Binding global and local object features in visual working memory

Abstract

When briefly presented with global and local visual information, individuals report global information more quickly and more accurately than local information, a phenomenon known as the global precedence effect (GPE;Navon, 1977). We investigated whether a bias toward global information persists in visual working memory (VWM) and whether the VWM representations for global and local features include information bound to their hierarchical levels and to each other. Navon figures, in which a larger (global) letter is composed of smaller (local) letters, were presented, and participants performed a change detection task that required participants to remember features only (either a global or local letter changed to a new identity); features bound to their hierarchical levels (the global and local letters within an object swapped levels); or features bound to each other within an object (2 letters from the same level swapped between objects). Performance suggested that there was a GPE in VWM (new global letters were more accurately detected than new local letters) and that although global and local features were not necessarily bound together in VWM, they were bound to their corresponding hierarchical levels. These results indicate that level binding in VWM occurs more readily than binding specific object features together. These findings further our understanding of how hierarchical objects are represented in VWM.

Attending globally or locally: Incidental learning of optimal visual attention allocation.

“…The lack of a relationship between the size of the change probability effect and awareness of the probability information in the LSF-probable conditions may be due to a preexisting bias toward LSF information. This bias is evident in previous research on change detection performance for changes to LSF and HSF features of objects that demonstrate a global precedence effect (higher change detection performance for LSF changes than for HSF changes; Ericson et al, 2016). Potentially, when the probability information is consistent with the preexisting bias, explicit awareness is less likely to occur and less likely to be related to the size of the change probability effect.…”

“…On the other hand, when waiting for a stoplight to change from red to green, attention must be allocated locally to the light to detect the color change. There is, however, a natural bias to focus on and remember global information over local details (Ericson, Beck, & van Lamsweerde, 2016; Navon, 1977). Therefore, adjusting the focus of attention to a scope that is most appropriate to the task at hand requires flexibility.…”