Experience-Tuned Predictive Coding in Monocultural Brains: A Visual Mismatch Response Study.

Spontaneous cultural categorization, mediated by automatic preattentive mechanisms, has been established in bicultural individuals through visual mismatch response (vMMR). However, how long-term monocultural experience shapes this process remains unexplored. Using vMMR, a neural index of prediction-error signaling, we found that predominantly monocultural Mainland Chinese exhibited a significant negative vMMR specifically to nondominant cultural deviants, while showing null responses to dominant cultural deviants. For Western participants, our primary analysis revealed no statistically significant vMMRs to both nondominant and dominant cultural deviants. Furthermore, exploratory regression analyses indicated that higher interdependent self-construal predicted a more positive vMMR to nondominant cultural deviants across both groups, suggesting a potential general role for this social-cognitive trait in modulating preattentive salience. No significant modulation effects were found for independent self-construal. These findings not only extend the phenomenon of automatic cultural change detection to predominantly monocultural brains but also provide preliminary evidence for experience-dependent neuroplasticity in predictive coding mechanisms, offering incremental advances in models of culture-cognition interactions.