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Updated: Aug 6, 2026

Cross-Modal Multivariate Pattern Analysis
Published on: November 9, 2011
Independent processing of parts and of their spatial organization in complex visual objects
Martin Arguin1, Daniel Saumier
1Groupe de Recherche en Neuropsychologie Expérimentale, Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada. martin.arguin@umontreal.ca
Abstract:
A visual search experiment using synthetic three-dimensional objects is reported. The target shared its constituent parts, the spatial organization of its parts, or both with the distractors displayed with it. Sharing of parts and sharing of spatial organization both negatively affected visual search performance, and these effects were strictly additive. These findings support theories of complex visual object perception that assume a parsing of the stimulus into its higher-order constituents (volumetric parts or visible surfaces). The additivity of the effects demonstrates that information on parts and information on spatial organization are processed independently in visual search.
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