Visual search for global/local stimulus features in humans and baboons (original) (raw)

Abstract

Fagot and Deruelle (1997) demonstrated that, when tested with identical visual stimuli, baboons exhibit an advantage in processing local features, whereas humans show the “global precedence” effect initially reported by Navon (1977). In the present experiments, we investigated the cause of this species difference. Humans and baboons performed a visual search task in which the target differed from the distractors at either the global or the local level. Humans responded more quickly to global than to local targets, whereas baboons did the opposite (Experiment 1). Human response times (RTs) were independent of display size, for both local and global processing. Baboon RTs increased linearly with display size, more so for global than for local processing. The search slope for baboons disappeared for continuous targets (Experiment 2). That effect was not due to variations in stimulus luminance (Experiment 3). Finally, variations in stimulus density affected global search slopes in baboons but not in humans (Experiment 4). Overall, results suggest that perceptual grouping operations involved during the processing of hierarchical stimuli are attention demanding for baboons, but not for humans.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Center for Research in Cognitive Neurosciences, CNRS, 31 chemin Joseph-Aiguier, 13402, Marseille, Cedex 20, France
   Christine Deruelle & Joël Fagot

Authors

1. Christine Deruelle
2. Joël Fagot

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Correspondence toChristine Deruelle.

Additional information

We thank B. Arnaud, G. Argenton, M. Chiambretto, R. Fayolle, and F. Lavergne for technical assistance. J. Requin and B. Sharf are acknowledged for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Deruelle, C., Fagot, J. Visual search for global/local stimulus features in humans and baboons.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 5, 476–481 (1998). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208825

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• Received: 03 June 1997
• Accepted: 24 November 1997
• Issue date: September 1998
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208825

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