Hemispheric processing of form versus texture at the local level of hierarchical patterns

Kimchi (Kimchi, R., 1992. Primacy of wholistic processing and global/local paradigm: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin 112, 24-38) proposed that the perception of hierarchical stimuli is dependent on the number of local elements. The local level of stimuli with smaller numbers of elements is perceived as discrete forms, and irrelevant form information at the global level affects processing of the local level; with larger numbers of local elements, however, the local level is seen as being comprised of a texture, and interlevel interaction is eliminated. The current study provides a test of Kimchi's hypothesis for left versus right cerebral hemispheric (LH vs. RH) processing, employing a stimulus set that sampled the critical range of a number of local elements more thoroughly than previous studies. Results indicate that (i) increasing the number of local elements reduces and eventually eliminates interlevel interference, (ii) the crossover point between perception of local elements as form vs. texture does not differ for LH vs. RH processing, and (iii) hemispheric differences in local-global processing of stimuli comprised of geometric shapes are not robust, although an LH advantage for local targets was obtained for stimuli with few local elements.