Global and Local Visual Processing: Influence of Perceptual Field Variables

TL;DR

This study investigates how perceptual field variables like Congruency, Size, and Sparsity influence the Global Precedence Effect in visual processing, highlighting the importance of task paradigms and extending findings to everyday behavior.

Contribution

It provides new empirical evidence on the effects of specific perceptual variables and task paradigms on global advantage in visual processing.

Findings

Congruency and Size significantly affect GPE

Sparsity has a small effect on GPE

Task paradigms influence the evaluation of PFVs' effects

Abstract

The Global Precedence Effect (GPE) suggests that the processing of global properties of a visual stimulus precedes the processing of local properties. The generality of this theory was argued for four decades during different known Perceptual Field Variables. The effect size of various PFVs, regarding the findings during these four decades, were pooled in our recent meta-analysis study. Pursuing the study, in the present paper, we explore the effects of Congruency, Size, and Sparsity and their interaction on global advantage in two different experiments with different task paradigms; Matching judgment and Similarity judgment. Upon results of these experiments, Congruency and Size have significant effects and Sparsity has small effects. Also, the task paradigm and its interaction with other PFVs are shown significant effects in this study, which shows the prominence of the role of task paradigms in evaluating PFVs' effects on GPE. Also, we found that the effects of these parameters were not specific to the special condition that individuals were instructed to retinal stabilize. So, the experiments were more extendible to daily human behavior.