increased over the last decade and hopefully will increase exponentially in the future. All of these aspects of being human are multiply-interrelated and we need to make far more progress in understanding those interrelations.     

What If? The Farther Shores of Neuroethics

Neuroscience is clearly making enormous progress toward understanding how human brains work. The implications of this progress for ethics, law, society, and culture are much less clear. Some have argued that neuroscience will lead to vast changes, superseding much of law and ethics. The likely limits to the explanatory power of neuroscience argue against that position, as do the limits to the social relevance of what neuroscience will be able to explain. At the same time neuroscience is likely to change societies through increasing their abilities to predict future behavior, to infer subjective mental states by observing physical brain states (??read minds??), to provide evidence in some cases relevant to criminal responsibility, to provide new ways to intervene to ??treat antisocial brains,?? and to enhance healthy brains. Neuroscience should make important cultural changes in our special, and specially negative, views of ??mental?? versus ??physical?? illness by showing that mental illness is a dysfunction of a physical organ. It will not likely change our beliefs, implicit or explicit, in free will, or spark a new conflict between science and religion akin to the creationism controversy.     

Why (and how) should we study the interplay between emotional arousal,Theory of Mind,and inhibitory control to understand moral cognition?

Findings in the field of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience have shed new light on our understanding of the psychological and biological bases of morality. Although a lot of attention has been devoted to understanding the processes that underlie complex moral dilemmas, attempts to represent the way in which individuals generate moral judgments when processing basic harmful actions are rare. Here, we will outline a model of morality which proposes that the evaluation of basic harmful actions relies on complex interactions between emotional arousal, Theory of Mind (ToM) capacities, and inhibitory control resources. This model makes clear predictions regarding the cognitive processes underlying the development of and ability to generate moral judgments. We draw on data from developmental and cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopathology research to evaluate the model and propose several conceptual and methodological improvements that are needed to further advance our understanding of moral cognition and its development.     

Social Neuroscience: Progress and Implications for Mental Health

ABSTRACT— Social neuroscience is a new, interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how biological systems implement social processes and behavior. Social neuroscience capitalizes on biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social behavior, and it uses social and behavioral constructs and data to inform and refine theories of neural organization and function. We focus here on the progress and potential of social neuroscience in the area of mental health. Research in social neuroscience has grown dramatically in recent years. Among the most active areas of research we found are brain-imaging studies in normal children and adults; animal models of social behavior; studies of stroke patients; imaging studies of psychiatric patients; and research on social determinants of peripheral neural, neuroendocrine, and immunological processes. We also found that these areas of research are proceeding along largely independent trajectories. Our goals in this article are to review the development of this field, examine some currently promising approaches, identify obstacles and opportunities for future advances and integration, and consider how this research can inform work on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders.     

认知神经科学的心理学理论价值

从认知神经科学面临的三个挑战--(1)神经科学是“还原” 的,不能完全解释一个人的心理活动过程;（2）认知神经科学无法真正解释人的心理与行为;（3）认知神经科学只能揭示出神经事件与认知活动或行为活动的相关性--入手来讨论其心理学理论价值,阐明认知神经科学在心理学研究中的重要地位及主流趋势。同时指出,认知神经科学只是心理学学科门类中的一种,它能解决的问题也只限于特定的范围,对它要有科学理性的认识和定位。     

注意的跨文化研究及意义

Nisbett提出东西方文化差异可能导致了注意的差异,但是并没有对这种现象的原因和机制提出直接的证据.最近几年来,文化对注意过程的影响有了新的研究和发现,证实了Nisbett最初的观点是正确的.文化与注意的行为研究包括在整体与局部加工、场依存与场独立、变化盲等方面的研究.对于注意文化差异的潜在原因和机制,研究者们主要从发展性研究、ERP和FMRI研究等方面进行探讨.未来研究需要进一步探索文化对其它注意指标的影响、文化与注意的脑机制以及文化与注意的应用研究等等.     

Biocultural orchestration of developmental plasticity across levels: the interplay of biology and culture in shaping the mind and behavior across the life span

The author reviews reemerging coconstructive conceptions of development and recent empirical findings of developmental plasticity at different levels spanning several fields of developmental and life sciences. A cross-level dynamic biocultural coconstructive framework is endorsed to understand cognitive and behavioral development across the life span. This framework integrates main conceptions of earlier views into a unifying frame, viewing the dynamics of life span development as occurring simultaneously within different time scales (i.e., moment-to-moment microgenesis, life span ontogeny, and human phylogeny) and encompassing multiple levels (i.e., neurobiological, cognitive, behavioral, and sociocultural). Viewed through this metatheoretical framework, new insights of potential interfaces for reciprocal cultural and experiential influences to be integrated with behavioral genetics and cognitive neuroscience research can be more easily prescribed.     

Socio-cultural selection and the sculpting of the human genome: Cultures’ directional forces on evolution and development

This paper argues for culture as a significant determinant of the modern human genome. As progress in the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology have gained greater insights into evolutionary process, aspects of classical proposals explaining how phenotypic responses to environmental experience could make their way into the genotype have returned in new guises. Recent proposals recognize environmental context as a key source of genetic variation by directly altering selection pressures to mask and unmask adaptive value of expressed traits, by reorganizing the combination and expression of genes during ontogeny to provide novel variants for selection, and by influencing developmental trajectories through epigenetic systems acutely sensitive to ontogenetic contexts. The emergence of a robust human socio-cultural niche, shielding humans from more proximate evolutionary pressures that marked our ancestral evolution, has arguably provided the strongest directive force on modern human evolution. Language is discussed as an exemplar of a cultural niche with a powerful self-organizing dynamic and the potential to dramatically alter the human genome.     

A Theology of Nature: Social Neuroscience and Its Theological Implications

This article explores social neuroscience, an emergent subfield of neuroscience, and highlights its implications for a theology of nature. This author argues that since social neuroscience and theology are both non-reductionist, they can contribute to a balanced view of human nature and nurture. Social neuroscientific research has shown the ways in which social factors impact the brain’s development, and also how social factors are necessary for the treatment of diseases. Social neuroscience can thus enrich essential teachings and practice of religions, such as sociality and healing. Finally, this article examines how social neuroscience can be used in a reinterpretation of Wesleyan soteriology.     

Developmental cognitive neuroscience: progress and potential

Developmental cognitive neuroscience is an evolving field that investigates the relations between neural and cognitive development. Lying at the intersection of diverse disciplines, work in this area promises to shed light on classic developmental questions, mechanisms subserving developmental change, diagnosis and treatment of developmental disorders, and cognitive and neuroscientific topics traditionally considered outside the domain of development. Fundamental questions include: What are the interrelations between developmental changes in the brain (e.g. in connectivity, chemistry, morphology) and developmental changes in children's behavior and cognitive abilities (e.g. representational complexity, ability to sustain selective attention, speed of processing)? Why, and how, is learning enhanced during certain periods in development? How is our knowledge organized, and how does this change with development? We discuss preliminary investigations of such questions and directions for future work.     

Jungian Analysis of the Chinese Mythological Image of Sun Wukong

This paper examines the symbolism of the cultural image Sun Wukong (the Monkey King), a Chinese legendary hero, and how it influenced an eight-year-old boy’s psychic development. Through an analysis of Sun Wukong’s life from his birth to attaining Buddhahood, a three-phase healing process is identified in Sun Wukong’s tale and the psychotherapeutic process: “naming and initiating,” “nurturing and taming,” and “transforming and transcending,” proposed by Dr. Heyong Shen. Sandplay visually highlighted these key clinical changes in conscious awareness and developmental behaviour influencing the boy’s individuation process. Images found either in cultural traditions or spontaneously emerging from the unconscious in individuals are of significance in human life, offering pathways to psychic healing and development. Further, myths and cultural resources used in clinical work demonstrate that having cultural competency is invaluable in Jungian analysis. Pathogenic and health-maintenance factors of culture can be explored in future clinical practice and research.     

Accommodating religion to modern neuroscience

Science and religion commonly reside in either an awkward peaceful co-existence or in bitter conflict. That conflict emerges especially in college students as they acquire knowledge about physical, biological, and social sciences. Most college students bring their shallow childhood religious instruction to their college classes. Neuroscience can help students realise how their religious views are affected by their biology, conditioning, experiences, culture, education, emotions, and cognitive processes. In turn, religion can provide world views that challenge neuroscience and remind us of how much remains unknown and may even be unknowable. This report summarises the author’s three semesters’ experience of teaching an upper-division undergraduate essay and discussion course in which students discover how neuroscience and religion inform each other.     

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in "social cognitive neuroscience," although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.     

文化神经科学：一个新兴的跨学科领域

文化神经科学是一个将文化,心理和大脑整合起来的新兴的跨学科领域。本文简要地介绍了从2000年到2010年在文化神经科学领域内的各种观点,同时回顾了该领域里一些典型的功能性磁共振（fMRI）的研究成果。文章认为,文化神经科学可为人类心理的研究提供一个全新的,整合性的理论框架,而且,它还为中国心理学家提供了机遇：使用中国被试开展文化神经科学研究去取得世界一流的成果。     

What is the self? A psychobiological perspective

Philosophers have long struggled with questions about the nature of personal identity and of the self, with some viewing the self as a transcendent entity, and others arguing that the self is a constructed fiction. An approach based in cognitive-affective neuroscience emphasizes that self-related structures and processes are based in the brain-mind, and emerge within the social processes of human development. Alterations in such structures and processes are present in a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders, and neuropsychiatric lesion and functional brain imaging studies have led to more detailed awareness of the precise neuronal circuitry underlying self-representations. A cognitive-affective neuroscience approach provides a conceptual basis from which clinical research can further explore how best to assess and treat a wide range of disruptions to the self.