ROLE OF ECCENTRICITY AND SIZE IN THE GLOBAL PRECEDENCE EFFECT

The global precedence hypothesis was investigated in a series of exper iments by considering the effects of eccentricity and size and their p ossible interaction on the speed of processing of both global and loca l levels of compound stimuli. Furthermore, the possible effect of size -eccentricity uncertainty on the temporal order of processing was exam ined across eccentricity. The results showed a global advantage in spe ed of processing regardless of experimental presentation conditions wh en the confound of eccentricity was controlled. Somewhat surprisingly, the pattern of response times as a function of eccentricity was quadr atic. Subsequent experiments indicated that the quadratic functions ob tained result from the summed individual effects of size and eccentric ity. The results indicate that size and eccentricity are the main dete rminants of the global advantage effect and that many previous finding s may be explained in terms of these effects.