. This seems to suggest that our environment has an impact on our perceptual development. Segall’s research however, has been criticised due to the linguistic barrier. The cross cultural variations may be due to language differences, which mean that perception may be similar, but is reported in a different way. This would decrease the validity of findings.
Gregor and McPherson compared two groups of Australian Aborigines. One group lived in a carpentered environment, whereas the other lived in a natural environment. The two groups did not differ on their susceptibility to the Muller Lyer illusion. This suggests that cross cultural differences in perception may depend more on training and education than on the environment. Even so, this suggests that it is nurture, rather than nature that determines our perceptual development. The external validity of this research may be limited due to the use of visual illusions; they are not representative of cultural differences in everyday perception.
Hudson investigated perception of simple two dimensional drawings. He found that non Western societies had difficulty perceiving 3D scenes in drawings, whereas those from Western societies had no problem. This again suggests that perceptual development is influenced by training and education, as those in Western societies are trained from a very young age to perceive pictures in 3D. The task used in this research was however, extremely ethnocentric. The two dimensional picture perception task is a culturally specific task based on Western drawing styles. Thus we must be careful in drawing conclusions on cultural differences as the findings may be biased by ethnocentrism.
Deregowski et al also researched perception of 2D images. They found that the Me’en in Ethiopia did not seem to recognise drawings of animals on paper. This might suggest that they had poor ability to make sense of two dimensional representations. However, when the Me’en were shown animals drawn on cloth (a material familiar to them), they were generally able to recognise them. This highlights the argument that Western psychologists can easily misinterpret differences in perception due to ethnocentrism.
Although cross cultural research is extremely useful