Abstract
The question of whether different levels of hierarchically structured visual stimuli are processed in parallel by separate systems or sequentially by a single processing resource was investigated by recording behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures in two divided-attention experiments. In the first experiment, letter stimuli were presented in which a large (global) letter was built up by the spatial arrangement of small (local) letters. Subjects were asked to respond to target letters that could occur with equal probability at the global or local level of the centrally presented stimuli. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results indicated a dissociation between the relative speed of responding to global or local target letters and the direction in which one level of information interfered with the processing of the other, suggesting the existence of separate systems involved in global and local pattern processing. Furthermore, ERP correlates of early target perception pointed to hemispheric differences of global and local pattern perception. Experiment 2 further tested this hemispheric asymmetry by using the same letter stimuli as in Experiment 1, but presenting them to positions at the left and right of fixation. ERP analysis strongly supported the assumption that separate perceptual systems process global- and local-level information in parallel with a left/right hemispheric asymmetry of local/global processing.
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Heinze, HJ., Johannes, S., Münte, T.F., Mangun, G.R. (1994). The Order of Global- and Local-Level Information Processing: Electrophysiological Evidence for Parallel Perceptual Processes. In: Heinze, HJ., Münte, T.F., Mangun, G.R. (eds) Cognitive Electrophysiology. Birkhäuser, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0283-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0283-7_4
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