AsianScientist (Mar. 26, 2011) – Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that eye movement patterns of Chinese people, born and raised in China, are different to those of Caucasian people living in Britain.
The team, working with Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, investigated eye movements in Chinese and British people. To test for fast eye movements, participants were asked to respond to spots of light with their eyes as they appeared suddenly to the right or left of their line of sight.
They discovered that a type of fast eye movement, called saccades, is rare in British people but much more common in Chinese people. 97 percent of British people had the common fifth of a second delay, and only 3 percent had the much faster response. In the Chinese group, however, 30 percent had the faster, less common response.
Rare eye movements were originally thought to be useful to identify signs of brain injury or disease, such as schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis, in populations across the world. Dr Paul Knox, from the Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease, explains:
“In a person from any country in the world we would expect the reaction time of fast eye movements to be approximately a fifth of a second. Very rarely we find some people with eye movement reaction times that are much shorter than this, at around a tenth of a second. This, however, is usually assumed to be a sign of an underlying problem that makes it difficult to keep the eyes pointing where you would like for a long enough period.”
Suggestions for these differences include culture, education, work and social activities. Other possibilities include basic differences in brain structure and function that produce the kind of behavior identified.
Scientists are now investigating eye movement in Chinese people born and living in Britain compared to Chinese populations born in China but now living in Britain. The study aims to further understanding into the cultural effects on eye movement behavior.
The research is funded by the Royal Society and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
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Source: University of Liverpool.
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