Cultural Background and Experiences

The different experiences and learning opportunities available to people living in different cultural settings also shape their perception in genuine, documented ways. People who grow up in a relatively "pictureless" environment -- with little or no prior exposure to two-dimensional pictures -- often fail to recognise the objects depicted within pictures. Hudson's influential study of picture perception among African participants documented several such difficulties: many participants were unable to identify objects depicted in pictures (such as an antelope or a spear), failed to perceive the depth represented within pictures, and consequently interpreted the pictures incorrectly. In a related but different vein, Inuit peoples (Eskimos) have been found to make remarkably fine distinctions among many different varieties of snow that people from other cultural backgrounds would find difficult to tell apart, and some aboriginal groups of the Siberian region have similarly been found to differentiate among dozens of distinct skin colours of reindeer -- distinctions that people unfamiliar with reindeer-herding would generally be unable to make. …