The neural mechanisms of short-term changes in semantic interpretation following cross-cultural interaction

Cultural mindsets are profiles of loosely related, culturally shaped cognitive tendencies expressed across different aspects of cognitive processing, from visual attention to semantic interpretation. These tendencies develop through cultural experience and interpersonal interaction. However, whether cross-cultural interaction can induce short-term changes in specific culturally shaped cognitive tendencies, and in which aspects of cognitive processing these changes are expressed, remains unknown. In this study, Chinese learners interacted with either a US instructor (cross-cultural interaction condition) or a Chinese instructor (within-cultural interaction condition), and then independently watched an ambiguous geometric animation under concurrent fNIRS and eye-tracking recording, followed by a verbal recall task in which they described their interpretations of the animation. We assessed visual-attention processing through gaze-allocation patterns and semantic understanding through interpretations expressed in verbal recall. The results showed that cross-cultural interaction changed learners’ semantic interpretations. At the neural level, cross-cultural interaction reduced inter-subject correlation (ISC) in the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), and inter-subject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA) showed that pMTG neural-response similarity was associated with semantic-interpretation similarity. Furthermore, moderation analysis revealed that perceived communication quality moderated the association between instructors’ analytic–holistic tendencies and learners’ short-term change in pMTG ISC, particularly for the causality dimension. These findings provide neurocognitive evidence that cross-cultural interaction can induce short-term changes in specific aspects of culturally shaped cognitive processing, with the clearest changes occurring in semantic interpretation in the present task.