Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 19, 2026

Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity
Published on: March 18, 2019
Who sees trees before forest? The obsessive-compulsive style of visual attention
Iftah Yovel1, William Revelle, Susan Mineka
1Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 15 Parkman St., ACC 812, Boston, MA 02114-3117, USA. iyovel@partners.org
Abstract:
It has been suggested that individuals with obsessive-compulsive personalities tend to focus on small local details in their surroundings, whereas histrionic individuals are characterized by more global information processing. Using the global-local hierarchical-letters paradigm, we were able to provide support for the first but not the second hypothesis. Measures related to obsessive-compulsive personality disorder were associated with excessive visual attention to small details of the hierarchical letters. Specifically, the obsessive-compulsive cognitive style was associated with local interference, which reflects the effects of distraction by to-be-ignored small details on identification of global information.
Related Concept Videos
Visual Agnosia
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Gestalt Principles of Perception
Prosopagnosia
Perceptual Constancy
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Diagnostic Criteria and Symptoms
To diagnose ADHD, symptoms must manifest before age 12 and be evident across multiple settings.

