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A single-element impact in global/local processing: the roles of element centrality and diagnosticity

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Abstract

A modification of the compound stimuli paradigm has been used to measure the impact of a certain single element on the local-to-global effect and to compare the measured impacts of central and non-central elements matched on diagnosticity. In addition to global letters made of identical response-associated elements, some global letters comprised of only one response-associated element at a specific location (with all other ones being response-neutral), and in some other global letters that critical element was rather response-neutral (with all other ones being response-associated). Experiment 1 showed that the contribution of a central element that served as a distinctive feature was as large as the joint contribution of all other elements. Experiment 2 (as well as Experiment 4) showed that, in contrast, a non-central element that served as a distinctive feature did not contribute at all to the effect. Experiment 3 showed that the contribution of a central element was still as large as the joint contribution of all other elements even when it was completely irrelevant for selecting the response.

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Acknowledgments

The experiments reported in this paper were supported in part by a grant no 883/03 from the Israeli Science Foundation. The author is indebted to Ziziana Lazar for programming the experiments, to Ori Amir, Jonathan Dvash and Noa shalev for running them and to Ronen Kasten for helping in setting them up and conducting the analyses.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, 31905, Israel

    David Navon

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  1. David Navon
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Correspondence to David Navon.

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Navon, D. A single-element impact in global/local processing: the roles of element centrality and diagnosticity. Psychological Research 72, 155–167 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-006-0102-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-006-0102-2

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