Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments
Published on: January 23, 2017
The distortion of spatial relationships between local elements in hierarchical patterns decreases the global
Dolores Luna1, Pedro R Montoro
1Departamento de Psicología Básica 1, Facultad de Psicología UNED, Madrid, Spain. mluna@psi.uned.es
Abstract:
The present study examined the influence of perceptual organization on the processing of global and local information in hierarchical patterns. In two experiments, we examined whether disturbing the spatial relationships between local elements by introducing between-element distance and size heterogeneity affected global processing dominance. The effects on global processing dominance of undistorted compound stimuli with equidistant and homogeneous local elements were compared with those of compound stimuli which presented between-element distance heterogeneity (Experiment 1) or heterogeneity in size (Experiment 2). The results showed that the global advantage effect decreased similarly under conditions of between-element distance and size heterogeneity that disturbed the spatial relationships between local elements. The results provide new evidence on the role of perceptual organization in hierarchical patterns processing.
Related Concept Videos
Halo Effect
Habitat Fragmentation
Causes of Similarity-Dissimilarity Effect
Impact of Schemas
Robbers Cave
Gestalt Principles of Perception