Hierarchical forms processing in adults and children

A novel approach to investigate recursion and iteration in visual hierarchical processing

“…In particular, it is interesting that while the proper processing of hierarchies involves the integration of global and local information, there are several conditions in which individuals are biased to focus on the local information only. For instance, while attending to a big square composed of small circles, young children have a tendency to identify the small circles faster and easier than they can identify the big square (Harrison & Stiles, 2009;Poirel, Mellet, Houdé, & Pineau, 2008). This local-oriented strategy to process hierarchical stimuli is similar to that seen in non-human primates (Fagot & Tomonaga, 1999;Spinozzi, De Lillo, & Truppa, 2003).…”

The Effect of Component Meaningfulness on Global-Local Processing in Children and Adults

“…Similarly, it has been shown that memory representations for meaningful stimuli affect neural activity during global processing in adults (Beaucousin et al, 2011;Soldan, Zarahn, Hilton, & Stern, 2008). began to investigate the effect of element meaningfulness in 4-to 9-year-old children by using a similarity judgment task with hierarchical stimuli composed of objects and nonobjects (see also Harrison & Stiles, 2009, for similar results). They found that children were less accurate when the nontarget element was meaningful (e.g., the local level was meaningful when the global level was the intended target).…”

“…Therefore, 5-year-old children would be ideal to investigate given that they do not yet present the global visual bias found in adults (Dukette & Stiles, 2001;Poirel, Cassotti, Beaucousin, Pineau, & Houdé, 2012). Stiles (1996, 2001) also have some evidence, based on their research of element density, that suggests that integration abilities (i.e., combining components into a complex whole) continue to develop well into elementary school (see also Harrison & Stiles, 2009;Kimchi et al, 2005;Vinter, Puspitawati, & Witt, 2010), whereas segmentation abilities (i.e., parsing components) seem to be further developed, which would explain an initial local advantage. Note, however, that segmentation skills also continue to develop and affect hierarchical visual processing (Lange-Küttner, 2000).…”

The Development of Global and Local Processing: A Comparison of Children to Adults

“…Many studies across a range of paradigms have demonstrated that children steadily improve in tasks that involve the integration of global and local elements (e.g., Dukette & Stiles, 2001;Harrison & Stiles, 2009;Poirel, Mellet, Houde, & Pineau, 2008;Porporino, Shore, Iarocci, & Burack, 2004;Vinter, Puspitawati, & Witt, 2010). With respect to the adult model, three primary questions remain unclear: How does the relative efficiency of global and local processing change with development?…”

“…Global precedence was also observed in the adult comparison sample. It is important to note, however, that in both child studies and adult studies, basic perceptual characteristics of the task such as the relative salience of the local elements (Dukette & Stiles, 2001;Martin, 1979) as well as task complexity (Harrison & Stiles, 2009;Shedden & Reid, 2001) influence the relative dominance of global and local processing. Thus, it is difficult to compare findings across different paradigms and to draw simple conclusions.…”