Do you want to see the tree? Ignore the forest: inhibitory control during local processing: a negative priming study of local-global processing.
The visual environment consists of global structures (e.g., a forest) made up of local parts (e.g., trees). When compound stimuli are presented (e.g., large global letters composed of arrangements of small local letters), the global unattended information slows responses to local targets. Using a negative priming paradigm, we investigated whether inhibition is required to process hierarchical stimuli when information at the local level is in conflict with the one at the global level. The results show that when local and global information is in conflict, global information must be inhibited to process local information, but that the reverse is not true. This finding has potential direct implications for brain models of visual recognition, by suggesting that when local information is conflicting with global information, inhibitory control reduces feedback activity from global information (e.g., inhibits the forest) which allows the visual system to process local information (e.g., to focus attention on a particular tree).
LaPsyDÉ, Unité CNRS 3521, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Université de Caen, <location>France</location> Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), <location>Paris, France</location>
Nicolas
N
Poirel
LaPsyDÉ, Unité CNRS 3521, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Université de Caen, <location>France</location>
Claire Sara
CS
Krakowski
LaPsyDÉ, Unité CNRS 3521, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Université de Caen, <location>France</location>
Sabrina
S
Sayah
LaPsyDÉ, Unité CNRS 3521, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Université de Caen, <location>France</location>
Arlette
A
Pineau
LaPsyDÉ, Unité CNRS 3521, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Université de Caen, <location>France</location> Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), <location>Paris, France</location>
Olivier
O
Houdé
LaPsyDÉ, Unité CNRS 3521, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Université de Caen, <location>France</location>
Grégoire
G
Borst
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005260:Female; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D060865:Repetition Priming / Q000502:physiology; D014197:Trees; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
compound stimuli; global processing; inhibition; local processing; negative priming