Findings: 1999-2005
Physical Cognition
What is it?
Global and Local Processing
Global and Local Processing in Adult Humans, 5-year olds, and NW monkeys
New! Published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, Volume 120, No. 4, November, 2006
Pdf available -- please seek permission from author. Copyright © 2006 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. Use of copyrighted material requires permission from APA and the author.
Abstract
This study compared adults (Homo sapiens), young children
(Homo sapiens), and adult tamarins (Saguinus oedipus)
while they discriminated global and local properties of stimuli. Subjects
were trained to discriminate
a circle made of circle elements from a square made of square elements,
and were tested with circles made of squares and squares made of circles.
Adult humans showed a global bias in testing whichthat was unaffected
by the density of the elements in the stimuli. Children showed a global
bias with dense displays, but discriminatedion by both local and global
properties with sparse displays. Adult tamarins’ biases matched
the children. The striking similarity between the perceptual processing
of adult monkeys and autistic humans diagnosed with autism, and the difference
between this and normativelyl developing human perception is discussed.
Keywords: Global precedence, local bias, perception, discrimination,
cotton -top tamarins