Two-letter stimuli, consisting of one small letter inside a much larger one
tin Experiments 1A, 1B, and 2) or inside a "blob" tin Experiment 3), were
used to examine the role of size difference in global/local tasks. The smal
l letter was placed at locations that avoided contour interactions. The res
ults showed no identity interference. in that the specific identity of the
large letter did not differentially affect identification of the small one.
However. there was evidence of global advantage, in that the presence of a
large letter hindered identification of the small one, The magnitude of th
e global advantage effect, as measured by the difference in performance bet
ween the small-single and small-embedded conditions, was largest (about 200
ms reaction time (RT) difference) when the large letters were the same as
the small ones, lower (a 63 ms difference in Experiment 1B. and 89 ms in Ex
periment 2) when the large letters were unrelated to the small ones, and lo
west (a 25 ms difference) when the large stimuli were blobs. It is proposed
that the amount of interference depends on the overlap between the feature
s of the large stimuli, as a set, and those of the small ones, also as a se
t. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.