The principal objective is to examine alternatives for the origin of the adult Himba local bias. The Himba are a semi-nomadic population of animal herders whose territory is spread over 25,000 square miles in northern Namibia described as the last wilderness in southern Africa. Westernization is coming rapidly to the Himba and a secondary objective is to ensure that their data are not affected by exposure to Western artifacts. The Himba are clearly remarkable to the extent that they can isolate local parts of figures and therefore be very exact in their size judgements. Even if the Himba have a local bias similar to that of Western pre-school children, it is nevertheless greater and with a lack of gender differences. It is important to stress how surprising are the Himba data. Indeed, so much is global bias the norm in the analysis of visual stimuli, that it has even been proposed as a default human characteristic. Clearly, the Himba dispute that view. The similarities in attention between the Himba and atypically developing individuals (eg, autistic children) coupled with the strikingly different social outcomes, will open up new avenues for research away from current biologically deterministic views.

Computer tasks, recording either latency and accuracy measures, or participants' choices between multiple visual stimuli.