In the natural environment, objects are frequently occluded, and peopl
e continuously complete partly occluded objects. Do local processes or
global processes control the completion of partly occluded objects? T
o answer this question, most previous studies simply asked subjects to
draw the completions they ''saw.'' Such drawing tasks are highly subj
ective, and they provide equivocal results. Our studies are the first
to use an objective, implicit paradigm (primed matching) to determine
the extent to which local or global processes underlie the visual comp
letion of partly occluded objects. Our results suggest that global pro
cesses dominate perceptual completion, whereas local processes do not
play a large role. Therefore, local theories of completion, or theorie
s in which local processes dominate, cannot be entirely correct.