Does culture effect our visual perceptions of the world?

[cheerfulgreek]

At one time colonial missionaries in Africa believed that they observed differences in visual perception among different cultures. Since then other studies showed that North Americans pay more attention to objects in the foreground of a photograph, whereas Asians focus on the background. I'm not sure how true all of this is. I guess this would pretty much suggest a familiarity with socially complicated and interdependent situations. Who knows?

Are there perception differences? Are people from different cultures able to perform tasks in roughly the same amount of time, but if given tasks to perform that are not preferred by their culture, would it take more brain activity to finish the task?

For me, I think that rooting out cultural differences in perception would be really hard, if not, impossible.

I would like to read other opinions on this.