The Integration of Object Levels and Their Content: A Theory of Global/Local Processing and Related Hemispheric Differences.

Abstract

This article presents and tests the authors' integration hypothesis of global/local processing, which proposes that at early stages of processing, the identities of global and local units of a hierarchical stimulus are represented separately from information about their respective levels and that, therefore, identity and level information have to be integrated at later stages. It further states that the cerebral hemispheres differ in their capacities for these binding processes. Three experiments are reported in which the integration hypothesis was tested. Participants had to identify a letter at a prespecified level with the viewing duration restricted by a mask. False reporting of the letter at the nontarget level was predicted to occur more often when the integration of identity and level could fail. This was the case. Moreover, visual-field effects occurred, as expected. Finally, a multinomial model was constructed and fitted to the data.

Do the hemispheres differ in their preparation for global/local processing?

“…This proposition is related to the integration theory of global/local processing (Hübner and Volberg 2005). The theory says that the hemispheres do not generally diVer in their eYciency for processing the information at the global or local stimulus level, but rather in their capacity for binding the stimulus information to their respective level.…”

“…This is because the idea of a 'top-down asymmetry', as proposed by Yamaguchi et al (2000), is partly incompatible with other explanations on hemispheric diVerences in hierarchical processing. For example, in their integration theory of global and local processing Hübner and Volberg (2005) proposed that the LH and RH mainly diVer in their ability to produce high-level representations of compound stimuli where the levels are integrated with their respective contents. Because cues are typically single-level stimuli where no such integration is required, the occurrence of hemispheric diVerences can not easily be explained.…”

Strategies of flanker coprocessing in single and dual tasks.

“…A. Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974), the compound-stimulus task (e.g., Briand, 1994;Hübner & Volberg, 2005;Paquet & Merikle, 1988), the S-R compatibility task (e.g., Kornblum, Hasbroucq, & Osman, 1990;Marble & Proctor, 2000;Proctor & Vu, 2002), and the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935). Various results indicate that stimulus selectivity is limited in that some processing of irrelevant stimuli can hardly be avoided (e.g., C. W. Eriksen & Hoffman, 1973;Paquet, 2001;Paquet & Craig, 1997).…”

Binding global and local object features in visual working memory

“…Feature-to-level binding occurs after individual features have been identified (Hübner & Volberg, 2005). When participants were tasked with reporting either the global level (large letter) or local level (small letter) of a Navon figure that was presented briefly (24 ms) and then masked at various intervals (12-96 ms), participants were more likely to make feature-tolevel errors (e.g., reporting the local letter when asked to report the global letter or vice versa) at short stimulus-to-mask intervals (Hübner & Volberg).…”

“…Features of an object are initially processed independently of each other (Treisman & Gelade, 1980) and their hierarchical levels (Hübner & Volberg, 2005). However, perception of a unified object requires feature-to-feature (Bobject^) binding (Treisman & Gelade, 1980;Wheeler & Treisman, 2002) and feature-to-level binding (Hübner & Volberg, 2005).…”