title: Speed of processing and stimulus complexity in low-frequency and high-frequency channels.
abstract: Studies of the microgenesis of perception led to the hypothesis that global aspects of objects are processed faster than their details. If one starts with the assumption that low-frequency information of objects corresponds to the global, and high-frequency information to the local aspects, recognising objects should rely at first on information from the low-frequency channels and afterwards from that of the high-frequency channels. The priming paradigm provides a mean of investigating experimentally the temporal availability of low-frequency and high-frequency information in object perception. In the experiments subjects had to respond to target objects preceded either by related or by unrelated priming stimuli, which consisted of low-pass-filtered and high-pass-filtered versions of the objects. With the influence of stimulus complexity controlled, pictures of objects were chosen that varied in the number of intensity changes in the high-frequency components, with those of the low-frequency components kept constant. The exposure duration of each prime was varied between 40 and 100 ms. The results indicated that target identification only profits more from low-frequency than from high-frequency primes if the high-frequency information has a high level of complexity. If the number of intensity changes in the high-frequency components of the prime is low, target identification is most strongly facilitated. The results are discussed in terms of models which focus on organising principles at different scales.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hoeger
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011601:Psychophysics; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*