Citation

Peressotti F, Rumiati R, Nicoletti R, Job R. Acta Psychol. 1991; 77(1): 35-46.

Affiliation

University of Padova, Italy.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1991, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

1950635

Abstract

Two experiments are reported investigating the order in which global and local information of visual forms is processed. Subjects were presented with compound stimuli and were asked to identify the local level, always consisting of small letters. At the global level, the stimuli could be either large letters, consistent or inconsistent with the local level, or meaningless patterns derived from the large letters by modifying the spatial relations among segments. Results showed that inconsistent stimuli were responded to more slowly than both consistent stimuli and meaningless patterns, which did not differ from each other. This was true both when letters and patterns were presented intermixed, as in experiment 1 or separately, as in experiment 2. The pattern obtained accords well with predictions derived from the perceptual precedence hypothesis which states that global information becomes available at a faster rate than local information. No support for the alternative, post-perceptual, hypothesis was found.

Language: en