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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cultural Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1533274

Immigration Modulates Audiovisual Emotional Processing in Adults: Is This Really an Influence of the Host Culture?

Provisionally accepted
Anna K. Nakamura Anna K. Nakamura 1,2Hisako W. Yamamoto Hisako W. Yamamoto 3Sachiko Takagi Sachiko Takagi 4Tetsuya Matsuda Tetsuya Matsuda 5Hiroyuki Okada Hiroyuki Okada 5Chiaki Ishiguro Chiaki Ishiguro 6Akihiro Tanaka Akihiro Tanaka 1*
  • 1 Tokyo Woman's Christian University, Tokyo, Japan
  • 2 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Tokyo, Japan
  • 3 Ritsumeikan University, Ibaraki, Japan
  • 4 Tokiwa University, Mito, Ibaraki, Japan
  • 5 Tamagawa University, Machida, Tōkyō, Japan
  • 6 University of the Sacred Heart, Shibuya, Tōkyō, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Individuals from Western cultures rely on facial expressions during the audiovisual emotional processing of faces and voices. In contrast, those from East-Asian cultures rely more on voices. This study aimed to investigate whether immigrants adopt the tendency of the host culture or whether common features of migration produce a similar modification regardless of the destination. We examined how immigrants from Western countries to Japan perceive emotional expressions from faces and voices using MRI scanning. Immigrants behaviorally exhibited a decrease in the influence of emotions in voices with a longer stay in Japan. Additionally, immigrants with a longer stay showed a higher response in the posterior superior temporal gyrus, a brain region associated with audiovisual emotional integration, when processing emotionally congruent faces and voices. These modifications imply that immigrants from Western cultures tend to rely even less on voices, in contrast to the tendency of voice-dominance observed in native Japanese people. This change may be explained by the decreased focus on prosodic aspects of voices during second language acquisition. The current and further exploration will aid in the better adaptation of immigrants to a new cultural society.

    Keywords: immigration, Audiovisual processing, Emotion Perception, functional MRI, right posterior superior temporal gyrus

    Received: 23 Nov 2024; Accepted: 15 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Nakamura, Yamamoto, Takagi, Matsuda, Okada, Ishiguro and Tanaka. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Akihiro Tanaka, Tokyo Woman's Christian University, Tokyo, Japan

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.