Abstract
When operating a product, images of icons or buttons have crucial roles for understanding the use. This study focused on understanding a diverse tendency among people from different countries on image recognition. We studied two different ways of cognizing images: Attribute-oriented Thought versus Relationship-oriented Thought. Two experimental methods were tested: one was an experiment of categorizing images and the other was an experiment of image association. Through the experiment on categorizing images, it was found that there were cognitive differences among nationalities; 71 British and 81 Chinese subjects had stronger tendencies in Attribute-oriented Thought than 76 Japanese and 81 Korean subjects. Next, we examined an experiment on image association. As a result, the British and Chinese subjects had lesser tendencies in Attribute-oriented Thought than the Japanese and Korean subjects; the subjects' responses of the second experiment differed from the ones of the first experiment. These results suggested that the difference of experimental methods could influence on the way of thinking of human beings. The differences were considered as two experimental conditions: the existence of related stimuli, and the differences of cognitive processes.
