HEMISPHERIC PROCESSING OF FORM VERSUS TEXTURE AT THE LOCAL-LEVEL OF HIERARCHICAL PATTERNS

Kimchi (Kimchi, R., 1992. Primacy of wholistic processing and global/l ocal paradigm: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin 112, 24-38) p roposed that the perception of hierarchical stimuli is dependent on th e number of local elements. The local level of stimuli with smaller nu mbers 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 se en as being comprised of a texture, and interlevel interaction is elim inated. The current study provides a test of Kimchi's hypothesis for l eft versus right cerebral hemispheric (LH vs. RH) processing, employin g 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 eli minates interlevel interference, (ii) the crossover point between perc eption of local elements as form vs. texture does not differ for LH vs . RH processing, and (iii) hemispheric differences in local-global pro cessing of stimuli comprised of geometric shapes are not robust, altho ugh an LH advantage for local targets was obtained for stimuli with fe w local elements. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.