Global and Local Processing of Letters and Faces: The Role of Visual Focal Attention

Studies in the literature have shown how the preference towards local or global processing can vary according to different characteristics of the stimuli involved, such as stimulus type and stimulus time duration. In the present study, we investigated whether letters and faces undergo similar or different global/local processing and the attentional mechanisms that might be linked to eventual differences. We used hierarchical, congruent, and incongruent letters and faces in different time conditions (180 and 500 ms) and we conducted three different experiments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that with stimuli shown for 180 ms, letters are processed more efficiently at the local level, with an inversion of the global interference effect. Conversely, faces are still processed more efficiently at the global level, with evidence of global advantage and global interference. The results of Experiment 2 showed that when the same stimuli are presented for longer (500 ms), they are still processed differently. Indeed, we observed faster local processing for letters but still a tendency, even if not significant, toward a global processing advantage for faces. Moreover, the cue-size effect, i.e., the ability to modulate visual focal attention based on the characteristics of the cue, was measured. In Experiment 3, the cue-size effect showed a statistically significant correlation with the local processing advantage for letters but not for faces. We conclude that during the almost automatic processing of letters it is possible to modulate focal attention on the basis of the task, narrowing the field of visual attention during the local task and neglecting the global stimulus. Conversely, during face processing, the holistic mechanism tends to prevail over focal attention modulation skills, even when it is explicitly required to focus on the local stimulus.