People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.
Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scan evenly(均匀的) across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.
"We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect (忽略) the mouth."
According to Jack and her colleagues, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used to reliably convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.
The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.
It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than did Westerners. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggests that whereas Westerners use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less."
In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotion. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.
小题1:What were the people asked to do in the study?
A．To make a face at each other.
B．To get their faces impressive.
C．To classify (分类) some face pictures.
D．To observe the researchers' faces小题2:What does the underlined word "they" in Paragraph 6 refer to?
A．The participants in the study.
B．The researchers of the study.
C．The errors made during the study.
D．The data collected from the study.小题3:In comparison(比较) with Westerners, Easterners are likely to .
A．do translation more successfully
B．study the mouth more frequently
C．examine the eyes more attentively
D．read facial expressions more correctly小题4:What can be the best title for the passage?
A．The Eye as the Window to the Soul
B．Cultural Differences in Reading Emotions
C．Effective Methods to Develop Social Skills
D．How to Increase Cross-cultural Understanding
小题1:C
小题2:A
小题3:C
小题4:B
题目分析：本文叙述了经过研究发现东方人与西方人看不同的面貌特征看面部表情是不同的，而西方人用全脸来表达情感,东方人多用的眼睛来表达情感和嘴使用更少。简而言之,这个数据表明,面部表情并不普遍的人类情感的信号。
小题1:细节理解题。根据They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.故选C。
小题2:细节理解题。根据上下文可知指的是参与者，故选A。
小题3:细节理解题。根据Easterners use the eyes more故选 C。
小题4:标题归纳题。纵观全文短文主要谈及的是读情感时的文化差异，故选B。
点评：文章标题是文章的点睛之笔。标题归纳题在英语阅读理解题中属深层理解题，它要求考生在通读全文的基础上，准确把握文章大意及作者的写作意图。一般说来，标题应该具有概括性、针对性、简洁性三个突出特点。其中概括性，是指标题应最大程度地覆盖全文，囊括文章的主要内容，体现文章的主题；针对性，是指标题的含义要直接指向文章的主要特点；而简洁性，则是指标题应言简意赅，能吸引读者的注意力，并唤起读者对文章的阅读兴趣等。